I said, “Ok, show’s over. I need to kidnap one of you.”
My eyes zeroed in on my target.
Zavier dropped the hand of poker he held and shoved his chair back across the linoleum with a loud squeak. “Yes! I’m the victim. For what?” He stood, but he wasn’t really concerned.
He should have been.
I drank in the sight of him. He was so hot in his typical basketball shorts and grey wifebeater, his muscles and full sleeve of tattoos on display. His straight black brows arched as he took in the heels on my boots and let his coffee-colored eyes roam up slowly until he realized I had a strip of cloth in my hand.
“Are you turning me in?” he asked with a chin jut that meant he’d seen my blindfold. He held out his wrists dramatically, ready to be tied or cuffed or whatever he’d mistaken the blindfold for, and said, “I didn’t do it, Officer, I’m innocent!”
“She’d be a good naughty officer,” Evan commented from his spot at the table. The other guys muttered their agreement.
I ignored them and kept my focus on Zavier. “No, but if you want handcuffs involved, that could be arranged,” I snarked with a wink.
“Hey!” Gray grumbled at us from his spot leaning against the butcher block kitchen counter. “No fair. I call handcuffs as my thing.”
“You would,” I simply rolled my eyes at the tall, handsome black man, though the thought of his gravelly voice in my ear as he cuffed me gave me a thrill.
Gray pouted at me until I pointed a finger and said, “Your entitled rich boy is showing.” Then he turned away and fiddled with the police scanners on the counter, pretending to listen to the chatter instead of all the razzing the guys started to give him.
“Better watch out,” I warned the rest of them, making eye contact with Evan, who’d made the last comment. “Gray might just write a spell to put you all in handcuffs too. And I’m pretty sure you won’t have as much fun in them as I will.”
That set off a whole round of booing, but Gray’s smile was worth it. I gave him a wink too. Then I grabbed Z’s hand and said, “Come on. It’s date night.” I led him away from the catcalls, past the cache of guns we kept in the hallway at the ready, up the stairs, and halfway to my bedroom. I stopped in the middle of the dim, dingy hallway and presented him with the blindfold, saying, “Get down so I can put this on you.”
Z’s naughty smile nearly made me give up on this whole “seduction” thing he’d insisted on. That smile alone made me want to take him right there in the hall—when Zavier smiled, morning dawned and birds sang and the world lit up.
But then he knelt on one knee.
Lust nearly toppled me. Staring down at him, watching him bend to my will as he got to his knee and held still, hearing his intake of breath as I stepped forward and wrapped the blindfold around his straight dark brows and playful eyes, feeling his cheeks curve into a grin when I nudged the black band down over his face … all of it got to me. My throat was tight when I ordered him to turn so I could tie the strip of cloth behind his short, dark brown hair. All of it gave me a thrill I hadn’t expected—a sensual thrill.
Someday, if we made it out of all this trouble, I wanted to use a blindfold on him again. And then I’d do much naughtier things to him than those I had planned for tonight.
The tight heat inside my core doubled when Z didn’t straighten from his crouch but spun back around on his tip toes, still bent, his face level with my stomach, and reached for me. One of his hands found each of my hips, settling on top of my jeans, and for a long, drawn-out moment the sexual chemistry boiled between us and the dark hallway grew hot, steamy.
Until he ruined the moment. Because he was Z and that was what he did. His hands on my hips shook me back and forth as he demanded, in a plaintive six-year-old’s tone, “Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!”
I laughed, my hands going to his thick shoulders. “No! This is your first date and it’s a surprise. You wanted seduction. Part of that seduction includes surprises.”
My Firefly jutted out his