“When you’re done, let me drop you at your car. We can’t go into the office together. I don’t need any more scrutiny than I already have.”

Her face dropped for the briefest of seconds, then she recovered, raising a delicate eyebrow. “Like that, is it? You’d rather pretend that last night and this morning never happened?”

She sidled into the kitchen, sinuous and graceful, slipping her arms around his waist. He had to admit, she was incredibly appealing. The scent of musk and roses filled his nostrils, and he breathed in deeply, aware that he was hard again. Good grief. He’d unleashed the genie in the bottle.

“It’s not a good idea, Charlotte. You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman, but-“

Charlotte was rubbing against him again, grinding her hips into his with precision. She set her coffee down, then took the mug from his hand and transferred the warmed flesh to her now-exposed breast. How did she manage to get out of her shirt so quickly? He lowered his head and flicked his tongue across her nipple. She accepted the invitation and eased down his zipper. He glanced over her head at the clock on the stove and decided, what the hell. He’d been under enough pressure lately. Maybe he’d been wrong to fight this. Maybe being with Charlotte was exactly what he needed.

Charlotte was small, only around five foot five, and easily lifted. She was wearing a tight black skirt, the same one that had been bothering him the night before. He quickly discovered she’d neglected to put on any underwear. He settled her on the counter, bent her backward, running his palm down the length of her body, and sheathed himself again. She giggled, and he felt a laugh build in his own chest. Here they were, going at it like a couple of teenagers, not even bothering to undress. It felt good. Better than he could have ever expected.

Charlotte

Baldwin dropped her at the car in a strangled silence. Embarrassed? Regretful? She didn’t know his looks well enough to be able to tell what he was thinking. Not yet.

She respected his discomfiture, slipped out of the car without saying anything. She had a fresh change of clothes in her trunk-she always had a go bag packed for the times they needed to attend to a crime scene in person. She drove to work, slung the bag over her shoulder and slipped inside. Only the guards at the desk saw her, and who were they to comment? It wasn’t the first time an agent had done the walk of shame into work.

After she changed, Charlotte took an extralong time in the bathroom. She hadn’t been able to do her hair properly- instead of fine, red silk, the ends were waving and a bit frizzy. She used a special boar-bristle brush to get them tamed down, then reapplied some makeup.

There, that was better. Would they be able to tell? She stared in the mirror, taking in every detail. Yes, her lips were a bit puffy and red around the edges. His beard, all bristly, had scraped the tender skin nearly raw. She thought about the other parts that were raw and was pleased to see a fine flush make its way up the bone-china skin of her neck into her cheeks. Oh, that was pretty. She looked ripe, a perfect grape plucked from the vine.

No wonder he couldn’t resist. She’d make sure he never would again. She knew how to press his buttons now.

She grabbed her bag and went to her desk. The rest of the team was already assembled. Butler and Geroux didn’t give her much of a second glance, but Sparrow looked at her, eyes narrowing. Charlotte mustered up the most angelic, innocent smile she could, then raised her eyebrow in a sultry hello. Sparrow openly thawed.

She’d need to be careful there. It was going to be tricky navigating two relationships, especially if Sparrow wanted to start getting possessive. Sparrow was a pretty girl, prettier than she knew, trim and athletic, with an adorable crossbite. Charlotte had seduced her three weeks ago, after a long evening celebrating the close of their first case as a team. They’d done the girl thing, slipped off to the bathroom together, and Charlotte had locked the door behind them and let Sparrow go down on her while she sat on the counter with her legs spread wide.

Goodness, she was starting to feel quite warm. Mmm, maybe Baldwin and Sparrow? No, probably not. Baldwin seemed a bit too parochial for all that. But it made for a nice fantasy. This was the way she preferred to live her life, with one partner of each sex on the hook. Hard and soft, dark and light She smiled to herself, then opened her computer, just barely pushing the image of the three of them intertwined on Baldwin’s office floor from her mind. She needed to focus. This case, this stupidly named case, was driving her mad.

She didn’t understand men who committed crimes against children. Adult-on-adult violence, yes, she could fathom that. It was one of the things that made her a good profiler-she had a certain empathy with the killers. For her dissertation she’d interviewed more than forty serial offenders, and almost all of them had given new information in their cases. One had even coughed up the location of a body-shocking, considering he’d been using it as leverage to keep his privileges.

Yes, she was good with killers. She’d excelled in her classes, gotten her Ph.D. in record time, had been snapped up by the Bureau right out of school. She’d worked her way into the BAU with a combination of intelligence and sheer guts. But working cases involving children was not her forte.

Sparrow carne into her office with a stack of files.

“More sex offenders to interview today.” She barely brushed her arm against Charlotte’s shoulder as she placed the folders on the desk.

Charlotte scooted her chair back a little and swiveled so she could see Sparrow face on. She raised an eyebrow and waited in silence. She knew what was coming.

“I tried calling you last night. I thought we were supposed to meet up.”

“You called?” Charlotte feigned innocence-God, she should win an Oscar for that tone. “I must have slept right through it. Yesterday was so awful, and I had a lot to drink last night. I’m sorry, honey.”

Sparrow blushed at the endearment. “Well, maybe tonight? We could get Indian. I know how much you love it. Drink some wine, unwind a little?”

“Maybe tonight, sugar. We’ll have to see what the day brings though, right? Lord knows there’s a creep out there just waiting to be caught Let’s go get him, yeah?”

She ran her fingernail up Sparrow’s leg, then flipped her chair back into the proper position and pulled the first file off the stack. Sparrow, firmly dismissed, hesitated a moment, then left her in peace.

Yes, this was going to be very, very complicated.

Seventeen

Nashville

8:50 a.m.

The CJC sat baking in the late fall sun, heat shimmering off the building’s bricks. Taylor hadn’t realized just how warm it was today-after the previous night’s chill, it felt almost like summer. Crazy weather for the first of November.

People flowed in and out of the building, officers in uniform and plainclothes detectives, random strangers looking for the courts, black and white and yellow and brown, all mingling into one stew of justice. The diversity of Nashville was never better represented than in this one spot-the Criminal Justice Center in the morning.