Arresting Desire Berkley Sensation Trade ISBN-13: TBD Release Date: July 3, 2012 Genre: Sexy Contemporary Romance FBI Agent Jon Bocelli never stopped wanting beautiful professor Lucia DiStefano. She's interested in taking her first lover, and he intends to be that man. When her past puts her life in danger, Jon risks everything to save her and prove this fling is forever. Pre-Order: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Amazon UK Pre-Order eBook: Kindle | Nook

Chapter One

He stood at the back of the smoky club and watched with a grimace as four mostly naked men danced around the sitting redhead he hadn’t quite forgotten in the last two years. A bawdy song about loosening up some girl’s buttons throbbed over the speakers in the background.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Blade Bocelli,” a familiar voice drawled.

He turned to find Nicki Sullivan wearing a red lacy corset, a tight leather skirt, and five-inch fuck-me pumps—along with a huge, glittering wedding ring. She leaned against the club’s back wall, giving him a teasing smile.

“You know my name is Jon.” He grimaced. “Drop the cheesy Blade, huh? My days undercover with the Mafia, posing as your Uncle Pietro’s right-hand bitch, are done.”

“You clean up nice in Armani. Guess the FBI prefers its agents in suits.” Nicki looked up and down with a grin. “But you looked good in leather.”

Jon didn’t give a shit what she thought. “You share that view with your husband?”

“I said you looked good. I didn’t say I wanted to fuck you. Mark is the only one, and he knows it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re a long way from Jersey. What brings you back to Vegas?”

“I need to talk to you, and like I said over the phone, I didn’t want any potential for being overheard.” He glanced at the stage again, holding in a curse when one of the male dancers gyrated his junk in the pretty redhead’s face. When she giggled, Jon clenched a fist.

“Something wrong?” Nicki asked, all innocence.

“You didn’t tell me your sister would be here.”

She shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

No, but he’d wanted to. Lucia DiStefano was everything he had no business wanting and embodied nearly every fantasy he’d ever had. She wasn’t tall or stick-thin. She wasn’t a man-eater who knew twenty ways to get off in three minutes. She was highly intelligent, more National Geographic than Vogue. Jon had itched to awaken the sensual woman under Lucia’s polished surface the second he’d laid eyes on her while working undercover here two years ago.

“Her comings and goings are none of my business,” he said finally.

“But you want them to be,” the sultry brunette returned. “Especially the coming.”

Absolutely. Fuck, was he that transparent? “I need to ask you about something your father may have left you in his will.”

“What are you looking for?”

Wasn’t that the million-dollar question? Or in this case, a lifetime sentence. If he didn’t get it answered fast, his brother might die in a maximum-security prison for the murder of a federal judge he hadn’t committed.

“I’m not exactly sure. I suspect I’m looking for some form of media he used to store security footage. A DVD, a flash drive, an SD card . . .”

Nicki snorted. “The feds had his office bugged for years. You’re one of them. Can’t you just prowl through your own files?”

Great thought, but . . . “I looked through their evidence. I found nothing. Literally. Whatever we once collected is gone. Shortly after I looked, my boss told me not to sniff around for anything related to Judge Casale’s murder.”

“They know your brother was convicted of that.”

“Stefan didn’t do it.”

“Because he’s such a choir boy?” She raised a dark brow.

“I’m under no illusions. My brother was once your father’s favorite assassin, and no one in the Mafia is a choir boy. But Stefan didn’t kill that judge.”

“He tell you that?”

“My brother hasn’t said a damn word.”

But Jon knew Stefan well. If he had pulled the trigger and planted two bullets in the judge’s head, Stefan would be agitated and itching to get back to his “family.” The fact that he seemed content to rot in the pen told Jon that his brother was lying low for some reason. But there was no chance that Jon was going to let Stef piss his life away. If Lucia’s father, Nicholas DiStefano, had ordered the hit against Judge Casale, he might have kept a record, some evidence—something that could exonerate Stef. Since, by all accounts, Nicholas and his wife had been estranged for a few years, who else but his daughters would the man have entrusted with his worldly goods after his murder?

“Well, my father has been gone a few years now. Lucia and I have been through his things. I didn’t find any recording devices or security footage that I can recall.”

“All of his possessions are accounted for?”

Nicki sighed. Clearly, she didn’t like these questions. “I have no way of knowing. I loved my father, but he wasn’t the sort of man who let anyone get terribly close.”

True enough.

“We never found our grandmother’s jewelry, which upsets my sister most. Since Lucia was a little girl, Mama Antonella had promised my sister her engagement ring and her mother’s locket. They weren’t among my father’s belongings, though. None of it is hugely valuable. It’s just sentimental.”

Nicholas DiStefano hadn’t been dumb. He’d known that someone in the Gamalini crime family, most likely his brother, had wanted to take him down and become boss. Maybe he’d stashed the jewelry and his security recordings together? Jon looked down to the stage, where one G-string-clad dancer hovered over Lucia and kissed her cheek. Jon had the immediate urge to give the douche bag a slow, painful beating.

“Any theories on what might have happened to the jewelry?” he asked Nicki, forcing himself back on task.

“It’s not like my father needed the money, so he wouldn’t have pawned or sold it. At this point, I wonder if my Uncle Pietro grabbed it for his stupid cow of a daughter. But I don’t know.”

One thing Jon did know for sure? Pietro DiStefano was looking hot and hard for something that had belonged to his deceased older brother. Maybe money. Or one of the man’s many accommodating mistresses. But it could also be something more incriminating. Either way, Jon had a week’s vacation to save his brother from a life—and probable death—behind bars.

“Look . . .” Nicki glanced at the stage, then raised a brow as one of the male dancers kissed Lucia’s neck.

Jon ripped his gaze away from the scene. “What?”

“If you came all the way to Vegas just for some hidden media storage stuff, you’re wasting your time. If you came about my sister . . .” She crossed slender arms over her chest and grinned. “Then your timing is perfect.”

“She looks occupied to me.” Crap, he hadn’t meant to sound jealous.

“Not yet. You know she’s turning twenty-five tomorrow?”

Jon swallowed. No, he hadn’t known, but it reinforced the reasons he’d left her untouched two years ago. Though he was barely ten years Lucia’s senior, twenty-five sounded damn young to him. Given their differences in life experience, that ten years might as well be a hundred.

“So your dancing goons down there are a birthday present?” He nodded to the stage.

“Nah. My employees just like her.”

“Well, then she won’t be spending her birthday alone.” And wasn’t that a bitch?

“Maybe not. But she likes you more.” Nicki’s direct stare challenged him.

Jon knew that. God, didn’t Nicki realize that he’d had to force himself to leave Lucia once before? Twenty-three had been too young for what he’d wanted to do to her. He’d taken one look at her then and known that she was a virgin. Glancing at her giggling embarrassment around the male strippers currently thrusting their dicks in her direction, Jon wondered if anything had changed.

“Your sister is beautiful and kind. She deserves someone great who will come home to her every night, kiss the kids, and snuggle up with her on the couch. That’s not me.”

“I didn’t ask you to marry her and knock her up. I only meant that maybe you’d take her out for a drink or something and talk.”

“Where do you think that talking would lead, Nicki?”

She shrugged. “Maybe to just a nice evening. Maybe to bed.”

He shot her a skeptical glance. “You’re encouraging me to sleep with your younger sister?”

Shifting her weight from one platform to the other, Nicki sighed. “She’s still a full-fledged V-card member, but probably not for long. I’m . . . worried about her.”

Jon was far more worried about what would happen if he spent any time alone at all with Lucia DiStefano. She made him hungry. And after too many tense, sex-related cases, his strings were pulled damn tight. Knowing that she was still a virgin . . . Well, everything about her was so sweet and pure. And couldn’t he use some of that in his life?

Great, except he’d sully her all up. He couldn’t bear to be the one to disillusion a girl as tender as Lucia.

“Want to know what I did on my last case?” Jon asked Nicki. He was sure that she didn’t, but was going to tell her anyway. “I ensured that one of my analysts trained properly to pose undercover as a submissive at a BDSM resort. I watched her get naked. I watched her get spanked by one man . . . and get off at the hands of another—at the same time. I saw her publicly flogged and fondled, then I had to send her to a place where orgies and whippings are common. Your sister’s idea of racy is probably reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover aloud at a book discussion group of her fellow academians. Don’t get me wrong; I’d be a lying motherfucker if I said I didn’t want to be the man to take Lucia’s virginity, but she deserves someone who hasn’t lived too long on the edge. Trust me, I’m doing her a favor.”

“Oh, get over yourself.” Nicki rolled her eyes. “So she’s been sheltered. That makes her corruptible, not breakable. I’m only telling you this because I know you have some feelings for her, and I think you’d make her first time better than any drunk slob she’s going to meet at that stupid singles’ resort she’s jetting off to for a week. But you know what? If you’re determined to be all self-sacrificing and white knightish, then let her go to the Bahamas and get her brains fucked out by a stranger. I’ll slip a box of condoms into her suitcase and tell her to have a good time.” Nicki shoved away from the wall. “You’re welcome to stay for cake. If not, you know where to find the door.”

#

“So, Dr. DiStefano,” Ashley whispered in Lucia’s ear, “are you going to make a meal out of him or just ogle him like a decadent but off-limits dessert?”

Sipping her daiquiri, Lucia tore her gaze away from the hunk embroiled in conversation with her sister and tossed a glare over her shoulder at Ashley. “I’m just trying to figure out what he’s doing here. I haven’t seen Jon Bocelli in two years.”

Ashley’s blue eyes widened. “That’s the guy you’ve been crushing on? Oh, I can totally see why you’ve been hung up all this time. He’s hawt! It doesn’t matter why he’s here. Go for it! You’re twenty-five and never been—”

“I don’t need a reminder that my hymen is probably growing cobwebs,” she whispered furiously.

She stared at Jon, still unable to believe he’d come here. He’d likely flown out to Vegas for something related to a case, since he’d talked to Nicki first. Certainly, he hadn’t come for her. She’d made no impact on him two years ago. Most likely, she made even less of one now.

Lucia needed to get over him and move on with her life. Despite their frequent arguments during the summer they’d spent here, only Jon—with his hard body wrapped in sleek Italian style, black leather, and commanding vibe—had aroused her. In the past, he’d swaggered his way around Nicki’s club, Girls’ Night Out, looking hotter than any oiled-down pretty boy on stage. He reminded her of the Doms she read about in the erotic romances she devoured one after the other. Nothing had changed in the last two years, except his attire. His presence still filled a room and made her shiver. But he’d left his undercover assignment—and her—and walked away without a word. Why was he here now?

“Jon Bocelli is so out of my league. Heck, he’s out of my universe.” He could—and probably had—hooked up with any number of sexy, confident, experienced women. “Wanting him is a bad habit I should quit. I just need the right twelve-step program.”

“Maybe not . . .” Ashley whispered. “Every time you’re not looking at him, his eyes are all over you. Those glances of his could singe the chrome off a fender.”

“You’ve had too much to drink. If he’s looking, he’s probably wondering how Nicki could possibly share genes with such a frumpy sister.”

Ashley smacked her arm. “You are not frumpy. If he thought you were, he wouldn’t stare like he’s dying to eat you up.” She anchored a hand on her hip and sent her a sour glare. “You do this, you know?”

“Do what?” Lucia scowled into her daiquiri glass before finishing the last sip.

“Undermine yourself. I’ve seen it a hundred times with you. You talk, you laugh, you sparkle with a guy. The minute he acts interested, you clam up, shut down, and your personality leaves town. Why is that?”

Lucia rolled her eyes. Why did Ashley have to drudge this crap up tonight? “I know when men are being polite. They aren’t interested in me sexually. They like to talk to me. I’m a good listener. I laugh at their jokes. But they always ask out someone thin and cute who doesn’t have an IQ that puts her in the ‘freak’ category. Trust me, the one-two punch of being thirty pounds overweight and enjoying a healthy debate about whether Alexander the Great or Napoleon was the more brilliant military strategist scares them off. If, by some miracle, they’re still interested despite the thunder thighs or the fact I earned a PhD at twenty-one . . . well, the family name drives off the rest.”

Pursing her glossy red lips together, Ashley sighed. “You’re the one who puts a stop to anything beyond friendship. That one”—she nodded at Jon—“isn’t thinking anything about your thighs except how much he’d like to be between them. I guarantee it.”

“He’s probably looking at you,” Lucia said. And that would be normal. Ashley stood tall and slender, with long, blond hair tumbling down her back in tousled waves. She was every man’s walking wet dream.

“Nope. Bocelli likes curves, especially breasts, which you’ve got plenty of, lucky thing.”

“You’ve never met the guy. How would you know?”

“Because every time you turn in his direction, he looks at yours.” Before she could object, Ashley cut her off. “How about a friendly bet?”

“Okay.” Lucia turned her back to Jon and frowned suspiciously. “What?”

“When he talks to you, engage him in conversation, flirt, give him the green-light vibe. If he backs away after that, I’ll promise to proofread your latest research article. Deal?”

Tempting offer. Ashley was a killer with copyediting marks and a red pen. And this last article she’d finished was so, so important to her professionally.

“All right. But I’m telling you, he’s only staring because he’s wondering why I squeezed an ass so big into a black dress so tiny. Last time I listen to you for fashion advice, by the way.”

Ashley grinned. “Honey, please consider the possibility that he genuinely likes you, that you make him hard as hell, and that he’s trying to figure out how to get your panties off.”

“Sure.” Lucia rolled her eyes. “Every scrumptious bad boy in Vegas is trying to figure out how to get me into bed.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me in the least, Doc,” murmured an all-too-familiar gravelly, Jersey-accented voice that went straight to her belly and bloomed into a wild, sensual ache.

Jon Bocelli.

Oh my God! She gasped. He’d heard her?

Lucia could feel him now, hot at her back, mere inches away. The musky spice unique to him alone wrapped around her, intensifying the ache in her gut into something with claws that had dug in deep long ago and refused to let go.

She turned, hoping somehow that her senses had deceived her. But no. There he stood, all six-plus feet of him, clad in a midnight blue shirt, black slacks, and matching suit coat.

The slam of her heartbeat kicking into overdrive thumped like a sledgehammer against her chest. Lucia swallowed, fighting the ache low in her belly, spreading between her legs. Helplessly, her gaze climbed up his sculpted torso, past the golden sinew of his throat visible through his open-collared shirt, gliding over the five o’clock shadow that spelled danger, lingering on his full mouth, which would have looked just as at home on a sultan, a gigolo, or the cover of a magazine. Finally, she made her way to his dark eyes. His stare, relentless, self-possessed, hungry, and not remotely teasing, made her suck in a breath. The sense of leashed control he gave off absolutely melted her.

“Talk to him,” Ashley mumbled in her ear.

Talk? Lucia could barely find the presence of mind to shut her gaping mouth, let alone think of a witty rejoinder.

“All right, everyone!” Nicki spoke into a small microphone, breaking the tense moment. “Time for the birthday girl to open gifts.”

Jon flicked his gaze to her sister for a moment, breaking the spell. Lucia released the breath she’d been holding.

“Guess I . . . should go,” Lucia murmured. “It was good seeing you.”

His gaze drilled into her, hot, intense. “I’m not leaving yet. I need to talk to you.”

About what? “Sure.”

“Lucia!” Nicki prompted into the microphone at center stage. Her mountain of a husband, Mark, stood behind her, hand resting protectively around her waist. “Get up here, birthday girl!”

Doing her best to balance on four-inch heels, Lucia made her way to Nicki’s side, mindful of her little black dress—which was just barely shy of indecent—and sat in the waiting chair in the center. Nicki thrust a fresh daiquiri in her hand. Lucia promptly consumed half of it, nervous when she noticed Jon’s gaze lingering on her.

“Start unwrapping!” Nicki demanded, pulling Lucia out of her thoughts.

Setting aside the other half of her daiquiri, Lucia stared at the smattering of brightly wrapped boxes, some little, some big, all around her. She dove in.

From a group of the dancers who worked at the club, a gift certificate for a day of pampering at an upscale spa nearby. From Nicki and Mark, a gorgeous pair of pearl earrings and a matching pendant. Amid the scattering of boxes, one that had no wrapping paper and no card snagged her attention.

Her father, God rest him, had never wrapped any of her gifts or given the folks at Hallmark a dime.

Lucia frowned as she picked up the rectangular box.

Definitely odd. It barely fit on her lap. The cardboard of the box was a bit dulled, as if it was old. The edges were even frayed.

Lucia frowned. “Who is this from, do you know?”

“Oh, sorry,” Nicki piped up. “That arrived this morning from Dalton Cahill.”

“Dad’s estate attorney?”

Nicki nodded with a shrug thrown in. “I thought that was weird, too. But I signed for it.”

They only heard from Dalton Cahill whenever business pertaining to the assets her father had left behind arose. But he’d never contacted them in a personal way. Certainly, he’d never observed their birthdays. Cahill had all the warmth of a used car salesman crossed with a cobra.

Frowning, Lucia pulled away the heavy strapping tape around the faded box and lifted the lid. She peeled back the tissue paper, feeling the outline of something hard and square with rounded edges. She dug deeper inside and wrapped her fingers around the metallic outline. Lifting it free, she found a photo in a sleek silver frame. The image was raised in the center, and the sides of the frame slanted down, giving the photo a three-dimensional effect.

The picture itself was of her father, looking as he had shortly before his murder, standing next to his brother, her Uncle Pietro, arms around one another, both smiles as they stood outside an Italian restaurant called Celeste’s. She’d never heard of the place. But seeing her father looking so vital, standing beside the man she was certain had orchestrated her father’s death, torqued something in her stomach. The hot sting of tears stabbed at the back of her eyes.

Nicki wandered closer, leaned in, then hugged her. “Oh my God . . .”

The moment her sister’s arms came around her, Lucia lost it, and tears fell. With one hand, she clutched the picture to her chest. With the other, she covered her mouth. But even that didn’t keep the sobs in.

“Why would Cahill have sent this to you?” Nicki frowned. “And why a picture of him with Pietro?”

“Are you okay?” Mark moved in behind her, his brows lowered in concern, eyes gentle.

Lucia wiped at her tears. “Fine. I’ll be fine. I just . . . I didn’t get anything in the way of personal mementos when my father passed away. So this is a shock.”

“And really unusual,” Nicki murmured.

Exactly. Why had her father’s attorney sent her such a thing, especially after all this time?

“Have you spoken to Dalton Cahill lately?” Nicki asked, practically reading Lucia’s mind.

She shook her head. “He just left me a message a few weeks ago and asked if I’d be coming to Atlantic City anytime this summer. He wanted to have lunch. I left him a voice mail telling him that I was coming here.”

Snagged by the weight of a hot stare across the room, Lucia looked up. Jon stood there, over six feet of testosterone. He drilled her with a questioning gaze, part concern, part crowbar. He had questions about something and intended to get answers.

Nearly lost in the wad of tissue paper on the floor of the stage, she glimpsed a piece of paper she’d missed before, taped to the bottom of the box. Grabbing the little scrap, she ripped it off and opened the handwritten note from Dalton Cahill.

“What does it say?” Nicki prompted impatiently, leaning over her shoulder.

Miss DiStefano,

Shortly before his death, your father asked me to pass this box and its contents to you on the occasion of your twenty-fifth birthday. Therefore, I am forwarding this box to you at his behest.

Best,

D. Cahill

Her father had asked his attorney to do this before his murder? And years after his passing? Cold shock cascaded through her. It made no sense . . . Then again, many of her father’s actions hadn’t. Always cloaked in secrecy, in kind evasions. She knew he’d been trying to protect her from his big, bad world. She missed him in death, even if she hadn’t understood him in life. They’d shared a familial bond. She’d loved him. And in his macho Italian way, he’d loved her, too.

Fresh tears filled her eyes, and Lucia swiped at them. This was a birthday party, a celebration of life. Ashley hadn’t flown all the way to Vegas to be sad. Tomorrow, they were going to the tropics to get their tan on and find hot guys at Erotics Anonymous. Now wasn’t the time to weep. She’d been through the grief process, and had learned to deal with life minus her dad. But every once in a while, a new pang would assert itself, and she’d feel the sadness weigh her down.

Maybe she was looking at his gift all wrong. Her father had given her a memento so she could remember and celebrate, not so she could mourn.

Yes, but . . . why this photo? Why now? One thing she and her father had in common was the love of a good puzzle. Maybe she was supposed to figure out why Dad had sent this to her. Was it a message from beyond the grave?