When the call came out for stories about Secret Identities, I had a few ideas and started them, and they petered out, leaving me worried that I just didn’t have a story for the anthology in me. I can also be dogged when it comes to things, and that’s when I decided to find that story.

My mind remembered that the instigating conflict in Cygny’s Six was the lies between the hero and heroine. While I talked about what had happened between them, we only dealt with the fallout and then how they moved beyond it in the book.

So, once I found the idea of what to write, what was left was to put the pieces together. Their attraction was a given. The pull between them was elemental. I needed to get them across the line into a physical expression of that heat.

That’s when I thought of a power outage. Hot weather. No relief from an AC unit or a fan. I love a good AC unit to cool things down probably because I don’t have one at home. And I only pseudo joke that there’s only so much you can take off when it’s hot.

So that’s how I tipped the balance over into the crux of the story. They cross the line into a connection that’s more than physical. For Cygny, she puts more than her body into this thing building between them… And then… Well, something had to be thrown into the mix.

Snippet from “In the Dark”…

She was crazy for going to his apartment, but then again, they’d been flirting back and forth for a while now. What was the harm?

The harm, her mind whispered at her, is that he doesn’t know who you are.

Leo’s door opened, and she was left staring.

Bare-chested, with a towel slung around his neck and a pair of grey sweatpants that had her sweating, was the man who was on her mind every spare minute she had.

And heaven help her, the way he wore those sweatpants, made her mouth dry and her palms tingle to touch all the exposed skin above it.

“So, are you going to come in?”

Overheated and frustrated to boot, she put one foot in front of the other until she reached his door and found out that he wasn’t going to make it easy.

He turned to the side but didn’t step out of the doorframe.

There was a bit of a challenge in his eyes, daring her to make a decision.

Well, Cygny wasn’t a woman who was cowed easily.

The look in Leo’s eyes got under her skin. She was already hot to the touch, and now he had her heating up from the inside.

Damn him! The confidence rolling off him in waves was like a damn aphrodisiac. Pheromones? Probably. And the heat wasn’t doing her any favors.

Turning her shoulder toward the door, she tried to slide past him into his apartment.

Just as she moved past the doorframe, Leo caught her eye as he leaned forward.

Cygny sucked in a breath and tried to keep some distance between them, but it was impossible.

She felt his breath on her face and the warm press of his thighs against hers. It wasn’t until a drop fell from his hair onto hers that she grumbled. “You invited me in, Leo.”

She didn’t want to use his name, but it slipped out. The more she said his name out loud, the more he’d likely say hers. She didn’t like hearing him call her Elaine. It was like having a second woman in the room. And she’d never been interested in sharing with another woman in bed, but she was pretty sure that’s where this was going.

His smile said the same. It was leisurely and filled with confidence. “That I did.”

“And are you going to let me in?”

She’d meant to make the comment airy and relaxed, but it didn’t help that he was close enough to kiss, and his chest was still slightly damp with water from the shower. There might even be steam coming off his chest.

Damn, he was hot.

The silence between them was what turned her head.

Or, in this case, lifted it.

Cygny snapped up her head to look at him and see right into his eyes.

He was smiling at her.

He knew.

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About the Author

Reina Torres is an author for whom reading was always a way to escape, dream, and travel to different times and places. Writing was a way to discover new adventures and share those stories with others. Reina writes across a number of different romance sub-genres, remembering that those who wander aren’t always lost.

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