She waited a beat too long deciding whether to follow him out the window or backtrack to the glass door. She turned toward the door just as he came across the bed.
He pulled her backward, flipping her under him as they landed hard. She was facedown, her head turned to one side. He had her wrists pinned on her lower back, his knees on her spread thighs, and his mouth by her ear.
“I like a woman who’s active in bed, but you really push things to the limit.”
“Go to hell.”
She didn’t fight him, but he didn’t for a second believe she’d accepted defeat. He kept his hold firm. “Been there, done that, didn’t bother buying the T-shirt.”
“Why, none big enough to fit over your ego?”
“Nah. I knew I’d get another chance on my next trip.”
“I’ll do my best to make that real soon.”
“You can try.” She craned her head just enough to hold his gaze. Hers was unwavering.
It was a helluva time to notice how incredibly green her eyes were. He was already well aware of the rest of her … attributes. Watching her athletic form as she strolled in and out of the bedroom, it had been impossible not to notice. Those black ski pants of hers fit like a second skin. Now she was pinned beneath him for the second time, all taut muscle and finely tuned response.
Yeah, she had him taut and finely tuned too. Adrenaline wasn’t the only thing pumping through his system.
“How’d you get out of the restraints?” she asked, her voice steady and determined despite the strain of her current position.
“Professional curiosity?”
“Harry Houdini couldn’t have gotten out of those straps.”
“Martin Riggs could.”
Her eyebrows quirked. “Never heard of him.”
He let out a disgusted sigh. “What kind of cop are you, Detective?”
She didn’t flinch, but he felt the tension in her wrists stretch even tighter.
“I’m not a cop.” She briefly closed her eyes. They flashed open, the momentary blip in her otherwise complete control might have gone unnoticed had he not been watching her so intently. “Who’s Martin Riggs?”
“You might not be a cop any longer, but you were. A detective, as I believe I deduced earlier.”
She said nothing, her expression remained stony.
Oh, she was good. He was better. “As for Riggs, any self-respecting officer of the law watches cop shows. Martin Riggs was the Mel Gibson character in the Lethal Weapon movies.”
She studied him for a second longer, then lifted her head a fraction and flicked a dismissive glance over his shoulders and chest before meeting his eyes once again. “Your ego really does need a reality check.”
He almost smiled. “You’re just mad because I’m on top this time.” It occurred to him that he was actually enjoying himself. Big mistake.
“Don’t get used to it,” she shot back.
His lips quirked. “Hey, I’m a sensitive guy. I let the woman be in control. Occasionally.”
“Let?”
“Now whose ego is bruised? What’s the matter, Detective Princess, you don’t like giving up control?” He pressed his lips a little closer to her ear. “No matter what women say, they like being pulled beneath a nice, hard body, they like feeling the weight of their man settle between their legs.” He relaxed his weight more heavily on her thighs. “But not you, right?”
Had he really heard that soft intake of breath? When he’d made the tactical error of pressing too much of him against too much of her, it became hard to hear past the thrumming in his own ears.
For all her trim muscle and smart mouth, her body felt pliant beneath him. He redoubled his concentration and worked on steadying his heart rate. She’d tricked him once before. He might be enjoying this unexpected, if intriguing twist in his hunt for Lucas, but he wouldn’t let it interfere with his ultimate goal. He sighed. Playtime was over.
He didn’t pull away, deciding the position lent more advantage than disadvantage. For the moment, anyway.
“Why don’t we dispense with all the bondage foreplay and get to the main act,” he said. The amusement disappeared, his tone was cool and sharp. “What do you want with me?”
Scottie swore silently. She should have kept him talking, kept him preoccupied and focused on his sudden reversal of power until she found the weak link. She doubted he’d let her take him as easily as before, and her current position didn’t lend itself to many possibilities.
Then he’d dropped his already deep voice to that rough whisper and painted visions in her mind that were all too clear and none too safe. Damn her. Even exhausted as she was, she’d responded—with great enthusiasm.
She could have made excuses for herself by pointing out that any woman with two-hundred pounds of beautifully sculpted, aroused, naked male above her would have to have been dead not to react, but she didn’t. Scottie didn’t make excuses. Not for herself, not for her team.
So why was there this tiny, niggling sense of relief picking its way into her brain? Relief? Just because she’d responded like a healthy, sexual human being?
Exactly.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, as much to keep him talking as to distract herself from that train of thought. “How did you get out of the restraints? Or should I ask,” she added mockingly, “how did Mel do it?”
“Riggs could dislocate his shoulder.”
“On purpose? You can do that?”
“No. But I am double-jointed.”
“Handy.”
She felt his breath caress her, tickling her ear. “It has its moments.”
That quivering sensation rushed over her skin again. “I bet.” Scottie wasn’t so sure having proof that her sexuality still existed was such a relief after all. Being in thrall to her hormones was a unique experience that would make for interesting analysis, but not right now.
Yet she seemed to have no choice. Every breath he expelled, every tiny movement he made caused a reaction in her. She was excruciatingly aware of every contact point between them, even the feel of the mattress beneath her.
His fingers tightened slightly around her wrists. She was a tall woman with a frame to match, yet his hand easily encompassed both of her wrists with a strength that did not need to be exerted to be understood. She heard his whisper again in her mind. They like feeling the weight of their man between their legs. Indeed the weight of his body on hers wasn’t at all unpleasant. It made concentrating on anything but the sensations he was causing inside her all but impossible.
Stop! she commanded herself. Think. She couldn’t very well lie beneath him on a bed and keep him talking for eight days. And nights, her mind inserted helpfully.
She stifled a groan. Battling him was a difficult enough challenge. She did not need to battle herself as well.
“Enough about me,” he said. “Let’s talk about you.”
“Let me up,” she instructed. “We can talk in the kitchen after you’ve dressed.”
“You give orders very well. Does that come from being the detective? Or the princess?”
“I’ve never been a princess of any kind in my life.”
“Oh, you went straight to queen then. How plebeian of me. Please forgive me Your Highness.”
Scottie didn’t know whether to laugh or scream in frustration. Even in his condescension there was no cruelty. In fact, there was an underlying amusement in most everything he said that begged her to join him in his mockery. Considering she was the target, it should have been easier to resist. She had to work at it.
“Fancy speech for a cop. Or does that come from playing bartender-philosopher?”
His smile remained, but the light went out in his eyes. She could have shivered from the chill. It was much easier now to recall the dark specter that had loomed over her an hour before. Sarah. Scottie wondered again who she was, this woman who had the ability to make him lose control.
Without warning, Logan flipped her on her back.
She was not a small woman. His power and the ease with which he exerted it made her realize again just how lucky she’d been earlier.
He straddled her, his ankles pressing hers to the bed to keep her legs straight so she couldn’t rear up. Her wrists were still pinned at the base of her spine by his hand, the uncomfortable position made worse as it cocked her hips at an awkward—not to mention disturbingly intimate—angle.
His other hand captured a fistful of hair. He leaned down. His black eyes glittered, giving his smile an almost evil cast. The dark specter had returned.
“Who the hell are you? How do you know me?”
This menacing side of him made her relax. Bullies and madmen she could handle. She had a lifetime of experience with their kind.
“Let me up and I’ll tell you,” she said calmly.
He reared back and tugged her half off the bed. With her hands and arms immobile, she had no balance and was forced to brace her chest against his. Their faces were less than an inch apart.
His smile disappeared. When he spoke, his voice was a growling whisper. “Now.” He nodded to the straps tangled on the sheets. “Unless you want to see if you’re double-jointed too.”
“Try it.”
His eyes widened, then the smile returned. She’d surprised him. Good. She had no chance in her current situation. She doubted mentioning Sarah would throw him again. She had to get him to move off of her.
“You like living dangerously,” he said.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
He said nothing. Then, very deliberately, he dropped his gaze to her mouth. After a long moment when she could almost taste her pulse in her throat, he looked up at her through thick black eyelashes.
“Why, yes. Yes, you are.”
His voice, those eyes, the weight of his body … his naked body. He was the perfect male animal; finely tuned, supremely controlled, and quite comfortable in nothing more than his own skin. He was seduction personified, and she was damned sure he knew it.
He smiled slowly as if reading her mind. A small gasp slipped past her lips. She quelled the sudden panic knotting her stomach. Bring back the bully, she schooled herself, bring back the madman.
“Trust me,” she said, fighting to keep her voice calm, unaffected. “If I’d come up here looking for something”—she glanced down, then back up—“personal, I wouldn’t have needed the syringe. I don’t drug my men.”
She’d played the role of femme fatale before in order to fight off unwanted attention. It had always been easy. Of course the key word in those cases was “unwanted.” This was different. This was like playing around a fire with an unlit firecracker. And she was the firecracker.
“I’d say whatever drove you to climb a mountain after a blizzard in order to attack a naked man in his bed, needle or no needle, sounds pretty damn personal. I sure took it personally.” He slowly lowered her back down to the bed, following her until she was pinned beneath the full length of his body. Her hands were still caught behind her. He was heavy … and hard. His hips pressed deeply into hers.
There was no controlling her reaction. It was instinctive, primal. She pushed back. A groan caught in her throat.
“Tell me what you want, princess,” he said, his voice hot and silky. “Or would you like me to show you what you want?”
What she wanted was him off of her. Dear God, she wanted him inside of her.
He pressed down again, making her swallow a gasp. He smiled. “The hell with it. I’ll show you what I want. We can talk later.” He lowered his mouth.
She wanted to taste his lips so badly, she literally ached. But this was business, dammit. She was on the job.
He’d somehow narrowed the entire world down to the breath of space between his lips and hers. She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think of anything else but him and what he was doing to her, what he was making her feel. Heaven have mercy, she wanted to beg him. Only she didn’t know quite what she’d be begging for. “Don’t.”
He stilled, then pulled back a fraction, studying her.
She wanted to sigh in relief. She wanted to sob in aching frustration.
In that instant he rolled off of her to stand by the bed. Stunned by her sudden release, it took her a moment to switch gears. Her hand went immediately to her hip.
“Looking for this?”
He was by the door now. She stared without meaning to, certainly without wanting to, unable to contain the pulse of admiration that shot through her. Lounging in the doorway, naked and apparently unconcerned about that fact, he was an incredible male animal. An armed male animal. Her gun dangled carelessly from his thumb and forefinger.
She automatically reached for her ankle.
“Got that one too.” He lifted his other hand, which held her knife.
She’d never felt a thing. Actually, she’d been feeling many things, too many things, unfortunately, and none of them were job related. Dammit, where was her head? He could have killed her. Several times.
Her only remaining weapon was sarcasm. “Let me guess, Mel Gibson’s character was a pickpocket too?”
“I prefer sleight-of-hand artist. Don Johnson.”
“The guy from Miami Vice?”
He sighed. “Nash Bridges. When was the last time you watched TV, anyway?”
“I stopped watching TV when Hawaii Five-O was canceled.”
“Ah, a classics snob. You don’t know what you’ve missed.”
“You can’t top perfection,” she said. “Mission Impossible, The Mod Squad, The Avengers.”
“Yeah, but you also had stuff like Dragnet.”
She frowned. “Don’t knock Dragnet.”
“Get Smart,” he challenged.
“Excellent satirical commentary,” she responded with a sniff.
“Oh, please. Next you’ll be telling me that Charlie’s Angels was a platform for the women’s movement.”
“And you’ll be telling me you watch Baywatch for the lifesaving techniques. You can’t name three shows in the last ten years that could touch Columbo.”
“Hill Street Blues. Barney Miller. Cagney and Lacey.”
She paused, found herself actually suppressing a smile into a frown. “Okay, I’ll give you those.”
“Not to mention NYPD Blue or Homicide.”
From the corner of her eye she spied the syringe. It was on the floor near the corner that angled to her right, hidden from his view by the bed. If she could keep him talking … “Wouldn’t know. Don’t watch them. Bring back The Rockford Files or Baretta, then maybe I’ll tune in.”
He shook his head, then shifted his weight, settling in for the debate. It was as big an opening as she was likely to get. Without tipping her hand by so much as a blink, she tucked and rolled backward off the bed, landing in a crouch.
Her best hope was to engage him in hand-to-hand combat. Going for the needle was just an excuse to make him move away from the door. It worked.
He was quick, launching himself in a flying tackle across the bed as she lunged for the syringe. It wouldn’t stop a bullet, but she really didn’t think he would shoot her. Not yet, anyway.
He caught her ankle and pulled her away just as her hand slapped down close to the syringe.
“Missed it by that much,” he said in a perfect imitation of Don Adams’s Agent 86.
She choked on a surprised laugh, giving up what edge she might have had. A second later she was pinned beneath him once again.
“You know, I’m beginning to think you really like this.”
She was breathless, as much from frustration as exhaustion. She worked up a casual smile. “Tell you what, why don’t we put all the toys away. You grab some sweats, and we’ll go out to the table, have some dinner and talk. All this wrestling has made me hungry.”
“You’re offending my masculinity. I thought you were enjoying my natural self.”
“Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t offend your masculinity,” she said, struggling against his superior weight even though she
knew it wouldn’t do any good. “Come on, you win. Two pins out of three. Now be a good sport and let me up.”
He grinned down at her. “Wanna go for best three out of five.”
She glared at him. “No. I’m crying uncle here, okay? You win. You’re king of the sandbox. You get to keep all the toys.” She bucked at him again. “Now get off of me.”
“Squirming like that isn’t helping your case any,” he said, his voice husky. “I know an even better way to work up an appetite.” He leaned closer. “It’s sort of like wrestling, but you’ll have to take your clothes off too.”
She struggled not to swallow visibly as erotic images of the two of them entwined, naked, writhing on the floor assaulted her mind. How did he do that to her? She’d been propositioned more times than she could count and never, not once, had it affected her this way. So instantly. So … graphically.
“Even sex for sex’s sake requires trust.” She forced a slow smile, certain he could feel the trembling of her inner thighs. “You sure you can trust me even that much?”
He leaned closer. “Let’s just say I’m willing to accept the challenge.”
She held his gaze. “Throw the gun and the knife up on the bed.”
His eyebrows lifted. She’d surprised him again. Hell, she’d surprised herself. Just what are you going to do if this doesn’t work?
He pinned her hands with one of his, then picked up the gun he’d dropped when he tackled her and tossed both it and the knife on the bed. “Okay.” He looked up. “Wait a minute.” He leaned over her, his bare chest sliding across her face as he reached above her head. The syringe hit the bed a second later. He settled back down on top of her, straddling her hips, pinning her legs with his ankles. He slid her hands down until each wrist was beside her head. “No more needles. What next?”
She didn’t move. When he’d loomed over her, she’d made the mistake of looking down. He was definitely, um, up for the job. She felt him … resting on her stomach. She kept her gaze locked on his.
At least she’d accomplished one thing. They were both unarmed. She’d leveled the playing field.
He smiled. Her pulse doubled. Muscles that she had no control over clutched painfully between her thighs.
Dark Knight: A Loveswept Romance Classic Page 4
