by Jane Graves
Hadn’t he had this dream before? An out-of-the-way cabin, all the time in the world, and an anonymous blonde in red crotchless underwear just dying to make his dreams come true?
Maybe Daniels was right. Maybe this vacation was just what he needed after all.
Good God. What in the world had she done?
As the Explorer tooled down the two-lane blacktop, Renee hugged the passenger door, her heart pounding like crazy. She had no idea where all that stuff she’d promised this man had come from. It was as if Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Stone, and Madonna had all been whispering in her ear, providing her with seduction language so hot she was surprised the diner hadn’t burst into flames. What had ever made her say those things?
Desperation. That’s what.
Then she had a terrible thought. She sat up suddenly and turned to her getaway driver. “The people in that diner. Do they know where you live?”
“No. Just that I’m on Lake Shelton. Why?”
She settled back onto the seat, wondering how close that information might get Leandro to discovering her whereabouts. “No reason.”
“I’m borrowing a friend’s cabin. Just for a week or so.”
“So you’re not from around here.”
“Nope.”
She nodded, then turned to stare out the passenger window, relieved that he seemed to be a man of few words. The last thing she wanted to do was make small talk. He put a cassette into the player, filling the car with the pleasant sound of soft jazz.
Renee couldn’t believe she’d managed to slip out of that diner only seconds before Smokey the Bounty Hunter tore into the parking lot. She glanced into the side mirror every few seconds, relieved that she didn’t see Leandro. She was further relieved when the Explorer veered off the main two-lane highway onto a less traveled road. If Leandro were after them he’d have to make a decision about which road to take, and that could slow him down considerably.
Then a few minutes later, he swung the Explorer off the side road onto a narrow gravel road surrounded by thick forest. Instead of feeling relieved at the convoluted path he drove, Renee started to feel a little uneasy. He took one fork in the road, then another, all of them unmarked. Renee tried to maintain some sense of where she was, but pretty soon her warped sense of direction told her they must be in Oklahoma by now, and she knew that couldn’t be right. Then the gravel road turned to dirt, and she felt a tremor of panic.
All at once it struck her that she didn’t know a single blessed thing about the man she’d just propositioned. For all she knew, he could be one of those reclusive guys who stayed in some primitive, out-of-the-way place so he could murder women and bury them under the front porch. After he dismembered them.
She gave him a sidelong glance. His sharp profile had blurred a bit in the fading evening light, but she hadn’t forgotten the way he looked at her in the diner when she had first approached him—as if he could freeze her where she sat with a single glance. She searched for something sinister about him, wondering if she’d traded a bad situation for one even worse. He didn’t look like a person who smiled much. Maybe he didn’t have much to smile about. Serial killing would do that to a guy.
Looking down, Renee realized her fingernails were leaving little crescent-moon indentations in the door handle. She moved her hands to her lap and took a few furtive deep breaths. She was letting her imagination get the better of her. The worst thing that was going to happen was that she’d be forced to give him what she’d already offered, but even the thought of that made her heart race with apprehension. Especially the thought of that.
The car slowed, then came to a halt, and it took Renee a moment to realize they’d reached their destination. At the end of a short, wooded path, a small cabin sat nestled beneath the trees, with a lake practically at its back door. A light shone dimly through one of the front windows, and through a small clearing at the lake’s edge the glow of a three-quarter moon reflected off the water.
He turned off the ignition. The silence was so complete she could hear the blood pulsing in her ears.
If only she could dissuade him. If only she could take his mind off of sex. If only she could make him forget all those erotic acts she’d promised him, the sexual heights she’d offered to take him to. If only they could break out the six-pack, maybe tom on the radio, have a nice conversation...
And then do each other’s hair, bake cookies, and play Twister. Damn it. Who was she kidding? After the top-notch sales job she’d done on herself in that diner, the only party game this guy was going to be interested in playing was strip poker.
He grabbed the sack and stepped out of the car, then came around and opened Renee’s door. She climbed out, pine needles crunching beneath her feet, the cool night wind lifting her hair off her shoulders. He shut the car door and walked toward the cabin. Renee didn’t move.
He turned back. “Coming?”
For a moment she considered fleeing into the woods after all, but her Fear of Forest came crashing back to her.
“Uh, yeah.”
Even ten paces away, he exuded a powerful male energy that seemed to fill the space between them, smothering her with thoughts of how big he was and how big she wasn’t. He had to be at least six-two, and while she stood nearly five eight, still he outweighed her by a good seventy pounds. His tall, lean-muscled body made a forbidding silhouette in the near-darkness, and the thought of following him into that cabin made her shiver. A few minutes ago she’d been desperate only to be anywhere Leandro wasn’t, but now all she could think about was what she’d promised this man and how desperately she wanted not to go through with it. Then she took stock of her situation and realized she might not have a choice in the matter.
Her purse was still sitting in room fourteen of the Flamingo Motor Lodge, which meant she had no cash and no credit cards, which meant she couldn’t get a hotel room. She didn’t know a solitary soul within two hundred miles. There wasn’t a twenty-four-hour anything open in this part of the world she could hang out in, even if she could get him to take her back to civilization. The forest was deep and dark and cold and scary. She had no choice but to stay here tonight, and if he insisted she make good on her promise, there wouldn’t be a thing she could do to stop him.
He opened the door to the cabin and stepped aside for Renee to enter. It was the size of an efficiency apartment, with even fewer amenities. A kitchenette lined one wall, which was nothing more than a short counter with a hot plate and a coffeepot resting on it, a stainless-steel sink, and a few knotty pine cabinets with a dull, scratched-up finish. At the end of the counter sat a small refrigerator which was, thank God, not nearly big enough to store body parts.
A stone fireplace sprawled along an adjacent wall, and facing it a sofa in an earth-tone plaid rested on rough pine floors. The room smelled of raw wood and smoke and country air, and despite the obvious lack of tender loving care, under any other circumstances she might have thought it rustic but homey. Now it just looked small. Way too small. With nowhere to hide.
She walked over to the window and stared out into the night, at one pine tree after another standing tall against a pale, moonlit sky. It was the most inhospitable sight she’d ever seen. “Do you have any neighbors?” she asked him.
“Oh, yeah. Lots of squirrels. Maybe an armadillo or two.”
“Any two-legged ones?”
“Across the lake.”
So they were alone. Really alone.
Silence. Then the sound of the sack clunking against the floor. That was a bad sign. A man who didn’t refrigerate a six-pack clearly had something more pressing on his mind.
He moved up behind her. She met his gaze in the window reflection, those piercing eyes of his staring back at her with an intent so clear he might as well have spray-painted it on the wall. He closed his hands around her elbows in a gentle but possessive grip. He ran them slowly up to her shoulders, then back down again, and she felt a million nerve endings jump to life. She rested her palms against the
windowsill and continued to stare out into the night, afraid to turn around, afraid to do anything that might look like encouragement. No matter what she’d said, she knew nothing about the kind of sex that resulted in broken commandments and global screaming.
She had a feeling this man did.
He ran his fingertip down the length of her hair, blazing a path down her back, then picked up a strand and twirled it around his finger.
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
She shivered at the low, velvety tone of his voice. He moved closer and circled his arm around her waist, pulling her against him. Her back met his chest. She felt something rock-hard just beneath the small of her back, proof positive that talking him into having a beer instead of having sex probably wasn’t going to be an option.
He rested one hand against her abdomen, and with his other hand he brushed her hair away from the side of her neck. The cool air of the cabin washed over her exposed skin, sending shivers down her spine, which re-warmed instantly when his hot breath fell against her neck.
“Tell me again,” he whispered.
She froze. “Tell you what?”
“Exactly what kind of sex we’re going to have.”
Before John knew what had happened, his hot little blonde had slid from his grasp and flown halfway across the room. It was as if he’d touched her with a cattle prod.
He stared at her, dumbfounded, and she stared back, those blue eyes wide and her mouth hanging open as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.
“Is something the matter?” he asked.
“Uh...no. I just...I need to go to the bathroom.”
John took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He felt like a skydiver on the verge of a free fall who’d just gotten yanked back into the plane.
“It’s in there.” He pointed to the only separate room in the primitive cabin, and she scurried inside and closed the door behind her. He heard her fumbling with the door handle, probably looking for the lock that wasn’t there. Then silence.
John snatched up the sack from beside the front door. He deposited the beer in the mini-refrigerator in the kitchen, tossed the Certs on the counter, then stared at the box of condoms. He knew it was too good to be true.
This woman was obviously hiding something. She had no purse, no coat, no car. It was as if she had come out of nowhere. He’d seen all the signs, but he’d chosen to ignore them. He should have trusted his instincts. He should have stuck to naked women with staples in their navels instead of dragging home the real thing.
He tossed the box of condoms into a kitchen cabinet, then collapsed on the sofa, which was a little uncomfortable to do when a certain vital organ of his was inflated to twice its normal size, still trapped inside a pair of jeans that suddenly seemed two sizes too small. As hot as she’d been for him in that diner, when they got into his car he’d expected to feel her hands roaming all over him and seductive words whispered in his ear, and when they made it back to the cabin he’d expected to have his clothes ripped off before he even had a chance to pull out the sofa bed.
Expected it? Hell, he’d prayed for it. Instead, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, his tigress had morphed into a baby kitten.
She wasn’t completely inexperienced. That much he was sure of. She had to be at least twenty-five, maybe older, and no woman could kiss like that if she hadn’t been around the block a time or two. Still, while he had no idea what she wanted, he had a pretty good idea it wasn’t sex. But she’d sure been motivated to make him think that was what she wanted, and it was time he found out why.
Calling her bluff would likely do the trick
Chapter 3
Renee splashed cold water on her face and dried it with a threadbare green towel hanging on a hook beside the bathroom sink. She rested her palms against the sink and bowed her head. She was tired and hungry, her knees ached from the fall she’d taken on the blacktop in her attempt to escape from Leandro, and all she wanted right now was a decent meal, a hot bath, and a good night’s sleep. She sighed heavily. Not much chance of any of those things happening, especially the good night’s sleep.
Then she raised her head, looked in the mirror, and wondered who the woman was looking back.
According to her, she was an innocent woman who swore from now on she’d control her late-night craving for ice cream. According to the Tolosa police, she was a fugitive from justice. According to the man in the next room, she was a hot, sex-crazed hussy looking for a good time.
Right now, she had to deal with the sex-crazed hussy thing. But since she knew nothing about the man on the other side of that door, she had to face facts: telling him no might lead to worse consequences than telling him yes.
She opened the door slowly, feeling like a mouse coming out of its hole who knows there’s a tomcat in the vicinity. He was waiting for her on the sofa, and his hot, hungry expression told her the tomcat analogy was right on target.
“Come on over here, sweetheart.”
She inched her way over to the sofa and stood beside it. He patted the cushion beside him. “Park it right here.”
She sat down as he requested, but approximately two feet away from the place he’d indicated, cramming herself up against the opposite arm of the sofa. He slid over next to her, draping his arm behind her head and resting the palm of his other hand against her thigh. The look in his eyes—that fiery, almost primitive look—shook her all the way to her toes. She splayed her hands across his chest as he moved closer still, but the solid wall of muscle she felt only heightened her anxiety.
“You never did tell me your name,” she said weakly.
“I thought we were keeping names out of this.”
“I changed my mind. I’m...Alice. And you’re...?”
“John.”
“John. Nice name.”
“My mother thought so.”
“Where are you from, John?”
“We’re pretty much past the small-talk stage, wouldn’t you say?”
“I just thought it might be nice to get to know each other a little.”
“That’s funny. Back at Harley’s place, there was only one part of me you wanted to get to know; and it had nothing to do with my hometown.”
“I know. But after all, we did just meet—”
“And I gotta say it was one hell of an introduction.” He touched a finger to her cheek, then dragged it along her jaw. “All you really need to know about me is that I’m partial to blue-eyed blondes, particularly when they’re looking for a good time.”
He brushed her hair away from her shoulder and dropped a gentle kiss to the side of her neck, his touch sending a flurry of shivers down her spine. Then he teased his lips along her jaw, and she felt the scratchiness of his beard.
“When’s the last time you shaved?”
“I wasn’t aware my personal hygiene was part of the deal.”
“Your beard is irritating.”
She tried to sound annoyed, but to her dismay, her words came out soft and breathy. Seductive. And she definitely did not want to sound seductive.
“Irritating, huh?” He dropped a feather-light kiss on the sensitive spot just beneath her left ear. “It didn’t seem to bother you back at the diner.”
Good point.
She squirmed around, trying to distance herself from him, but she succeeded only in maneuvering herself into a position where his hand crept even further up her thigh. “You know, I haven’t had a shower all day. I’m such a mess—”
“A shower? Sounds good. Why don’t we take one together?” My big mouth strikes again.
“Well, that’s a possibility. But it’s a little cold in here, don’t you think? Maybe if you started a fire in the fireplace—”
“Not necessary. I’ll keep you warm.”
He pulled her closer, cradled her head in his arm, and kissed her, and it was as if a nuclear reactor had exploded inside her head. At the diner, she’d been the aggressor out of sheer desperation, but now the tables
had turned and he’d assumed command of the situation. Total command. His arms were wrapped around her like a velvet vise, caressing but controlling, allowing her not an inch of leeway in any direction as his mouth engulfed hers.
He slid his hand along her cheek and drew her even closer, twining his tongue with hers in a dance of pure, slow-motion seduction. She knew now that his lips were every bit as warm and sensual as they’d seemed the first moment she saw him. They were beautiful lips. Talented lips. Lips that made resisting him slip farther and farther from her mind. But despite his single-mindedness, she felt an odd glimmer of restraint in his touch, a hint of tenderness she hadn’t expected, as if he had no intention of taking without giving.
He kissed her for what seemed like hours, pulling away a little, brushing his lips against hers, then plunging in again. Before long his advance-and-retreat technique was driving her crazy in the very best sense of the word. She’d never felt anything like it. And it was turning her into mush.
Then he eased away and stared down at her. What was he looking for? Surrender? Renee stared back at him, afraid she was about three seconds away from precisely that.
“I could kiss you all night,” he whispered.
Her heart leaped with hope. Maybe he’d forgotten she had a body below the neck. Then he ran his hand along the outer swell of her breast, to her waist, down her thigh, and back up again, his gaze following the path of his hand like a moth follows light.
“All over.”
Uh-oh.
He tugged at the hem of her sweatshirt, easing it upward. When his hand fell against her waist, she gasped softly. He covered the gasp with a kiss, then moved his palm upward until his fingertips brushed the satin cup of her bra. He teased her nipple to a taut peak through the fabric with the pad of his thumb, then traced a fingertip in the hollow between her breasts, setting her adrift in a hazy sea of erotic pleasure she would cheerfully have drowned in.
Then he reached for the front clasp of her baby-pink bra with the white rose at the clasp, the one she’d bought at Victoria’s Secret last month, thinking at the time that she’d probably wear it out before a man ever laid eyes on it.
