by Jane Graves
His gaze dropped to her lips, lips that could be telling the truth, or lying to save her skin. The heated anger between them only a few moments ago had faded, and now every second that passed felt blurry around the edges, as if he were walking through a dream.
“I’ve got no choice,” he said. “I’m going to take you in.”
“I know,” she whispered. She gently pulled her hands from his grip, then flattened both of her palms against his chest. “But just for a minute...would you pretend you’re not?”
Holy shit.
She leaned into him, inching her hands upward until they reached his shirt collar, then moving them across that boundary to ease around his neck. He blinked with surprise, but some force he couldn’t fathom kept him from pulling away. For a long, breathless moment he stared at her, knowing exactly what she wanted, and the knowing almost did him in. She moved closer by small degrees until her breasts grazed his chest. Then she touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, leaving them moist and glistening.
One minute he was supercop, taking no crap, and the next minute he was staring at her lips as if he were dying in the desert and they were a cup of crisp, cool water. The last thing he needed was a major complication like this hitting him right between the eyes. If she were to fall backward onto a bed of pine leaves and drag him right down on top of her, God help him, he knew he wouldn’t put up one moment of protest.
But as he was pondering the logistics of that, a truth he’d chosen to ignore crept into his mind again, pounding away at him like a native drumbeat spelling out an urgent message.
He’d been here before.
The diner. Last night.
Slowly the memory went from hazy to sharp. In that diner last night, her eyes had been full of lust, her lips full of hunger, her touch full of promise, and her brain full of ulterior motive. He’d been thinking hot sex and she’d been thinking escape.
In a thunderclap of sudden reason, John froze, allowing his brain time to crawl out of his pants and make its way back up to his head. He couldn’t believe what a fool he’d almost been.
It was time to stop her from messing with his mind. To let her know that under no circumstances was he interested in a repeat performance of the kiss she’d given him in that diner, no matter how heart-stopping it had been. To let her know who was the boss here, and it wasn’t a pretty blond fugitive with a body that could make a priest toss down his collar and never look back. Coming on to him all of a sudden was nothing more than a ploy to entice him to let her go, and she wasn’t going to get away with it.
It was time to fight fire with fire.
In one smooth, quick move, he took hold of her wrists again and pushed her back against the tree. He held her arms firmly at her sides, then inched closer, insinuating his body next to hers, meeting her eyes in a long, languorous stare.
“Now, if I didn’t know better, sweetheart, I’d think you wanted me to kiss you.”
She stared up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. He moved his lips to within inches of hers. “And I’m thinking that sounds pretty good.”
Renee twisted in his grip, but he held her tightly.
“But there are a lot of things besides kissing that sound pretty good, too. How about if I cash in on that promise you made me last night that you never followed through on?”
Her accelerated breathing and widened eyes told him she hadn’t counted on this turn of events. John smiled to himself. She’d run scared last night at the mere suggestion that they have sex. The more he poured on the intimidation now, the less likely she was to pull this crap on him again.
“I want what you promised me,” he whispered. “And this time I’m not stopping until I get it.”
He dragged the words out in a seductive drawl, waiting for her to tell him loud and clear to get the hell away from her so he could claim victory. But all she did was squirm a little in his grip. He tightened his hand on her wrists, then inched closer and placed a feathery kiss on the angle of her jaw. She sucked in a sharp breath at the touch of his lips, as if he’d struck a live nerve, so he followed that kiss with several more, placing them wherever they seemed to generate the most reaction.
“John...please...”
Ah. Now he was getting to her. She shimmied against him, her breath coming faster, but with his hold on her wrists and the tree at her back, there was absolutely nowhere for her to go. He continued his feather-light kisses, letting his hot breath spill over her skin.
Unfortunately, this was getting to him, too.
Every time he touched his lips to her cheek, her neck, her throat, images flashed through his mind of what it would be like to go through with his threat, and it wasn’t long before the close proximity he’d created was making him half-crazy with lust. Just because his brain had no intention of following through didn’t mean his body had gotten that message, and if he didn’t end this pretty soon, he wasn’t going to be in complete control of the situation.
Come on, sweetheart. Say it. Tell me to stop like you did last night. Then I’ll tell you that it’s your own damned fault for trying to trade your body for a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, and we'll get on down the road.
He dragged his lips along the curve of her ear. She shimmied against him but he held on tightly, whispering in the most blatantly carnal tone he could muster, “You’re not going anywhere, Renee. You started this, and I’m going to finish it. We’re going to have sex right here and right now. We’re getting down in the dirt, getting naked, and not even coming up for air. And if you think you’re getting out of it this time, you’ve got another thing—”
“Okay,” she whispered.
John pulled back and stared at her. “What?”
She lunged forward and pressed her lips against his in a fiery, demanding kiss that shocked the holy hell out of him. He let go of her wrists and pulled away, only to have her take advantage of her freedom by winding her arms around his neck and pulling him back again, devouring his mouth with hers.
Somewhere in John’s mind, the word stop was blinking at him in red neon letters, but those talented lips of Renee’s had caused his brain waves to flat line. Stop. He knew that word had to be telling him something, but damned if he could figure out what.
And before he knew it, he was kissing her back.
Chapter 8
John pushed Renee backward until she bumped against the tree again, pausing for a few seconds to catch a breath. At the same time he thrust his hands through her wind-tangled hair and turned her face up, and when he met her eyes and saw nothing but sheer, hot desire, he thought he was going to explode right there.
He dove in to meet her lips again, and she opened her mouth to him willingly, her tongue moving with his in a dance of pure ecstasy. Feeling her squirm against him during his testosterone assault had already sent him halfway to heaven, and now all he could think about was finishing the trip.
With a soft groan Renee went on the offensive again, sliding her hands down his chest and around his hips to hook her fingers into his hip pockets. She dragged him hard against her until his groin was pressed firmly against her abdomen. She might not have wanted it last night, but she sure as hell wanted it now, and he didn’t stop to wonder why because— Lord—he wanted it, too.
He caught the hem of her sweatshirt, nudged his hand beneath it, then went straight for the clasp of her bra. About a hundred times since last night, he’d thought about how that tiny clasp had been just a flick of his fingertips away, and now all he had to do was hold it here, twist it there, and it would open. Just...like...that.
Her bra fell away. He swept it aside, then closed his hand over her breast and squeezed it firmly. She broke off their kiss with a muffled gasp, then dropped her head back against the tree, her eyes closed, breathing wildly, her fingertips digging into his shoulders. He wasted no time pushing her sweatshirt up and over her breasts until they met the cool autumn air. He circled them with his hands, then moved the pads of his thumbs over her tight nipples in a hot,
strumming caress.
“John…oh, God...”
The deep, throaty hum of her words sent a jolt of heat spiraling through him. He could tell by the sound of her voice that she wasn’t telling him to put on the brakes. She was begging him to hit the throttle and move full speed ahead.
He kissed the ivory column of her throat, then moved upward to swirl the tip of his tongue against her earlobe, still caressing her breasts, doing his best to drive her crazy at the same time the blood was sizzling through his own veins. The pine forest surrounding them had become strangely unreal, his mind turning hot and hazy and completely beyond his control. Everything about this woman was making him forget who he was and what he was supposed to be doing, because right now he was absolutely sure he was supposed to be making love to her, and he knew that couldn’t possibly be right. But anticipation had shoved every other thought from his mind. He wanted her right here, right now, right up against this tree, right down in the dirt or anywhere else he could have her.
She worked her hands in between them and grasped his belt buckle. In only a few seconds she had it undone and was starting in on his jeans, and it was a damned good thing. The way he felt right now, if she didn’t rip them off in the next ten seconds he was going to rip them off himself. And then hers would be next.
But as she coaxed his zipper south, slowly it dawned on him that he was only a zip and a tug from standing in the middle of a pine forest half-naked. A half-naked cop, soon to be all naked, on the verge of making love to an accused armed robber.
When the full force of that mental image hit him, he froze. For the first time he realized that she really did intend to go through with this. She clearly intended for them to get naked in the dirt, just as he’d suggested, just as he’d imagined, just as he wanted so badly he could taste it. And that was when he felt a hard mental slap that knocked his sanity back into place.
Of all the women in the world, he was on the verge of making love to the one most likely to end up in prison. Good God—was he out of his mind?
He leaned away suddenly and took her by the shoulders, holding her at arm’s length, fighting to keep his wild breathing and stratospheric body temperature under control. Her hands fell away from his zipper and she looked at him quizzically, her blond hair blowing in the breeze, her cheeks flushed pink with passion. Somehow he managed to grind out the words—the only words that would redeem him from this situation he’d been stupid enough to get himself into.
“Well,” he said, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, “I guess we know now just how far you’ll go to stay out of jail, don’t we?”
Renee stood perfectly still for a moment, his words hanging almost palpably in the air. She opened her mouth as if to speak. Then she clamped it shut again, her expression shifting to a mask of total fury. She slapped both palms against his chest and gave him a hard shove.
“You bastard!”
He stumbled backward. She pulled her sweatshirt down and stalked past him, whacking him with her elbow at the same time. She walked up the road several angry paces, then spun around hotly.
“You really think that’s why I wanted you? To stay out of jail?”
“Hell yes,” he said, buckling his belt as he strode toward her. “And you can give it up, sweetheart. It won’t work. I know plenty of cops who can be bought with far less than a hot female body. Unfortunately for you, I’m not one of them.”
“Excuse me,” Renee said, “but I don’t believe I was the only one participating!”
“But you were the only one with something to gain.”
“So you didn’t really want me. Is that right?”
He gave her a disinterested shrug. Her gaze traveled down his body and stopped at his crotch. “Sorry, John, but your built-in lie detector is telling me otherwise.”
He shifted uncomfortably. She had him there.
“Okay, Renee. I suppose there’s a lot about you to interest a man, in spite of the fact that you’re a fugitive.”
“So it was basically a lust thing.”
Oh, yeah. Lust had been heavily involved. And so had stupidity. Daniels was right: his objectivity was shot to hell, and he probably needed a month of vacation instead of a week, out alone in the wilderness with no law-breaking women to tempt him. He’d been thinking with his crotch instead of his head, and that was a very, very dangerous thing to do.
“More like curiosity, really,” John said. “You promised me all kinds of interesting things to escape Leandro, so I thought I’d see just how far you’d go to keep yourself out of jail. To tell you the truth, it was even farther than I figured.”
“I told you that’s not why I did it!”
“Well, then, suppose you tell me the real reason. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like sexual bribery, pure and simple.”
Her stance was belligerent, with her fists on her hips and her chin thrust forward, but her angry gaze had faltered a little. She blinked several times, and he was surprised to see tears glistening in her eyes.
“Okay! Fine. You want to know the real reason I wanted you? I’ll tell you why. Because where I’m going, I won’t have the opportunity to make love to a man again for, oh, say, the next ten years or so. And since kissing you and...and other things...is not an entirely disgusting experience in spite of the fact that you’re a cop, I figured, why not?”
She’s yanking you around again. Tears and all. Don’t buy it.
“Kind of like having that last cigarette before the firing squad pulls the trigger?”
“Well, I could have done without that analogy, but yeah. Kind of like that.”
“I see.” He shrugged again. “Actually, I suppose kissing you has its advantages. As long as that pretty little mouth of yours is occupied, it can’t be telling me lies.”
“I’ve told you the truth! About everything!”
“Are you kidding? You haven’t spoken a truthful word since the moment I met you! You’ve lied to me, stolen my car, shot my car—”
“You big, dumb jerk! They actually pay you to solve crimes?” Her words shot through the forest, then echoed back at him, doubling the accusation. “Think about it, will you? If I’d really been the one who shot that store clerk, I wouldn’t have shot your car. I’d have shot you!”
Stunned, John just stared at her.
“Now let’s get out of here,” she said, wiping her eyes on the shoulder of her sweatshirt and sniffing a little. “I’m sick of this damned forest, and I’d just as soon get all that booking and fingerprinting and strip-searching over with, if you don’t mind.”
She turned and marched up the road, not even bothering to see if he was following. He stared after her, frozen to the spot where he stood.
I wouldn’t have shot your car. I'd have shot you.
He’d been so furious about his car last night that he’d just written her off as loony, never really stopping to think about the reason she’d destroyed his vehicle and not him. Why hadn’t she shot him when she had the chance? Even a shot in the leg would have rendered him incapable of coming after her. She could have hopped into his car and easily escaped. It would have been hours before he could have gotten out of the woods, and by that time she’d have been long gone.
But she hadn’t done that. She’d shot his car instead.
He started walking, staying several paces behind her, suddenly smothered in an avalanche of confusion. He’d seen a lot of things in those clear blue eyes of hers, but God help him, a lie wasn’t one of them. It’s just a ploy. That’s all. Take her to jail. Put the bad guys away and you’re done for the day.
This situation was even more clear-cut than most. Renee wasn’t a suspect he had to decide whether or not to take to jail. Some other cop had already made that decision, and judging from the evidence against her, it had been a slam dunk. All John had to do was transport her from point A to point B and his job was over. He had a clear, unequivocal responsibility that was as black-and-white as anything could possibly be. So why, when h
e looked at Renee, did he see all those shades of gray?
Because for the first time, he was actually starting to believe that maybe—just maybe—she was telling the truth.
It took at least twenty minutes after they’d started back down the road again for the fire-red blush on Renee’s cheeks to fade. She’d never felt so embarrassed in her life. She had never, ever thrown herself at a man the way she’d thrown herself at John. And then to have him turn around and mock her, suggesting that she was trying to bribe him with sex, had been the ultimate in humiliation.
No. The ultimate in humiliation had been when she’d blurted out the whole pitiful truth of why she’d done it.
He’d been standing so close to her, pressing her up against that tree, swearing he was going to take her right then and there, and all at once she’d had a flash of the years of prison that awaited her. Suddenly she’d been desperate to feel something hot and intense and overwhelmingly sexual before they put her away for the best years of her life. All she’d wanted was for John to make good on his threat, to quit being a cop for a few stupid minutes and make her feel the same way she’d felt last night when he’d kissed her. And he had. For a moment. She could still feel his breath warming her neck, his lips engulfing hers, his touch waking up every nerve in her body. Her face got hot all over again just thinking about it.
But at the same time the memory thrilled her, it mortified her, too, because she knew now that it hadn’t been real. But even if he had wanted her, making love with him would have been the most foolish thing she could possibly have done. He probably wasn’t carrying any protection, and she certainly didn’t have anything with her. Would she have done it anyway? Would she have said to hell with all the promises she’d ever made to herself about turning her life around, which included not treating sex as a recreational sport?
Okay. There were extenuating circumstances. She was about to be put away in some god-awful prison for the better part of her young life without ever experiencing sex with a real live man. All she’d wanted was for John to give her something she could remember during the long years she was facing inside those prison walls, where a man’s touch would be as rare as gourmet meals and bubble baths.
