Bound to the Bounty Hunter

by Hayson Manning

  “Raspberries,” he murmured, “I fucking love raspberries.”

  He touched his tongue to the side of her neck, so fleetingly she wondered if she’d imagined it, but her body didn’t. It responded by flushing from head to toe. The scent of her danced between them.

  Damn.

  His dark, weighty gaze dropped to her mouth. The intensity of it stole her breath.

  His total focus centered on her. Her lips parted.

  I want to feel you swell in my mouth, stare up at you, and know you’re all mine.

  I want to be slammed against a wall and wrap my legs around your hips while you pound into me.

  I want to run my tongue over every part of your body and hear you moan my name.

  His eyebrows raised. “I wish I could get inside your head. I like the look on your face.”

  Self-preservation kicked in and, by some sort of miracle, her brain took control.

  She had to get out of here, now.

  On trembling legs, she walked to the door, stopping with her hand on the knob. She glanced back to find his gaze locked on her butt.

  With distance, and without his scent filling her head with all kinds of compromising images, she studied him, curious why he’d been at Hostage. Was it the same reason as her? Did he have something on Babic?

  “What were you doing at Hostage last night?”

  He folded his arms across his wide chest again. “I was there looking for a sub.”

  She blinked. “So that’s your thing? Small, blond, and submissive?”

  He nodded.

  Evidence he’d been playing her.

  “I’m hardwired for control. The women I’m with want to be dominated. They do what I say when I say.”

  Her eyes widened.

  Wow. The essence of the man right there.

  No white picket fence in his future. No putting together a bike at three a.m. on Christmas Eve. No worrying about loose teeth.

  “But, you’d know the rules of being a sub, wouldn’t you, Sophie?”

  She shook her head. “Giving up who I am and disappearing to fit what a person wants me to be? I can’t do that,” she said quietly.

  “When I win the bet. You and me, Sophie. One night.” His velvet voice skimmed across her skin. “One long night where we play the rules my way.”

  …

  Sophie’s head shot back, color flooded her cheeks, and her dark, smoky eyes narrowed.

  “Oh hell no. You won’t win the bet, so there will be no rules being played your way.”

  Harlan had been semi-hard all morning thinking of her, but after she’d walked through the door, her fruity scent trailing her, his cock could be snapped off and used as a weapon.

  To beat himself to death.

  Her nipples were still hard through the cotton of her T-shirt. He’d heard the small gasp when he’d touched his tongue to her neck. The need to taste her skin was overwhelming. He’d wanted to mark her, show every man she walked past that she was off-limits.

  The bet was an inspired moment. Without realizing it, she’d played into his hands. When she clocked his security detail she’d be assuming he was trailing her for the bet.

  Perfect.

  And one night when this assignment was over?

  Fuck yeah.

  She tilted her head to one side, assessing.

  “For curiosity’s sake, what if one of your small, blond subs wants more?”

  “I don’t do more.”

  And he didn’t. He never had. He liked his partners. They set mutual rules. They ticked each other’s boxes on body type. They wanted sex only. If he saw a woman more than once and caught the softness in her eye, he let her down gently and walked away. He wasn’t a prick who’d use a woman who had feelings he didn’t reciprocate. He controlled the situation as he did everything in his life.

  He strode to where she stood. His hand wrapped around her forearm. At the physical connection, his body jolted. Hers did a full-body shiver of the good kind. Her raspberry scent mixed with her musk and filled his lungs. He’d wanted to hold his breath longer, keep the flavor of her inside him. At this rate he’d walk past a fruit stand and get hard. Even wearing that T-shirt, which should make him blind, he couldn’t rip his eyes away.

  His gaze dropped to her nails digging into her palms.

  You’re sitting on my face. My fingers are holding you prisoner while I fuck you with my tongue. You’re going to beg me to fuck you with my tongue, then my cock. You’re going to pull on my piercings. The steel ball in my cock is going to hit the spot. The one I bet makes you whimper. I’ll be using toys, because I like them and so will you.

  “No.” Her voice strained with need.

  I want to taste you. Feel you spasm around my tongue. Have you beg for more.

  “I didn’t say anything.” His voice was hoarse.

  “You didn’t have to,” she whispered.

  He sucked air through his teeth.

  She pulled herself away, her skin flushed, her forehead damp.

  Her mind may say no, but her body was begging for him. Her chest heaved, face flushed.

  She tried to pull away farther, but he held her hair for a beat longer then released her.

  “When I win the bet you won’t come within two miles of me.”

  He chuckled.

  “That wasn’t a joke, by the way,” she said over her shoulder then walked out the door.

  When this case was over Sophie Callaghan would be his for one long night. Oh, how she’d be his. Until then… It would be a challenge to convert her to his way of thinking, and he enjoyed a challenge.

  He walked to the window. Sophie strutted her sweet butt to a car that looked like Henry Ford had assembled himself. She eventually merged into the traffic. A brown nondescript sedan with one of his men at the wheel followed her.

  He grinned.

  Perfect.

  He stood lost in thought, mostly about Sophie and their night together. His cock twitched painfully against denim at the image of her cuffed, panting, and looking up at him.

  Yep, he’d definitely be winning the bet.

  A food truck pulled into the lot in a park across the street. The email he’d read earlier surfaced in his brain. Today they’d be serving tomato soup and either a chicken club sandwich or pastrami on rye along with a hot drink or bottled water plus a toiletries pack.

  Good to know thinking about soup wipes Sophie from my brain.

  Until she resurfaced in a tiny bikini, her long legs wrapped around a pole.

  His.

  He rubbed his chin.

  He continued to stare out the window when the door opened.

  “You still playing white knight?” Zeb said.

  Harlan spotted a boy not much older than he’d been when he’d found a soup kitchen that had fed him instead of asking questions, helped him out with clothes, and handed him a note with a cell phone number and the three words that changed his life—call me, anytime.

  The boy shuffled to the head of the line, head bowed. At the last minute, he raised his head and looked at the server, who smiled at him.

  He pushed his hands into his pockets. “Still paying back, brother. Life’s shitty when you’re homeless, but it is fucked when you’re homeless, starving, and want clean teeth.”

  Zeb cleared his throat.

  Harlan turned.

  Zeb poured his frame into a chair, his face serious. “We have a problem. A big fucking problem.”

  Every muscle in Harlan’s body locked.

  Zeb passed him a sheet of paper. An autopsy picture of a middle-aged white dude— O’Connor. Harlan skimmed his vital stats. Six foot, blue eyes, no distinguishing marks.

  “Your girl, Sophie Callaghan, doesn’t add up. There’s a birth certificate issued in the state of Montana, twenty years ago when she was two. Mother is listed as a Jane Callaghan, and I can find no evidence of her birth or death. Father listed as Josiah O’Connor. There’s a notation that the certificate was issued without hospital proof o
f birth. O’Connor signed an affidavit that Sophie was born in Montana, in a field with no witnesses. O’Connor died six years back. I had to dig hard to get his story out of the woodwork. Turns out he was a con-artist preacher who, with his direct connection to God, could heal cancer, bring rain, grow crops and find love…for a price.” Zeb looked pained. “Sorry, brother.”

  A pit opened up in the bottom of Harlan’s stomach, and his internal organs tried to squeeze out his asshole. Soon after Zeb had joined the firm and after a near miss on a surveillance shoot, they’d gotten shitfaced and broken the ice over a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. When he was seven, his mom had sold everything for a healing prayer from a preacher when the doctors gave her no hope. All his mom wanted was to stay on the planet longer to care for her only child while cancer ravaged her body. When the prayer didn’t arrive and the preacher disappeared, his mother had died, broken.

  He hated the prick preacher who’d stolen his mom’s hope and her dignity. He wanted to find the man his whole life and snap every bone in his body then hack out his heart and feed it to vultures.

  At least it wasn’t O’Connor. Wrong ethnicity.

  “A small token of consolation. O’Connor liked girls and blow. Took a beating after trying to get out of paying for both. Brain hemorrhage.”

  Harlan stilled.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  “Leaving Sophie exposed.” He stood, then paced, clenching and unclenching his hands, adrenaline spiking through his body. “What kind of sick father does that to his daughter? Jesus.” Different scenarios played out in his head, all ending badly. “Imagine if any of O’Connor’s victims wanted revenge and found Sophie alone and vulnerable.”

  Wait.

  Could still find Sophie.

  He stilled.

  Harlan had brought in sick, depraved, and flat-out desperate people who’d do anything for money or revenge. If any of them had found Sophie, could still find Sophie, she could slip from this earth in a heartbeat.

  “Brother, there’s more.”

  Harlan braced, breathed heavily, and nodded.

  “I got to her house before she left to come here, took over from Arabella. Someone else is on her. There was a guy parked on her street with a telescopic lens, under the guise of reading water meters. I lifted this envelope from the passenger seat.”

  “Arabella didn’t notice him?” A steel band clamped around the inside of his head and tightened. He’d have to deal with that snippet of news later.

  Zeb shook his head, his face pained. He placed photos of Sophie on the desk. Harlan’s heart beat out an SOS against his chest cavity. He forced in a slow breath, staring at a montage of photos. Sophie hauling on the lead of a hog of a dog. One of her in running clothes, taken last Monday. One, date-stamped last night, showed Sophie wearing a long trench coat walking out of Pipe’s with Pipe.

  “Whoever this crew is watching Sophie, they’re serious. This fucker had high-end camera equipment. Professional. I ran the plates. They don’t match the registration. The car was listed as stolen last week in South Dakota. I’ll confirm if the car changes daily. This type of operation takes money. A lot of money.”

  “Yep,” Harlan ground out.

  “Brother, Sophie Callaghan came into this world aged two. No confirmed birth that fits her age with her parents in fifty states. Someone out there is paying large to keep her under high-end surveillance. Someone with a lot of coin, someone—”

  Cold sweat gathered on Harlan’s forehead. He stopped pacing and faced Zeb, who looked grim. “Someone who knows of her possible connection to Petrov and who’ll use her as collateral or someone out for revenge for her father.”

  Zeb’s unflinching icy blue stare met his. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Harlan nodded, trying to digest the information that sat like a lump of concrete in his stomach.

  “I’ll keep digging, but I don’t have a good feeling.” Zeb headed toward the door, his phone in his hand, punching out a text. The door closed with a click.

  Harlan rubbed the back of his neck, staring sightlessly at the floor. A lot of people had been unhappy when Petrov went straight. The man was a business genius. Everything he touched turned to gold. If he took an interest in an abandoned diamond mine, it would start spitting out diamonds bigger than fists. The man had run guns in and out of countries without a single shipment ever being stopped. He now used those traffic lanes for legitimate purposes.

  If someone wanted to get Petrov to open up the profitable transport routes, using Sophie may get the man to change his mind. Worse still was the scenario that a rogue player, or players, wanted Sophie as revenge for her father’s cons.

  Harlan had run a financial check. Sophie had under one hundred dollars in her savings account and scraped by on her checking. Anyone looking for revenge thinking she was sitting on a nest egg would be cornered when they realized she had nothing. Maybe they’d play with her before they killed her. Maybe not.

  The bad mood that had been kicking around his head like a teenage boy with two broken hands morphed into a starving ten-foot troll. Whether she liked it or not, and he was guessing not, Sophie would be moving in with him.

  Chapter Five

  “Coming, Titus.”

  After a mouthful of noodles, Sophie licked the sauce from a fork and placed the plate and utensil into the sink.

  Pongo lifted his head and opened one eye before laying his sorry head back down—tired from waking up.

  She smiled at her dog before heading toward the door. “You’ve spent all day sleeping, I swear if ‘Bark in the Park’ has a Useless Guard Dog competition this year, I’m entering you.” She laughed when her dog responded with a thump of his tail, and a quick, explosive fart filled the room.

  She knew, if push came to shove, Pongo would lick any intruder to death, then gas them with his lethal cocktail, and she loved every inch of his trusting, fart-filled soul.

  When a second heavier knock echoed around the room, she hurried her pace. “I’m here.”

  The Carrolls must have seen her shoot down the driveway an hour earlier. She’d spent longer in Denver than she’d anticipated. After leaving Harlan’s office, she’d headed for a cappuccino and a huge slab of banana bread. Tequila would have calmed her nerves faster, but busting out the top shelf would delay her stay.

  It had frightened and disturbed her how badly she’d wanted Harlan. If the man had touched her neck with his tongue one more time…

  Her fingers skimmed the crescent-shaped welts on her palm, where she’d dug for control.

  But thoughts of Harlan and his sinful body had to take a backseat, because she had more pressing matters: getting her equipment from the park, listening to Babic’s conversation. Then her demand when she won the bet—Harlan leaving her alone.

  Getting to the park unnoticed might not be so easy. Harlan’s people moved fast. A brown sedan had tailed her after she left the office.

  After tonight’s surveillance evidence job, she’d lead Harlan’s people on a chase around the streets of Denver before she’d collect the microphone and secure it in the safe.

  A win-win situation.

  Sophie unlocked and opened her front door, expecting to see Titus’s sparkling brown eyes, leaning on his walking stick, a smile on his face, a fuzzy felt hat on his head. Instead, she gazed into intense dark blue eyes. Harlan’s ripped body filled her doorframe. A black T-shirt hugged every washboard on his rock-hard stomach; faded blue denim had been replaced with aged black molded over long, long, muscular thighs. His full lips were pressed into a tight line.

  “What are you doing here?” Blood thicker than molasses finally made its way to her brain. She stood on tiptoes staring past him to see a black demon of a car parked behind her hatchback where the words “Clean Me” were written on her passenger side window. The sinking sun splashed shadowy light across her car.

  He scanned the contents of her small house. “How long would it take you to pack a bag?” He gently turne
d her sideways and walked inside.

  Pongo, sensing a new food source, lumbered off the couch, a series of popping noises accompanied him.

  She sucked in a breath at Harlan’s grin.

  “Did your dog fart?”

  She shut the door and followed him in.

  “Yeah,” she said, distractedly. “I’m guessing it’s why he was left on the side of the road with ‘unwanted’ written on a note attached to his collar. If he’s in a joyous mood, he can clear a room in less than ten seconds. It’s his gift to the world.”

  Harlan stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, executing a slow circle. Her couch housed a selection of throws, an empty tube of Pringles, and three of her dog’s chew toys.

  Dark brows hit his messy hairline when he took in the usual disaster of her living room.

  Her hands went to her hips.

  Seriously?

  After a childhood of moving from state to state with no warning, sometimes in the middle of the night, not having to mold her life and her possessions to fit into one bag was freedom. Leaving a bowl in the sink meant she was coming back.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Why are you here, and why would I need to pack a bag?” Her brain finally shook off the shock that Harlan was standing in her living room. “Are you here because of the bet? Because if you are you can turn around and strut your cute butt out the door.”

  Pongo had made a thorough inspection of their visitor’s pockets. Although he hadn’t found food, he gazed up at Harlan like he’d found a new best friend. His stump of a tail beat against the wooden floor.

  “Cute butt?” Harlan’s blue eyes twinkled. “Men don’t have cute butts. Babes have cute butts.”

  Exasperated that he stood here, and annoyed that he exasperated her, she threw up her hands. “God, you’re right. Women never think cute butt. They always think, now that’s a well-proportioned set of gluteus maximus muscles.”

  Harlan grinned before his face stilled, his stare focused on her. “Without going into details, you’re being followed. Someone is taking photos of you with a telescopic lens. At your house, walking your dog. Walking out of Pipe’s Bar.”