“Damn him,” she muttered as she riffled through the toiletries he’d given her. She washed her face first, not wanting Shane to see the evidence of her tears . . . or her vulnerability. Let him believe that he could get to her sexually. See where it got him. She vowed then and there that her previous inability to resist his touch was the only manner in which Shane permeated her defenses.
Was this really happening? Laura wondered for the thousandth time as she brushed her teeth with one of the newly purchased toothbrushes she’d found in the bag. She’d been shocked before in her life, but never to the degree that she had been when Shane had handcuffed her earlier this evening and calmly told her that he was taking her as his captive until she talked.
His behavior was so irrational, so strange as to cast a surreal mental fog over the entire experience. And yet she sensed his steely resolve and methodical nature above all else. He was angry, but it wasn’t his fury that primarily motivated him. The evidence of his grim resolve panicked her.
Shane wasn’t the kind of man who did things halfway. He was a force to be reckoned with when he made up his mind on something and combined his will with a first-class intellect. The combination of an incisive understanding of human behavior, a steely determination, and unrelenting perseverance was undoubtedly a prime factor behind his success and rapid rise in the ranks of the FBI.
Did Shane really believe that even if she gave into him sexually that it implied she’d give him whatever information he needed in order to successfully complete his investigation?
He was wrong.
She had way too much at stake. She wouldn’t relent to him. Not with her mind, anyway . . . even if her body and spirit did betray her cause.
Maybe she could use their intense sexual attraction for each other against him? Lull him into a sense of mastery over the situation so that she could try to escape. She needed to get back. If Randall Moody became suspicious of her whereabouts or her activities he might become desperate.
If he ever discovered she was with Shane Dominic, he’d resort to murder once again.
Moody got a perverse satisfaction from always mentioning how fond he was of her. Of course, Moody’s definition of “fondness” meant that he hadn’t yet had her killed, so Laura wasn’t much comforted by his supposed benevolence.
She jumped nervously when Shane pounded heavily on the other side of the bathroom door.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Laura seethed.
She spun around when the door swung open. He leaned in the doorway, a large, indomitable presence. What was it about being intruded upon in the bathroom that felt like the worst possible invasion of personal space?
“No. Now,” he said calmly.
“I just need another minute.”
“I told you five minutes.”
“I’m not a criminal! How dare you treat me like one,” she sputtered when he grabbed her elbow and drew her firmly into the bedroom. His dispassionate manner infuriated her all over again, making her forget her tentative plan to go along with him until he let down his guard. She stopped her instinctive struggling, gritted her teeth, and allowed him to lead her over to the bed.
“Do you want me to take off your clothes? Or would you rather do it yourself?”
Despite the fact that Laura had been expecting something like this, her mouth gaped open. “Do you really expect me to answer that?”
Shane shrugged. “I thought you might want to choose, that’s all.” His blue eyes looked glacial as they ran over her figure. “I’ll do it, then. Lie down on the bed.”
The protest on her tongue froze when she glanced down at the large bed. He’d been busy while she was in the bathroom. The comforter and top sheet had been folded back, the decorative pillows removed. But not only that, he’d fastened two black cuffs to the right side of the head of the bed. Her gaze flashed rapidly to the foot of the bed where she saw two more.
“What’s wrong?” Shane asked softly when he saw her nervous glance. “Surely you didn’t expect that I was going to give you free run of the place while I slept. You’ve been restrained plenty of times before, haven’t you, Laura?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sheswallowed when she met his gaze, seeing the anger that simmered in his blue eyes. Despite his actions, the idea that Laura was accustomed to being tied up for sex clearly pissed him off royally.
Just as his belief that she was such an inveterate slut infuriated her in turn.
It more than angered her—it pained her like a physical wound that Shane believed so wholeheartedly such sordid things about her. But she needed him to believe if she wanted to continue this charade, and she really had no choice as to that. She never had. Just like Moody had said, Huey’s death doesn’t change a thing in regard to you, Laura.
Nothing mattered until she could finally wrap her hands around some tangible evidence. Then maybe she and Shane could be on the same side. But for now, Shane was as much her enemy as Randall Moody.
Laura didn’t need Moody to tell her that nothing had changed after Huey’s death. She’d known from the beginning that Huey was just one of many puppets. Moody himself was the one who jerked the string on his little army of soldiers. She’d been flabbergasted when Shane said Moody’s name so matter-of-factly tonight at Joey’s. Shocked and frightened.
The thought of Shane drawing too close to the fat, deadly spider in the center of his web terrified her.
Her anxious thoughts fueled her performance.
“What, are you worried I’ve got more experience in the bondage arena than you?” she asked, injecting as much scorn in her tone as she could muster.
He gave a small smile. “I think my experience will be sufficient. Now, are you going to lie down or what? The sooner you do, the sooner we can both get some rest.”
Laura gave him a mutinous glance before she bent, unzipped her brown leather boots, and kicked them off carelessly.
“What did you mean by that? Do you really get into bondage?” she asked. Her tone was purposefully condescending, but she was curious about his response. She lay on her back on the bed, trying not to reveal her anxiety when he bent and leaned over her. Shane believed she had experience with being restrained on a regular basis, after all.
He didn’t make eye contact with her as he begun to unbutton her blouse in a brisk, matter-of-fact manner. Laura’s skin pebbled and her nipples grew erect against the material of her bra when she was exposed to the cool air. He opened his mouth, as though he meant to answer her, but he went completely still instead.
She glanced down to where he stared so fixedly. The pendant on her necklace nestled in the valley of her breasts. A whimper rose in her throat when Shane touched the piece of cut glass with a long finger. The pendant was slightly larger than a quarter in diameter and approximately a half-inch thick toward the top. It had been shaped to roughly resemble a heart.
“Do you wear this often?”
“I . . . yes,” Laura replied, confused by his intensity. “It . . . It’s not real, but I always thought it was pretty anyway.”
He looked up at her. “How do you know it’s not a real emerald?”
Laura couldn’t stop the blush from heating her cheeks. She knew because she’d taken all of the jewelry Huey had given her during the first year of their marriage—including her wedding ring—in order to sell it. Huey had gambled away his paychecks from the CPD even back then, and Laura could have used the assurance of a nest egg given the bizarre, tenuous circumstances in which she existed. She’d been vigilant about preparing for an emergency since the day she’d been horrified to discover that her bonds to Huey Mays were tied with steel knots.
She’d already suspected that the emerald was a fake: It was the type of gem one would expect in a prince’s crown, not a cop’s wife’s jewelry box. But she’d at least expected some of the smaller items to be real.
At least her wedding ring.
But perhaps it made the most sense of all that her wedding ring was a fake. Not a par
ticularly clever one either, Laura thought as she recalled the jewelry appraiser’s glance of amused disbelief when she’d showed it to him.
“Don’t you think I’d know if my own necklace was a piece of glass or a priceless emerald?” she asked Shane bitterly.
He didn’t respond for a moment. His fingertip remained on the multifaceted surface of the pendant. She knew it was just her imagination but his touch seemed to enliven the trapped fires in the glass, making her skin tingle and burn.
“It’s almost the precise color of your eyes.”
Her heartbeat began to throb loudly in her ears at his low, intimate tone.
She breathed a shaky sigh of relief when he finally moved, reaching behind her to unhook her bra. She shivered when he whisked it off her shoulders and arms and tossed it aside. Laura couldn’t say if she was disappointed or glad when he didn’t even glance at her exposed flesh and reached for her wrists instead.
Her breasts felt strangely large . . . obvious and vulnerable prey even though Laura knew very well that they could be labeled medium-sized at best. She was acutely aware of her stretched naked torso as he secured her wrists inside the cuffs, then used an attached connector hook to attach her to the straps.
“You never answered me. Is bondage really your thing?” she asked as she tugged experimentally on the cuffs and straps once he’d finished. They seemed more than secure. Her fingers couldn’t reach the silver buckle on the back of her wrists. Unlike the metal handcuffs that he’d used earlier, the straps restraining her snugly at present were made of soft, supple leather. She likely would grow stiff from having her arms over her head all night, but at least her elbows were bent and resting comfortably on the pillow.
Shane reached behind her to unzip her skirt. He eventually spoke but Laura wished he would have at least made eye contact with her when he went about this intimate business.
“Does that surprise you?” he asked gruffly. He wore a small smile as he swept her skirt down her thighs.
No, it didn’t. Shane had always been a dominant, alpha male. People had responded to his calm confidence since they were children, looking to him instinctively for leadership and guidance. Even though he’d never used the paraphernalia of the trade on her, so to speak, when they’d been lovers in the past, he’d mastered her heart, mind, and senses effortlessly in his bed.
Still, his smug little smile irked her.
“My, my, this is news,” she taunted. She gritted her teeth when he paused and stared down at her completely naked body with the exception of her thigh-high stockings. “Who’d have thought the all-American boy was into kink?”
“Who’d have thought the girl-next-door was?” he countered flatly as he attached the cuff to her right ankle.
Laura stared up at the ceiling as he pulled on her left ankle so that it reached the other restraint. She lay with her legs spread, her pussy completely bared. Why did the cool air tickle and caress it like a lover’s touch even though Shane refused to look at her?
“You don’t know anything about me, Shane. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into,” she challenged when he’d finished.
He stood abruptly and met her eyes. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Laura. You’re the one who has something to learn.”
She just stared at him, speechless, as he drew the sheet up over her naked body, turned, and walked away. The bathroom door closed with a brisk bang behind him.
Laura’s ears seemed to have been pitched to some hyperalert status as she listened to Shane move around in the bathroom. The fire made a crackling, cheerful sound that belied the heavy tension inherent to the situation. Laura already felt its heat warding off the chill in the room.
She tried to take advantage of Shane’s absence to scope out where he’d placed things in the room—the location of the car keys, a cell phone . . . his gun.
Surely he’d brought his gun with him. Laura had grown up with cops. She’d lived with a policeman in the house since she was twelve. She’d gotten accustomed to the grim reality of a gun being in the house ever since her parents had died and she’d moved into her uncle Derrick’s home.
The surfaces of the bedside tables were empty except for the lamps. If Shane had left keys or a cell phone anywhere, it was probably out in the living room or kitchen, far from where she could access it. What would she do with a cell phone anyway? Would she really have the nerve to turn Shane over to the police?
Laura admitted grimly that despite her fury at Shane, it wouldn’t serve her ultimate purpose to have him arrested. Although the last thing she’d do was tell Shane that.
Escape was her only hope then.
Anxiety melded with anticipation, both of them rising to an alarming degree as she lay there waiting. Her pulse began to throb uncomfortably at her throat. Even though Shane had tossed the sheet over her, she felt very aware of her nakedness beneath it . . . of her stark vulnerability.
She forced herself to remain still even though her heart jumped a mile high in her chest when Shane opened the bathroom door abruptly. She told herself to close her eyes, to try her best to shut out his presence from her mind. But her eyes seemed to have a will of their own. For a full few seconds she didn’t breathe, her entire body held captive by his male beauty.
He only wore his jeans, having removed his shirt in the bathroom. His skin stretched tightly over lean, rippling muscle, the color of it a rich olive tone. Laura recalled only too well how the summer sun treated Shane like a cherished lover, how easily he transformed into a bronzed Mediterranean god. She’d guess by the leanness of his torso and hips that he still ran to keep in shape. His arms, shoulders, and chest were thick with well-defined muscle, but he wasn’t bulky or husky like some of the weight-lifting fanatics Laura had seen at her gym. Instead he was all long, lean power and graceful male movement.
He approached and paused on the opposite side of the bed, removed his wristwatch, and dropped it onto the bedside table. Laura clenched her eyes at the strangely erotic image of his strong, flexing forearms dusted with dark hair.
“Laura,” he said. She felt the mattress give and knew that he’d sat down on the bed.
She opened her eyes cautiously.
“Are you comfortable?”
Laura thought of complaining just for the sake of complaining, but something in the tone of his deep voice had made her go mute. She nodded.
“If you become uncomfortable during the night, just call out to me and I’ll change your position. I’m a light sleeper.”
“I remember.”
The intimate words had left her mouth before she’d had the opportunity to censor them. She saw the tiny flick of his eyelids as he watched her and knew that he’d been just as surprised by her admission as she had.
She felt like she couldn’t draw air adequately when he suddenly stretched out beside her. He leaned on his elbow and looked down at her.
“What else do you remember?”
Laura stared up at the ceiling, refusing to be lulled by his seductive tone. “I remember lots of things about you. I have a good memory. I recall details about most of my lovers, even the ones who weren’t particularly worth remembering.”
“Is that right?”
Laura shrugged, still refraining from looking into his starkly handsome face. Something about his silky tone made her heartbeat escalate erratically, however.
“What about those friends of Huey’s you entertained last month? Do you remember everything about them?”
“Why? Are you worried you won’t match up?” she asked coolly. She gasped in surprise when he suddenly palmed her jaw and forced her to look at him. Despite the firmness of his hold, his forefinger gently stroked her cheek.
“You’re a mean liar, Laura. But you’re not a particularly good one.”
Her eyes went wide in alarm. Could he see through her that easily? “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means—” he began before he reached for the sheet that covered her, “that I
know the way a woman sounds when she’s out of her mind with desire and I know the sounds of a woman being dramatic to please her audience.”
He whisked the sheet down until it crumpled around her knees.
Laura inhaled sharply when he lightly skimmed his fingertips across her hip bone and then her bare belly.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Shane said almost conversationally as she shivered beneath his slow caresses on her stomach and ribs. Her skin roughened and her nipples pulled into tight erection. “You sounded aroused enough on those tapes I heard. But there was a lot of showmanship mixed in. Huey’s gorillas were either too stupid or too worried about coming to notice.”
Laura stifled a moan when his callused fingertips skimmed lightly over the sensitive skin on the underside of her breast.
“A true dominant wants one thing above all else.”
“W-what?” Laura couldn’t stop herself from asking. She watched, wide-eyed, as his fingertip traced the shape of the aureole of her pebbled nipple, never really touching the pink crest, just lazily circling around and around . . . taunting her with his power over her.
“He wants to hear the sounds of his woman in an all-out frenzy of desire. He wants to take her to the core of honesty . . . to a place of raw, primitive need,” he explained, his quiet, slightly rough voice making her skin prickle with heightened awareness. “He wants her to submit to that, to surrender to the truth. Do you understand, Laura? No dramatics. No lies can exist where I’m going to take you in the next few days. I want you to let yourself go, give up the responsibility you’ve been harboring into my hands. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Laura shut her eyes tightly as emotion gripped at her throat. For a few seconds it felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Oh God, why had he said that thing about giving over the responsibility to him? How had he known that it would pierce right through her defenses, tempt her with the promise of something that could never be?
“Just because you can make my body respond to you doesn’t mean that you own me.” A tiny cry of loss slipped past her lips when he removed his fingertips from her breast.
Beth Kery Page 10
