by Litte, Jane
“You know you’ve got to move up higher before I can fuck you like that.” His thumbs hooked the waistband of her briefs, began to draw them down. “I’m going to kiss you here while you do it, though, and make you feel better.”
God, and he did. Openmouthed, he lowered his head to her sex, his tongue delving through her slit, and kissed her like a man starving for her taste. And with his mouth on her, his fingers in her, the pain in her wrists didn’t matter, the agony that drew tighter and tighter. When he sucked on her clit, every flick of his tongue pushed her higher, higher. Jenny moved with him, sobbing with the pain of it, but he made it good, so good.
And then she was there, as high as she could get, crying out in anguish and relief. For a few moments, she lay panting, before lifting her head and considering her position. Sweat soaked her bra and skin, hardened wax had pooled on the crotch of her panties, and red streaks splattered the inside of her thigh. She was still on her back, her legs still spread—but now she lay with her ass halfway up the back of the chair. Once on her feet, she could shuffle around without tipping over.
“On your feet, but bent over,” Ian mused. “If I found you like that, I don’t know if I could stop myself from bending you farther, making you take all of my cock. Begging for it. Would you want that?”
On her feet? “God, yes.”
“This cabin is a crime scene. Our forensic technicians will go over every inch. They’ll find my come, and yours. Everyone would know that I fucked you.”
Her brother would know. Jenny didn’t care if Tom did, and she didn’t think Tom would give a crap, either. Only Ian had a problem with it.
“I’d take that chance,” she told him. “Would you?”
“When you escape from here, you can find out.”
She nodded. “I will.”
No more pretending, no more wasted years. She would find out.
“You’d better,” he said. “But first, how will you get up on your feet? You’ve got dirty hands, working with them for a living, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have a brain in your head. You’re smart enough, Jenny. Smart enough to yell out his name, and smart enough to get yourself out of here if he doesn’t tell me where you are. So how will you do it?”
“I’ll roll over.” Though she was on her back, she wasn’t a turtle. “My face will be on the floor, but I’ll be able to scoot along with my knees to that wall.”
Only a few feet away. If she turned her head, only one of her cheeks would be scraped up. And after making her way to the side of the cabin, she could slowly inch her way up, using her head and her shoulder against the wall for leverage. Once she was up, once she was steady, she could shuffle around. She could get the hell out.
“And I’ll find you,” Ian said.
Maybe. If Shaw had been caught, and if he’d given the police the directions to his cabin. If not, Jenny didn’t know if she could shuffle the distance to the highway; a rough dirt road through the woods wouldn’t be easy to traverse, especially barefoot and tied to a chair. So she had to bring help here, somehow.
“My hands are too high now to hold over the flame.” And she wouldn’t lower them again and trade mobility for a slight chance of melting the cable ties. She looked to the cabin’s windows—at the moth-eaten burlap curtains. “But I could back up to those, and I bet I could pull them down. They’d catch fire easily, burn this damn cabin up. Someone will see the fire and come.”
“But will you be able to get out, Jenny?”
“Shaw didn’t lock the door.”
“But can you open it?”
If her hands weren’t completely numb by then. She had to do this quickly. “I hope so.”
His mouth tight, Ian shook his head. “Hope isn’t good enough, Jenny.”
That was true. Hope hadn’t gotten her anywhere so far. Only sheer determination had.
“Then I’ll damn well do it,” she said.
10:25 P.M.
And she did, but she’d forgotten about the two stairs outside the front door. Despite the crackling heat from inside the cabin urging her to hurry, she shuffled carefully across the small porch, and edged as close to the first step as she could without going over. She considered the best way to drop, the best way to keep her balance when she landed—but when she finally shuffled over the edge, the chair’s back legs hit the porch, and she tumbled down. The chair’s wooden frame cracked then, but not enough to free her, and Jenny stared up at the bright stars, winded again. When the heat from the burning cabin began to prickle her skin, she didn’t try to get up—there was nothing to leverage her face and shoulder against. She rolled, instead, thumping along the hard-packed earth, letting the Big Dipper take a good look at her granny panties. At a safe distance from the cabin, she stopped, coming to rest on her side. She shoved her hands back down toward the seat to restore circulation, and waited.
Someone would come to investigate the fire. The wide, earthen clearing around the cabin and the still night air would help prevent the fire from spreading to the trees, but no one would know that until they got here. And at this time of year, this close to federal forestlands, this close to a highway, the response to any blaze would be swift.
Shaw would realize that, too. And so even if he hadn’t been caught, he might not risk returning when he saw the fire—knowing that very soon, others would be arriving, too.
Sooner than she thought. Bright headlights appeared at the end of the road. Shriveling fear crawled down her spine. What if she’d been mistaken, and Shaw had risked returning to the cabin? Still tied to the chair, she couldn’t fight him.
Fuck that. Her mouth was free now. If it was Shaw, she was going to bite out his eyes and spit them down his throat.
Behind her back, her fingers curled into fists. She couldn’t hear the engine over the crackling roar of the fire and the pounding of her heart, couldn’t determine whether it was Shaw’s sedan or some other vehicle approaching. She thought the headlamps were positioned too high for a sedan, more like an SUV, but from her angle on the ground, she couldn’t be sure. And, God—he was coming fast. She should have thumped farther off the road.
But the driver must have caught sight of her. He skidded to a halt a few yards away from her, and though he switched to low beams, she still couldn’t make out more than a silhouette until the driver’s door flew open and the SUV’s interior lights fell across his beautiful, beloved face.
“Jenny!”
He shouted her name as he ran toward her. Jenny watched him come, disbelieving. She’d imagined him here, but—“Ian?”
Her voice wasn’t her own, far too hoarse. But his voice was rougher than usual, too—and she couldn’t imagine he’d been screaming like she had.
Ian fell to his knees beside her, reaching out but stopping just short of touching her. His desperate gaze searched her face. “Oh, Jenny—thank God. Tell me where you’re hurt, first. I don’t want to make it worse.”
Everywhere. Nowhere. There wasn’t anything that wouldn’t heal.
“I’m okay,” she told him, and repeated it when he didn’t seem to hear her. “I’m okay, Ian.”
He must have heard her that time, and believed her, because suddenly his mouth was on hers. A stunning kiss, hard and fast—and it hurt her bruised lips, but that didn’t matter. He said her name against her mouth like a prayer before sitting back, reaching into his jeans pocket.
“All right, sweetheart. Let’s get you out of this thing.” Flames reflected dully in the blade of his pocket knife. His jaw tightened when he looked around the back of the chair and saw her wrists.
“I’m okay,” she said again, then made herself a liar when he cut the cable tie. Her arms flopped forward, and she shrieked as pain shot through her stiff muscles. Ian caught her with a forearm beneath her shoulders when she would have fallen on her face, and he quickly cut through the ties at her ankles.
Pocketing the knife, he slipped his arm behind her knees and froze, his gaze fixed on her thighs. “Fuck that, Jenny, you’re
not okay.”
“I’m not bleeding. He didn’t . . .” She let that thought trail off. “It’s candle wax. Smell it, if you don’t believe me.”
But she saw that he’d already realized that the texture appeared wrong. Still, his face didn’t lose its harsh cast, or his voice the rough edge. “The ambulance wasn’t far behind me, but I don’t want you in this dirt. Will you let me carry you to my rig?”
“Please.” Unable to raise her arms around his neck, she simply rested her cheek against his shoulder and said, “And when we get there, will you help me untie this goddamn ribbon he put on me?”
“I’ll do more than that, sweetheart,” he said grimly. “I’ll hang him with it.”
He lifted her against his chest, began striding toward his vehicle. God, she’d thought she loved to watch him move? Feeling him move was so much better.
And she vowed this wouldn’t be the last time she did.
2:45 A.M.
In the quiet moments between the exams and the questions, when the terror of learning about the trophies that Shaw had kept in his home became too strong, when the possibility of what could have happened if she hadn’t been leaving Ian a message or if he hadn’t discovered the GPS in Shaw’s car threatened to overwhelm her, Jenny returned to one simple thought: Ian had kissed her.
It had been sweeter than any kiss she’d ever imagined.
A part of her knew that she might be reading too much into that kiss. It might have been the kiss of a close friend who’d suffered genuine fear—and then blessed relief. She might have imagined the possessive light in his eyes, just as she’d imagined everything in that cabin.
Just as she might have misinterpreted every look he’d given her in the past three years.
And wouldn’t that be just like her? By letting herself believe that a secret longing existed between them, Jenny created an excuse to keep every other relationship purely physical. When it came to men, her body liked a rough ride, but her heart didn’t. In that way, she’d always been something of a coward.
Well, she wouldn’t be a coward anymore. Perhaps she had imagined everything, but if she hadn’t let the threat of pain stop her in the cabin, she couldn’t let the fear of being hurt stop her now.
Funny, though, how working up the courage to take that risk seemed so much harder than throwing her weight around or setting a cabin on fire. It wasn’t until after the questions were over, her wrists bandaged, and she’d dressed in a pair of Ian’s sweatpants and his oversize T-shirt that she could even think of throwing herself at him. Yet when he suggested that she stay at his house so that she wouldn’t have to spend the night alone in a hotel, her answer came easily.
The neighborhood was quiet, his house only a few blocks from the one she rented, and where the crime scene techs were still processing her kitchen. She let him open the passenger door and guide her through his hot, darkened garage with his hand at the small of her back. His kitchen wasn’t quite as stifling; a little window over the sink had been opened to let the day’s heat escape. She blinked rapidly when he switched on the light, amazed as always at how clean he kept his home, every counter and appliance sparkling white.
Hopefully, he liked his women dirty.
“You’ll take my bedroom,” he said. “There’s A/C in there. I’ll camp out on the couch.”
She hoped he wouldn’t. “I can’t sleep yet.”
He nodded and turned toward the fridge. “A drink, then?”
That was what they usually did on hot nights like this: They took a beer out to his deck overlooking his backyard, and kicked their feet up. But that wasn’t what she wanted now.
Bottle in hand, he glanced around. His gaze met hers, and she saw the stillness that swept through his body, his sudden tension.
She saw the quiet intensity of a man holding himself back.
His eyes closed. “When you look at me like that, Jenny . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t tell him that he was looking at her the same way. She simply said, “It means that I don’t want a drink.”
He apparently did—or he was just slowing her down, considering her statement and making certain he didn’t mistake her meaning. Twisting off the cap, he straightened and let the refrigerator close before leaning back against the door. His dark gaze never left hers as he took a long swallow. She watched the play of muscle in his throat, the way the light hit the sheen of perspiration on his tanned skin.
He lowered the bottle. She wondered if it cost him to maintain that even tone when he asked, “What is it that you want, then?”
She wanted to lick his neck. She wanted to drop to her knees, and discover whether he’d harden in her mouth, if he tasted as good as she’d imagined, if she could make him lose control.
But she needed to tell him that, first.
“I want what we’ve been dancing around for the past three years. I know that getting together with your partner’s sister would create too many problems on the job, and so I haven’t wiggled my ass in front of you, haven’t teased you at all. It didn’t seem fair to play with you like that, to make you choose between your partner and a woman.”
Though Ian’s expression hadn’t changed, his fingers tightened on the neck of the bottle. She paused, her heart racing. But he didn’t tell her she was wrong, that she’d imagined anything.
“You’re right,” he agreed softly. “You didn’t play with me. You didn’t give me any sign.”
“Because your code made sense. If you and I got together—and then if we fucked it all up and I got hurt—something might change between Tom and you. There might be a sense of betrayal, a lack of trust. That’s not something that should be standing between you and the guy who’s supposed to have your back. The guy who might hold your life in his hands.”
“Yeah. That’s my code.” Ian gave a half laugh, but it must have been a bitter one. As if to wash the taste away, he took another swig. “You’ve nailed down some great reasons to have one, Jenny. Not a bad code at all, is it?”
“No. But tonight, it was my life in your hands. And I need to know: how do you feel about that code now?”
“I feel like I wasted three fucking years.”
Oh, thank God. Giddy relief pushed a laugh from her. She supposed that this was the point where she should jump him, take him down to the floor, and dirty him up. Instead she just stood grinning in the middle of his kitchen and thinking, Thank God.
Quietly, Ian set his beer aside and pushed away from the fridge. Three long strides brought him within arm’s length, but he didn’t come any closer. He looked down at her, his gaze hot. “But what you’ve been through tonight is exactly why I shouldn’t touch you right now. It would be taking advantage.”
And she wanted him even more for his restraint—it meant that he’d be able to restrain himself in other ways. That he’d be able to drive her crazy, until it was time to let himself go.
But he didn’t need to restrain himself now.
She shook her head. “You’re thinking that I’m shaken up, that I’m just looking for comfort—and I am. But I only want it from you, Ian. If any other Detective McHottie had rescued me from that cabin, I’d have chosen to sleep in a hotel room alone tonight.”
His brows rose. “McHottie?”
“Very.” So very.
Ian smiled and lowered his head. Anticipation started low in her belly, a tremor that moved through her in shivers, tightening the back of her neck, shaking her hands. But Ian’s hands were steady. He cupped her jaw, and the condensation on his palm felt cool against her skin.
“I wouldn’t have left you alone,” he said softly, and his warm lips covered hers.
A sweet kiss—and a frustratingly chaste one. He didn’t delve into her mouth the way she wanted to be taken, possessed. He simply held her close, as if absorbing the feel of her. Wonderful, but not enough. Jenny rose up on her toes, seeking more of his taste, a deeper connection. His right hand slid back, his fingers tangling in the hair at her nape
, keeping her still—and that easily, he exerted his control. Oh, yes. He didn’t have to fuck her mouth with his tongue, but just do that. Just tell her, with the squeeze of his hand and the firm direction of his lips, that she was his.
Excitement zinged through her blood, carried along by the pounding of her heart. Though she hadn’t even tasted him yet, his kiss resonated within her, dominating her senses—the tinge of his cologne on the air that she breathed, the heat that radiated between them. Her arms ached when she clutched at his shoulders to pull him closer, but that pain was overwhelmed by the delight of exploring the dense muscle beneath the tips of her fingers, and she moaned low in her throat.
As if he’d been waiting for that sound, Ian angled his head and traced the seam of her lips with his tongue, easing her open for his slow possession. Pleasure sizzled across her nerves, and each soft lick into her mouth sparked an answering flame between her legs. Jenny pressed closer, desperate to burn hotter. Sweet Jesus, this man could kiss.
With soft pressure against her chin, he urged her lips open wider, sweeping his tongue deep into her mouth. Need speared through her, painfully strong. She whimpered and writhed against him, seeking some small relief in the friction of her nipples against his chest, in the pressure of his erection against her belly. Too many clothes separated them. She curled her fingers into his shoulders, frantic for more.
Abruptly, Ian broke away, cursing. She stared up at him, her mouth open and panting. Oh, God. He couldn’t quit now.
“What?”
“I’m going too fast.” He touched his thumb to the raw corner of her mouth. “I’ll hurt you.”
Oh. That was all?
“At least this time it’ll be real.” She smiled up at him when his brows drew together in confusion. “This is good for me, Ian. This is what I want. And it’s true that tomorrow I’ll probably ache so bad that I’ll kill you for touching me. But these little cuts and bruises?”—she gestured to her face, the gauze around her wrist—“They just make me feel even more alive.”
