She’d been scared, but she’d dealt with it.
She would deal with this, too.
The gag tasted of man and infuriated her. She couldn’t push or wiggle or slide it out, so she gave up on it and concentrated on freeing the loop of the cuffs. If she could free her hands from the gearshift, she could fold herself up, bend her legs through her arms and get some mobility.
She was agile, she told herself. She was strong and she was smart. Oh, God, she was scared. She moaned and whimpered in frustration. The handcuffs might as well have been cemented to the gearshift.
If she could only see, twist herself around so that she could see what she was doing. She struggled, all but dislocating her shoulder, until she managed to flip around. Sweat seemed to boil over her, dripped into her eyes as she yanked at the steel.
She stopped herself, closed her eyes and got her breath back. She used her shaking fingers to probe, to trace along the steel, slide over the smooth length of the gearshift. Keeping them closed, she visualized what she was doing, carefully, slowly, shifting her hands until she felt steel begin to slide. Her shoulders screamed as she forced them into an unnatural position, but she bit down on the gag and twisted.
She felt something give, hoped it wasn’t a joint, then collapsed in an exhausted, sweaty heap as the cuffs slipped off the stick.
“Damn, you’re good,” Jack commented as he wrenched open the door. He dragged her out and tossed her over his shoulder. “Another five minutes, you might have pulled it off.” He carried her into a room at the end of the concrete block. He’d already unlocked the door, and he’d paused for a minute to observe, and admire, her struggles before he came back to the car.
Now he dumped her on the bed. Because her adrenaline was back and she was fighting him, he simply lay flat on her back, letting her bounce until she was worn out.
And he enjoyed that, too. He wasn’t proud of it, he thought, but he enjoyed it. The woman had incredible energy and staying power. If they’d met under different circumstances, he imagined they could have torn up those cheap motel sheets like maniacs and parted as friends.
As it was, he was going to have a hard time not imagining her naked.
Maybe he lay on her, smelled her, just a little longer than necessary. He wasn’t a saint, was he? he asked himself grimly as he unlocked one of her hands and secured the cuff to the iron headboard.
He rose, ran a hand through his hair. “You’re making this tougher than necessary for both of us,” he told her, as she murdered him with a scalding look out of hot green eyes. He was out of breath and knew he couldn’t blame it entirely on the last, minor skirmish. That tight little bottom of hers pressing against his crotch had left him uncomfortably aroused.
And he didn’t want to be.
Turning from her, he switched on the TV, let the volume boom out. M.J. had already ripped the gag away with her free hand and was hissing like a snake. “You can scream all you want now,” he told her as he took out a small knife and sliced through the phone cord. “The three rooms down from here are vacant, so nobody’s going to hear you.” Then he grinned. “Besides, I put it around at check-in that we’re on our honeymoon, so even if they hear, they’re not going to bother us. Be back in a minute.”
He went out, shutting the door behind him. M.J. closed her eyes again. Dear God, what was going on with her? For a moment, for just one insane moment, when he pressed her into the mattress with his body, she’d felt weak and hot. With lust.
It was sick, sick, sick.
But just for that one insane moment, she’d imagined being stripped and taken, being ravaged, having his mouth on her. His hands on her.
More, she’d wanted it.
She shuddered now, praying it was just some sort of weird reaction to shock.
She wasn’t a woman who shied away from good, healthy, hot sex. But she didn’t give herself to strangers, to men who knocked her down, tied her up and tossed her into bed in some cheap motel.
And he’d been aroused. She hadn’t been so stupid, or so dazed with shock, that she was unaware of his reaction. Hell, the man had been wrapped around her, hadn’t he? But he’d backed off.
She struggled to even her breathing. He wasn’t going to rape her. He didn’t want sex. He wanted— God only knew.
Don’t feel, she ordered herself. Just think. Just clear your mind and think.
Slowly, she opened her eyes, took a survey of the room.
It was, in a word, hideous.
Obviously, some misguided soul had thought that using an eye-searing combo of orange and blue would turn the cheaply furnished, cramped little room into the exotic.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
The drapes were as thin as paper, and looked to be of about the same consistency. But he’d pulled them closed over the narrow front window, so the room was deep in shadow.
The television blared out a poorly dubbed Hercules movie on its rickety gray pedestal. The single dresser was ringed with interlinking water-marks. There was a metal box beside the bed. For a couple of bucks in quarters, she could treat herself to dancing fingers. Whoopee.
The yellow glass ashtray on the night table was chipped, and didn’t look heavy enough to make an effective weapon. Even over the din of Hercules, she could hear the roaring sputter of an air-conditioning unit that was doing absolutely nothing to cool the room.
The print near a narrow door she assumed was to the bathroom was a garish reproduction of a country landscape in autumn, complete with screaming red barn and stupid-faced cows.
Reaching over, she tested the bedside lamp. It was bright blue glass, with a dingy and yellowing shade, but it had some heft. It might come in handy.
She heard the rattle of the key and set it down again, stared at the door.
He came in with a small red-and-white cooler and dropped it on the dresser. Her heart thumped when she saw her purse slung over his shoulder, but he tossed it on the floor by the bed so casually that she relaxed again.
The diamond was still safe, she thought. And so was the can of Mace, the can opener and the roll of nickels she habitually carried as weapons.
“Nothing I like better than a really bad movie,” he commented, and paused to watch Hercules battle several fierce-looking warriors sporting pelts and bad teeth. “I always wonder where they come up with the dialogue. You know, was it really that bad when it was scripted in Lithuanian or whatever, or does it just lose it in the translation?”
With a shrug, he walked over, lifted the top on the cooler and took out two soft drinks.
“I figure you’re thirsty.” He walked to her, offered a can. “And you’re not the type to cut off your nose.” His assessment was proved correct when she grabbed the can and drank deeply. “This place doesn’t run to room service,” he continued. “But there’s a diner down the road, so we won’t go hungry. You want something now?”
She eyed him over the top of the can. “No.”
“Fine.” He sat on the side of the bed, settled himself and smiled at her. “Let’s talk.”
“Kiss my butt.”
He blew out a breath. “It’s an attractive offer, sugar, but I’ve been trying not to think along those lines.” He gave her thigh a friendly pat. “Now, the way I see it, we’re both in a jam here, and you’ve got the key. Once you tell me who’s after you and why, I’ll deal with it.”
The worst of her thirst was abated, so she sipped slowly. Her voice dripped sarcasm. “You’ll deal with it?”
“Yeah. Consider me your champion-at-arms. Like good old Herc there.” He stabbed a thumb at the set behind him. “You tell me about it, then I’ll go take care of the bad guys. Then I’ll bill you. And if the offer about kissing your butt’s still open, I’ll take you up on that, too.”
“Let’s see.” She leaned her head back, kept her eyes level on his. “What was it you told your pal Ralph to do? Oh, yeah.” She peeled her lips back in a snarl and repeated it.
He only shook his head. “Is tha
t any way to talk to the guy who kept you from getting a bullet in the brain?”
“I kept you from getting a bullet in the brain, pal, though I have serious doubts he’d have been able to hit it, as it’s clearly so small. And you pay me back by manhandling me, tying me up, gagging me, and dumping me in some cheap rent-by-the-hour motel.”
“I’m assured this is a family establishment,” he said dryly. God, she was a pistol, he thought. Spitting at him despite his advantage, daring him to take her on, though she didn’t have a hope of winning the game. And sexy as bloody hell in tight jeans and a wrinkled shirt.
“Think about this,” he said. “That brainless giant said something about me taking too long, talking too much, which leads me to believe they were listening from the van. They must have had surveillance equipment, and he got antsy. Otherwise, if you’d gone along with me like a good girl, they’d have pulled us over somewhere along the line and taken you. They didn’t want direct involvement, or witnesses.”
“You’d be a witness,” she corrected.
“Nothing to sweat over. I’d have been ticked off about having another bounty hunter snatch my job, but people in my line of work don’t go running to the cops. I’d have lost my fee, considered my day wasted, maybe bitched to Ralph. That’s the way they’d figure it, anyway. And Ralph would have probably passed me some fluff job to keep me happy.”
His eyes changed, went hard again. Knife-edged gray ice. “Somebody’s got their foot on his throat. I want to know who.”
“I couldn’t say. I don’t know your friend Ralph—”
“Former friend.”
“I don’t know the gorilla who broke my door, and I don’t know you.” She was pleased her voice was calm, without a single hitch or quiver. “Now, if you’ll let me go, I’ll report all this to the police.”
His lips twitched. “That’s the first time you’ve mentioned the cops, sugar. And you’re bluffing. You don’t want them in on this. That’s another question.”
He was right about that. She didn’t want the police, not until she’d talked to Bailey and knew what was going on. But she shrugged, glanced toward the phone he’d put out of commission. “You could call my bluff if you hadn’t wrecked the phone.”
“You wouldn’t call the cops, but whoever you called might have their phone tapped. I didn’t go through all the trouble to find us these plush out of-the-way surroundings to get traced.”
He leaned over, took her chin in his hand. “Who would you call, M.J.?”
She kept her eyes steady, fighting to ignore the heat of his fingers, the texture of his skin against hers. “My lover.” She spit the words out. “He’d take you apart limb by limb. He’d rip out your heart, then show it to you while it was still beating.”
He smiled, eased a little closer. He just couldn’t resist. “What’s his name?”
Her mind was blank, totally, completely, foolishly blank. She stared into those slate-gray eyes a moment, then shook his hand away. “Hank. He’ll break you in half and toss you to the dogs when he finds out you’ve messed with me.”
He chuckled, infuriated her. “You may have a lover, sugar. You may have a dozen. But you don’t have one named Hank. Took you too long. Okay, you don’t want to spill it and rely on me to work us out of this, we’ll go another route.”
He rose, leaned over. He heard her quickly indrawn breath when he reached down for her purse. Without a word, he dumped the contents on the bed. He’d already removed the weapons. “You ever use that can opener for more than popping a beer?” he asked her.
“How dare you! How dare you go through my things!”
“Oh, I think this is small potatoes after what we’ve been through together.” He picked up the velvet pouch, slid the stone into his hand, where it flashed like fire, despite its lowly surroundings.
He admired it, as he had been unable to in the car, when he searched her bag. It was deeply, brilliantly blue, big as a baby’s fist and cut to shoot blue flame. He felt a tug as it lay nestled in his hand, an odd need to protect it. Almost as inexplicable, he thought, as his odd need to protect this prickly, ungrateful woman.
“So.” He sat, tossing the stone up, catching it. “Tell me about this, M.J. Just where did you get your hands on a blue diamond big enough to choke a cat?”
Chapter 3
Options whirled through her mind. The simplest, and the most satisfying, she thought, was to make him feel like a fool.
“Are you crazy?” She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Yeah, that’s a diamond, all right, a big blue one. I carry a green one in my glove compartment, and a pretty red one in my other purse. I spend all the profits from my pub on diamonds. It’s a weakness.”
He studied her, idly tossing the stone, catching it. She looked annoyed, he decided. Amused and cocky. “So what is it?”
“A paperweight, for God’s sake.”
He waited a beat. “You carry a paperweight in your purse.”
Hell. “It was a gift.” She said it primly, her nose in the air.
“Yeah, from Hank the Hunk, no doubt.” He rose, casually pushed through the rest of the contents he’d dumped out. “Let’s see, other than the blackjack—”
“It was a roll of nickels,” she corrected.
“Same effect. Mace, a can opener I doubt you cart around to pop Bud bottles, we’ve got an electronic organizer, a wallet with more photos than cash—”
“I don’t appreciate you rifling my personal be longings.”
“Sue me. A bottle of designer water, six pens, four pencils. Some eyeliner, matches, keys, two pair of sunglasses, a paperback copy of Sue Grafton’s latest—good book, by the way, I won’t tell you the ending—a candy bar…” He tossed it to her. “In case you’re hungry. A flip phone.” He tucked that in his back pocket. “About three dollars in loose change, a weather radio and a box of condoms.” He lifted a brow. “Unopened. But then, you never know.”
Heat, a combination of mortification and fury, crawled up her neck. “Pervert.”
“I’d say you’re a woman who believes in being prepared. So why not carry a paperweight around with you? You might run into a stack of paper that needs anchoring. Happens all the time.”
He made a couple of swipes to gather and dump the items scattered on the bed back into her bag, then tossed it aside. “I won’t ask what kind of fool you take me for, because I’ve already got that picture.” Moving to the mirror over the dresser, he scraped the stone diagonally across the glass. It left a long, thin scratch.
“They just don’t make motel mirrors like they used to,” he commented, then came back and sat on the bed beside her. “Now, back to my original question. What are you doing with a blue diamond big enough to choke a cat?”
When she said nothing, he vised her chin in his hand, jerked her face to his. “Listen, sister, I could truss you up again, leave you here and walk away with your million-dollar paperweight. That’s door number one. I can kick back, watch the movie and wait you out, because sooner or later you’ll tell me what I want to know. That’s door number two. Behind door number three, you tell me now why you’re carrying a stone that could buy a small island in the West Indies and we start figuring out how to get us both out of this jam.”
She didn’t flinch, she didn’t blink. He had to admire the sheer nerve. Because he did, he waited patiently while she studied him out of those deep green cat-tilted eyes.
“Why haven’t you taken door number one already?”
“Because I don’t like having some gorilla try to break me in half, I don’t like getting shot at, and I don’t like being hosed by some skinny woman with an attitude.” He leaned closer, until they were nose-to-nose. “I’ve got debts to pay on this one, sugar. And you’re the first stop.”
She grabbed his wrist with her free hand, shoved. “Threats aren’t going to cut it with me, Dakota.”
“No?” He shifted gears smoothly. His hand came back to her face, but lightly now, a skim of knuckles along a cheekbone that h
ad her blinking in shock before her eyes narrowed. “You want a different approach?”
His fingers trailed down her throat, down the center of her body and back, before sliding around to cup her neck. His mouth hovered, one hot breath away from hers.
“Don’t even think about it,” she warned.
“Too late.” His lips curved, and his eyes stared straight into hers. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since you swaggered up the apartment steps in front of me.”
No, he’d been thinking about it, he realized, since Ralph shoved her photo at him. But he’d consider that later.
He skimmed his mouth over hers, drew back fractionally. He’d expected her to cringe away or fight. God knew he was ruthlessly pushing all those female fear buttons. It was deplorable, but he’d consider that later, as well. He just wanted the pressure to work, to get her to spill before they both got killed. And if he got a little twisted pleasure out of the whole thing, well, hell, he had his flaws.
But she didn’t fight and she didn’t cringe. She didn’t move a muscle, just kept those goddessgreen eyes lasered on his. A dark, primitive thrill rippled down to his loins.
What was one more sin on his back, he thought, and, clamping his hand on her free one, he took a long, deep gulp of her.
It was all heat, primitive as tribal drums. No thought, no reason, all instinct. That surprisingly lush mouth gave under his, so he dived deeper. A rumble of pure male triumph sounded in his throat as he moved into her, plunging his tongue between those full, inviting lips, sinking into that long, tough body, fisting his hand in that cap of flame-colored hair.
His mind shut off like a shattered lamp. He forgot it was a con, a ploy to intimidate, forgot he was a civilized man. Forgot she was a job, a puzzle, a stranger. And knew only that she was his for the taking.
His hand closed greedily over her breast, his thumb and forefinger tugging at the nipple that pressed hard against the thin cotton of her shirt. She moved under him, arched to him. And the blood pounded like thunder in his brain.
She moved fast, all but twisting his ear from his head while her teeth clamped down like a bear trap on his bottom lip.
He yelped, jerked back, and, certain she would saw off a chunk of him, pinched her chin hard until she let him loose. He pressed the back of his hand to his throbbing lip, scowled at the blood he saw on it when he took it away.
“Damn it.”
“Pig.” She was vibrating now, scrambling to her knees on the bed to take another swipe at him, swearing when her reach fell short. “Pervert.”
He spared her one murderous look, then turned on his heel. The bathroom door slammed shut be hind him. She heard water running. And, closing her eyes, she sank back and let the shudders come.
My God, dear God, she thought, pressing a hand to her face. She’d lost her mind.
Had she fought him? No. Had she been filled with outrage, with disgust? No.
She’d enjoyed it.
She rocked herself, berated herself, and damned Jack Dakota to hell.
She’d let him kiss her. There was no pretending otherwise. She’d stared into those dangerous gray eyes, felt the zip of an electric current when that cocky mouth brushed over hers.
And she’d wanted him.
Her muscles had gone lax, her breasts had tingled, and her blood had begun to swim. She’d let him kiss her without a murmur of protest. She’d kissed him back, without a thought for the consequences.
M. J. O’Leary, she thought, wincing, tough gal, who prided herself on always being in control, who could flip a two-hundred-pound man onto his back and have her foot on his throat in a heartbeat—confident, kick-butt M.J.—had melted into a puddle of mindless lust.
And he’d tied her up, he’d gagged her, he had her handcuffed to a bed in some cheap motel. Wanting him even for an instant made her as much of a pervert as he was.
Thank God she’d snapped out of it. It didn’t matter that bone-deep fear of her feelings had been the motivation for stopping him. The fact was, she had stopped him—and she knew she’d been an instant away from letting him do whatever he wanted to do.
She was very much afraid that if she’d had both hands free, she would have flipped him onto his back. Then ripped off his clothes.
It was the shock, she told herself. Even a woman who prided herself on being able to handle anything that came her way was entitled to go a little loopy with shock under certain circumstances.
Now she had to put this aberration behind her and figure out what to do.
The facts were few, but they were clear. She had to contact Bailey. Whatever her friend’s purpose in sending the stone, Bailey couldn’t have had any idea just how dangerous the act would be. She’d had her reasons, M.J. was sure, and she thought it was likely to have been one of Bailey’s rare acts of impulse and defiance.
She didn’t intend for Bailey to pay the price for it.
What had Bailey done with the other two stones? Did she have them, or… Oh God.