“What’s going on? The whole story.”
“I don’t know the whole story. Yet.”
“So, tell me the parts you do know.” She tugged again, hard, this time, making him tighten his grip again. “Who is Stoecker?”
Her pupils flared, and her throat worked, which he told himself was fear, but his body was busy telling him that that part of her reaction was based on something else entirely. Which made him a bit more blunt than might have been entirely necessary, because given the fact she had him rapidly growing hard as a rock, maybe they both needed a bit of shock therapy. “Kir Stoecker is a bodysnatcher. He gets paid a very princely sum to travel back through time and capture women to be put up at auction for those who enjoy the companionship of the helpless and truly enslaved.”
“You mean s-sexually?”
He couldn’t help it, he could feel her, soft, curvy, pressed up against him. His gaze drifted to her mouth, and then back to her eyes, pupils so wide and dark he could fall right into them and never come out.
“Sexually, and every other way they might want to wield their newly purchased power.”
He brought his hand up and stroked the side of her face, pushing back those wild, ridiculously luxurious curls. “And you, sweetheart, would be ripe picking for his sort.” He slid his hand across her hair, palm to cheek. “You’d earn him quite a bounty.”
“Me?” The word came out breathy, almost hoarse.
“Tall, defiant,” he said, crowding her further, tipping up her chin. Then, giving into the urge, he pushed his hand deeply into all that silky curl. “With the kind of hair a man can get a good grip on. Oh, you’d fetch a pretty price, indeed.”
She swallowed hard, then her gaze drifted to his mouth, too. “And you?” she said, still looking at his mouth. Her breath was coming in shallow pants now. “What do you do?”
“Keep him from succeeding.”
Her gaze lifted to his. “And do you?”
“Not always.”
She gave a convulsive little jerk at that. “You don’t participate in the trade. Do you?”
A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Sample the wares, you mean? There are some who have been grateful to escape their fate.” When her eyes widened, he lowered his mouth until his breath mingled with hers. “I always refuse.”
He could feel her body tighten further, rather than relax. Her voice was hoarse now, barely a whisper.
“So, you never . . .”
“Oh, I didn’t say that.” He slid his hand to the curve above her nape, and tipped her mouth up to his. “I just prefer my partners wanting me out of something other than gratitude.”
She wet her lips. “Like?”
“Spontaneous, mutual desire?”
He looked into her eyes as her chin quivered. “Yes,” she breathed, holding his gaze quite steadily, nonetheless. “I mean . . .”
But it was too late for quantifications. He took her mouth, intending it to be a shock of sensation for her, bringing her to her senses. But it turned out the recipient of that shock was him. Her lips were warm, and tasted both sweet and earthy, beckoning him to explore, to find out what was beneath that surface. So . . . he did. She moaned a little as he parted her lips. Her newly freed hands gripped his biceps, not to push him away, rather to support herself as her body trembled against his.
That should have been enough. Enough to jerk him out of this state he’d somehow succumbed to.
Instead, like some kind of elusive jungle quicksand, it simply sucked him in more deeply. That sweet vulnerability in one so tall and strong made him want to both claim and protect. He ignored those thoughts, thoughts that never interfered when it was pleasure he sought. In fact, thoughts like those had never interfered in any instance. A man like him, a slave-trade bounty hunter, didn’t lead a life conducive to lasting friendships and deep, personal relationships, so he chose his partners accordingly.
Dani here, she wasn’t that kind of partner. In fact, she wasn’t like anyone he’d ever encountered. Not so innocent, and yet so very, very naïve. At least about what was happening to her, or could.
And yet, those thoughts didn’t stop him from sliding his hands from her hair, and down along her torso, letting his thumbs drift in so they brushed along the swell of her breasts. She jerked at the touch, moaned against his mouth. So he shifted her, just enough, to bring his thumbs back up again, only this time brushing them directly across nipples that were hard and plump to the touch.
His body was the one jerking now. Sweet hell, it had been far too long since he’d indulged in this kind of simple, yet primal, pleasure. She moved against him, and he was the one groaning under his breath. She was sinuously tall, so well matched for him, and oh so ripe for the taking. He felt it in her quick breaths, rapid pulse, and the way she shook when he slid his hands down her hips, then hiked her up the wall, so he could press the aching, rock-hard length of himself right where it wanted most to be nestled. “I want to rip your clothes off and sink every last inch of this into you,” he growled against her neck. He didn’t know if he was still trying to scare her or convince her.
Her thighs squeezed instinctively, reflexively, around his hips as she locked her ankles around his lower back. “I – yes,” she panted. “Yes.”
Lost, so well and truly lost, he thought, reeling at a time when he should be at his sharpest. Wrong time, wrong woman, wrong everything. And yet he was undoing the buttons on the front of her filmy little sundress, sliding her higher up the wall, so he could put his mouth on those turgidly plump and oh-so-
perfect nipples. Even through the sheer, pale-pink film of her bra, she tasted dark, and sweet. Her responding moan was a low keening, and she slid her hands to his head, into his hair, holding his mouth where she wanted it to stay. Her scent was sweeter still, and growing increasingly musky. His body all but howled for him to take what was being so generously and openly offered. No harm, no foul, just pulsing, thundering release.
But, before they could make a decision they would surely come to regret, they both froze as the wall behind Dani’s back vibrated, followed by the sound of something crashing inside the shop.
“Shit. Shit!” What in the hell had he been thinking? He scooped her against his chest and ran like hell across the narrow alley, dropping her feet down as soon as they hit the grass on the other side, where it slanted down steeply toward a ditch. “Down,” he commanded, brain back in focus, even if his body wasn’t. Not even close. “Belly flat, don’t look up.”
“Jack—”
There was no time to think now, to wonder, worry, decide. Operating purely on unquestioning instinct now, he crouched down and took her face in his hands. “Trust me, Dani. Do as I say, and live. Look up, show yourself in any way, and I can’t be responsible. You got me?”
She locked gazes with him, in that unnerving, intense way she did, that was so much more than a simple meeting of the eyes, and nodded. Then he did the damnedest thing. He wasted another precious several seconds to lean down, and kiss her. Hard, fast, but . . . dammit. “I’ll be back for you.”
“Right.” Her expression was sober, as if a shield had dropped into place.
“Dani—”
“Just, don’t die,” she said, as seriously as he’d seen her. “You got me?”
He grinned. And something clicked, right into that empty place he’d never thought someone like him could fill. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart.”
Three
Dani lasted a full minute, which felt like several lifetimes, before she peeked. Not that she hadn’t taken Jack’s warning seriously. In fact, she quite understood that the right thing to do was to scuttle down to the bottom of the ditch, crawl her way to the end of the alley through the muck ( eww), then run as far away from her shop as she could get. Because that was what any person in her right, tumor-free mind, would do.