Dangerous Tease (16 page)

He wanted to take it slow,
but she felt so fucking good. Holding onto her waist, he brought her back onto his cock with forceful strokes, sliding into her as if he could find the secrets to the universe in her depths. The heady scent of sex filled the air around them and the sound of skin slapping against skin and heavy breathing echoed throughout the kitchen.

The tingle in his spine spiraled out to his limbs and his
balls tightened. His release immobilized him and his entire body went stiff.

It took a minute for his vision to return. The sight that greeted him was Josie looking coyly over her tattooed shoulder, her curly platinum hair tossed helter-skelter around her head. Withdrawing from her was almost beyond him, but her position couldn't be comfortable.

As soon as he left her, everything felt…off.

Josie scooped up her clothes. “I'll be right back.”

She disappeared down the hall and Sam yanked on his pajama pants. The first rays of dawn turned the indigo sky a thousand shades of pink and orange. A new day. A second chance.

The shuffling behind him announced Josie's return.

“So how do you like your eggs?”

A deep voice chuckled. “Scrambled, lots of salt. How 'bout you, Linc, you want some
eggs?”

The man's voice sent Sam into attack mode, but oblivion came crashing down before he could form a fist.

J
osie splashed ice cold water on her face in a vain attempt to harden the mush her brain had become. Her heart she could understand, but her mind wasn't supposed to fall prey to Sam's deft fingers or that flicker of something more than lust that had flashed in his tawny eyes. Of all people, she should know better than to believe, but she did.

She thunked down onto the toilet
lid and cradled her head in her hands, her stomach weaving as if she'd stepped off the mother of all roller coasters.

A whack sounded in the kitchen, followed by a groan and a thump that made the floor reverberate under her.

She sprinted down the hall and her heart screeched to a halt in the kitchen doorway.

Snips, shadowed by Linc, loomed over Sam's crumpled form. “Miss me?”

The snide remark
yanked her back to reality. Her jaw snapped shut, adrenaline spiked and she shot herself at the power-hungry shithead who had turned her life upside down.

Her right fist slammed into his eye socket, sending him stumbling back. She grabbed his head between her hands and banged it down as she brought up her knee.

Meaty fingers wrapped around her arms, yanking her away from the subject of her
wrath. She kicked her feet back and tried to wiggle free, but Linc's grip couldn't be broken. Josie let loose with a primal yell.

“Shut the fuck up, bitch.” Snips snarled at her, his left eye already puffing up.

Linc freed one of his hands to slap over her mouth.

Snips dropped a duffle bag to the ground and dug out a roll of duct tape. Grunting, he dragged Sam's unresponsive body to a kitchen
chair and made quick work of taping his arms and legs to it. For good measure, he wrapped tape around Sam's chest, tying him to the back of the chair.

“This motherfucker isn't going anywhere.” He pulled a switchblade from his back pocket, hitting a button to expose the thin but deadly blade.

Panic flooded Josie's system. She thrashed in Linc's iron grip and tried to bite the palm that was still
cemented over her mouth. Immobilized, she could only watch and pray for the best possible outcome. Survival for them both.

Snips ignored her failed attempts to gain her freedom. He sliced off a five-inch strip of duct tape and slapped it across Sam's mouth. Then he bitch-slapped Sam with the back of his hand. One. Two. Three times.

“Wakey, wakey, Professor Punk Ass.”

Finally, Sam blinked,
confusion clear in his eyes, but the moment he spotted Josie locked in Linc's arms, his gaze cleared. He strained to reach her, but his bonds held tight.

“I warned you what would happen if we ever met up again.” Snips slid the wicked blade down Sam's cheek, drawing a thin line of blood. “Now it's time to pay the piper for interfering with my plans.”

With vicious efficiency, he dug the blade
into Sam's cheek, tracing the line of his scar but lengthening it by at least two inches. Blood streamed from his cheek and down his neck.

“Don't worry, head wounds bleed like a bitch, but you won't die. You'll just have a nice reminder of what happens when you mess with James Esposito.” Snips wiped the bloody knife blade across Sam's bare chest, opening thin slices across his pecs, then clicked
it shut. “Remember that when you finally get loose. Follow us and the penalty for you and the girl will be much steeper.”

The loan shark strutted to the door. “Come on, we need to get out of here before the neighbors see us stuffing this piece of ass in the trunk.”

Josie screamed against the palm blocking her mouth and struggled to twist herself enough to maintain eye contact with Sam as Linc
hauled her out the door. Instead of the fear or anger she expected to see in his hazel gold eyes, she only saw confidence. Didn't he realize how close he'd come to death? Didn't he know how lucky he was?

He didn't blink, didn't look away but instead held her gaze. Just as Linc crossed through the doorway, Sam nodded his head as if to tell her it would all be okay.

Snips rewarded him with a
vicious jab that knocked Sam's head back with a snap.

Linc tossed her over his shoulder and she knew everything was far from alright. They were down the hall and out the front door in a matter of moments. True to his threat, Snips hit a button on the car's key fob and the trunk popped open. Linc dumped her in and slammed the lid shut, leaving her in darkness.

Josie fought against the panic
bubbling up in her chest and threatening to squeeze her lungs closed. Her knees pressed against her breasts as she lay curled in the fetal position with her right shoulder touching the sealed opening.

“At least you're not claustrophobic,” she mumbled to herself.

The car's motor roared to life and the smell of gas permeated the space. Inertia tried to move her body when they turned a corner,
but the close confines of the sedan’s trunk negated any motion but the bare minimum. After a few minutes they picked up speed. The highway? Was he taking her back to Vegas? She didn't even want to think about what Snips would do to her there.

Blood spilled down Sam's face from the gash across his cheekbone. When the stream hit his chin,
it met up with the line of red liquid gushing from his nose. With his body immobilized by the gray duct tape, he could only stare at the cordless phone no more than three feet away. The anger burning in his gut would have to wait for release. First, he had to get Josie.

He strained against the sticky bonds holding his wrists tight against the chair arms, his ankles to the chair legs and his chest
to the upright wooden back. The tape yanked out several arm and chest hairs but failed to tear.

The image of Josie tossed over that thug's shoulder like a fifty-pound bag of dog food flashed in his mind. He'd seen her gray eyes filled with lust and laughter, but never with fear. He'd kill the son of a bitch for putting that panic in her eyes.

But he couldn't do a damn thing duct taped to a
chair in his own kitchen. Unable to move his feet away from the chair legs, he gripped the tile floor with his bare toes and curled them in an effort at forward motion. His thigh and calf muscles bunched, struggling to make it happen. His fingers gripped the chair arms so tight they turned white. The chair bobbled, but didn't move.

The phone rested on the counter three feet in front of him. Three.
Fucking. Feet.

He clenched his toes again and wiggled his hips to shimmy the chair forward. Instead, it went backward a few inches.

Before frustration had a chance to burst to the forefront, the idea hit him. He wriggled only his right hip. Inch by inch, the chair turned so he faced the kitchen's bay window, dominated by the gloomy January sky and a large icicle dangling from the gutter. He
ground his teeth together and concentrated all of his efforts on shuffling the chair back.

Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. He passed the table.

With every inch he scooted, images of Josie at Snips' mercy bombarded him. Was she somewhere tied up? Were they on their way to the state line? Private planes landed at the Dry Creek Regional Airport all the time, what if Snips had one waiting
on the runway? If that bastard hurt her in any way, Sam was going to tear him apart. Shit, he wanted to slam himself against a wall for not being able to stop the bastards.

The chair rammed into the counter. The phone stood near the counter's edge, just over his right shoulder, the red message light blinking.

Okay, he'd made it to the counter. Now what?

Panting, he sucked in some of the tape
covering his mouth. The tape didn't tear at his lips. In fact, it wasn't sticking to them anymore. The mixture of saliva and blood had moistened the glue, making it ineffective.

He contorted his mouth under the tape, wetting as much of the underside as possible, then rubbing it against his shoulder. One corner came loose. Buoyed by the small success, he continued, ignoring the growing ache in
his neck. After what seemed like eternity, the tape fell and hung limp from the corner of his mouth.

Sam shuffled a single hip again, turning the chair so the counter was to his right. He angled his head, arching his neck painfully, and knocked the phone from its base. It landed with a thunk against the granite and rolled three times before coming to rest half off the counter.

Fear squeezed
his lungs, but the phone didn't fall. He exhaled and his shoulders relaxed. Leaning as far to the right as possible with the tape around his chest locking him to the chair, he reached for the phone with his mouth.

His shoulder bumped the counter.

The phone wavered on the edge, then plunged off.

For a millisecond, the world went blank.

Then the cool plastic fell into his hand and he wrapped
his fingers around the phone. It took a second to regain control of his breathing and to clear the panic from his vision.

He inched the phone so his fingers could access the buttons and dialed nine-one-one.

“Dry Creek County Sheriff. What's your emergency?”

“This is Sam Layton. I'm at 1628 Pimlico Lane. There's been a kidnapping.”

Fifteen minutes later, nearly every member of the Dry Creek
County Sheriff's Office milled around in the street in front of his house. Half were there just to keep his mother from storming the place once she arrived. Inside the house was a different story. Only a handful of investigators gathered, conferring in quiet voices in the hall.

Bright red strips of raw skin crisscrossed his chest, arms and legs from where the paramedic had peeled the duct tape
from his bare flesh. The same paramedic loomed over Sam, chewing her bottom lip.

“The nose is definitely broken.” She shook her head, but not a single hair moved from her tight French braid. “It might take a couple of adjustments to get it in line. You sure you don't want to go the hospital and have the doc take a look?”

There wasn't time for the hospital. Josie was out there, in danger and
alone. “Just do it.”

She shrugged her shoulders and handed him a towel. “Blow your nose into this first.”

Getting rid of the blood and muck stuffing his nose hurt like a son of a bitch, but he got it done and dropped the towel into the red bio-waste bag the paramedic held open.

“Okay, hold still, this will feel worse than having it broken in the first place.” She put one latex-gloved hand
on each side of his nose, her thumbs lined up against the swollen bridge. “So are there any Laytons who don't get beat up or shot?”

Before he could even formulate an answer, she pushed against his nose, forcing it back into place. Pain spiked through his sinuses.

The paramedic stepped back and cocked her head to one side. She hmmed a few times, then moved in for adjustment number two.

This
time she didn't bother to distract him, just aligned her fingers against his nose and pushed. Another shot of agony exploded in his skull. She spread medical tape across his nose to hold it in place.

“Now you'll never be as pretty as me,” Hank drawled from the doorway. “How's he doing?”

“Hey, Sheriff.” The paramedic yanked off her gloves and tossed them in the red bag. “Ignoring advice to go
to the hospital. That seems to be a thing with you Laytons.”

Hank flashed the aw-shucks grin that had helped him win the last election. “Yeah, we can be real pains in the ass.”

The paramedic rolled her eyes, grabbed her duffel bag of equipment and strode out of the kitchen, leaving Sam and his big brother alone.

Hank moved in front of him, standing arms akimbo. In his brown Dry Creek Sheriff's
Office uniform, he looked all business.

But Sam didn't need the county sheriff right now. He needed the kind of backup only a brother could provide. He stood and a wave of dizziness and nausea made his empty stomach lurch. On automatic pilot, he grasped Hank's arm, anchoring himself to reality.