Dark Knight: A Loveswept Romance Classic (7 page)

“Put these on.” She pulled a pair of standard issue handcuffs from her bag and tossed them to him. “And what calling was that?”

He hadn’t expected her to follow up. “Curiosity, Detective Princess?”

“Analysis, Lieutenant.”

“I’m not a lieutenant. I’m a bartender, remember?”

“You’re a lot of things, Blackstone. Right now what you are is under my protection. Put on the cuffs.”

He put the cuffs on, eyeing her with a taunting smile as he pushed them to a fairly tight slot.

Her only reaction was to toss him a pair of ankle cuffs with a long chain between them. “These too, Houdini. Chain over the handcuffs.”

“Boy, you really have a thing for bondage, don’t you?” He sat on the couch. He snapped one cuff on, looped the chain over the links between his wrists, then put on the other cuff. He made sure his jeans were tucked into the cuffs. No use in carving up more skin than he had to. “I can’t wait to find out what else you have in your toy bag there. Whips?”

The hint of a real smile was buried beneath her dry response. “Sorry, I left them at home this trip.”

“Lucky me.” He shifted his back to the armrest and swung his legs up onto the couch, making as much noise as possible. He took his time settling in, then said, “So, you say I’m under your protection. I gotta tell you, you
have a really unique way of protecting people, Detective.” The frown lines carved deeper into her forehead every time he called her that. He planned to call her that often.

“Not everyone realizes they require protecting.” She pulled out a chair and sat facing him.

Less than ten feet separated them now, but the gun resting on her knee kept him pinned to the couch. “Well, I guess I definitely fall into that category. Who are you protecting me from, Detective? And who’s going to protect me from you?”

She stood. “I’m starving.”

“You’ve drugged me, beaten me, and chained me up. Don’t you think I at least deserve to know why I was so lucky to qualify for your generous protection services?”

Turning her back to him, she walked to the small counter in the kitchen where she’d stored her supplies. She kept the gun. There was no way he could move more than an inch without the chains alerting her to the fact. It was basic captive restraint, but simple was often the most effective.

“I like my steak medium rare,” he said.

“I don’t cook.” She pulled a foil-wrapped power bar out of the box on the counter and tossed it at him. It landed on his outstretched thighs, right in front of his fingers.

“Good aim, Detective.”

She smiled. “A wise thing to remember.” A juice pouch followed, landing in exactly the same spot.

Logan shook his head and tore open the foil wrapper. In the past two months his entire being had been exclusively focused on one thing: finding his brother. In hunting him down, he’d discovered that Lucas didn’t
want to be found, but he did need to be rescued. His twin had been brainwashed by some lunatic fringe cult, operating up in the mountains somewhere. He couldn’t fathom how anyone could let themselves get so messed up that they could be swayed by these fanatics, but that didn’t matter right now. He’d save Lucas, whether his brother wanted to be saved or not.

He was all Logan had left. He wouldn’t lose Lucas. He couldn’t.

So why was he sitting there, chained up, eating cardboard food and actually enjoying himself? He chewed slowly and watched his captor, who was rooting in her black bag of tricks. He should be going ape, being trapped the way he was. Instead he found he was more than content to watch the good detective. He’d never met a woman like her. He was both captive and captivated.

He shook his head and popped the last bite into his mouth. Maybe he’d finally lost it. Maybe when you lost your mind it didn’t make you crazy with pain, as he’d long suspected—expected. Maybe it just made you crazy. Suddenly it wasn’t so hard to fathom the weak-minded after all.

He raised his eyebrows as she sat back in the chair and unwrapped another candy bar. The look of bliss that briefly crossed her face as she chewed the first bite stirred a hunger of a completely different kind in him. He shifted slightly on the couch. The sound of his chains made her eyes snap back open.

“So, how come you get chocolate and I get fused pasteboard?”

“It’s good for you. Chocolate will rot your teeth.”

“You’ve got an answer for everything, Detective, except the questions I most want answers to.”

“Sorry. And stop calling me detective.” She turned her back to him, pulled another small stash from her bag, and carried it to the counter.

“You don’t like Detective Princess? I’m wounded. And here I thought I was being charming and sociable, not to mention creative and incredibly observant. All of which I deserve credit for, seeing as you’re being so rude to me. Don’t you think so, Detective? It is detective, isn’t it?”

She slammed a box on the counter then looked upward, her eyes closed. “Scottie,” she said with exaggerated calm.

“I don’t think he can beam you up from here, Captain. No’ enough power.”

She groaned. He smiled. He thought his burr was pretty good. Considering his Scots father was only a second-generation American, it should be. A sharp pang pinched his heart at the thought of Blackie. Now the only third-generation American Blackstone was Logan. And Lucas.

Scottie turned and leaned against the counter, her hands braced on either side of her. The gun was still at her fingertips. “
My
name is Scottie. Are you happy?”

He pushed aside the resident ache in his heart and focused on his current plan of attack. “Happy? No. I’m Logan. Though I think the dwarves had a pretty good thing going there. Seven guys, one woman. Hey, you wanna play Snow White?” He lifted his hands, rattling his chains. “I’ll be Sleazy.”

She curled her fingers into fists and turned slowly back to unpacking.

He grinned. Goading her was a strategic plan, but he had to admit he was enjoying the role. She was fun to rile up. He supposed it was because she was a worthier adversary than he’d come up against in … well, in too many years to count. Sarah’s smile taunted the fringes of his mind. He shoved those memories away too.

His smile was slightly more forced when he said, “I’m getting to you, aren’t I? Women say I drive them crazy.”

“This is not a surprise.” She faced him again. “Though I wouldn’t sound so smug. There’s a difference between lust-crazed and just plain crazed.”

In response, Logan took a leisurely visual inventory, his gaze finally settling back on her face. Her flat expression faltered. “You speaking from personal experience?”

She crossed her arms. “Only on the latter.”

He dropped his voice to a dark whisper. “Liar.”

She stiffened, but to her credit her skin didn’t flush. He was mildly disappointed by that. He realized he wanted her more than just bothered. He wanted her hot and bothered.

“I’d say you have more pressing things to worry about than whether you can seduce me.” She shot a pointed look at his ankle and wrist chains. “Regardless of what you might have been led to believe, bondage does nothing for me.”

“On the contrary,” he said, “seeing as I am chained and you won’t talk to me about the details of my incarceration, I have little left to do other than indulge in my fantasies.”

She crossed the short space to the table and hefted
her black pack. “
Penthouse
will no doubt be thrilled with your next letter.”

He watched her as she moved to the small refrigerator and lifted the pack on top of it. Chained as he was, even if he was allowed mobility in the cabin, he’d be lucky to reach the handle of the fridge, much less anything higher. The only thing she’d left within easy reach were power bars. Boxes of them. Oh yum.

“Just how long do you plan on keeping me here?” He shifted his back and carefully crossed one leg over the other.

The sound of the heavy links clanking made her pause. After a moment, she said, “Eight to ten days. And don’t even think about moving.” She went into the bedroom.

His eyes widened, more because he’d finally gotten some information out of her than at the answer itself. “A man can’t live on power bars alone,” he called to her.

She was a real mystery, one he’d love to spend time solving. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a week to spend deciphering her clues. He figured he had another two days before he could hike farther up and continue his search for the best entry into the compound where Lucas was being held. Two days was plenty of time to get himself out of this mess and find out what the hell she was doing. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it had something to do with his search for Lucas.

What in the hell have you gotten yourself into, Brother, if the government has agents out after you?

“Lucky for you, you have all those fantasies to keep you occupied,” she responded.

Smiling again, he leaned forward so he could see
her. She was retrieving his hiking boots from under the bed. The semiautomatic was on the bed within easy reach.

He waited until she’d finished checking out the room. She was quite thorough. She grabbed his bag and boots and carried them to the kitchen table.

He shifted, rattling his chains a little. She looked up. When her eyes met his, he said, “Thinking about those fantasies will only make me hungrier.”

He watched her hold herself even more still, keeping her gaze emotionless, but the swallow she took belied her disaffected pretense.

“I make you crave more than chocolate, don’t I, Scottie?”

He wished he was closer, wished he could see her green eyes, watch her pupils dilate in reaction. It was the only one she couldn’t control. His gaze drifted down, snagging on her tight black turtleneck. His body twitched. There was one other reaction she couldn’t control either. He looked back into her eyes. “I won’t rot your teeth either, princess.”

He noticed her white-knuckled grip on the table. He lifted his wrists. “Why don’t you take these things off of me?” He nodded to the window. “I can’t go anywhere anyway.” He had several dozen questions he wanted to demand answers to, not the least of which was how in the hell had she gotten to the cabin after a blizzard. But right at that moment, none of those questions seemed to matter. He wanted to get his hands on her … but not to force her to talk.

No, he didn’t want to
force
her to do anything.

“You want me to stay here, fine. You say you are only protecting me. You must be telling the truth, or
you would have done more damage to me by now. You’ve had ample opportunity. Hell, you had me dead walking in the bedroom door.”

He didn’t have to be close to see her reaction to that reminder. Only he didn’t think her slight intake of breath was due to her thinking about him dying. Just how long had she been standing there, staring at him, naked in his bed?

“I’d like some answers, but I won’t hurt you in order to get them.” He held his wrists out. “Cut me loose, Scottie.”

Scottie stared at him. “You really are crazy.”

“We’re both professionals.” At her raised brow, he added, “We’ve both been cops at one point in our lives. We know this drill, both of us.”

“Which is precisely why you should know better than to ask me to let you go.”

“Scottie, I—”

She cut him off by turning her back to him and began searching his duffel bag. “There’s more than one way to hurt a person,” she said quietly.

Logan started to shoot off a reply, then stopped himself. Something about those softly spoken words caught at him. He thought back over their conversation. He’d promised no physical violence. He’d also propositioned her with personal pleasure.

The quick conclusion he made bothered him. He also had a strong suspicion his instincts were on target. In his hunt for Lucas he’d discovered he hadn’t lost any of what had made him a good detective. Good detective. He stifled a self-deprecating snort, squashed the sharp dagger of guilt that accompanied it.

Good detectives didn’t get their witnesses killed. They didn’t fall in love with them either.

He stared hard at Scottie. She fascinated the hell out of him. And yes, he desired to know her more intimately. It had been a very, very long time since he’d felt both for the same person. In fact, not since Sarah had he—

He shut down. What in the hell was he doing? Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d somehow drawn the attention of another private government agency? Obviously Lucas was into something a lot deeper than selling daisies at airports. Even with the information he had access to, Logan had come up hard against an impenetrable wall when trying to dig into the Brethren. He knew next to nothing about them. He’d tracked Lucas to their door, so to speak, then poof! Nothing.

Scottie had information he needed, he’d bank on it. She was no lackey sent to guard the intruder. Instead of playing games and looking at her as a hormonal diversion while he waited for the snow to melt, he should be doing whatever was necessary to make her talk. If that meant hurting her or seducing her, so be it. After all, she hadn’t exactly been too concerned about his rights, civil or otherwise.

He continued to watch her. He didn’t want to hurt her. He did want to seduce her. Sarah’s face loomed before him again. Only this time she wasn’t smiling. Her face was frozen in an eternal mask of surprised pain, her eyes open but unseeing.

Logan closed his eyes.
Damn
. Too many ghosts in his life.

He opened his eyes. Scottie was systematically going through every inch of his bag, stacking up clothes on
one side, hardware on the other. No, he didn’t want to hurt her. Which was precisely why he wouldn’t seduce her.

He would get the information out of her, though. One way or the other. To that end, his strategy of annoying her into talking to him had actually been fairly effective.

But even that path was denied him when she said, “It’s been a long day. You have ten minutes in the bathroom, then you can take the bed.”

“It’s barely seven o’clock.”

“Ten minutes,” she replied. She turned her attention to stowing his clothes back in his bag. She kept the hardware.

He started to balk, but recalling the urgency of how he’d spent his morning hours, Logan moved off the couch to the bathroom. When he emerged exactly ten minutes later, she was standing beside the couch.