Gone With the Witch (10 page)

"I have to pee:' he yelled.

Storm's laughter, even from a distance, washed over
him and made him ready again.

"Try me in an hour," she said over the intercom, "then I'll think about it for another hour after that. You're a regular camel. I've noticed your staying power."

"That wasn't the staying power 'I wanted you to notice," he
muttered. "On the other hand, I noticed that you're a morning
person," he said. "What time did you get up this morning?"

"Shuddup!"
She yawned.

Oh, the power of suggestion. If only it could get her back here.

"Hey, we're driving in a rather serpentine manner. Do
you need a nap?
A cup of coffee?
Please don't fall asleep at
the wheel. Storm, I don't want you to get hurt" Though
he'd nearly killed her himself tonight, both during and
after her stunt.

"I'm not sleepy."

"Then you need to turn on the GPS system or stop and get a
map."

"Those things don't help when you don't know where you're going. How's Warlock?"

Aiden listened to the kitty purr near his ear and ... liked
it ...
as
if he'd ... bonded with the beast ... heaven help
him. "He's asleep right here beside me, where you could be"

"Great try"

The motor home climbed a curb and fell off the other
end twice, damned near spraining his wrists and ankles
each time, while his closet door swung open and
barfed
half his clothes, because Storm hadn't latched it. Outside,

branches—
or giant ogre fingernails—scraped the exterior paint job, which would cost a bundle to restore.

"It's okay," Storm called. "Everything's okay." They came to a bouncing stop. "I'm gonna get myself a cup of
coffee. Do you want anything?" Her voice now came from
just outside the bedroom door, he could tell, though he couldn't see her.

"You
know
what I want," he said, putting as much sex appeal into his voice as he could muster.

Storm groaned. "Hold that thought"

"For how freaking long?"

"Until maybe ...
Connecticut
?"

"We're going to
Connecticut
?"

"I don't know, but we're pointed in that direction, sort of.”

“
What the hell are you using, a broken Girl Scout compass?"

"I got kicked out of Girl Scouts."

"I gotta ask.
For hiding a Boy Scout in your tent?”

“Hey, good guess. For sleeping in the wrong tent during
a camperee"

"With a boy."

"No ... with three
boys."

"Effin' A.
You're killing me here. Now I'm all hot again.
Seriously, what are you using for directions?"

"I'm using the sound of the baby 'I hear crying. If it's
loud, I'm on course. If it fades, I'm off course, and I turn around and go back, until it gets loud again."

"At this rate, it could take two days to
get
to
Connecticut
.”

“
We
have
two weeks."

"I will definitely need to pee sooner than that." Aiden stilled. "Storm ... there's a woman looking in at me.
Two women.
Three.
Storm, I'm a sexual freak show!"

"Get real. You have tinted glass."

"
And a surprising sense of modesty. They're grinning
like they're starving, and I'm Sunday dinner. Oh for—one
is licking her lips. They're pointing, and gathering a crowd.
Effin' A, Storm! Someone snapped a picture. Will you
come and close the damn shades!"

Storm came into the room looking like ... a
hooker ..
.
fiddling
with his ...
shades—his
luck.

"How do you close these things? There's no string to
pull."

"Power shades. Button's at the—okay. Whew. Thanks.”

“
You're welcome ... sideshow freak."

She was trying not to look at him, he could tell. "You can look your fill," he said. "It's not like I can do anything about
you"

"And aren't you sorry?" She sighed. "No, I can't look.
If I do, I'll want to do something about you ... like jump
your bones a couple, three times."

"Do give in to your baser urges and dive right in. I'm begging you."

"No, you're scaring me"

"Why? I'm not mad. I'm not a threat."

"That's what's scary. You should be livid. If that veneer
of calm is a ploy, I'm in deep doo-doo. You're a loose
cannon stud puppy with a cannon-sized boner, but you
could be playing possum, and the first time I turn my back,
you could tie
me
to the bed and take me back to
Salem."

Aiden appreciated the fact that his grin startled her. He raised a brow. "Honey, if I cuff you to this bed, I will not
be thinking about going back to
Salem. I shouldn't admit
it, because I'm really tired of this position, but the thought
of driving this motor coach is not what's driving me"
Aiden glanced down at his tented boxers. "Get the pic
ture?" How could he not be turned on with her looking
like that? Wearing his tailcoat over that merry boner
maker made her look like a pricey streetwalker. "You look naked under there"

She placed her hands on her curvaceous hips with a st
an
ce
that could only be termed argumentative. "Well, I'm not!"

"If some guy follows you back in here, 'I will not be re
sponsible for your rescue, because I'll be too tied up to
help"

"My
knight on a white charger," she said, and he wasn't
sure if he should be complimented or insulted.

"Oh, honey, I am so not a knight. I'm the fire-breathing dragon all knights fear,
an
d
don't you forget it."

"Another good reason to keep you cuffed"

"What's the name of this place you're going into?" he asked.

"Captain Midnight's, a twenty-four/seven coffee shop
an
d
eatery."

"Do yourself a favor and don't eat anything. Stick to the
coffee. I'll be waiting."

She bent over him, gave him a glimpse of her luscious
caged breasts, and kissed him with plenty of tongue, which made him want to give her plenty of s000 much more than
tongue.

When she straightened, she moved to his torso and
kissed the tip of his reaching cock through his boxers—the
highlight of his night—then she petted her kitten, sleeping against his neck, and she left.

The minute the coach door opened, Aiden heard cheers
an
d
applause. Women, it sounded like, lauding Storm for tying a man to a bed. Go figure.

Once the door shut, and he got over the shock of
Storm's apparent victory over mankind, Aiden stretched to
try to slide the handcuff up an effin' tall bedpost.
Cuffed ..
.
to
the rope-twist leather bed he'd fought to have modified and installed, rather than a same ole headboard screwed to the wall.

"Dumb ass perfectionist."
Posts! He'd had to have
posts.

On one hand, he wanted out. On the other, if Storm
wanted to have sex with him shackled, she'd have to
do
all
the work, so why spoil her fun—his fun—by freeing himself? Not that he was close to succeeding, but he preferred
to believe he held some control over his life, such as it was.

The fact that he stopped trying to escape for the sake of some bitchin' badass sex probably meant that his kidnapper had made him as crazy as she was.

Sex Storm Cartw
ri
ght.
Damn, he wanted to slip it to her.

Chapter Fourteen

•

IT
took Storm longer to get back to the motor home than
she expected, because she'd gotten stuck fielding questions
from those applauding women and feeding them a pack of
lies about why she kept Aiden cuffed to the bed. Of course,
she hadn't called him by name. She hadn't needed to.
They'd already given him a name in honor of his foxy
good looks and silver briefs, the only clothes she'd left
him.

She found Aiden sound asleep and drove for another
hour, until about three in the morning, when she could
barely see straight. Hard to believe, they'd only been on the
road for a few hours. No campgrounds in sight, but she spotted a huge open field that called to her with vibes of happy childhoods and parents who cared.

She drove onto the field, well off the road, before she parked, locked up, and closed all the shades, including the power windshield-privacy curtain.

In the bedroom, she tossed her merry widow toward the
chair, where Warlock meowed with annoyance and shook it
off his head, and she wrapped herself in a blanket.

In the darkness, she noticed Aiden's eyes like pinpricks
of fire aimed directly at her, as if he was determined to see
into the depths of her soul and extract every mystery she
kept hidden there. But she wouldn't let him. "Yes," she said
with a knee-jerk defense, "I have years of embedded secrets, but they're buried so deep, even 'I can't see them"

Aiden gave her a half nod, as if he understood her
convoluted thinking. Maybe they were more alike than
they let on. "Maybe you refuse to see them," he said. "How
many layers are you hiding?"

Storm considered the question. "Pretend I'm an onion. Peeling away my many layers produces tears. If you con
tinue to peel, you allow yourself to be blinded by the tears,
so your knife slips, makes a deep
cut,
and you bleed to
death. Take that as a warning, McCloud. I'm not good for you. I'll suck the life right out of you."

"I believe we've already established that." He pulled against his cuffs to demonstrate. "You, Storm Cartwright, have failed Emotion 101
. '
I see what you do. You slip into rebel
goth
mode to scare away potential emotional intruders."

"Don't go trying to bare my soul," she snapped,
spooked by his perception. "It's so dark it casts a shadow like blood on the moon
. '
I think maybe you're so smart be
cause you know a little something about hiding. Let he who
carries his protective shell for crawling into bare his soul first."

"You're changing the subject. You don't react well to
emotion because you don't know
how.
Has no one ever
made you
feel
anything?"

"Screw you, Aiden McCloud."

"I wish the hell you would. I'm way past due.”

“I have a headache," she said, telling the truth.

"
And I've got a bladder like a water balloon."

She bet he did. "I have to go, too. Wait, I'll be right
back."

"Like I have a choice.
You're special, you know," he called after her.

She scoffed. What the hell was with him? "Yeah, right:'
she said.

"I'll just keep telling you until you believe me”

“Cold day in hell, McCloud."

"You can't scare me away."