I Got You, Babe (15 page)

He whipped back around, his jaw so tight it trembled. “Okay, Renee. I’m looking. And do you know what I see? I see a criminal who’s lying to save her skin. That’s what I see!”

“Do you know what I see? I see a man who’s so jaded he couldn’t recognize the truth if it slapped him in the face!”

His anger surged, pounding inside his head with a primitive rhythm. “You don’t know shit about me.”

“Oh, but I do.” Her voice was low and intense, crawling inside him and setting his nerves on edge. “You’re a man who’d like to think the best of people, but you can’t do that because you’ve seen too much of the rotten side of humanity to believe in much of anything anymore. So that means you’ve lost it, John. You’ve lost any hope you ever had of spending the rest of your life as an actual human being. Now, I don’t know if your life is crappy in general, or if it’s just your job that’s got you all screwed up, but—”

“Shut up, Renee—”

“—you’ve got a hell of a rotten attitude. And instead of backing off right now and
thinking
about what you’re doing, you’re just playing by the numbers no matter what they add up to. And you’re too damned afraid to look at me, because you just might see how wrong—”

“I said shut up!”

She stopped short and stared up at him, breathing hard, her cheeks flushed red with anger. He needed to back off, yank her away from that tree, and get on down the road again. But the nerve she’d struck was a live one, and all he could do was stare at her, wondering how she’d gotten under his skin. Wondering why he was standing so close to her that a tissue couldn’t have separated them. Wondering why, when he needed desperately not to look at her, he couldn’t tear his gaze away.

Something John hated to face had welled up inside him—a feeling of uncertainty that rattled him all the way to his bones. He relaxed his grip on her wrists until it became almost a caress. Time seemed to move like molasses as he hovered next to her, and slowly, slowly, her furious expression melted into a plaintive one.

“Look at me, John. Am I guilty?”

Her voice was barely audible now, her words passing her lips on a whispered breath. In that moment he felt all the anger and skepticism drain right out of his body—those critical emotions that were built into cops so they didn’t do stupid, reckless things like listen to beautiful blond fugitives profess their innocence.

“The evidence says you are.”

“The evidence is wrong.”

He stared at her a long time, the cool breeze of the piney woods swirling around them. “Maybe.”

Maybe.

The moment he uttered that word, he knew he’d crossed a line he never should have gotten within a hundred miles of. There was no “maybe” about this, so how in the hell had he let that word come out of his mouth? It was time to become a cop again, to back away, to clear his head of all this uncertainty. But still he stood so close to her he could sense the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. This was either one of the biggest injustices he’d ever encountered, or Renee Esterhaus was one of the biggest con artists he’d ever encountered. And the fact that he couldn’t tell the difference was eating him alive.

His gaze dropped to her lips, lips that could be telling the truth, or lying to save her skin. The heated anger between them only a few moments ago had faded, and now every second that passed felt blurry around the edges, as if he were walking through a dream.

“I’ve got no choice,” he said. “I’m going to take you in.”

“I know,” she whispered. She gently pulled her hands from his grip, then flattened both of her palms against his chest. “But just for a minute...would you pretend you’re not?”

Holy shit.

She leaned into him, inching her hands upward until they reached his shirt collar, then moving them across that boundary to ease around his neck. He blinked with surprise, but some force he couldn’t fathom kept him from pulling away. For a long, breathless moment he stared at her, knowing exactly what she wanted, and the knowing almost did him in. She moved closer by small degrees until her breasts grazed his chest. Then she touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, leaving them moist and glistening.

One minute he was supercop, taking no crap, and the next minute he was staring at her lips as if he were dying in the desert and they were a cup of crisp, cool water. The last thing he needed was a major complication like this hitting him right between the eyes. If she were to fall backward onto a bed of pine leaves and drag him right down on top of her, God help him, he knew he wouldn’t put up one moment of protest.

But as he was pondering the logistics of that, a truth he’d chosen to ignore crept into his mind again, pounding away at him like a native drumbeat spelling out an urgent message.

He’d been here before.

The diner. Last night.

Slowly the memory went from hazy to sharp. In that diner last night, her eyes had been full of lust, her lips full of hunger, her touch full of promise, and her brain full of ulterior motive. He’d been thinking
hot sex
and she’d been thinking
escape.

In a thunderclap of sudden reason, John froze, allowing his brain time to crawl out of his pants and make its way back up to his head. He couldn’t believe what a fool he’d almost been.

It was time to stop her from messing with his mind. To let her know that under no circumstances was he interested in a repeat performance of the kiss she’d given him in that diner, no matter how heart-stopping it had been. To let her know who was the boss here, and it wasn’t a pretty blond fugitive with a body that could make a priest toss down his collar and never look back. Coming on to him all of a sudden was nothing more than a ploy to entice him to let her go, and she wasn’t going to get away with it.

It was time to fight fire with fire.

In one smooth, quick move, he took hold of her wrists again and pushed her back against the tree. He held her arms firmly at her sides, then inched closer, insinuating his body next to hers, meeting her eyes in a long, languorous stare.

“Now, if I didn’t know better, sweetheart, I’d think you wanted me to kiss you.”

She stared up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. He moved his lips to within inches of hers. “And I’m thinking that sounds pretty good.”

Renee twisted in his grip, but he held her tightly.

“But there are a lot of things besides kissing that sound pretty good, too. How about if I cash in on that promise you made me last night that you never followed through on?”

Her accelerated breathing and widened eyes told him she hadn’t counted on this turn of events. John smiled to himself. She’d run scared last night at the mere suggestion that they have sex. The more he poured on the intimidation now, the less likely she was to pull this crap on him again.

“I want what you promised me,” he whispered. “And this time I’m not stopping until I get it.”

He dragged the words out in a seductive drawl, waiting for her to tell him loud and clear to get the hell away from her so he could claim victory. But all she did was squirm a little in his grip. He tightened his hand on her wrists, then inched closer and placed a feathery kiss on the angle of her jaw. She sucked in a sharp breath at the touch of his lips, as if he’d struck a live nerve, so he followed that kiss with several more, placing them wherever they seemed to generate the most reaction.

“John...please...”

Ah.
Now he was getting to her. She shimmied against him, her breath coming faster, but with his hold on her wrists and the tree at her back, there was absolutely nowhere for her to go. He continued his feather-light kisses, letting his hot breath spill over her skin.

Unfortunately, this was getting to him, too.

Every time he touched his lips to her cheek, her neck, her throat, images flashed through his mind of what it would be like to go through with his threat, and it wasn’t long before the close proximity he’d created was making him half-crazy with lust. Just because his brain had no intention of following through didn’t mean his body had gotten that message, and if he didn’t end this pretty soon, he wasn’t going to be in complete control of the situation.

Come on, sweetheart. Say it. Tell me to stop like you did last night. Then I’ll tell you that it’s your own damned fault for trying to trade your body for a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, and we'll get on down the road.

He dragged his lips along the curve of her ear. She shimmied against him but he held on tightly, whispering in the most blatantly carnal tone he could muster, “You’re not going anywhere, Renee. You started this, and I’m going to finish it. We’re going to have sex right here and right now. We’re getting down in the dirt, getting naked, and not even coming up for air. And if you think you’re getting out of it this time, you’ve got another thing—”

“Okay,” she whispered.

John pulled back and stared at her. “
What?”

She lunged forward and pressed her lips against his in a fiery, demanding kiss that shocked the holy hell out of him. He let go of her wrists and pulled away, only to have her take advantage of her freedom by winding her arms around his neck and pulling him back again, devouring his mouth with hers.

Somewhere in John’s mind, the word
stop
was blinking at him in red neon letters, but those talented lips of Renee’s had caused his brain waves to flat line.
Stop.
He knew that word had to be telling him something, but damned if he could figure out what.

And before he knew it, he was kissing her back.

Chapter 8

J
ohn pushed Renee backward until she bumped against the tree again, pausing for a few seconds to catch a breath. At the same time he thrust his hands through her wind-tangled hair and turned her face up, and when he met her eyes and saw nothing but sheer, hot desire, he thought he was going to explode right there.

He dove in to meet her lips again, and she opened her mouth to him willingly, her tongue moving with his in a dance of pure ecstasy. Feeling her squirm against him during his testosterone assault had already sent him halfway to heaven, and now all he could think about was finishing the trip.

With a soft groan Renee went on the offensive again, sliding her hands down his chest and around his hips to hook her fingers into his hip pockets. She dragged him hard against her until his groin was pressed firmly against her abdomen. She might not have wanted it last night, but she sure as hell wanted it now, and he didn’t stop to wonder why because—
Lord
—he wanted it, too.

He caught the hem of her sweatshirt, nudged his hand beneath it, then went straight for the clasp of her bra. About a hundred times since last night, he’d thought about how that tiny clasp had been just a flick of his fingertips away, and now all he had to do was hold it here, twist it there, and it would open. Just...like...
that.

Her bra fell away. He swept it aside, then closed his hand over her breast and squeezed it firmly. She broke off their kiss with a muffled gasp, then dropped her head back against the tree, her eyes closed, breathing wildly, her fingertips digging into his shoulders. He wasted no time pushing her sweatshirt up and over her breasts until they met the cool autumn air. He circled them with his hands, then moved the pads of his thumbs over her tight nipples in a hot, strumming caress.

“John…oh,
God
...”

The deep, throaty hum of her words sent a jolt of heat spiraling through him. He could tell by the sound of her voice that she wasn’t telling him to put on the brakes. She was begging him to hit the throttle and move full speed ahead.

He kissed the ivory column of her throat, then moved upward to swirl the tip of his tongue against her earlobe, still caressing her breasts, doing his best to drive her crazy at the same time the blood was sizzling through his own veins. The pine forest surrounding them had become strangely unreal, his mind turning hot and hazy and completely beyond his control. Everything about this woman was making him forget who he was and what he was supposed to be doing, because right now he was absolutely sure he was supposed to be making love to her, and he knew that couldn’t possibly be right. But anticipation had shoved every other thought from his mind. He wanted her right here, right now, right up against this tree, right down in the dirt or anywhere else he could have her.

She worked her hands in between them and grasped his belt buckle. In only a few seconds she had it undone and was starting in on his jeans, and it was a damned good thing. The way he felt right now, if she didn’t rip them off in the next ten seconds he was going to rip them off himself. And then hers would be next.

But as she coaxed his zipper south, slowly it dawned on him that he was only a zip and a tug from standing in the middle of a pine forest half-naked. A half-naked cop, soon to be all naked, on the verge of making love to an accused armed robber.

When the full force of that mental image hit him, he froze. For the first time he realized that she really did intend to go through with this. She clearly intended for them to get naked in the dirt, just as he’d suggested, just as he’d imagined, just as he wanted so badly he could taste it. And that was when he felt a hard mental slap that knocked his sanity back into place.

Of all the women in the world, he was on the verge of making love to the one most likely to end up in prison. Good God—was he out of his mind?

He leaned away suddenly and took her by the shoulders, holding her at arm’s length, fighting to keep his wild breathing and stratospheric body temperature under control. Her hands fell away from his zipper and she looked at him quizzically, her blond hair blowing in the breeze, her cheeks flushed pink with passion. Somehow he managed to grind out the words—the only words that would redeem him from this situation he’d been stupid enough to get himself into.

“Well,” he said, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, “I guess we know now just how far you’ll go to stay out of jail, don’t we?”