Pick Your Poison (7 page)

“We’re in a ball,” she whispered, smashing her face into his neck again, tunneling her nose like a terrier in the dirt. “But not having one.”

“Speak for yourself,” he teased, getting a miraculous bit of laughter from her.

Very slowly, she lifted her face, sliding her hips from side to side over his hard-on, eyes widening. “Isn’t it too cold for that?”

“Apparently a minute in sub-zero temperatures is all it takes with you.”

A smile threatened. “Impressive.”

“Worth living for?”

Biting her lip and rocking again, she nodded. “Is my minute up yet?”

“Not quite.” His voice was rough but his hand gentle over her breast. “Ten more seconds in paradise, farm girl. Make it good.”

She did, kissing him again, dragging her bound hands lower to rub between their legs. Ten seconds might have been twenty, or even thirty. Might have been an hour and a half because with that kiss and this woman, time stood still. Everything burned, blissful, delightful, and
warm
. He touched her everywhere his hands could reach, up her thighs, cupping her ass, and sliding into her panties. There, his finger found slick, wet warmth.

She groaned in pleasure as he slid into her. “Guess some liquids don’t freeze,” she whispered into his ear.

As he dipped deeper, the heat finally reached his brain and he actually felt a cohesive, intelligent thought form.

Liquids…freeze.

He stopped moving, pulling away from the kiss, getting an unhappy groan in response.

“Liquids freeze… and expand.”

She stared at him, her blue eyes nearly black from arousal. “That’s sexy.”

“They expand and can break… the lock.” He almost pushed her off him, but she was up as fast as he was. “We need water, Callie. We need to melt some ice for water, then figure out a way to get the water into the lock. When it freezes again, the pressure should break the lock.”

All of that would take a half an hour, which would be about all she had left.

She rubbed her arms, the effects of their kisses already gone. “How are we going to melt water in here?”

He just smiled. “I can’t believe you have to ask.”

~*~

“Holy shit, this is perfect.”

Callie was too cold to complain about his language, spinning around from her own search of the shelves to see what he’d found. There wasn’t much; the freezer might be kept ice cold, but it was obviously not in regular use.

Meaning no one might happen in on them… for days. No one knew where they were except two killers.

“What is it?” she asked with a nearly uncontrollable shiver, hugging herself as they met in the middle.

He held up a clear plastic squeeze bottle with a nozzle at the top, the kind Granny Belle used to serve her homemade barbeque sauce. “All we have to do is melt, squeeze, and freeze. Here, start thawing the bottle while I get the right size of ice.”

He tucked the bottle between her breasts so she could use her wrapped-in-tie hands to rub the frozen plastic. As she did, a wave of dizziness threatened her stability. Slowly, she lowered herself to the icy cold floor, knowing it would make her colder, but hardly able to stand any more.

“Hey, hey.” He pulled her up. “We need to stay standing. The less of your body that touches the cold surfaces, the longer you’ll stay alive.” He tipped her chin up to face him. “You’re not losing it, are you, Callie?”

She bit her lip, shocked that ice was forming on it. “I’m fine,” she lied.

“You will be,” he promised, setting his phone on a shelf so it cast a pale light into the center of the freezer, putting a rod-shaped icicle next to it. “Give me the bottle.”

He took it and started to unscrew the top, the light beaming on the muscles of his bare chest, catching the tips of frozen hair tufted between sculpted pecs. His body tense, every cut in his abs showed a classic washboard on a very, very sexy man. A much focused and still sexy man.

“How come you’re not shivering?” she asked.

“I’m bigger than you,” he said.

“Certainly have more… muscles.” She stared at them again, not too cold to imagine… kissing that chest. Those abs. That
bulge
she couldn’t forget. “Really nice muscles.”

He glanced up, eyeing her carefully. “You know, a victim of hypothermia can feel symptoms of drunkenness.”

“I’m not drunk,” she countered. “I’m cold. And you’re hot.”

He chuckled. “Help me get this icicle in, then. So we can get out of here and you can do whatever it is you’re thinking about doing.”

The tie fell off her hands, the silky fabric so frozen it wasn’t helping anymore, so she could hold the bottle while he worked the ice into the top, licking the point of ice to make it slide in.

“Your tongue’s amazing,” she said.

“You don’t even know. Yet.”

The last word sent a welcome and unholy heat through her. “I’d like to,” she admitted.

He lifted his gaze from the bottle, raising her temperature a few degrees with one smoky look. “You will.”

The promise was enough to stave off dizziness and hypothermia.

When he got the ice into the bottle, he held it up for them to examine.

“Is that going to melt into enough water?”

“Absolutely.” He stepped closer to her, his confidence almost as dizzying as the cold, and the closeness of him. “But now we have work to do.”

She took a step closer and he put the bottle dead center on his solar plexus, holding it with one hand while he pulled her into him with the other. The ice bottle touched her shirt, making her cry out softly, but he barely flinched with it against his skin.

“Heat, Callie. We need friction and heat.” He smashed them closer together, nestling the bottle between them. “That means we have to move against each other.”

She looked up at him. “We can do this,” she said.

“Damn straight we can.” He rocked left to right.

“You cuss too much.”

He laughed softly, rolling the bottle between their bodies. “You don’t cuss enough.”

Closing her eyes, she shifted side to side, their hips as close as their chests, his arms folded around her. “Shit, it’s cold,” she whispered. “How about that?”

He rubbed faster, side to side, body to body. “Getting there.” He kissed her cheek and worked his mouth to her ear, his lungs still producing blissfully warm breath.

“My toes are frozen and yours must be frostbitten,” she said.

“Not yet.” He rolled and rubbed and squeezed them closer. “We don’t have much time, honey, and I can’t do anything for your toes.”

“My lips are icy.”

“Now, those…” He lowered his head. “I can do something about.”

Clinging to the rock solid torso that was somehow, miraculously, still generating heat, she kissed him again. Craving more, she lifted her leg and wrapped it around his thigh, greedy for his warmth, for the strength of those granite-like muscles, for the certainty he had that they would survive.

He massaged her back, hard and fast, making more heat and then dragged his hands over her rear end, lifting her onto him just a bit. He wasn’t hard—it would be superhuman in this temperature—but he was warm and sexy and powerful and if the dang water didn’t melt, then Callie certainly would.

“Think about heat,” he whispered, kissing her ear, breathing that luscious hot air on her neck. “Think about how hot we could get. In a bed, naked, me inside you… all the way inside you.”

How could he do that? How could he make those frozen muscles twitch and warm her bitterly cold body enough to feel the stirrings of desire? It didn’t matter; he could.

“When I lick you and kiss you, you’ll fry under my tongue.”

A gasp caught in her throat, and her legs almost buckled. “Ben.”

“You’ll scream when I’m in you, Callie, when I fill you up and…” The rest was lost in a kiss because she couldn’t stand to hear it. But the words were doing the job, firing every cell in her body, making her heart beat faster, producing friction and need.

Finally, he broke the kiss and looked into her eyes.

“That talking…” she said, trying to breathe. “That worked. I’m… hot.”

“I’m not just talking.” The words were barely whispered, but loud enough to curl her frostbitten toes. “Let’s check the ice.”

No surprise… it had melted.

Chapter Seven

Only sub-zero temperatures kept Ben from sporting wood hard enough to beat their way out the door. Callie turned him on, enough to keep his blood flowing and his brain working so he could get them the hell out of this icebox.

He wanted her, hell, yeah. But first, he wanted to destroy that prick McManus and the chef who cooked up more than the governor’s food.

On his knees, with Callie standing behind him holding his phone for light, Ben jimmied the nozzle of a bottle built for pouring ketchup not cracking locks. This
had
to work. They wouldn’t make it another twenty minutes in here.

“How long will it take to re-freeze?” she asked, her chattering slower now. That wasn’t good. Her body functions were actually shutting down if she wasn’t shivering to generate heat.

Next, she’d stop behaving rationally. Hell, any more kissing and she definitely wouldn’t have been behaving rationally.

“Two tablespoons of water in a lock chamber of a freezer? Not long.” He stood slowly, setting the rest of the ice-filled bottle on the floor. “You’re going to make it.”

It wasn’t a question. She could go either way, he sensed. Full-blown panic with stage-two hypothermia, or utter calm. He had to keep her calm.

She swayed slightly, losing her balance. “I’m really woozy, Ben.”

Damn it. He pulled her into him, chafing her back and arms, breathing on her again. Instinct and training told him sex wasn’t going to work anymore. She needed something else to fire her up… something strong enough to give her the will to fight.

Not sex, not the governor, not her precious black roses. Something important.

“Tell me about her,” he whispered into her ear.

She managed to lift her head and look at him, her lips bloodless blue, tiny shards of ice forming on her lashes, her skin as white as, well, snow. “Who?”

“Your great-grandmother,” he urged. “Tell me about her. Why does she want to go to Paris so bad?”

She grew very still for a moment, all the shivering finished, nothing but surrender in her limp body. He gripped harder, his feet numb, his arms aching, but sheer determination held him in place.

He would not let this beautiful, dear, one-of-a-kind flower die because of him. He would not.

“C’mon, Daisy Duke,” he urged, trying for a tease and barely finding it as the cold slowly began to win the war. “Tell me about your great-grandmother.”

“She’s dead.”

Oh, not what he expected. “Sorry. I thought you said you wanted to take her to Paris.”

“I do.” Her voice cracked and he clutched a little tighter, putting his hand on her cheek, hoping it transferred some warmth. “Her ashes.”

“I see.” But what he could see was a woman losing a fight, eyes drifting close, pulse slowing to a dangerous rhythm. She had to talk. She had to think. She had to
feel
.

“Why Paris?”

“She… met… him there.”

“Who?”

“A man she… loved.”

“Your great-grandfather?”

“Well, yes… and no.”

She was confused, of course. Complex thinking would be hard for her. Hell, it was about to get hard for him, but he was ten minutes behind her and eighty pounds heavier.

“Tell me,” he insisted. “Who was this man?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know.”

“Come on, Callie. You’re giving into the symptoms.” He squeezed her. “Fight it. Talk it out. Think. Feel.”
Live
.

“We really don’t know who he was,” she said. “And I was kind of hoping…” Her voice trailed off.

“Hoping what?”

“Never mind. His name was… Jeremiah. He was American… spy. During World War II. Occupied France.”

He tangled his fingers into her hair, holding her head as it bobbed. “Stay with me now, Callie. Stay with me. Tell me more.”

She fought for strength and air, an admirable dig to her own personal China. Finally, her eyes cleared. “She met him on the Pont au Change.”

She pronounced the well-known Parisian bridge with a perfect French accent, as if she’d heard the words a million times and wouldn’t ever Anglicize something so reverent.

“Was your great-grandmother French?”

“Belle Dumond? So very French.” She tried to smile, but the effort was too much. “Let me sit down, Ben. Please.”

“No.” If she sat, she’d never get up again. He slid a glance to the lock, willing the water to freeze, willing his desperate plan to work. “Tell me about Belle and Jeremiah. Were they lovers?”

“Mmm.” She did smile. “For one night. It was love at first sight, across the bridge.” She closed her eyes. “The Germans… the Nazis… were everywhere. She wanted to die. Wanted to end the misery of war. She stood on the bridge, about to jump, when he found her…”

He rubbed his cheek against hers, breathing on the flakes of ice in her hair. “He saved her?” he guessed.

“He did. He walked right up to Granny Belle…” She let out a soft groan, like the memory was hers, not her great-grandmother’s.

“What did he say, this spy named Jeremiah?”

“He said she was too beautiful to die and he promised her… absolutely
promised
her that things would change soon.” She finally opened her eyes. “It was June fourth, 1944.”

Two days before the invasion of Normandy. “What happened?”

“They spent the night together and he disappeared the next day, but… he left part of himself behind. My grandfather.”

“He knew about the invasion,” Ben said. “Because he was a spy.”

“And he saved her life with hope.”

“Just like I’m going to do right now.”

Her eyes grew dead, her next breath labored, her body nearly limp in his arms. “I can’t… go… on…”

“You can,” he insisted, kissing her face, her frozen lashes, her mouth. “You have to, Callie. For Belle. For Jeremiah.”