“I should have known he wasn’t going to listen.” Kerry slumped down in her seat and burst into tears. “You tried to warn me. And—and worse, he told me that Mark’s trial has been moved up. It starts next Monday.”

  Chapter 10

  At three o’clock, Kerry and Rafe climbed into her beat-up blue slug of a car and drove back to the Love Shack in the thickening traffic.

  She barely saw the cars on the road as she sank deep into her thoughts. All this effort, for nothing. She’d poured weeks of planning—a challenge for her in the best of circumstances—into kidnapping Rafe. She’d taken a stranger away from his life, tied him to a bed, for Pete’s sake, with every intention of forcing him to help her brother. She’d broken the law and probably prevented him from achieving a deeply personal goal.

  All for nothing.

  It would be a wonder if Rafe didn’t resent her like a waitress does bunions her for all she’d done to him.

  She couldn’t cry anymore. She’d been doing it all day. Now she hovered somewhere between a thick sludge of dread and sheer numbness.

  Even worse than what she’d done to Rafe, she’d let Mark down. Her brother was no closer to freedom today than he had been last week. She’d believed with her heart and soul that Rafe could help her save her brother from an awful fate. Nope.

  She also couldn’t seem to save herself from falling hard for a man destined to leave her.

  Hot tears stung her eyes anew. Her head pounded nearly as badly as a jackhammer. Embarrassment heated her cheeks. It seemed nothing could get worse . . . until she remembered this was her last evening with Rafe. By morning, he’d be gone from her life. Forever.

  As they arrived at the Love Shack, Kerry let out a shaky sigh and climbed out of the car. Rafe followed in silence, seemingly elsewhere mentally.

  Of course he is, idiot. He’s with beautiful women who won’t drag him into their problems, break laws, and cry every two seconds. He’s probably wishing himself back in New York on a hot date with a woman who can carry off a slinky black dress and a witty laugh. Who could blame him?

  They walked into the shadowed interior of Dominating Dave’s cottage. How familiar everything seemed. How intimate. Kerry looked at the red leather chair Rafe frequently lounged shirtless in, the kitchen table they’d made lascivious use of. So many memories here, in such a short time. How had that happened?

  Yearning and regret tangled in her throat as she faced Rafe in the little living area. “I’m sorry. Incredibly sorry. For everything.”

  For a heartbeat he said nothing. Just stared. “You look tired. Sit down.”

  Kerry watched, frowning, as he went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and poured her a glass of wine.

  “Drink,” he ordered after crossing the room and thrusting the glass in her hand.

  She took a dutiful sip, then another . . . until she drank it all. Unfortunately, even downing the whole bottle wasn’t going to make her feel better, particularly since it would only add the need to puke along with everything else. Guilt still buzzed and stung like a whole hive of killer bees. And Rafe, standing there with traces of patience and concern on his face . . . Why? Surely he understood the implications of their call to the FBI.

  Her grand scheme, in which she’d illegally robbed a perfectly wonderful man of freedom and free choice, was over. Mark would likely go to prison. She had failed miserably.

  She would have to live with that truth for the rest of her life.

  Kerry frowned up at him. “You have every right to be furious with me for dragging you into this mess. Clearly, my hope that the FBI would listen to you, that some perfect piece of evidence to free Mark would be easy to find—it was all a dream. And now Smikins is threatening not to pay you, and I’ve screwed up the goal you’ve worked toward for years. I’ve ruined everything.”

  Disgust rolled through her as she had to fight new tears. Oh, she was pathetic.

  He knelt in front of her and brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek. “You’re being too hard on yourself. You did what you thought was necessary to help Mark. I don’t fault you for that. Smikins will pay me if I have to wring his scrawny neck.”

  A sad smile flitted across her mouth. “But what I did to you . . . it was so wrong. It’s only right that I let you go now. I—I’ll be happy to make you dinner if you’re hungry, then I’ll help you pack your things and drive you back to your hotel. You can get on with your life and forget I ever screwed it up.”

  He stopped. His expression closed up faster than a government office on a holiday. Traces of patience and kindness disappeared, replaced by a forbidding gathering of black brows. The air between them went still, heavy. Kerry watched, her stomach pitching and rolling—then landing somewhere in the vicinity of her shins. Uh-oh.

  Rafe’s lips thinned, nostrils flared, as he dropped his hand and stood, towering over her. “So I’ve served my purpose and you want me gone? How convenient for you.”

  Is that what he assumed she meant? “I just thought—”

  “What? That you could get out of the rest of this bargain?” He stepped closer, looking down at her with an expression that bordered on menacing. “Babe, you promised me forty-eight hours of fucking. By my watch, it isn’t up yet. We’ve been tangled in other shit, and you’ve put me off all day.”

  Tangled in other shit? Oh, just saving Mark. That was shit now? Did he assume she’d put sex before her brother? Was he angry that she hadn’t? If so, he apparently assumed she had all the decision-making skills of a life-sized blowup doll.

  “I’m not settling for no anymore,” he growled. “No matter how or where I want you, your answer should be yes.”

  Amazing—from good guy to bastard in like three seconds. “Or ‘Yes, master’ would be preferable, right?” Kerry stood, crossing her arms over her chest. “You talk like I’m nothing but a piece of ass.”

  Something ugly crossed his face. “Well, you act like I’m an expendable hacker, so I think that makes us even. Strip.”

  “What?” Kerry felt her heart pounding, amazement mixed with anger.

  “You heard me. Off with the clothes. All of them. I’ve had an impossible hard-on all day, waiting for a glimpse of what’s under that baggy shirt. I want to see now.”

  “You’ve got the patience of a preschooler with an ice cream sundae, and the maturity to go with it. I think we should talk instead. I’m not sure why you’re angry—”

  “I’m not angry; I’m horny. I want you out of your fucking clothes.”

  As if to prove this, Rafe grabbed her around the waist, seized the nape of her neck, and captured her mouth in a demanding, ungraceful kiss. Too angry, too confused, Kerry didn’t respond. She tried to jerk away. Her brain spun with questions. She’d tried to do the right thing and let him get on with his life. Why was he angry?

  Then he cupped her face, swiped at the seam of her lips with his tongue, and moaned. Heat sparked in her belly, which she did her best to ignore. Instead, she leaned away, opened her mouth to ask him if he’d lost his mind in the last three minutes or if he’d been unhinged all along. Before she got a word out, he covered her lips with his own again and poured inside. He invaded her very senses.

  The first sweep of his tongue told Kerry he was determined to ignite her. The second proved that he could. Her indignation and anger started to melt under the onslaught of his mouth. Possessive. Hungry. Determined. He wanted her. He wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  At that point, in a contest between desire and rage . . . well, rage wasn’t winning any blue ribbons.

  She had no defenses against Rafe. Not when he was mad, not when he was tender, not even when he was conquering—not in any circumstance, it seemed. Not since she’d realized how much she cared for him. It was a dangerous level of care. Even in the face of his anger, the thought of him returning to New York and never seeing him again left her slightly panicky and despondent.

  She did not want to know why.

  Whatever it meant, this would be their last night together. In spite of Rafe’s odd, wicked mood, part of her shouted that she should make the most of it. The saner part said she’d only sink deeper and faster into heartache.

  Unable to stop her reckless heart, Kerry clasped her arms around his neck and threw herself into the kiss—all her anger, all her confusion, all her passion . . . along with the misery she feared was coming.

  Rafe’s hands made their way down her body, clinging to her shoulders, cupping her breasts, outlining her waist. When she tilted her pelvis to his and slid against the heavy bolt of his erection, he grasped the sides of her loose-fitting blouse in tight fists and moaned.

  Breaking off the kiss, he stared at her. His sharp gray eyes clawed her with hunger.

  “Strip,” he demanded again, all pretense of a sensitive guy gone. He was all determined alpha male.

  She’d never seen him in this mood. His playfulness gone, steely determination to have her in its place. Warmth didn’t inhabit his eyes, only heat. That blazing intensity broiled her skin, her blood, letting her know that if she succumbed, he was going to do everything in his power to inundate her with pleasure.

  The thought made her weak in the knees. And her tummy . . . and her head.

  And it worried her.

  “Maybe we should talk,” she said, coming up for air.

  “Talk later. Strip now.”

  Kerry could have told him to go to hell. She knew that in her gut. Rafe would have been pissed off, but he would have gotten over it.

  Instead, she acknowledged the want enveloping her heart and churning in her body. She pushed aside the ache she knew she’d feel tomorrow after Rafe had gone, the odd mingled anger and excitement she felt tonight at his attitude, and focused on enjoying his touch tonight. She unfastened the top button of her blouse.

  Then Kerry dropped her hands to her sides and slanted him a sultry stare. “Is this what you had in mind?”

  He shook his head. “More skin. More quickly.”

  “What’s the rush?” she asked with a languid rise of her hands to button number two.

  Rafe swallowed as she unfastened the button between her breasts, then parted the baggy striped fabric just enough to show the inside swell of her cleavage and no more.

  “Rush?” He glanced at his watch before his gaze returned to her face, aggressive and uncompromising. “It’s been fifteen hours and forty-three minutes since I’ve been inside you. That’s a third of our time together. I’ve been patient.”

  Something in the hard angle of his jaw, the steely glint in his gunmetal gray eyes, told Kerry that Rafe was done waiting. Done talking. Done with anything that didn’t involve sex.

  An instant later, he confirmed her suspicions by barreling toward her and hoisting her off the floor with a vise grip under her arms. Lifting her as if she weighed nothing more than the average toddler, he settled her against his chest. But the toddler theory went out the window as he held her against his full-staff erection with a hand curved under her ass.

  “Wrap your legs around me,” he bit out as he strode down the hall.

  Automatically, she obeyed.

  The friction of his rock-hard cock against her dampening folds had her moaning. Before she could finish the first sound of pleasure, Rafe captured it with his mouth. He delved inside and looted more, like her breath, her sanity. He pillaged with all the mercy of a pirate, taking, taking . . . and giving back a pleasure and expectation that left her dizzy and achy.

  Inside the bedroom, he lay her against the cool sheets. Before she could say a word, he’d removed her sandals, popped the button of her khaki shorts and worked them down her hips, then tossed them across the room. They landed with a soft whoosh on the hardwood floor.

  He spared no glance to see where they landed—or for the white cotton thong barely covering her essentials. Instead, he focused his attention on her half-unbuttoned shirt. Setting his jaw, he began the task of unbuttoning it, bottom up. His eyes narrowed with each new inch of skin revealed. First, her navel and the smooth skin of her belly. Next, her rib cage and the soft underside of her breasts. He didn’t pause to look or touch the flesh he’d just exposed. No. Every scrap of his attention was focused on the last straining button holding the shirt closed over her breasts.

  For a long moment, he only stared. Kerry waited, tingled. The phrase “breathless with anticipation” held infinite meaning in that moment. She ached. Need centered low in her belly, between her thighs, twisting her mercilessly. For a moment, she imagined things he might do with her, want from her. Those images tumbled, one over the other, in her mind. Each one, more erotic than the last, sent fresh blasts of heat straight to her vagina. She felt her own slick moistness dampening her white cotton thong. Rafe drew in a deep breath, and Kerry felt sure that he could scent her wetness. She shivered. Their gazes connected, locked. He stared, eyes alive with the molten heat firing his taut body.

  “Undo it.” He dropped his intent gaze to that last fastened button on her shirt. “Show me. The thought kept me hard all day.”

  A surge of power flowed through Kerry. She might be underneath a strong man, half-undressed and taking orders . . . but appearances were deceiving. Something in Rafe’s face said he was barely maintaining a thread of control, one that could snap at any moment.

  She smiled. “What will you give me if I do?”

  Pure predator took over Rafe then, and he laid his body over hers, covering her completely. Heat assailed her at every point of contact, thighs, belly, breasts. Kerry caught her breath at the sensation. Oh, God, the ache. She needed, damn it. Needed the pleasure, the searing affection, Rafe gave her.

  Her power dissolved in a haze of desire as she realized she was barely hanging on to her own composure.

  Without rational thought, she arched her pelvis against his, grinding her aching folds against the hardness that told her he was all man and beyond ready.

  “I’ll give you what you want,” he whispered ruthlessly in her ear. “What your body craves. Undo that damned button, and I’ll press you beyond your boundaries, trip you into orgasm after orgasm all night.”

  His words carved out a crater of craving in her belly. Nothing on earth would please her more. Suddenly, she could hardly remember why she’d been fighting. Who knew? Who cared?

  “Yes.”

  He raised himself a few inches from her chest. “I want to watch that last button come free. Do it.”

  Kerry slid her hands between them. With trembling fingers, she shoved the little disk through its corresponding opening, then all but ripped the two sides of the shirt apart, leaving her nearly naked breasts exposed . . .

  Except for the small golden rings clipped gently to her taut nipples.

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve died, and you’re heaven.”

  Leveraging himself down her body, he pinned her to the bed, his middle now keeping her thighs spread wide. He’d positioned his mouth perfectly level with her breasts.

  Kerry’s heart beat erratically as he licked his lips and pierced her with a stare of scorching sexual promise.

  Rafe lowered his lips to her breast, sucking her nipple into the voracious tunnel of his mouth. The tip of his tongue played with her sensitive nipple, now hyperaware from wearing the body jewelry all day. More blood rushed into her nipples, and Kerry swore her entire being was centered there, totally a captive to the pleasure Rafe bestowed upon her.

  She moaned and arched into his mouth, spreading her legs wider in silent supplication. He ignored her voiceless demands for satisfaction and kept at her breast, toying with the tiny gold hoop fastened over her nipple, gently nibbling on its hard tip until the sting of pain combined with a jolt of pleasure that had her pleading.

  “Rafe. Now. Please now.”

  “You’ve felt these all day, haven’t you?” he whispered against her skin.

  “Yes.”

  “Did they arouse you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Make your nipples beyond sensitive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you imagine my mouth on you, sucking, licking?” He echoed his words with actions, fastening his mouth on her again.

  “God, yes.” She could barely get the words out, the feel of his mouth so distracting.

  “I stayed hard all day thinking about you riding me, about sinking my cock into you while my tongue worked that little loop and your nipples at once.”

  “Why are we waiting?” she panted.

  His laugh had all the smoothness of sandpaper. “I want you wild first. I’m going to give you a night you won’t forget.”

  Forget? Not possible. She’d always remember the way the ache inside her had grown, swelled to mammoth proportions, swallowing her heart with it. Taking a breath was almost too difficult. Pleasure had diffused her brain, now haunted her blood, until she could only want beyond anything she’d ever imagined.

  “I’m wild.” She scratched at his shoulders, folding her legs around his torso to prove it.

  “Not yet, you’re not. But I have ideas . . .”

  Kerry had no clue what he meant. In the next moment, his mouth devoured her other breast, giving it the same hot sting he’d given the other. Knowing he wouldn’t let up until he was good and ready, she threaded her fingers through the inky strands of his dark hair and held on.

  At least until the devil inside her urged her not to take this lying down.

  Drawing in a deep breath and doing her best to gather her wits, Kerry murmured, “Did you think of my nipples all day?”

  “Hell, yes,” he muttered against her skin before licking her sensitive tip again.

  She hissed in pleasure but was not dissuaded. “Did you imagine them getting hard? Swelling?”

  His mouth full of her breast, he only nodded.

  “Did you think I’d be slightly aroused all day, and stay wet and ready because of it?”

  “Yeah.” He fixed her with a hot stare. “Were you?”