Hot and Sexy (Some Like It Hot 1)

Oh, hell. He’d kicked off his own covers long ago, and her head came to rest on his shoulder. She pressed her slender hand to his bare chest, right over his rapidly beating heart, and at her gentle, evocative touch, it picked up its pace.

He bit back a deep groan as she stroked her hand down his stomach and nuzzled her face against his neck. “I thought…” The entire length of her shuddered before she continued, “Oh, God, I thought he killed you,” she whispered in a raw tone of voice. “And I couldn’t bring myself to shoot back and I couldn’t move and you were lying there, dying, and I felt so helpless…”

She was babbling, her mind caught up in a scenario too gruesome for him to comprehend, and the last thing he wanted was for her to turn hysterical on him. Experiencing a surge of protectiveness that took him momentarily off guard, he turned his head and brushed his warm lips against her temple. He inhaled the delicate melon scent that clung to her skin, which instigated a fresh rush of tenderness to well up in him.

“Shhh,” he coaxed, and with a little maneuvering he managed to slide his free arm around her shoulders to pull her close, into the safety of his embrace. “It’s okay, Jo. We’re both fine,” he assured her.

“Yes, you’re fine,” she murmured drowsily. Wrapping her arm around his middle, she nestled her body tight against his. One of her knees slipped between his legs, and he tried not to think about the intimacy of their position. Or how mortified she was going to be when she discovered what she’d done in the middle of the night.

“It was all a bad, horrible dream,” she mumbled, her words slow and lethargic.

“Yeah, a bad dream,” he agreed, though from her vivid reaction, he suspected that reality had played some part in creating the terrifying images that had afflicted her mind. And who, he wondered, was Brian? And was the other man alive or dead?

He pondered the possibilities as he threaded her silky soft hair through his fingers and gently massaged her scalp to lull her back to sleep and, he hoped, to sweeter dreams. His ploy worked. She sighed contentedly, her mint-scented breath fanning evenly across his throat, leaving his skin moist and hot and excruciatingly sensitive. After a few minutes of pampering, her body relaxed completely and leaned heavily against him as she dozed off again. The ultrasoft, feminine curves of her waist, hips and thighs branded him, and her even softer, lush breasts crushed too provocatively against his chest.

That quickly he grew hard and thick and fiercely aroused, and there wasn’t anything he could do to curb his deprived body’s instinctively male response to her cuddling and warm female scent. He’d be damn lucky to get any more rest tonight when all he could think about was how much he wanted this seemingly tough, in-control female bounty hunter who was sexier and sassier than any woman he’d had the enjoyment of tangling with in a long, long time. A woman who possessed a vulnerable side that drew him and made him want to discover all her deep, dark secrets.

Despite the evidence against Dean Colter she carried in her file, there was a mutual attraction they’d be hard-pressed to deny if confronted head-on with the shared interest. He’d seen the desire in her eyes when he’d stripped off his clothes earlier, could feel the sensuality shimmering between them.

She was fighting temptation, struggling valiantly against the promise of pleasure that beckoned and teased them both. And she would continue to do so until he proved his innocence, he thought with a frustrated sigh.

She inhaled a deep, peaceful breath, exhaled slowly, and the set of keys fastened to the waistband of her shorts slipped lower and scraped along his belly. They taunted him, daring him to take advantage of his one chance to validate Jo’s doubts about his criminal status and demonstrate how trustworthy he truly was.

A slow, sly smile formed. It was

time for the captor to become the captured. And in the process, they’d finally put to the test the attraction they’d both been skirting since she’d cornered him in his garage and frisked him.

* * *

With a low groan, Jo stretched her aching muscles and tried to roll to her side, certain her alarm would go off at any second to wake her up. Her right arm refused to follow the movement of the rest of her body and instead ended up twisted at an awkward angle above her head. Frowning at the odd sensation biting around her wrist, and perplexed at the unexplainable and uncomfortable position she seemed to be in, she blinked her lashes open and found herself looking directly at her prisoner reclining casually on her bed, his head propped up by his hand, unrestrained and completely in control.

He stared at her in return, the dark stubble lining his lean jaw intensifying the green hue of his eyes. “Good morning, sweetheart,” he drawled in greeting.

She barely heard his words…not when her mind filled immediately with alarm that he’d managed to escape somehow. Then pure, undiluted panic registered when she yanked on her hand again and realized she was the one secured to the headboard of the bed, putting her at his mercy. Adding to her internal chaos was the knowledge that her keys and revolver were on the nightstand between them…far, far out of reaching distance.

Her heart beat so hard she feared it would explode from her chest. She had no idea how she’d gotten in this predicament, couldn’t remember anything at all to give her a clue as to why she was the one shackled to Dean’s bedpost, or how the authority had shifted in Dean’s favor.

No matter the hows or whys, she refused to be a victim. She scrambled to a sitting position, preferring to be defensive instead of defenseless. Narrowing her gaze on him, she jutted her chin out. “How did you manage this clever trick?” she asked, opting for a sharp, snide tone to drown out the fear churning in her belly.

He had the audacity to wink at her. “I’ve always heard a magician never reveals his secrets.”

“You’re a felon, not a magician,” she snapped irritably, hating that this man had somehow, some way, duped her.

He feigned a wince at her well-placed barb, which did nothing to hide the humor dancing in the depth of his eyes. “Come on, Jo,” he said, cajoling her with his rich voice and sexy smile. “If I was really a felon on the run, fearful of standing trial back in San Francisco, I would have been long gone by now, leaving you to your own devices and letting the motel maid find you shackled to the bed. And if I was some kind of malicious criminal, I would have taken advantage of you hours ago.”

Her heart rate slowed as she mulled over his comment, knowing instinctively that what he said was true—no real convict would have wasted such a prime opportunity to flee. Knowing, too, that his behavior since she’d captured him and the evidence she’d discovered in his wallet all lent undeniable credibility to his innocence. Now she was forced to trust him, his story, and her own intuition.

Believing him came much easier this morning than it had last night, not that she was going to admit that out loud and give him any more leverage than he’d already managed to gain.

Calmer now, she wanted, needed, an explanation. “Could you tell me how I ended up cuffed to your bed?” she asked, then followed that up with a polite, “please?”

He grinned at her courteous request. “You had a bad dream last night that had you pretty upset. I called your name to wake you up and you sat up in bed, but you were actually still asleep. You thought I was Brian, and you crawled right across my bed and curled up next to me.”

Disbelief rushed over her, flushing her cheeks with a stinging heat. Her mouth opened to deny his story, then snapped shut again when she realized there was no possible way Dean could have known about Brian…unless she had mentioned his name at some point. And how much had she revealed about her partner and how responsible she’d been for his death?

Appalled that she’d been so bold and brazen as to cuddle up to Dean, especially in her sleep when a person was at their most vulnerable, she flopped back down on the bed and slung her free arm over her eyes and let a low, embarrassed groan escape her.

Bits and pieces of the same old recurring dream filtered through her mind, the same one that terrified and haunted her when she least expected her personal demon to rear its ugly head. Sometimes she recalled the dream the following morning. Other times she woke up in a cold sweat or physically shaking from the vivid images. Often she remembered nothing.