Driven by Fire (Fire 2)

She didn’t believe him. “Why not me?”

“I could tell you that I’m too tenderhearted to hurt you like that again, but you’d know that was a lie. I have no heart, tender or otherwise. But I also know that I got everything I need from you—you weren’t in a state to hold anything back. Therefore, you’re safe from my methods of interrogation.”

“Is that what you call it? I thought it was torture.”

For a moment she thought she saw him wince, then decided it was her imagination.

“When it comes to torture, what I did to you was really quite tame. Trust me, you run up against anyone involved with the Corsinis and this morning would feel like a walk in the park.” He tossed her small bag to her. “Get into your nightclothes. There’s nothing more we can do tonight, but the sooner we get started tomorrow morning, the better.”

“I’m not changing in front of you!”

“Suit yourself,” he said, yanking the black T-shirt over his head. “Change in the bathroom, or under the sheets, or whatever uptight, prissy way you want to do it. Tell you what—I’ll turn my back and you’ll have my word that I won’t watch.”

His actions suited his words, and she got a view of his tall, strong back, and for a moment she forgot everything. Forgot that she hated him, forgot that he was a killer, forgot that he’d hurt her.

He had the body of a warrior. His beautiful golden skin was marred by scars, a testament to the abuse of a decade or more, and she felt a momentary softening of her rage. A man who had gone through that kind of physical torture would have very little hesitation in hurting someone else if he needed to.

“Are you going to change or am I going to turn around?” he said, his voice bored. She heard the snick of his zipper, and she let out a little shriek.

“You’re not taking off all your clothes, are you?” she demanded.

“No, Parker. In deference to your maidenly modesty I’ll leave my shorts on. But if you don’t get moving . . .”

/> “I’m changing,” she said abruptly, starting to pull the shirt over her head. Pain seared through her arm, freezing her, and against her will she let out a cry.

He immediately spun around, to see her sitting on the bed in a totally ignominious position, the T-shirt half over her head, her arms stuck inside.

“Go away!” she said between gritted teeth. “I can handle it.”

She should have known she was wasting her breath. He took the hem of the T-shirt and slowly peeled it over her head, gently, relieving the pressure on her left arm as he did so. A moment later she was free, and she was sitting there in the plain-white cotton bra someone had bought for her, feeling totally exposed.

He wasn’t looking at her breasts. He was looking at her arm, and she looked down to see the row of bruises his hands had left on her pale flesh. She almost opened her mouth to tell him that she bruised easily, then shut it in time. He deserved any guilt or remorse she could thrust on him.

He turned his back without another word, picked his T-shirt off the floor, zipped up his fly, and walked out the door, closing it behind him. She heard the sound of the lock, and she stared after him in astonishment.

She wasn’t going to get away from him this quickly, and besides, she needed some sense of where she needed to go. She’d have to spend at least one more day with him. Stripping off her shorts, she slid down under the covers. Whoever had bought her clothes had failed to provide nightclothes, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep naked. The underwear would do.

She turned off the light between the beds, a pink ceramic monstrosity with writhing females all over it. He could find his own way back. She was tired, she was in pain, she was frightened, and she was mad. There were other emotions warring inside her, ones she didn’t want to examine too closely, and she needed sleep. Please God, she prayed she wouldn’t dream about Matthew Ryder.

Chapter Fourteen

Ryder walked out into the cool night, taking deep lungfuls of air. One look at Parker’s bruised arm and he’d felt oddly claustrophobic, as if all the air had been sucked from the room.

He’d hurt people before. Innocent people, ones who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he’d never felt this way. He did what needed to be done, and he didn’t waste his time second-guessing his actions. Parker had been holding something back, something important, and her time had run out. He’d needed an answer, fast, and he got it the only way he knew how.

She should count her blessings, he thought bitterly. He could have hurt her a lot more, gotten the answers even more quickly. Or he could have seduced her into telling him.

That possibility had been teasing him for days. He was past denying it—it was a simple fact of nature that he wanted her. There was something about her that drew him, and if he could figure out what it was, he’d have a better chance of fighting it. That, or give in to it.

He suspected she would have hated sexual coercion even more. Physical betrayal was bad enough. If he’d taken her to bed and forced the truth that way, she’d be in far worse shape than she was.

He wasn’t squeamish—sex was as good a weapon as anything else, and he used it when he needed to. He’d had a very good reason not to fuck Parker into giving up her secrets. He’d wanted to.

He presented a cold, unemotional exterior to those around him, but some of the things he’d done for the Committee ranged from painful to despicable. If he’d taken Parker to bed in order to get her secrets, he’d have liked it too much, and the betrayal would have been too devastating. He knew full well how physical abuse could shatter someone’s sense of self. She might not know it, but if he’d used sex, used pleasure instead of pain, she’d be in much worse shape.

But that didn’t change the fact that he’d marked her! How the hell had that happened? He’d always been able to judge the amount of pressure, just how much to hurt someone to get the truth, never to go beyond that point. Somehow he’d miscalculated, hurt her worse than he’d planned, hurt her so badly she trembled when he touched her, shook when he was close. Ms. Jennifer Parker, Esquire, wasn’t someone who broke easily—he, of all people, should know that. But he’d broken her. It was up to him to mend her.

He didn’t dare go far from the seedy inn—there was no telling who was watching them. He wasn’t naïve enough to think their arrival in Calliveria had gone unnoticed, and Parker would need protection whether she wanted it or not. She wanted to save Soledad, and he knew perfectly well she wanted to get hold of that cell phone and the secrets it held. It was his job to keep it out of her hands. In the end he didn’t give a shit about her slimy brother. There was information on that smartphone that would help anyone who wanted to take the place of His Eminence and the Corsini family with their human-trafficking empire, and he couldn’t allow such a volatile weapon to fall into the wrong hands. His job was to stop anyone before they got too solid a foothold in the filthy business, and he needed that smartphone.