So Trees did the next best thing. He waved her phone in front of her face until it unlocked, then started prowling through the device.
“No!” She lunged out of her chair and reached for the phone.
Trees merely held it level with his face, kind of amused as he watched her jump for it. There were occasional benefits to being freakishly tall.
Finally, he found the message string he’d been looking for, scanned and scrolled, then nearly lost his fucking mind. “Why were you planning to have a conversation with one of my bosses?”
With a frustrated huff, she plopped in her seat again. Because she realized the jig was up?
“It is none of your concern.”
The hell it wasn’t.
With a sigh, he flipped on the overhead light and headed to the coffeepot. If he was going to interrogate her, he needed some damn caffeine. Days and days without a full night’s sleep were catching up to him.
The instant he turned his back, she shoved out of her chair, legs scraping across the tile, and sprinted for the door. She’d barely reached it and pulled it open when he caught her around the waist again, lifted her petite curves, kicked the door shut, then carried her back to the kitchen. He pulled out the cuffs.
Her eyes widened. “What are you doing?”
He ignored her, managing to slap one cuff around her wrist before she started fighting like a hellcat. But she was too late. He’d already looped the chain around the rungs of the chair and grabbed her free hand.
“You cannot do this.”
He clicked the second cuff into place. “I just did. Now we’re going to talk. Want a blanket?”
He hoped like fuck she said yes because he was getting a full frontal of her under the kitchen lights, and it was impossible to miss her thick, beaded nipples.
Fuck me.
He loved tits, and she had a great pair. And that really wasn’t the number one subject on his brain. Well, it shouldn’t be.
“What will I owe you for it?”
For a fucking blanket? “Nothing.”
She hesitated. “Fine. Then yes. Please.”
He nodded as he grabbed a quilt from the corner of his bed. When he draped it over her, they both breathed a sigh of relief.
Then Trees turned the nearby chair backward and straddled it, resting his arms over the top. “Let’s start over. Why were you asking to talk to my boss?”
Laila proved once again she was as strong-willed as she was beautiful when she refused to answer.
“You want to tell him we fucked? See if that will get me in trouble? Are you hoping he’ll assign you a guard you can slip past?”
But as soon as the words were out, Trees realized he was wrong. She’d had days to throw him under the bus. For some reason, she hadn’t. And if she thought for a minute she’d be able to slip past someone else on the EM Security team, she would already have done her best to swap him out. But she’d met enough of them by now to know better.
So what was her angle?
Laila wouldn’t meet his gaze, so he took her chin in his grip and forced her to look at him. As always, her soft hazel eyes undid him—not to mention that pouty, fuck-me mouth he remembered kissing feverishly in the dark.
How many times had he jacked off to that memory?
“Why would you want to talk to Hunter without me knowing?”
Her white teeth bit into that pillowy lower lip, and he stifled a groan. She had no idea what she was doing to him, and he couldn’t let on. She’d already used his desire against him once. Trees wouldn’t let it happen again.
Since she still stubbornly refused to say a word, he’d have to puzzle the answer out himself.
If Hunter, Logan, or Joaquin had an issue with the job he was doing, based on her complaints, they would have called his ass on the carpet by now. If it wasn’t about the sex he’d once stupidly taken her up on and it wasn’t about the fact he was keeping her “captive” at his isolated compound, he could only think of one other thing.
And it fucking pissed him off.
“Were you arranging to use yourself as bait to catch whoever’s after your sister?”
Laila glared at him as if debating the wisdom of answering with anything close to the truth. Finally, she yanked her chin from his grasp. “Don’t touch me.”
“Then answer me.”
“Yes. And you cannot stop me.”
That’s what she thought. “Were you planning to run to Hunter’s place? Maybe get clear of my property, then call him to come get you?”
It wasn’t anything she did that told him he’d hit the nail on the head, but he knew. “Oh, that would have made me look really fucking good. Then again, you don’t care about that, do you?”