Consumed by Fire (Fire 1)

“I want you to go away.”

He rolled his eyes. “Haven’t you realized that isn’t going to happen? You know what they say when you’re going to be raped—just lie back and enjoy it.”

A combination of fury and remembere

d horror suffused her. “You disgusting, sexist asshole. You touch me and I’ll castrate you.”

“Tell you what—I’ll give you a knife and see if you can go through with it. We can try right now . . .” He reached for the button of his jeans.

“You’re forgetting that I pulled the trigger,” she said with grim satisfaction.

“Not forgetting, Angel. You looked like you were going to throw up after you realized what you might have done. It’s never easy to kill someone, particularly someone you’ve fucked.”

“How do you know?” she shot back.

The look on his face silenced her. He did know. Her con man, faux husband knew what it was like to kill, and the knot in her stomach grew bigger.

“Personally I think reacquainting yourself with my mighty wang will render you frozen in awe and lust, leaving my balls intact, but I may be overrating my attraction. I’m willing to risk it if you are.” He undid the button with one hand, still holding the water gallons. Merlin, the traitor, was watching both of them, his head moving back and forth, but he was sitting at James’s feet.

“Stop it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?” He refastened the button with a show of reluctance. “Then come back inside and stop asking stupid questions while I cook.”

“They’re not stupid questions.”

“They are because you know I’m not going to answer them. Come along, sweetheart.” He crossed and batted her on the butt with the gallons of water. “And bring your silly dog.”

Merlin no longer seemed much like her dog, but at that he turned and moved over to her, rubbing against her as well. Rubbing James Bishop’s nasty, conniving, deceitful cooties onto her own jeans. “Traitor,” she said, looking down at him. She squatted down, looking into his wise eyes. “He’s a bad man. You were supposed to rip his throat out.”

“He needs an attack order if he doesn’t recognize an immediate threat,” Bishop said, waiting at the door. “He’s been professionally trained. Usually ‘attack’ or ‘bite’ does the trick, unless he’s been trained in Europe. Then you’d have to figure out what language he was trained in.”

She rubbed Merlin’s head to reassure him she harbored no ill feelings for his sudden affection for strangers. “I’m pretty sure he’s an all-American dog. Otherwise how could he have found his way to a tiny campus in northern Wisconsin?”

“There’s always that,” he said, noncommittally. “I’m hungry—get in the fucking camper or I’ll put you there.”

If he took a step toward her, Merlin should have attacked him, even without a verbal order. He had always taken his protection duties seriously, but Bishop seemed to have the ability to cloud Merlin’s judgment. She moved past the man up into the camper, and this time Merlin came with her instead of keeping guard outside the door. At least he recognized that Bishop was more of a threat than anything that lurked outside in the deserted campground. She moved past him, sitting down at the dinette again, avoiding the bed for reasons she wasn’t going to consider too closely, and Merlin dropped down to the narrow walkway with a sigh.

Bishop ignored both of them as he worked at the stove, and Evangeline made herself watch him, his efficient grace, the beauty of his lean body beneath the work clothes. Of course he was beautiful—it was his stock-in-trade. You couldn’t be a con man if you didn’t have anything to offer, and he used his beauty to lure women in. At least, she assumed it was only women.

“How many times have you done this?” she demanded suddenly, wishing she still had the beer that had gone rolling across the floor. He’d helped himself to another but hadn’t offered her one—he probably didn’t want to risk having his head bashed in while he cooked. He didn’t realize she’d stored her cast-iron frying pan, the one she used for campfires, beneath the seat of the dinette.

“Done what?” he said without looking at her.

“Seduced someone in order to rip her off? Do you have any particular criteria? Do your victims have to be presentable, young, or do you go after older women in search of a boy toy? I would think they’d be more profitable. And what about older men? I would think anyone would like a pretty young thing like you.”

She saw the side of his mouth quirk up in a half smile, but he was concentrating on cooking. “You still think I’m pretty? That relieves me.” He took a swig of his beer. “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you the truth, though I could certainly make up some fascinating stories. In the meantime why don’t you just sit there and see if you can come up with some way out of this. You won’t be able to, but it should keep you occupied.”

“Fuck off.”

“Bad girl,” he murmured in mock reproof. “What would your students think?”

She ignored him. “If I can talk my suddenly pacifistic dog into attacking you, how do I get him to stop? Assuming there’s a slight chance I don’t want him to kill you. I assume I yell at him to stop.”

He shook his head. “If you’d had any sense, you would have signed up for classes once you realized you had a trained attack dog glued to your side. But you’re not terribly sensible, are you? If Merlin attacks and you want him to let go, you say ‘out.’?”

“‘Out’? That makes no sense.” She looked down at the dog at her feet. “Attack, Merlin.”

Merlin whined unhappily, looking between her and Bishop. She tried again, as Bishop watched with the supreme confidence of a man who knew he was safe. “Bite, Merlin.”