Wet and Reckless (Private Pleasures) Read online

  “I planned to renew it when I got home. I just…” She trailed off and shrugged again. Now she looked a little lost. “I haven’t figured out where that is yet. I have a passport. Somewhere.” She gestured toward the duffel.

  “Later. Right now, Roxy, I want you to take a seat in the cruiser.”

  Color drained from her face. She took an unsteady step away. He grabbed her arm to catch her, noting the jump of muscles beneath his grasp.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  Chapter Two

  “You’re in pain,” Officer Donovan replied in a deep voice that managed to sound authoritative even when mildly exasperated. He removed his hat and used it to gesture at her foot before adding, “The car seems like the best place to put you while I try to do something about it.”

  Apparently confident of her compliance, he turned, placed his hat in the trunk, and retrieved something from one of the well-ordered side compartments. Roxy watched the play of muscles under his rain-dampened uniform. Sure, he could bust her seven ways from Sunday, but she couldn’t help admiring the easy grace in his tall, athletic frame.

  When he turned to her, he had a first aid kit in his hand and an expression that gave nothing away. She wondered if he had to practice his stoic face or if it came naturally. Natural, she decided, when he nudged her toward the backseat. Cool, contained Officer Donovan wasted no words or movements.

  Just before she reached the door, she turned and made a last-ditch effort to avoid returning to the confines of the cruiser. “I’m fine.”

  Not true. Her heel ached, and the trace of citrus in his soap or aftershave reminded her she hadn’t had a bite to eat since the dried apricots she’d called breakfast hours ago. But she’d rather crawl the rest of the way to Bluelick than voluntarily get in the police car. Authorities tended to pigeonhole her right away as a stray. Someone who had been damn near everywhere but belonged nowhere. They also tended to meet that status with a lot of displeasure and suspicion. So far, she’d picked up plenty of both from this particular representative of Bluelick’s finest.

  “We’ll see.” He crowded her until he had her trapped between the vehicle and his body. “Sit.”

  Then somehow, without even touching her, he succeeded in making it happen. She stumbled and landed on her ass in the backseat. The impact dislodged the knot from her hair. She raised her hands to brush it away from her face, and her bracelets tinkled down her arm in a musical cascade.

  A trio of ugly, faded-to-purple bruises adorning her wrist reminded her of a couple important truths. Namely, a woman in her position couldn’t afford to let her guard down, and she wasn’t always the best judge of character. As casually as possible, she lowered her arms. The bracelets tumbled down, hiding the bruises. She risked a glance at Officer Donovan. His body completely filled her view, blocking the door and creating a big, insurmountable barrier. Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the car. Pressure built in her lungs, and her pulse skittered. They were out here alone. He had all the power. Anything could happen, and no one would miss her.

  “Relax,” he said, as if sensing her rising paranoia. He didn’t offer any additional words of reassurance, simply crouched in front of her, head bent, and concentrated on working her boot off. She stared at the top of his head and then bit her lip to keep from groaning when he pulled the boot over her raw heel.

  “I am relaxed.” Lie. “Why would I be tense?”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t glance up. His short, damp hair stood on end in places and looked as soft as sable. “Why would you?”

  Because she’d been caught hitchhiking? Because everything she owned in the world was currently in the trunk of a police car? Because, technically, she’d resorted to the five-finger discount to retrieve Gibson from a pawnshop owned by one of the most notorious loan sharks in Nashville before boarding a bus to Kentucky? Instead of voicing any self-incriminating responses, she said, “You could be some kind of deviant cop who picks up stranded women, shoves them into your trunk, and nobody hears from them again. I read the news. It happens.” Even as she put the irrational thought into words, she fought an impulse to run her fingers over the close-cropped hair at his temple and find out if it felt as velvety as it looked.

  “My trunk is currently full of your sh—stuff, so consider yourself safe, but for someone who puts her trust in the hands of strangers by hitchhiking, you have a very dark view of human natu—Jesus, Roxy.”

  The last bit drew her attention to her foot, currently cradled in his hand. Her size seven look positively dainty in comparison. Dainty and fragile. The impression unsettled her enough to lift her foot out of his hold, and that’s when she realized the cause of his outburst. Blood darkened the heel of her sock.

  The scarred leather motorcycle boots she’d bought yesterday from Music City Pawn & Loan probably hadn’t been the smartest use of fifty bucks. Forty-five plus tax to be exact, but she hadn’t hung around for her change because the purchase had been a diversion—a way to distract the clerk while she’d liberated Gibson and hauled ass. She should have chosen something cheaper, but the tough black boots had spoken to her. They’d said, “We take no shit.” She definitely needed to take less shit, so she’d bought the darn things. At the time, she couldn’t have guessed she’d end up wearing them to hike the final leg of her journey to Bluelick. “It looks worse than it is.”

  Eyes as gray and turbulent as Kentucky storm clouds commandeered hers. “We’ll see.”

  That’s all the warning she got before he tugged her sock off. She sucked in a breath and willed herself to keep still.

  He scanned her face. “Okay?”

  “Yes.” She held out her hand for the sock and tried to pretend she didn’t want to curl up into a ball and whimper.

  He placed the sock in her open palm, and their fingers touched for an instant. The pain in her heel subsided as the small contact set off a flurry of quakes throughout her body. Fantasies filled her mind—those same enticingly callused hands dragging her clothes out of his way. Removing her panties with one hard tug.

  She glanced at his face in time to see his eyes darken with reluctant hunger. A muscle tensed in his jaw.

  No. Uh-uh. Absolutely not, Roxy. Tangling with any man, much less a surly lawman who looked at her with alternating degrees of distrust and disapproval, ranked low on her to-do list. Her system craved the chemistry, that’s all. And chemistry had a way of blowing up on her.

  Officer Donovan cleared his throat. “Nice tat.” With the pad of his finger, he traced the small flock of black birds winging their way up her ankle. Even his fingers looked official. Long, squared, with clean nails trimmed in neat, no-nonsense lines.

  “Thanks,” she managed, while nerve endings all over her body reacted as if he’d stroked far more personal areas. An uncomfortably vivid scenario popped into her mind. Her, lying in the back of this very cruiser, floating just below consciousness while those official fingers carefully but thoroughly roamed over her body. Not another fantasy, her fired-up nerve endings assured her. A memory. He’d frisked her. The realization brought instant heat to her cheeks. She’d like to call the reaction mortification, but the sad truth was the idea of Officer Donovan touching her so intimately had her hot and bothered for all the wrong reasons.

  Maybe he realized he’d set off an erotic chain reaction with his casual touch because he released her as if he’d been burned. “Lift your foot so I can bandage your heel.”

  “10-4, Officer.” If she was any kind of a grown-up, she’d tell him to hand over the first aid kit and tend to herself, but she’d already had the woozies once today, so she raised her foot closer to his eye level. “Good?”

  He dipped his head to get a better angle then froze, let out a strangled groan, and looked away. “Ah…no. Not good.”

  That’s when she realized her position offered him an unobstructed view up her skirt. Immediately, she lowered her leg while an offended part of her insisted, Hey, some guys think it’s pretty good.

  “I’ll do it.” She held out her hand for the first aid kit.

  “Let’s try this instead.” His voice returned to the calm, sure tone she already thought of as normal. “Turn around and kneel on the seat.” Before she could fully process the instructions, he took hold of her and positioned her how he wanted her.

  She grabbed the headrest rather than end up on all fours across the seat. The notion introduced a whole new montage of unbidden images into her overheated imagination. Him shoving her skirt up, raking her underwear down, and dishing out his own personal brand of punishment for hitchhiking. Her hormones went wild at the prospect.

  What he actually did was wrap his hand around her ankle and ease her foot to the edge of the seat. Her stomach clenched as she knelt with her back to him, granting him unsupervised access to her injured heel. She couldn’t have felt more vulnerable if he’d told her to close her eyes and take a trust fall into his arms. Then again, she’d essentially done that when she’d passed out, and apparently, he’d caught her, so maybe she could trust him with this, too?

  She balanced on her knees and counted the broken white lines bisecting the empty stretch of highway visible through the back window. Behind her, he got to work. He had a surprisingly gentle touch for someone with such a brusque attitude. Gentle and efficient. It took less than a minute for him to dab antibacterial cream on her heel and apply a jumbo Band-Aid. Yet somehow during that time, he managed to dissolve every ounce of resistance she possessed.

  Whenever he leaned in, his hair grazed the back of her thigh. The light tickle left her fighting shivers despite the August heat and struggling to keep her breathing even. Did he know what he was doing to he
r? Did he feel it, too?

  A tug on her booted foot pulled her thoughts away from her tingling erogenous zones. She twisted around in time to see his hot stare travel up her body to stop at her face.

  “I want to check your other foot,” he said in a voice thick enough to tell her she wasn’t the only one getting a little something extra from playing doctor.

  The air between them sizzled like lightning-charged ozone. Though he hadn’t phrased his words as a question so much as a statement of intent, he paused, hand wrapped around her instep, waiting for her to respond.

  “That one doesn’t hurt.” Nonetheless, she relaxed her foot to let him to remove the boot.

  “It’s intact,” he said briskly once he’d dispensed with her sock, but his hands were just as quick and careful as he placed a protective Band-Aid over her heel. A moment later, he uttered a soft, “Done.” His hair brushed the back of her thigh once more as he raised his head.

  She twisted herself around to put some space between them but moved too quickly for her light head and ended up swaying as she dropped onto the seat. He grabbed her shoulders and steadied her. Gray dots swarmed her vision, but she blinked them away and focused on his face.

  His brow furrowed. A corner of his mouth tightened. “Easy.” He released her shoulders slowly and kept his hands hovering there for a moment in case she toppled. “You’re not going to pass out on me again, are you, Roxy?”

  Was she? Her hands shook, so she clasped them together and shoved them between her knees. The position brought her head lower, which helped. “No,” she insisted, as much to herself as him. “I’m okay.”

  He hesitated for several heartbeats, and she felt the weight of his stare. “Stay,” he finally said and stood.

  Sit. Stay. The single-word commands were getting old fast. Before she could share her disdain over being ordered around like a K-9, he leaned in the front seat and opened the glove compartment.

  Was he looking for his citation pad so he could write her a ticket? Perfect. She had exactly eight hundred and thirteen dollars to her name. Whatever the fine for hitchhiking, her limited resources couldn’t take the hit. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her knees.

  “Under the circumstances, I think we can skip the blessing.”

  “Huh?” She raised her head and saw an energy bar and bottle of water in her line of vision. Surprised, she took both and managed a pathetic, “Thank you.” Nobody had taken care of her in a long time. She wasn’t used to it. Maybe that’s why a couple Band-Aids and a snack suddenly made her want to cry?

  “Eat,” he ordered and got out of the passenger seat.

  And bye-bye sentimental tears. Securing the water bottle between her knees, she peeled the wrapper off the energy bar and eyed the machine-extruded protein bomb. Not normally her snack of choice, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Her stomach leaped like a starved wolf when she bit into the bar.

  By the time she’d swallowed the first mouthful, he was standing over her again, right arm braced on the open door, giving her a measuring look. She must have measured up, because he straightened.

  “You have a pair of shoes in your bag that won’t do more damage?”

  She gulped some water, nodded, and then started to stand. He stopped her with a shake of his head.

  “Don’t get up. I’ll bring it over.”

  Around another bite of energy bar, she called, “Thanks,” to his retreating back.

  When he returned, she swallowed the last bit of the bar and licked her sticky fingers before rifling through her bag for her Wonder Woman flip-flops. She slipped them on and admired the contrast between the red, white, and blue rubber and her Purple Haze multi-chrome toenail polish.

  “Do you own an article of clothing that doesn’t constitute a disturbance of the peace?”

  She wiggled her toes to see the polish shimmer in the watery light and did her best to hold back a grin. He sounded so disgruntled. “Mama said never blend in.”

  “Trust me, Roxy, you couldn’t blend in if you tried.”

  He spoke the truth, and she knew it. She specialized in left of center. Felt comfortable there most of the time, but his words still hit a sore spot. Not blending in also meant not fitting in. She was a born outsider, but with Bluelick she’d let herself believe things might be different. After all, she had family there. Was it inconceivable to think she might actually belong? Having the local law dash that hope before she even set foot inside the town limits left her depressed.

  And defensive.

  She was fine on her own. Having musicians as parents meant she’d grown up on the road. That kind of life taught a girl to make friends easily—because the road could be lonely—and relinquish them easily—because another gig always beckoned. She had fun while the fun lasted and then made her way down the next sometimes-lonely road. Lonely she could handle. Tying herself to someone else had proved to be the dangerous thing.

  Hiding her feelings, however, had never been a natural talent, so she kept her head down and concentrated on stuffing her boots into her bag and zipping it closed. When she was sure she had a mask of indifference in place, she got out of the car. He didn’t budge an inch, so she shouldered her duffel and stood a bit taller. “Officer Donovan, thanks for the first aid. If we’re all through here, I’ll take my guitar and be on my way.”

  He simply reached out, lifted the bag from her shoulder as if it weighed nothing, and strode to the trunk. “Get in the car. You can ride shotgun, or you can stick with the backseat. Your choice.”

  “In the car? Why?” The questions came out abnormally high-pitched. “I thought you said I wasn’t under arrest?”

  “You’re not. Yet,” he added under his breath when she didn’t move.

  “Look. I like to walk. I prefer to walk. There’s no law against taking a walk along a country road.”

  He closed the trunk. “There’s a law against hitchhiking.”

  “I’m not going to hitchhike anymore,” she said as he approached.

  “That’s right.” He opened the passenger-side door and waited. Patiently. Like a man entertaining absolutely no doubts about the outcome.

  Much as she would have loved to keep arguing, the look on his face suggested any additional words would be a waste of breath. As long as he had Gibson, he had the hammer. She walked to the passenger seat and got in.

  “Buckle up.”

  With that order hanging in the air, he shut the door. The resulting slam sounded disturbingly final.

  Chapter Three

  West got behind the wheel and glanced at his reluctant passenger. Roxy stared out the window. Her hair, now closer to dry, waved with abandon. Beautiful, untamed, and in a state of natural chaos, just like the woman. Chaos worried him. Spending his formative years in one of the worst areas of Baltimore had satisfied his chaos quotient for the duration.

  Stints as a SEAL and in the NYPD had taught him information combated chaos. Using his on-board computer, he keyed in her driver’s license and waited while the system ran a DMV and warrant check. He scanned through results—a whole lot of nothing—while noting her attention.

  She shifted closer to get a view of the monitor. “What are you looking at?”

  Christ, even cagey with nerves, her throaty voice thickened his blood. “You,” he answered a little more curtly than necessary and tapped the screen to scroll to the final page of the report.

  “You ran me?”

  There was that wariness again. He looked up and caught her running her tongue over her lower lip. “You’re clean.”

  Her lip glistened, and he imagined taking his turn dampening the soft, pink flesh. Instead, he started the engine and pulled onto the road. “You seem surprised by that outcome. Something you want to tell me, Roxy?”

  Silence stretched while he drove, and she worried the cuticle of her thumb with the nail of her index finger. He wondered if she might actually level with him, but no, she turned away and resumed staring out the window at the fascinating display of wilderness constituting scenery along Route 9. “Could I have my cigarettes, please?”