Page 5 of No Escape
Her body stilled a moment before she began thrashing beneath me once more.
Keeping my forearm pressed against her back, just between the shoulder blades I kept her face buried into the cushion of the blankets. Reaching to my utility belt, I unhooked the handcuffs from the belt and began the aggravating process of securing her hands behind her back.
“You fighting me isn’t going to change anything,” I growled. Just then, she squirmed underneath me and threw her head back, crunching into my nose. Pain shot across my forehead and through my sinuses, as I heard a faint snap. Not again. My nose, already crooked from previous breaks, throbbed painfully.
It took over five minutes, with more effort than I anticipated, to get her handcuffed with her hands behind her back and able to push myself off her body.
“Causing a fuss won’t help you. You’re caught and you’re going back to California. Just make this easy on both of us and stop putting up a fight.”
“I’m not going back,” she snarled.
“I beg to differ.” Getting off her, I kept a hand fisted around the chain connecting the cuffs and pulled her up and off the bed with me.
As she steadied herself on her feet she turned to look at me. As she turned, I couldn’t resist taking an up-and-down glance at her stunning body. I’d seen her pictures on billboards and appearances in movies and television. The heavily made-up look she presented to the public was nothing compared to the natural beauty she was face-to-face.
The beam of moonlight coming in from the window I’d left open gave just enough light to illuminate her slight curves under a virtually sheer teddy that barely covered her naked pussy and ass. Her nipples were dark and tight, straining against the delicate lace of the gown’s bodice.
My jaw clenched as I gave my head a quick shake, and lifted my gaze to look up and into her alluring blue eyes. The faster I got her back to California and out of my hair the better.
“I have money,” she blurted.
“I have money. I don’t want your money.”
“A lot of it. Just let me go. Whatever they’re paying you to bring me in I’ll double it.” Her eyes went wide—wild—as the direness of her situation sank in. “Triple it even.”
“You’re not the first one to try and buy their way out of this and you won’t be the last. Never worked for them and it won’t work for you now.”
“But I have it. Here.” She pulled at the chains leading me across the room. Deciding to humor her, but also a little bit curious, I allowed myself to be pulled across the room and to the closet.
“In there.” She nodded to the closet. “There’s a bag in there. I’d get it myself, but—” She jiggled the cuffs behind her back.
“Don’t move a muscle.” Releasing the cuffs, I hesitated a moment before opening the closet.
3
ELLE
Iwatched him as he opened the closet. There’s a chance he’d just take the money and still turn me in. Or take it all and take off, leaving me alone. The money was my only hope though. I had to hope his constitution was weak enough that he’d take the money but honorable enough to allow me to go free in exchange.
But what if he wasn’t actually a bounty hunter? He hadn’t shown me any identification. He’d just told me. Maybe he was one of them…
As he leaned down and grabbed the bag, I shot a glance over my shoulder at the door. I could run. If he was just for the money then perhaps he wouldn’t follow, he’d take it and leave.
But where would I go? No money. No ID. In a skimpy nighty. Where in the hell would I go? I certainly wasn’t capable of sleeping on the streets like this. Even with street clothes, would the streets really be preferable to prison if convicted? I’d seen people on the streets in California—dirty, desperate and begging for food.
Money was the only chance I had and it was now in his hands.
As if sensing my thoughts, he placed the bag onto the broken bed and looked up as he unzipped the bag saying, “No funny ideas. You’re not getting far with your hands cuffed behind your back.”
“I wasn’t thinking that at all.”
My sister’s dog began yapping, followed by the tick tick tick sound of his nails on the wood flooring. My sister wouldn’t be far behind.
“Good.”
“I’d like to see a badge or identification. I want to make sure you are who you say you are. And I need my clothes. I can’t just go like this.”
Yip, yip, yip.
