Primal Force

by D. D. Ayres

  “Oh.” He still thought there was an intruder.

  His jaw began to work. “Go ahead. Say it.”

  Jori took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to like her thoughts. She could see it in his expression. But she had seen him moments before. On his face had been the look of a man a million miles away from their reality. Caution told her to take an indirect route.

  “Someone would have to be pretty stupid to break into a law enforcement officer’s home.” She pointed to his holstered gun.

  He grunted as if she had made a joke. “Are you afraid of me now?”

  “No.” And she meant it. Afraid for you. But she couldn’t say that. He wouldn’t thank her for her concern. Not her place to be afraid for him. Her job here was as a trainer. So she’d use that.

  “If you’d stayed for the full ten days of training, you’d know we teach our dogs to do perimeter searches.”

  “But you don’t expect them to ever find anything.” His expression said he knew exactly what she was implying. “The perimeter search training is just a placebo to reassure us paranoid head cases that the Bogeyman isn’t real.”

  His sarcastic tone rubbed her the wrong way. “Our dogs provide a reality check. Don’t underestimate the value of knowing, despite what your senses are telling you, that your dog says there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “But your service dog did just alert.”

  Law walked over to the table and held his hand a scant inch above the closed laptop.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I turned my computer off this morning. It’s warm. Someone turned it on recently.”

  Jori folded her arms. “Or maybe you left it plugged in and the heat is from the battery charging.”

  “Do you see a cord?”

  Jori didn’t. “Why would someone want access to your computer?”

  “Good question.”

  “So, Sam really did alert on an intruder?”

  Instead of answering, he reached into a pocket and produced a few treats. Obviously he wasn’t going to share his thoughts with her. “Sam. Heir. Gute Hund.”

  Jori noticed he’d reverted to German, law professional K-9 command mode.

  Sam didn’t seem to mind. She came forward and got her petting and kibble treats for a job well done from her Alpha.

  “Has she learned much German?”

  Law frowned. “There’s an ongoing debate about how much language a dog really understands. A few words, certainly. It’s more the tone of voice.” He petted Sam absently, as if something else was on his mind. “She did all right. For a doodle.”

  For a doodle. The phrase bothered Jori. It was obvious that Sam was totally devoted to Battise. But Battise had yet to return that full-hearted affection.

  She bent and let Argyle, squirming like a dervish, down onto the wood floor.

  Argyle meowed as if someone had stepped on her tail, became an arched ball of fur that skipped sideways, and then shot across the floor and down an unseen hallway.

  Sam, spying the cat, followed their uninvited guest at a cautious stalking pace.

  Jori sighed. It seemed as if every other living thing in the room was operating off some high-frequency intensity she couldn’t hear.

  “You want a beer?”

  “No thanks.” Jori supposed this was his way of saying the emergency status was over. “I need to get back on the road. I didn’t leave a deposit with the motel in Springdale. I just planned to stop by to let you know I had arrived.”

  “You could have just called.”

  Jori held his gaze. So could you.

  And there it was, the reason they were dancing around each other.

  Not wanting to sound like a woman left behind, she concentrated on the reason she was being paid to be here. “Do you have those moments often, where you need Sam to reset reality for you?”

  He blinked twice, as if calibrating his thoughts. But if she hoped he was going to answer the question, she was disappointed. “Why did you agree to come, Jori?”

  Another, more dangerous question. But if he could ignore questions he didn’t want to answer, she could, too.

  She looked around. “Nice place.”

  “I rent.” The keep out sign went up in his gaze. “It provides the privacy I like.”

  She rounded on him. “I wasn’t hinting that I wanted to stay with you.”

  “Too bad. You would make a nice change from having Sam in my bed.” He hadn’t moved an inch closer but she suddenly felt crowded as he watched her with his lids at half-mast.

  He seemed so calm, so in control. The challenge in his expression said it didn’t matter if she jumped him or walked away. He had six other things on his mind and none of them, or all, might be about her. He wasn’t giving away clues. His cool made Jori want to wipe that smug look off his gorgeous face and replace it with a lustful grin from lips swollen and damp from her kisses.

  He set his Smokey Bear hat on the table then reached to unhook his rig and lay the twenty-plus pounds of his utility belt on the table beside it. “I’m going to make this easy for both of us.”

  When he looked up she didn’t have to wonder what this was. It was there. Direct. Hot and volatile as his sludge-gold gaze. Absolute lust.

  He stopped just inches away and leaned in to bring his lips on a level with her own. “We already know how good it can be between us. That makes it simple. We either act on it. Or we don’t.”

  He reached up and took the tab of the zipper on her vest and began dragging it slowly down. “What about it. Want to get naked?”

  Jori held still. She knew he was trying to steer her away from her assessment of his earlier actions as symptoms of PTSD. The problem was, it was a damn effective tactic. The carnal hunger that she’d been ignoring for three weeks was out of its box and stomping around her bloodstream in military boots.

  He kissed her, expelling his warm breath into her mouth.

  Law’s arms wrapped around her, drawing her up against his muscular length, crushing her to him as he took control of her, and of the hunger scorching through him. He palmed her butt, lifting her to grind his instant erection on her. Then he lowered his head and kissed her again.

  That’s all it took. All her good intentions went down the drain with the touch of his lips. Jori wrapped her arms about his neck to pull him closer.

  Part of Law was more than satisfied by her response. The other part warned him just how far over the line he was headed. He’d only meant to distract her. Expected her to back off. But he couldn’t hang in there when she kissed him like this. His head was in his pants and his dick was doing all the thinking. The urge to push into her and screw them both blind had him trembling.

  What had he been thinking? He could no more control the heat between them than he could fly to Mars.

  Feeling pretty damn desperate, and a split second from taking the decision out of her hands, he pulled back from the primal blaze that was Jori Garrison.

  One second, Jori had half climbed his body. The next, she was dropped back on her heels to steady herself as best she could on legs made liquid by his embrace.

  Winded and a little stunned, she grabbed his arm to keep from dissolving in a puddle at his feet. When she looked up at him, eyes dark with desire, he was sorry he’d touched her. “Why did you do that?”

  “Just curious. You still want me.” He grinned. “Bad.”

  Hard to look at the astonished hurt on her face. Harder still to resist the temptation of her mouth blurred and swelling from his kiss. No surprise when the hurt in her gaze flickered into outrage. He was just pathetically grateful. Without it, they would both have been lost.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. So, I’m horny. You’re horny. Big fat deal. You need my expertise with Samantha more than you need in my panties. Keep it tucked in your pants for the other women in your life. I’ll handle my end.”

  She was doing great. Letting them both off the hook with that jolt of common sense. It was working right up to the mome
nt he got sucker-punched by something as harmless as her lower lip trembling.

  He looked away, his gaze going everywhere, like that of a man overboard searching for a life preserver in a stormy sea. And there it was. His laptop.

  “I have business I need to take care of before we continue…” His eyes tracked back to her. “… with training. Make yourself comfortable.”

  He saw her split-second hesitation before she answered. “Right.”

  Goddammit! She didn’t play fair.

  The urge to reach out and soothe, even to apologize, was so strong he felt the pain of restraining himself. His fists clenched and his chest ached. He’d never felt regret whether he was taking or rejecting a woman. And never, even when he knew he was wrong, had he considered apologizing. What the hell was going on?

  Jori didn’t notice his dilemma. She had turned away, staring blindly for a second. Bastard! She knew better. He’d warned her. Worse, she couldn’t believe she’d practically begged him to continue.

  She sucked in a breath and almost choked on it. “I need some air.”

  She pushed back through the front door and moved quickly across the porch and around the side of the house toward the back, anywhere to get away from him so she could breathe.

  She inhaled early-December air, the chill a welcome relief from the sexual heat of moments before. It took a few seconds for her vision to clear. But gradually the view won her attention.

  The vista was impressive. The land behind the cabin dropped away steeply from an outcropping of shale on which it was built. Below, a thickly wooded valley rippled down and out before climbing the next ridge. Most of the trees had lost their leaves but in the deep underbrush there were still deep veins of green that winter had yet to reap. Higher up, where the foliage had been pruned away by a series of frosty evenings, a throng of trees thrust bare limbs through the slanted sunlight.

  If a car hadn’t passed by under her gaze, she would never have noticed the road that snaked through the ridge across the valley. With her vision adjusted, she soon spotted her SUV, too. Had Battise been watching for her, seen her become stranded on the road, and come to her rescue? Why wouldn’t he just say that?

  She groaned and bent to lay her head on her arms, folded on the railing. What sort of man treated even kindness as a covert operation?

  You don’t know him, Jori. You better not try.

  Good advice. If only she’d take it.

  * * *

  “I didn’t find anything. But that doesn’t matter now. I’ve got something better.”

  Becker grinned to himself as he sat behind the wheel of his truck in a sharp curve of High Sky Inn Road. Dressed in scent-blocker camo pants, a bubble vest, and cap, he looked like any other Arkie who might have pulled off to enjoy the view, or take a leak. The Steiner binoculars resting on his thigh hinted at the real reason for his stop at this particular spot.

  He’d gotten lucky. Now, whether it was good luck or bad would depend on if and how he could capitalize on his new information.

  “Battise has a guest. Called the license plate in. You’re not going to believe this. It belongs to Jori Garrison.”

  He listened carefully to the response, straining to detect the degree of concern in the voice on the other end rather than in the actual words.

  “Hell, yeah, I’m sure. Looking at the woman standing on his deck as we speak.”

  A slight rise in pitch from the voice on the other end. He smiled. That’s what he was listening for.

  “How the fuck should I know? My three days off are up. I’m headed back to Little Rock. We have an agreement. Nothing’s changed.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Law looked over at Jori. “Coffee?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about a little breakfast, too?”

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw her shake her head. “Are you sure? It’s going to be a long boring morning before lunch.”

  “No.”

  He glanced again at her. She was staring straight ahead out the front window of his patrol car at the streets of Springdale clogged with the morning commute. No expression. No apparent interest in him.

  The only thing possibly more hostile toward him was that cat crammed in the travel crate on his backseat. Even Sam, who usually took up the entire backseat, was giving the feline a wide berth. Argyle had already demonstrated her reach through the bars with a paw full of needlelike claws.

  Jori said she couldn’t leave Argyle in the motel room all day. So there was an aluminum pan and a sack of kitty litter in his vehicle. Perfect.

  The day was overcast, threatening rain. Sunrise had yet to have much of an impact on the darkness, making everyone feel like their day had begun much too early. But it was a sunny spring day outside compared with the atmosphere inside his cruiser. Iceberg in his passenger seat.

  He’d picked Jori up at her motel this morning so she could watch him and Sam go through their paces on a normal workday. He’d cleared it with his captain by getting permission for her to do a ride-along. Of course, it was mostly going to be a sit-and-watch-him-at-his-desk-in-the-office-along. He’d said he was working with a wounded warrior program to ensure that their service dogs could function even in a high-energy environment like a state police station. He’d omitted the PTSD issue. As far as he was concerned, Sam had already proven an ideal station dog, quiet, attentive, but never drawing attention to herself. If only her trainer were as easygoing.

  Heat of the moment. That’s what she’d said to him after he’d finished checking his computer the day before and found her on his back deck. She hadn’t even allowed him to begin some version of maybe-I-made-an-error-in-judgment, just-short-of-an-apology speech.

  She’d lifted a hand to silence him, her right eyebrow arching slightly. “Forget it. It happened. It won’t happen again. Heat of the moment.”

  And that was that. After he gassed up her SUV, she’d driven away without even a backward glance.

  Law cursed under his breath as the eighteen-wheeler, three cars in front of him, began rolling forward at a pace a chicken could outrun. At the rate he was creeping along they’d miss the light, again. This wasn’t L.A., Houston, or Manhattan, but the Fayetteville-Springdale half-hour version of rush hour was just as slow, boring, and frustrating.

  When he’d called Jori’s motel at six a.m., he half expected to hear she’d never checked in. But she answered, sounding wide awake.

  So he manned up, told her he was going to the gym for an hour and then he’d be by to pick her up to do her first day of shadowing them.

  All she’d said was, “Fine.” One lousy syllable.

  Since then, she hadn’t spoken a word he hadn’t had to pry out of her.

  Law ground his teeth as the light in front of him turned red for the second time without him getting through the intersection. “Forget this.”

  He turned on his blue lights, pumped his horn a few times, and gave his siren several short blasts.

  He watched as the middle-aged man in the Toyota in front of him glanced in his rearview mirror, jerked in surprise, and then glanced nervously right and left, looking for a way to get out of the state police cruiser’s way. It took a few seconds for other drivers to make their way. But little by little Law was able to nudge his cruiser to the head of the line.

  As the cross traffic slowed, he swung over in the left-turn lane, blasted his siren, and then when traffic halted for him shot through the intersection.

  “Was all that really necessary?”

  Jori’s dry tone hitched up his grin as he swung a glance her way. “Hell, yeah.”

  She just shook her head but he would swear she was pinching off a smile. Okay then. She was angry. He was angry. But she might thaw. She needed something hot—don’t go there. She needed coffee.

  He swung into a convenience store parking lot.

  “You’re not planning on buying coffee here?” She sounded as indignant as if he’d scooped up a cup of mud and offered it to her. It wasn�
�t the thanks he was hoping for.

  “You want the real law enforcement experience, you’re getting it.” He pulled into a space before the store’s bank of picture windows decked out with a few strings of twinkling multicolored Christmas lights. “How do you take it?”

  “I’ll get it.” She pushed her door open and was out before he could move.

  Sam nudged her head through the back window to watch her exit.

  Law reached up to cup a friendly hand under her chin. “That didn’t go the way I planned. Women. I swear the sex is alien.”

  But he smiled as he watched her walk toward the store. She was mad as hell at him. She had every right. But that didn’t stop him from looking, or appreciating, or wanting.

  Her khaki cargo pants fit tight across her gorgeous ass. That flare emphasized her narrow waist. The way her braid bounced down her back had him hard within seconds. All those things—and more, the woman herself—would be sitting inches away from him for the rest of his shift. Untouchable.

  He sighed. It was going to be a long day.

  Rodeo-ing his way through traffic lights wasn’t like him. Letting off steam and showing off in public wasn’t his way. But something about Jori had him flexing his fingers on the steering wheel, edgy and needing to work off his frustration. Maybe he’d hit the gym again at lunch hour.

  He reached over to check his computer when he realized Jori hadn’t moved very much since she’d entered the store. She was stock-still, staring in the direction of the checkout counter.

  At that moment she turned her head back toward him. Her eyes were wide with alarm.

  Something cold slid down Law’s spine. Time slowed as he tracked back along her gaze, taking in every detail of the scene all at once.

  A man stood at the counter. Short. Slim. In a gray hoodie. He could have been paying for a Slurpee except that his right hand was moving about wildly while his left was stuffed in his hoodie pocket. Was he hiding a gun, a knife? The cashier was busy at the register, stuffing what appeared to be money in a plastic bag. Several customers stood well back instead of forming a line.