“Yes. That would be fine. And any other information you need.”
Logan nodded. “We’ll be in touch.”
Jill pushed her hair off her brow with the back of her hand. It felt a thousand degrees inside the café even with the air conditioning running full blast. A dozen trips from the dining area into kitchen, where the temperature soared like an oven in the late afternoon, made her drip with sweat.
The small restaurant was empty now, except for the lone man in the corner by the window—the one in the T-shirt and jeans. He read the paper from page one to the end, then folded it neatly on the table. He continued reading through some papers he pulled from a envelope, than he put those back inside the leather jacket that hung over the back of his chair. It was much too warm for leather in the LA heat. And even in jeans, the man seemed out of place in a beach town where in June the population had begun wearing shorts and bikinis several weeks before, and would until the end of September. But it was more than his clothes that made him different. Despite his casual attire, he had a sophisticated air about him, and a way of combing his untidy black hair away from his angular face in a gesture of sublime contentment.
Jill had plenty of time to examine the man as he sipped three cups of coffee and casually ate his bagel sandwich. He seemed more like a latter day god than a real man. He made her uneasy. The way his brows narrowed over his eyes made them unusually intense, frightening, deep and brooding. Although he was pleasant enough when they spoke and his smile was surprisingly kind, he provoked feelings of conflict, distrust and arousal in his conscientious waitress. The way she was both drawn to him and repelled, she had to force her herself to stay away.
“Anything else you’d like?” Jill asked, as she made another pass by his table. In her effort to nonchalantly collect coffee cups and plates from a nearby table, she dropped several with a noisy clatter.
“Sorry,” she said, squatting down to gather the mess at his feet. She looked up at the stranger with a self-conscious smile.
“You’re Jillian Ingalls?”
The question came like a thunderbolt our of a clear blue sky.
“What?”
“Jillian Ingalls, right?”
“How would you know me?”
“I know Christopher Hurst. We need to talk.”
Her face instantly flamed. And her desire to flee became an overwhelming need. If she’d been on her feet, maybe. Instead, her squatting legs, collapsed under her and she fell awkwardly toward the side. She scrambled to rise, and did so with surprising ease, only to find that the firm grip of the man’s right hand aided her recovery.
“I think you should sit down. You’ve been running all afternoon. You’re tired. No one’s here for you to wait on, so take a load off those aching feet.”
He didn’t threaten, but earnest sincerity poured from him like the current of a mighty river. Her nerves responded with a thrilling shiver, and yet she was anxiously wary of his veiled demand and the unyielding hand on her wrist. She wanted to flee, as irrational as that seemed—or maybe it was not so irrational. “I’m sorry, but I’m working.” He’d still not broken his grasp.
“Sit down, Jillian.” Again, he spoke like he had the right to command her, and she unthinkingly sat because if felt as if she had no other choice.
“What do you have to do with Christopher Hurst?”
“He hired me to find you.”
“He did?”
“Yes. He tells me he’s frantic without you. Bewildered, lost, and I believe very angry. He wants answers and he wants you back.”
“Well, he’s not getting me back!”
“No?” His smile was sly and dangerously sweet.
“No. I’ve left him. What’s done is done. It’s over; please tell him so.” She started to rise, only to have the man grab her wrist and hold her down.”
“That may be what you believe, Miss Ingalls, but I assure you, you are going back.”
“And how is that? You plan to kidnap me?”
“I don’t think I’ll have to.”
“Really?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it.”
So cool. So certain. So engaging. His face, the small growth of beard on his chin and lip, the sexy, almost retro 50’s hair, the brooding, feral eyes.
“Who are you?”
He smiled slightly, like he was trying to be pleasant. “In colloquial terms, I’m a bounty hunter, Miss Ingalls. I have a warrant for your arrest in my jacket pocket. All legal. You’ll be coming with me.”
“What? What am I charged with? I left the man. There’s no crime in that.”
“There is when you take property that doesn’t belong to you, when you renege on a legally binding contract. Christopher Hurst claims he owns you.”
“He can’t!”
“I’m afraid he can to some extent. The charges of theft and breach of contract will stick. Fight me all you want, but I will win.”
“No! You’re not winning anything.” Furious, Jill bolted from her chair, only to be caught again by the man’s steely grasp.
“Don’t do that again.” He leveled her with an imperious stare. “I’m bigger than you and stronger than you, and if I have to, I will call the cops. They’ll put you in handcuffs in front of anyone who’s here to watch, and then grant me legal custody so I can do what I was hired to do—take you back to face your accuser.”
She sat back down, guts on fire, her stomach so queasy she was about to retch. She could hardly breath.
“I want to see those papers. Now!” Her hands fidgeted nervously in front of her.
“By the way, my name’s Logan Dunn.”
“I don’t care what name you go by. I want to see those papers!”
Afraid of her becoming hysterical, Logan’s mood softened. “Of course,” he said calmly, as he turned in his chair and reached into his jacket for the documents, which he handed to her across the table.
For several minutes, Jillian leafed through the dozen pages, her eyes riveted and searching.
“He says I stole $3000 dollars. I did not!” Her eyes flared. “And this… this is a lie. The jewelry belonged to my mother, not him!”
“It’s not my place to try you, Miss Ingalls, just bring you in.”
“I’m calling an attorney.”
“You have the money for that?”
“No. But I’ll find it if I have to.”
“You were the man’s sex slave,” the bounty hunter changed the subject completely—deliberately, to keep her off balance.
“What!”
“I have a copy of the service contract you signed. It’s a legally binding contract. You’re obliged to work for the man. Of course, the contract doesn’t specifically speak of sex in the agreement; it would hardly do that. But you know how your arrangement worked, and you were in full agreement until whatever possessed you to change your mind and leave.”
“I was NOT his sex slave!” she practically shrieked.
The cook peered out the kitchen door, concerned.
“You okay, Jill?”
She settled down. “Yeah, sure. I’m all right. I’m taking a break.”
“Hey,” he shrugged looking at the empty room. “Okay with me.”
“Thanks,” she said with a faint smile, which instantly faded as she looked back at Logan Dunn.
“You could to speak to a lawyer or we could find the local constabulary. But it’s not going to make any difference. You’ll be going with me in the end. I’d recommend that you accept the inevitable and go without a fight. Whatever freedom you thought you’d earned ends here. Might as well fight windmills as go against Christopher Hurst in a court of law. Against a man of his power and money, you’ll lose everything, not just your freedom, but your self-respect. You’ll turn him into a vindictive enemy, which you don’t want.”
She looked at him despairingly; afraid that everything he said was true. “But why would he want me back? It makes no sense.”
“He loves you.”
/>
“Like hell he loves me! The man’s a bastard, not a lover!”
“Maybe. But I have some pretty awesome pictures of you in my possession. He wasn’t always the bastard to you.”
“What pictures are those?” Worry raised her brows in wonder.
“I can show them to you, but not here.”
“Where then?”
“Anywhere that’s private, you name the place.”
She looked outside to the busy street, her brain a whirring dervish of activity.
“The public library is just down the street. I’m off in a half hour, I’ll meet you there.”
He shook his head. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait for you here.”
“You think I’ll run off,” she concluded.
He laughed. “Gee, I wonder why?”
“If you tracked me this far, I’m sure you can track me again.”
“True. But I’d rather not have to chase you again. Moving targets aren’t easy to find. And I start to get really pissy when my runaways try to pull a fast one on me.”
“Okay, then wait,” she told him. She scooted off the chair and moved to the back of the café to wait on a customer who had just come through the back door. Her mind was a mass of confusion as she wondered what he meant by ‘pissy’. Whatever, her legs felt like jelly, almost too weak to hold her upright. The feeling of doom spread through her like a death shroud, even as an illogical feeling of lust seemed to swell in her as well.
She’d always thought of libraries as esoteric lairs, places where secrets are lost and later found. They’d always had a sexual attraction for her—of course, she might just be remembering the hallowed ground of Christopher’s library and office, and the anteroom nearby where he’d sneakily take her when the whim struck. There were some similarities, and that same erotic feeling stirred her gut when she walked into the public library with Logan Dunn at her side.
The last half hour in the café had been miserable, as she felt the bounty hunter’s uncanny eyes undress her as he waited. He studied her as if she were a rare painting of unusual quality—but with an air judgment and smug superiority.
Jill finally gave up trying to act normal, and asked her boss if she could quit early. No problem, he told her.
“Let’s go,” she said to Logan, tossing her apron on the counter and grabbing her purse. She started out the door abruptly and didn’t wait for him to catch up.
Seconds later, they were striding side by side in a natural gait, saying nothing.
Once inside the library, they chose a corner in the back of the industrial arts section, where few people would bother them. They sat like romantic lovers, across from each other at a small table crammed into a four by four foot niche.
One by one, Logan pulled photographs from a manila envelope and tossed them in front of her—his evidence. Each picture was an accusation, evidence of the truth. She shuddered as she acknowledged each one with a pang of remorse. Each image was alarmingly more provocative than the last one. She hadn’t realized that Christopher had photographed nearly every important moment of their lives… holidays, her graduation, daily scenes of them working together—seemingly in an affectionate way. But always the angle, the juxtaposition of their bodies, or the expressions on her face skewed the truth of what she honestly felt at the time. Anyone who didn’t know her could only assume by these photographs that she was genuinely in love with the man. The look in her eyes, the way she laughed, the longing glance. How could he have captured so many tender moments when there simply weren’t that many in their miserable history? Then, with a shocking suddenness that almost hurt her eyes, Logan pulled from the envelope a series of sexually blatant pictures taken of her giving him head and getting fucked in various positions. He must have had hidden cameras in both their bedrooms, anteroom and library. Finally, the bounty hunter pulled from his stash the most damaging photographs of her elaborate bondage rituals—including the one in the woods, where she’d been lifted into ecstasy by the intricately knotted ropes.
“My God! How did you get these?” she asked with a desperate edge in her voice.
“How else? Mr. Hurst gave them to me when he hired me to find you.”
“He did a very good job of obscuring the facts.”
“And what facts are those?”
“That I despised him.”
“Is that so? Amazing how he could get you to lie so well and in so many ways. You hardly look as if you hate him.” He pointed to one image where she was heavily bound, her breasts obscenely tied with rope, her cunt tied open, her limbs stretched to the four corners of his bed, and her mouth tightly gagged with cloth. At the moment the picture was taken by a photographer on the sidelines, her eyes were fixated on Christopher’s beseeching face. His eyes were fixated in return, in a stare that was as frightening as it was telling. Even with her mouth gagged, Jill could see the mirth in her expression—and his. The picture had been taken at that wondrous moment following a hard session of physical torture when she was most accepting of the man who offered her such exquisite sexual bliss.
“Some things weren’t a lie. But the idea that I loved him is.”
“It will take more than that lame argument to convince me. But the truth is, it’s not my place to judge these things. Whether you loved him or not isn’t the point. He’s paid me to find you and that’s all I really need to do my job. Of course, he’s made a decent legal case to bring you back, and it’s always reassuring when I’m on solid ground with the law. But legal or not, you’re going back and what happens to you when you’re returned to his custody is not my concern.”
“Returned to his custody?”
“Oh, you might spend a few nights in jail, but I doubt it. You’ll be released to Mr. Hurst. Given the arrangement you had, I imagine his friend the judge will let him take care of the consequences for your bad behavior.”
“The arrangement?”
“The Dominant/submissive one.”
“Yes. I suppose it looks that way. But there was nothing to legally bind me to him—at least not in that way. Slavery is against the law.”
“That’s true. But sometimes the law looks the other way; you’re certainly smart enough to know that. Chances are, your Mr. Hurst has some sleaze ball of a judge in his back pocket. You are his slave in his eyes. You agreed to his rules and then you broke them. If he can convince a judge of his story, you might as well kiss your freedom goodbye.”
She sighed as if the weight of a thousand days were on her shoulders. “Well, we’ll just see how far you get taking me back with you, Mr. Logan Dunn. I have no intention of cooperating with your scheme.”
Her statement altered his mood in seconds. “I don’t need your cooperation,” he said, his voice firm, his resolve steely and cold. “I’m well within my rights to hogtie and gag you until I return you. I’d rather not do that, but I will if I have to.” He stared into her shimmering eyes relishing the way they brightened with alarm as he made his threat. Her chin quivered. Her whole body seemed to shake. Ah, yes! This was his payoff. It always happened in the first few minutes of an apprehension, when reality struck like an ax-wielding thug, shaking its victim to her core.
The bigger truth made him even more thrilled—he knew the woman loved the moment as much as he did. It might take a few days, maybe a week, maybe longer for the girl to realize that fact. Rarely would he be around to hear a runaway admit the truth. But he knew what was in the heart of a submissive woman. And just seconds in Jillian Ingalls presence confirmed her naturally surrendering nature. He’d provoked her inner fire. And she was teaming with the struggle he found in every runaway slave. And in her, the expression of conflict was as thrilling to him as any he’d seen in several years. The desire to submit pitted against their brief experiment in rebellion, compounded by their feelings of self-doubt, remorse and guilt made these runaways a breed of woman unlike any other. He loved them all.
Staring at her accuser, Jillian’s tummy fluttered wi
th lust. The way he spoke, the mention of bondage, the look in his eyes, the air of indifference caused the juices in her hungering crotch to flow like a stream of molten lava. She felt her panties dampen as the feeling expanded to include her entire body. She felt as if she might melt into a pool of liquid sex there in the library, in the hushed, empty quite of their secluded corner.
She still had a thousand questions clawing in her brain, seeking answers. But there was only one she was able to ask.
“What kind of man are you anyway? This is this your job? Chasing after women who don’t want to be caught like a vigilante, a self-appointed god?”
“If you didn’t want to be caught, you wouldn’t have been so easy to find.”
“Easy to find?” She lived in a needle-in-a-haystack world, one of thousands of women hiding out or looking for elusive fame in the arid Southern California valleys between the mountains and the ocean. “Here? In LA?”
“I guess you didn’t know that you hitched a ride with a celebrity?”
“Johnny?”
“I found him, and he led me right to you. I just had to play catch up until you landed here.”
“Johnny, a celebrity?”
“Not a particularly important one, but he’s known in the world of biking.”
“Just my luck,” she sighed bitterly before turning her eyes on him again. “But back to my question, bounty hunter, what kind of man goes after women who’ve done nothing wrong but get on the pissed-off side of a rich jerk?”
“It pays, Miss Ingalls. Pays very well. And better than that, the job satisfies my fascination for an underground I love. I believe that women like you who enter into arrangements like yours with Christopher Hurst thrive on, beg for, even subconsciously create moments like this one. They can’t help themselves. Being taken is their obsession.”
“I did nothing to create this moment!”
“But it’s really a moot point here. You may rant and rave and protest all you like—that’s your game. Fact is: you fit the profile as well as any runaway I’ve apprehended. If I thought you were going to be abused or mortally wounded, or really didn’t want what Christopher Hurst gives you, I wouldn’t have taken the job. If my conversation with you disputed the facts he gave me, I might have even changed my mind. But what I’ve seen in you only confirms the truth. The pictures don’t lie and neither can you, sitting there getting all squishy inside your panties. You’re going back with me and that’s that. We might as well start now.”
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