He flicked a glance at the cowboy and pasted on a smile. “I love it when you push my buttons, baby. I had something more in mind for your birthday, but we can sure as hell start with a kiss.”
The dialogue sounded false even to her tipsy senses. True to his hands-off approach now, Jonathon wasn’t putting his heart into his work. Well, she’d see what she could do about that.
She went up on her toes, arching into him, and with her hands on his whisker-roughened cheeks, brought his mouth down for a real kiss. Not surprised that he kept his firm lips closed, she thrust her tongue in, forcing him to let her in, excited by her own aggressiveness. It reminded her of their first kiss back at her house, only this time she didn’t cut the kiss short. She tasted him, toyed with his tongue and sucked it, hard and deep, until he wrapped his hand around the back of her head and took over the kiss. He buried his tongue in her mouth, stabbing at her with it, as she felt his cock harden against her stomach. If this was supposed to feel punishing, it wasn’t doing the job. It felt exhilarating. The whiskey, the song, maybe even the fear he’d once warned her about, were making her so hot for this man, she would have let him take her on the table if he wanted to.
Apparently, though, despite the erection and what she knew had been a hot and heavy kiss, he did not feel the same. He pulled away, and his lips traveled up to her ear to whisper, “Cut out this bullshit. We don’t have time for it.”
“Maybe I want to make time for it, Donny.” She concentrated on his mouth now nipping her earlobe, his hand rubbing her back. “Maybe I’m getting my priorities straight here and if I’m going to be in any more gun volley before this nightmare ends—”
He kissed her all of the sudden, as if to shut her up, then kept his face close to hers, murmuring, “Use your quiet voice, baby.”
For all that she knew he was mocking her, his erection didn’t lie. The excited little breaths he took didn’t lie. He was as turned-on as she was. So maybe she should be in charge of this juncture of their travel plans.
She whispered against his lips, “If I’m going to be shot at, I’d like to get my birthday sex in first, if you don’t mind.” She pulled back and said, full voice, “If you don’t feel up to it, I can take that cowboy upstairs instead. The sign said there were rooms available.”
Veronica wriggled out of Jonathon’s hold before he could stop her and headed for the cowboy, who had heard what she said and was grinning. Jonathon nabbed her arm at the last second and tugged her back. Bringing his mouth to her ear again, he snapped, “I let you drink that whiskey because I thought it’d help you sleep in the car. Not because I wanted you to act out your adolescent libido on me or anybody else.”
She jerked back— adolescent libido —and with the hand he wasn’t restraining, slapped him, hard, startled by how loud a noise it made.
Jonathon dropped his hands from her immediately and his green eyes shuttered. If she had expected him to play her wounded lover and punch out the cowboy or even play himself and drag her to the car so they could get back on the road, she was wrong on both counts.
Instead he watched her coldly. “Fine. Go on, then.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe if somebody doesn’t want me, I’ll find somebody else who does!”
“For Christ’s sake, go on, then.”
She stood uncertainly while he glanced at his watch then made an impatient gesture in the direction of the cowboy.
The cowboy looked between them in confusion but then sidled up to her and said in a low voice, “I don’t know what you two are into, but if he’s serious, I got a room upstairs as a matter of fact, honey.”
He drifted his hand in the vicinity of her shoulder and more boldly around to her waist. Tempted to jerk away—there was nothing unpleasant about his touch; it just wasn’t who she wanted to be touched by—instead she took his hand. “Let’s have a dance first.”
The juke box was on to another song, a slower love ballad about somebody doing somebody wrong, and the cowboy stepped right into Veronica to dance with their bodies as close as she and Jonathon had been when they were making out.
“I’m Ed,” the cowboy offered.
She let him set the swaying motion, but tried to put some distance between them, though he barely let her. She felt his breath at her temple. “I’m a little tipsy, Ed.”
Jonathon was still standing by the booth, his arms folded across his broad chest. The blonde waitress went to stand next to him and said something that caused him to laugh.
“So, ah,” Ed ventured, “was you serious back there or you just trying to make him jealous? I guess what I mean is, was your man serious there or is he going to beat the shit out of me if I try to take you upstairs?”
“I don’t know what he’s going to do,” she muttered. “But I need another whiskey.”
“What say I grab a bottle and we take it up to my room? You think we could get behind a locked door without your boyfriend breaking one of our necks?”
She nodded in Jonathon’s direction as he watched them and talked in low tones with the waitress. “He doesn’t look pissed off, does he? It looks like he’s just found himself a dance partner, too.”
Ed glanced back over his shoulder. “He’s an idiot, then. You should get the hell away from him. He’s trouble.”
“You have no idea how right you are.”
Ed stopped dancing. “No, really. I know you probably was just trying to make him jealous, but let me take you out of here. You don’t want to be here.” He steered her toward the stairs in the back of the bar. “I got my car keys upstairs and we can be gone from here before your asshole boyfriend even realizes it.”
Her asshole boyfriend was beside her in a second, stopping them. Veronica felt a flush of pleasure until he said to Ed, “Just give me a minute. Then you can have her.”
Jonathon pulled her into a dark corner by the restroom.
Okay, maybe the whiskey was making her horny and pushy and slow on the uptake, but why the hell was everybody pulling at her all the time?
When Jonathon leaned over her, glaring, she flung down the gauntlet. “So, I can go with him?”
“Sure. You seem to be dying for a fuck. I know you were expecting a whore when I showed up, and you don’t seem to be able to change gears very easily. So, go on. Get it out of your system. Maybe then you’ll stop with all this high school crap of trying to give me a hard-on every five seconds.”
She shook her foggy head. “You don’t seem to need much help on that account. If I had to guess, I’d say you have a very high testosterone level. Which is why it’s a safe bet you’re bluffing.”
“Like hell I am,” he countered. “Afraid I’ll have to watch, though, since I can’t in good conscience let you out of my sight. At least I’ll be aware enough to react if somebody jumps us.” Then he muttered a little softer, “Is that sexy enough for you? You want me to watch you fuck him? Is that it?”
She looked uncertainly back to her cowboy, who was lingering a few feet away. Then back to him. To Jonathon. Her protector.
At the thought, she felt so childish and silly. But she had pushed him too far because he said, “You know what? To hell with it.”
Before she knew it, Jonathon was slapping down a fifty on the bar, accepting a key from the barkeep-hotel clerk and yanking her up the stairs.
Ed was right behind them, though, grabbing his elbow. “Hey, there’s no cause to manhandle her.”
Jonathon shrugged him off, with a shove that had Ed struggling to keep his balance. “Back off,” he warned. “We just had a lover’s quarrel, that’s all, and you don’t want to get in the middle of this.”
Ed stood there uncertainly.
“I’m fine,” Veronica thought to add.
“But your date with her is off, buddy. Got it?”
Ed watched them both just a second more before he nodded, going back down the stairs, muttering something about a “fucking tease getting what she deserved”.
As soon as they were in the room Jonathon
had rented at the top of the stairs, he slammed the door behind them, clicked the lock and nudged Veronica up against the wall. He kicked her legs open in a move that caused her a swift pang of longing and kissed her, roughly, one hand greedy at her breast and the other at her ass.
Oh, God, that felt good.
When he let her up for air, he whispered, “Do you know how hard it is keeping my hands off you?”
In stark contrast to his words, he let go of her and stepped back. “You want a fuck? Obviously, so do I. No need to get that cowboy down there involved. So, let’s get going.” He unbuckled his belt and nodded toward the bed. “But we’ve had more than enough foreplay in our short acquaintance, wouldn’t you say? So, come on, we need to make this quick.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and flung a handful of condoms on the night table, the ones he must have purchased back at the other hotel. At her look of surprise, he said, “You didn’t notice that, did you? I took them. Just in case. Or are you offering me bare-backed, since you’re feeling so adventurous and all now, laughing in the face of danger and all that crap?”
His no-nonsense tone was clearing her whiskey-soaked head a bit. She just stood there.
“I thought, hoped I guess, we might get together, which is why I brought the condoms. Of course, I didn’t intend for it to be in the middle of us trying to get away, in a town I got no idea whether is safe or not, after we’ve just called attention to ourselves so that everybody in the whole damn bar could identify us. But hell, you only live once, right?”
His hand was still on his open belt buckle.
She looked around at the shabby room and felt so ashamed.
What was wrong with her? Was she trying to cause some high school drama, just as he’d accused her of doing downstairs, so she could forget about how serious the drama she was in really was?
He was right. They had called attention to themselves. She had called attention to them.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
He sighed and tipped her chin up. “I want you, Veronica. Of course, I want you.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not right. I’m dying for you. I am. That’s never happened to me on a job before. If I’m lashing out at you, it’s because I’m so unused to it. But if I make love to you and end up getting you killed, you know what? No matter how good it is, it won’t be worth it.”
Well, she had to agree with him on that one.
All the drunken bravado left her. She felt deflated. “I don’t know why I keep baiting you.”
He stepped over to the window to look out and said over his shoulder, “You’re tired and you’re scared and I’m not helping.” The last he almost seemed to say to himself. “The fact is, we can’t just keep driving while I wait until I feel it’s safe to stop. I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t felt that, not the whole time we’ve been driving. I don’t know why, but I haven’t. And I never ignore my gut. I’m going to have to go to plan B.”
“Which involves what?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
Something just occurred to her. “What did Ed mean about me getting what I deserve, do you think?”
“What?”
“Ed, the cowboy. That’s what he said as he left.”
Jonathon froze and looked toward the door.
“What is it?” she asked.
He shook his head, signaling her to keep quiet. She didn’t hear anything particular.
She wondered if he was waiting for someone to knock. But Jonathon’s attentive stance and the hand he slipped into his jacket were giving her the sense it wasn’t room service he was worried about. Jonathon slid his gun out from his jacket, pointing it up, ready. Yep, probably wasn’t room service.
Her heart sank.
He nodded his head toward the closet door. She glanced at it then back to Jonathon. He gestured for her to get in it.
Oh, no. No way was she going to leave him alone to face whatever he thought was out there. To whatever was out there. Sadly enough, by now she trusted his instincts, too.
It was all her fault that they were here in this room and not safe out on the road. She would face whatever she’d gotten them into.
She shook her head and moved closer to him just as the knob on the door to the hallway turned.
Jonathon had locked that door. She knew he had. But there was a jiggling sound, as if someone was unclicking the lock.
He pushed her behind him, both of them flat against the wall right next to the door that was about to open.
When it did, just the slightest bit, Jonathon yanked the man on the threshold inside, kicked the door closed and put the muzzle of the gun to his head so quickly Veronica almost didn’t catch the movement.
The guy, in dirty jeans and a frayed corduroy jacket, could have just been somebody mistaking this for his room, except for the fact that he had picked the lock to get in and had a gun in his hand, too, which Jonathon divested him of and tossed to Veronica. She caught it awkwardly. Not knowing what to do with it, she kept it pointed to the floor, as if it might go off any minute. It felt heavy in her hand.
“Put your hands up,” Jonathon ordered the man. “Now, who are you?”
“I’m just, ah, I thought this was my room and I…”
Jonathon held the gun steady. “Two seconds for you to tell me. Who are you?”
“Nobody,” the guy squealed. “Nobody!”
“Why did you pick the lock and come in here with a gun?”
“I thought it was empty. I was going to rob it.”
“You’re a dead man,” Jonathon muttered, ice in his voice.
Veronica did not want to see any more blood and could not help but cry, “Wait! Please!”
“Stay out of this.”
He spoke to her as coldly as he was speaking to the skinny, vacant-eyed and pasty-faced young man who was sweating bullets.
“Tell me why you came in here and I just might let you live.”
The gunman took a deep breath. “You’re being paranoid, man. I was just going to toss the room.”
“Two seconds,” Jonathon barked.
“Okay! Okay! Somebody don’t like you and I was paid to, ah, I mean they don’t want you to, ah, get back on the road, I guess you’d say. But I can lead you to them. I swear.”
The man let out a laugh. Veronica focused on his blood-shot eyes and deduced he was high.
But that didn’t mean he had to die.
“Whoever you’d lead me to wouldn’t do me any good.” The gun was still at the would-be assassin’s head and at the news that he had nothing to bargain with, the guy’s eyes went wider and he seemed to sweat even more, drops falling from his gaunt cheeks into big plops on the floor.
“God, Jonathon! I just…I mean, can’t we just leave him?” she begged. “Get out of here?”
Her pleas were enough to distract him, so that he glanced at her. And just that second of interference was enough for the other man to pull out a wicked-looking knife from his inside jacket pocket and stab up at the hand holding a gun to his head. Jonathon’s reflexes were too quick, and he yanked his hand away in time to avoid the slashing blade, but in the process the junkie managed to kick the gun from Jonathon’s hand and lunge with the knife. Jonathon rammed his attacker’s hand hard against the wall and the knife dropped. But the junkie seemed to have abnormal strength for his skinny frame and launched forward. Suddenly the two men were fighting, hand to hand, grappling with each other, rolling on the floor. Veronica had a sudden vision of the faceless man they had left back in that other motel room, only now his hair was a deep black.
The junkie managed to grab his knife again and was trying to slash at Jonathon. They wrestled, Jonathon’s gun too far away for him to reach.
That knife blade was going to—
She hadn’t even aimed the shot. It aimed itself, the heavy gun held aloft in both her hands, pointed toward the man with the knife raised to stab Jonathon. Blood gushed from the b
ack of the junkie’s head and he slumped to the floor.
She dropped the gun and scrunched her eyes closed. Jonathon scrambled up, searching the bleeding man’s pockets.
“Is he dead?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
She sank to the floor for just a second before he helped her up, shoving a piece of paper into his jacket pocket along with his gun and the dead man’s gun.
He hustled her out the door as she asked numbly, “Why are you taking his gun? I thought you left the guns.”
“Only if they’re carried by a spy since they could have a tracker.”
There was a back stairway so they could get out of the bar without anyone seeing them.
After collecting the satchel containing Veronica’s computer from the car, Jonathon broke the driver-side window of a truck next to it with his elbow. He opened the door, brushed the glass off the seat and pushed her inside before sliding in beside her. He leaned below the dashboard and fiddled with wires.
“The man I shot”—her voice broke—“wasn’t a spy?”
The engine started and Jonathon gunned it, going from zero to seventy more quickly than she had imagined a domestic make could go. They were back on the highway just that fast.
“No,” he said after a minute. “He was a garden variety thug. The piece of paper he had in his pocket had the name of that bar and our descriptions on it. There must be a contract out on us since they can’t trace us through the normal way.”
“They? Who’s they?”
“I don’t know. But they, whoever they are, probably put out feelers for us in the bluntest way. A bounty for whoever got a six-foot-two dark-haired man and a five-foot-eight blonde. Fuck, they’ve probably already killed some poor saps who vaguely match our description.”
She groaned, her arms around her knees, and he glanced at her. “Sorry. I’m just kidding. Put your seat belt on.”
She obeyed on auto-pilot.
“All I mean is a contract, especially in this situation, is a very imprecise weapon. It shouldn’t, under normal circumstances, cause us much of a problem. But I must be more tired than I gave myself credit for to let a guy like that get the best of me.”
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