She only turned away and stopped speaking. Rollo was at his wits end. They needed to be on the same side. Maybe he should have taken her down to the station in the first place. But now it was too late for that.
He was standing with her naked in the forest, holding her against her will. He couldn’t take that back now. He had to see this thing through. He grabbed the jewels off the forest floor. If she could just trust him and tell him the truth, if she could just believe that he could protect her from Dimitri Ivanov, they could put an end to this game.
“I’m going to have to keep you here until you tell me what’s going on. You understand that, right?” he asked her.
“I’ll never tell you anything, Rollo Morris. Just let me go.”
“Have it your way, little kitty,” he said, leading her through the forest toward the cabin.
When he looked back at her, as the yellow morning sun shone across her tanned face, he could swear he saw her smirk at him. Maybe this was a game that Zoe Bright didn’t mind playing.
11
So he had never been more turned on her in her life, or more pissed off. The more Rollo acted like some kind of protective jailer, the more she wanted him to play out his sexy little role. But he didn’t do it. He just kept asking her to tell him about Dimitri Ivanov. She couldn’t tell Rollo about her involvement with Dima.
If she turned evidence against her ex-lover, she knew she would be dead. He and his gang would find her, no matter where in world she ran, no matter what name she went by. Dimitri Ivanov would find her, and he would kill her. He would probably kill Rollo too.
Rollo had no idea what he was dealing with. Her sexy grizzly mate was a small town cop who thought he was doing what was best for everyone. She kept jabbing him about holding her against her will, but she knew exactly why he was doing it. He wanted to find a way to get her off the hook. But that would require her giving him concrete evidence about Dimitri Ivanov’s criminal activity. That was something she just couldn’t do.
It wasn’t out of some sort of sense of loyalty to Dima. Far from it. Her motivation was pure, unadulterated fear of the man. She had seen him shoot people in the face for lesser offenses, right in front of her.
He hurt her repeatedly. Not to mention the psychological torture he inflicted every day, reminding her what he would do to her if she failed again. He executed people who failed him, and he never missed a chance to show her exactly how cruel he could be.
She couldn’t turn him in. She couldn’t give Rollo any ammunition against the man, or it would put them both in danger. Rollo thought he was protecting her, but she was really protecting him. When they passed through the front yard of the cabin and in the door, she noticed the buck lying on the gravel below the stairs.
“Nice kill,” she said as Rollo pulled her into the cabin.
“I got it for you,” he said, pushing her into a chair.
“Ah, some girls get diamonds, and I get a dead buck.”
“You want to eat, don’t you?” he asked, tying her wrists to the chair with rope.
He had each arm tied down to one side of the chair, making it almost impossible for her to reach her claws over to the other wrist to saw herself out of the rope. Damn him. Hot puffs of his breath blew over her naked back as he restrained her to the chair. She would have to find some other way out of this. If only she weren’t so freaking turned on right now.
He straightened and walked around in front of her, looking down at her muddy, naked body. She slowly widened her legs until her pussy was only slightly revealed. He growled, showing his sharp teeth and the light of his animal in his eyes. She pursed her lips at him and then smiled.
“What about that buck?” she said.
He was naked himself and obviously as aroused as she was. She could smell the desire pumping out of his loins. He’d been hard since he’d caught her and stood before her almost completely erect. She bit her lip, imagining what he could do to her right now as she sat tied in this chair. God, she wanted him.
She wished he would just take her and mark her and be done with it. She didn’t want to think anymore, she just wanted to feel the heat of his body sliding into her wet softness over and over again until she screamed his name and scared the birds in the trees above the cabin into the sky.
“Right,” he said, pulling a sharp knife from the kitchen table.
Zoe balked at the sight of the knife, her arousal quickly turning to fear. Rollo frowned and lowered the knife to his side. He tilted his head and sniffed the air.
“I’ll go get our breakfast,” he growled. “After we eat we should get some sleep.”