***
After just a few hours of sleep, Jason’s eyes shot open. He drew in some ragged breaths and slowly realized that there were no sounds of inmates banging on cell bars or crying in their sleep. Don’t go there, he told himself, as he came more fully awake. If he dwelt on the past eight years—eight years he’d never get back, he’d lose focus. He’d gotten too far now to let his anger get the best of him.
The warm, soft body curled up against him brought him quickly back to the matter at hand. He was in a hotel room with Angela Chack. Her soft breasts were pressed against his arm. Her head rested on his shoulder and he inhaled the clean scent of her hair.
Big mistake.
A jolt of awareness shot through him. He’d told her she wasn’t his type but that was a lie. There wasn’t anything about her that didn’t light him up. He enjoyed watching the subtle sway of her hips when she walked. The sound of her voice soothed him. Her green eyes mesmerized and the feel of her against him was too much to bear.
He placed a hand on her shoulder and tried to gently move her away, but instead, she rolled on top of him and kissed him, a soft feathery kiss on the edge of his mouth.
She had no idea she was playing with fire. “You don’t want to do that,” he said in a low growl.
She kissed him again.
This kiss wasn’t anything like the first. It was hot, wet, passionate. Her lips were on his, her tongue exploring. She was intoxicating. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. The kiss grew deeper, hotter.
Suddenly, both of her hands were on his chest, pushing him away. “What are you doing?”
He could hardly see her in the dark, but he could hear the accusation in her tone. “You kissed me. Not the other way around.”
As best she could, she moved away from him, and pulled the sheet over her. He could hear her breathing, but she didn’t utter another word. Whatever that was, it ended as quickly as it had begun.
Chapter Six
They drove straight through Indiana and Illinois, didn’t stop until they entered Iowa and found a rest stop.
Jason leaned against the outside of the women’s bathroom and waited for Angela to finish up. If the place wasn’t empty, he might have worried about her talking to a stranger, alerting them to her situation. When she appeared, though, she smiled, revealing dimples he hadn’t noticed before. “You didn’t think I would come out of there, did you?” she asked.
“I was never worried.” He started off back to the car. She followed.
“About that kiss last night—”
“Forget about it,” he said as they walked.
“I want to apologize. I was half asleep. I thought you were Rob.”
“No need to apologize. I enjoyed it as much as you did.” He started walking again.
“I didn’t enjoy it at all.”
He grunted.
“Please, just let me go. My friends are probably worried about me. Kidnapping isn’t going to help your case.”
“I already told you. I’ll let you go when we get to California.”
“Why not now?”
“It’s too soon.”
He didn’t want to look at her, afraid if he did he might get the urge to take her right back to the hotel and finish what they had started last night. Having her warm body next to his had made it difficult to sleep, but the truth was, even if she wanted to make love to him, he wasn’t sure he would go through with it. For one thing, they didn’t trust each other, and he wasn’t that callous. But besides that, she was a young, beautiful woman who had her whole life ahead of her. He could end up back in jail, or worse, dead. He didn’t want her to do something she would later regret. Once they got to California they would never see each other again.
It wasn’t until he reached the car and opened the passenger door that he noticed she was gone.
He looked around, then frowned when he saw her jogging across the parking lot toward a semi idling across the way. She didn’t waste any time chatting it up with the driver. By the time he caught up to her, the truck driver had opened the passenger door and invited her to get inside.
Jason grabbed hold of her arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She looked over her shoulder at him, her green eyes sparkling beneath the bright rays of the sun cracking through the clouds. “This nice man said he would be happy to give me a ride.”
“I bet he would.”
The truck driver was, as they say, built like a truck. He also had a shaved head, and his neck was bigger than a tree trunk. The sleeves of his dirty shirt were rolled up to his shoulders, so that Jason could read Stan tattooed on his right arm.
“Move along, mister,” Stan told him. “The woman wants to go with me.”
“Give me a minute to talk to her and then I’ll leave her be.”