Raven’s Prey(14)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

There was an electric silence as Judd’s bird-of-prey eyes burned into her stricken, defiant features. Honor saw the attack coming before he had even moved, instinct warning her that he would retaliate. She swung on her heel and launched herself at the door.

She didn’t even make it halfway across the tiny room. Before she had gone two running strides Judd was on her, reaching out to circle her waist with his arm and yanking her back against the hard, taut length of his body.

“Oh!” The small exclamation came as the force of the impact made itself felt. She took a shuddering breath. His arm was like a steel band around her and there was no way on earth she could escape.

“If you can’t get a reaction one way, you’ll try another. Is that it, Honor?” he demanded far top gently. “Is that what you crave out of life? The attention and reaction of every man who comes near you?”

“Damn you!” she hissed helplessly, violently aware of the way her softly rounded rear was being forced against his thighs. The solid expanse of his chest was like a brick wall behind her. Everything about this man was like a brick wall, she told herself hysterically. And somehow she had to find a way to climb it. Throwing her coffee in his face had probably not been an especially good technique for gaining his confidence, she decided in dismay and disgust. “I’m sorry, Judd,” she tried awkwardly. “I lost my temper.”

“And when you lose your temper you strike out at the nearest available victim?”

“I said I was sorry!”

“I think you’re only sorry for your actions when they don’t gain you what you want,” he mused. Slowly he turned her around until she stood trapped in the circle of his arm, staring up at him in mute defiance. “What do you want from me, Honor?” he asked almost idly.

“I want you to go away and leave me alone. Go back to the States and tell Leo and Nick that you couldn’t find me. I’ll give you the two thousand you care so much about. Just go away and leave me here!”

“I can’t do that. And throwing your morning coffee into my face isn’t going to make me turn tail and run. Aiming guns at me in the middle of the night isn’t going to do the trick, either. Trying to scratch my eyes out won’t work and neither will telling me incredible adventure stories about illegal gunrunning. Last, but not least, bribery isn’t going to work.”

“Then what the hell will work?” she blazed. “What will it take to make you leave me alone, Judd Raven?”

“Probably nothing you’ve got to offer,” he advised simply.

She whitened beneath the terrible finality of his words. Gamely she fought for her breath. “Then there can be nothing but war between us, Judd,” she told him evenly. “As I told you last night, you’d better be prepared to cripple me or tie me hand and foot because I’m never going to stop fighting you.”

He stared down into her wide hazel gaze as if searching for a hidden truth. The determination in her was evident in every rigid line of her body.

“Last night,” he said deliberately, watching her face intently, “you tried to involve me in another kind of warfare. You practically dared me to take you. If I did that… if I put you down on the floor and stripped you naked and took you until you no longer had the strength or the will to go on fighting me, would that solve the problem? Would I still be obliged to knock you senseless or tie you hand and foot in order to control you?”

“You bastard!” she breathed. She was beginning to think he could do exactly as he said: throw her on the floor and force himself on her physically with no outward sign of emotion. That kind of dispassionate savagery was terrifying.

“I’m sure that in your eyes I probably am a bastard, Honor. But that’s because you can’t manipulate me. Or at least, not completely,” he amended with a wry twist of his mouth. “The fact that I find myself spending two extra days in Mexico is evidence that you have some ability in that direction, isn’t it?”

“That was a cold, hard cash deal, remember? Not manipulation. I’m paying you a thousand dollars a day to stay here!” She was beginning to hate the way he constantly accused her of manipulating people. “It’s your own mercenary greed that is keeping you here in Mexico, Judd Raven!”

He considered that. “Not quite. I’d call it curiosity. I’ve been growing increasingly curious about you for a week, Honor. Now that I’ve found you I seem to be stuck with more questions than answers. And last night I went to sleep with one particularly large question on my mind. I found myself wondering what would have happened if I’d gone ahead and accepted your challenge.”

“You mean what would have happened if you’d raped me?” she flung back.

“Are you sure it would have been rape, Honor?” he queried, as if only academically interested in the answer.

“What else could it be when a robot makes love to a woman?” she asked unwisely. “Go back to your airplane if you want someone who understands and appreciates what you’re offering!”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Hell, lady, you just don’t know when to stop pushing, do you?”

Then, before she quite realized his intent, he used his arm around her waist to draw her firmly against him. His other hand went to the back of her head, tangling in her unbound hair and holding her very still. For an instant longer he held her like that, reading the beginnings of pure, feminine fear in her eyes and watching the tiny tremor in her lips.

Quite lazily, as if he were only conducting some sort of experiment, Judd lowered his head and took her mouth.

This time there was none of the wild, enraged male lust she had endured the night before. This time there was absolute control, a kind of questing, searching quality in his kiss. Honor stood stock-still, partly because he was holding her immobile and partly because she couldn’t have moved if she’d tried.

The sensation being generated in her was not easily defined. The initial fear hovered still in the back of her mind but it was rapidly metamorphosing into mere wariness. The dominant feeling she was experiencing was a strange, budding excitement, a new kind of hunger, and there was no way to explain it.

His lips moved languidly on hers, beginning to deliberately tease and tantalize until her mouth flowered open in a response Honor was helpless to control. She moaned softly at the moment his tongue slipped into the intimate warmth of her, and her fingers fluttered upward to rest against his chest, half in protest, half in desire. What on earth was happening to her?