Chapter One #3
“No,” he said, and his voice stayed level. “I haven’t. You’ve mostly made jokes and tried to take my knee out.”
“Your knee was never in danger.”
“My thigh disagrees.”
“You’ll survive.”
“I’m comfortable with risk,” he said, throwing my own tone back at me.
Damn him.
A laugh tried to break loose. I killed it because laughing with him felt like the first inch of a trap.
Dex noticed anyway. His gaze sharpened, and the air shifted between us. Not safer. Not kinder. Just hotter.
I could see exactly how bad an idea he would be if we’d met anywhere else. A bar with sticky floors. A tattoo convention after midnight. A gas station in the middle of nowhere where he held the door and I looked too long at the ink on his forearm.
Anywhere else, I might’ve leaned into that voice.
Here, he had cuffs on my wrists and Crystal’s name in his pocket.
The thought cleared my head.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
“County route first. Then North Fork decides handoff.”
“North Fork Bail Bonds decides what happens to me?”
“The court already decided what happens when you skip. North Fork posted the bond.”
“That paperwork has everything figured out, then.”
Dex studied me for a beat. “Paperwork usually has less attitude.”
“Paperwork doesn’t sweat through a tank top on a mountain road.”
His gaze didn’t drop.
That was also irritating.
I knew when men looked. I knew how to use it. I knew the tiny pause between noticing skin and pretending not to. Dex kept his eyes on my face with the kind of discipline that made the rest of him worse.
Then his attention moved to the right shoulder where the overshirt had slipped and the anchor-and-compass piece showed more clearly.
He reached out, not touching me, just catching the shirt fabric and pulling it higher over my shoulder.
“File said left ankle and right shoulder,” he said.
My pulse kicked.
“Sounds like your file enjoys gossip.”
“It enjoys identifiers.”
“And here I thought my charm made me memorable.”
“It does,” Dex said.
The answer was too simple.
I looked at him.
He looked back.
No smile this time. Nothing I could use except the fact that my breath had snagged and he’d heard it.
Then he opened the passenger door of his pickup. “Get in.”
“I’m not riding shotgun while cuffed behind my back.”
“You won’t be.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s practical.”
“Men love calling ominous things practical.”
Dex’s hand settled at my elbow. “Step up to the running board and face out.”
I considered kicking him again. I considered throwing myself sideways, making him catch me, buying three messy seconds in which maybe the phone in my boot stayed hidden and maybe I could run on a flat tire and bad judgment.
Then I looked at the road.
His pickup blocked the mouth of the clearing. My sedan sagged over its blown tire. The locked gate gleamed behind me. The trees offered shade, scratches, and maybe ten yards before he had me in the dirt.
I could fight now and lose ugly.
Or I could get into his truck, learn the locks, learn his habits, learn how close he kept his keys, and wait for the better opening.
I lifted one boot onto the running board.
“Careful,” Dex said.
“I thought you were comfortable with risk.”
“With mine.”
Too much sat beneath that. He was a man who dealt in risk for a living. He understood exactly which risks he owned and which ones he wouldn’t let touch someone in his custody if he could help it.
At the open passenger door, he stopped me before I climbed all the way in.
“I’m moving the cuffs to the front,” he said. “Don’t make me regret that.”
“I try not to make promises during abductions.”
“Recovery,” he said.
“Still needs better public relations.”
He took a small key from his belt and held my left wrist steady.
The first cuff opened with a soft metallic snap.
He kept one hand around that wrist while he brought it forward, then repeated the process with the right.
He didn’t give me enough slack to swing, grab, or twist away.
By the time both of my wrists were in front of me, the cuffs were closed again and his thumb rested against the chain for one checking second.
He was competent, controlled, and deeply annoying.
“Better?” he asked.
“Wildly. I’m thinking of leaving five stars.”
“You do that.”
“Maybe four. You’re losing points for the kidnapping.”
“You weren’t kidnapped.”
“I was taken against my will by a large man in a truck.”
“Recovered,” he said again.
I climbed into the passenger seat before I answered with something that got me recuffed behind my back.
The cab smelled like dust, old leather, clean sweat, and the faint metallic bite of gear stored under the back seat.
A half-empty water bottle sat in the cup holder.
The dash was scratched. A folded paper map had been shoved between the console and the seat.
The cracked headlight warning blinked amber on the display.
Dex leaned across me to pull the seat belt down.
Every inch of me went aware.
His arm brushed my shoulder. His crucifix swung forward, close enough that I saw the worn shape of Christ on the cross before he tucked the belt across my ribs. The leather cord brushed his throat when he moved back. His knuckles grazed the bare skin above my knee as he clicked the latch.
The touch wasn’t quite an accident, and it wasn’t quite intentional.
It was proximity.
My skin warmed anyway.
“You good?” he asked.
“I’m handcuffed in your truck after a backroad pursuit. I’m going to say no.”
“Are the cuffs cutting?”
That question again. Practical. Decent. Harder to hate than it should’ve been.
I flexed my wrists. “No.”
He checked them anyway, sliding one finger under the chain. His hand was warm. Callused. Steady. My pulse hammered against metal.
Dex’s gaze met mine.
I smiled slowly because a woman should use every weapon she had, and sometimes a smile was sharper than a blade. “You’re very gentle for a man who chased me up a mountain.”
His expression didn’t move, but his voice roughened at the edge. “Don’t mistake gentle for distracted.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You already are.”
The words slid into the cab and stayed there.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then Dex shut my door.
I watched him walk around the hood, and I let myself use the time.
His keys were clipped at his right hip, not in his pocket.
His phone was in his jacket. The cuffs key was on his belt.
The truck had no cage partition, and the window controls sat on the armrest. My hands were cuffed in front, which meant he either trusted his own reaction time or didn’t intend to give me enough space to test it.
The phone in my boot pressed against my arch.
He hadn’t found it.
Crystal was still out of his reach.
I could work with that.