Roped

PROLOGUE

Present

I KNOW HE’S here even though I can’t see him.

I also know he’s watching me because he always does.

I wonder if he knows I’m wearing this dress for him.

It’s white in color, but that’s the only thing innocent about it.

It clings to me like a second skin, hits me a couple of inches above mid-thigh—so, basically, barely covers my ass—and its spaghetti straps are so thin, so fragile, that they’re practically a taunt.

For him.

To tear them off with one twist of his strong hands.

With one snap of his sharp teeth, even. I imagine him standing in a darkened corner of this bar we’re in, flexing his fingers, clenching his teeth with the need to touch me as he watches me sip on the cosmo I got with my fake ID that shows I’m twenty-two instead of nineteen.

Good.

It means my plan is working. Or at least it’s off to a good start.

Now on to the second part. Sitting at the bar, I eye the space, trying to choose my mark.

It’s going to be between the guy in a white T-shirt at the other end of the bar, or the one in a Western-style denim shirt two tables behind me.

They’re both drunk, obnoxiously so. They both look like they don’t take rejection well and think if a girl flirts with them, it’s her duty to put out.

Not to mention, they both have on cowboy hats.

Which isn’t that uncommon since we’re in the Wild West but which, in my experience, only bodes bad things.

In short, they are both asshole cowboys that no decent girl should ever get involved with.

Perfect.

When I see the denim-shirt guy breaking away from his group of friends and making a beeline for the bar, my decision is made.

I gulp down my cosmo in one go, feeling the burn of the liquor from my tongue all the way down to my chest, and spring up from the barstool.

The moment I do, I feel a prickle at the nape of my neck.

Not that it wasn’t there before—it followed me all the way through my apartment to this bar—but in this moment, as I make my way to the guy I’m about to pick up, that prickle has become heated, agitated.

I ignore it, though, and put myself in the denim-shirt guy’s path, deliberately crashing into him.

Pasting a demure smile on my lips, I look up at his face, lined with irritation.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you. ”

At my words, his irritation melts away and he flicks his drunken gaze up and down my body. “No worries, sweetheart,” he says, his voice carrying that cowboy-ish drawl, lazy and arrogant and totally disgusting in my opinion. “Ain’t every day I get bumped into by a girl as pretty as you.”

I want to smile in triumph; this is going to be easier than I thought.

But I refrain and keep up the innocent act.

Guys like him—and by that I mean bullheaded cowboys—like their girls sweet.

They like them submissive and feminine, someone they can control and mold.

While I can be feminine, I’m not anyone’s submissive.

I love putting on pretty pink heels, but I’ll just as easily grind them into your balls if you mess with me.

“Well, I should really learn to watch where I’m going, though,” I say, batting my eyelashes a little bit.

His lips tip up into a smirk as he runs his eyes up and down my body again.

This time, he pauses at my chest for a few seconds.

Which isn’t all that generous—only 33B—but the built-in bra in this dress does give good cleavage.

One of the many reasons why I chose to wear it for my mission tonight.

Once he’s done checking me out, he looks up and licks his lips.

“Well then, maybe I can teach you that. Don’t want you bumpin’ into the wrong sort of man. ”

Yup, so much easier than I thought.

I move closer to him, my voice still shy but with a hint of flirtation. “That’s very generous of you.”

He moves closer too. “I am a generous man.”

He’s not talking about his character. Obviously. I flick my gaze down to the thing he is talking about—his junk in his washed-out jeans—and wish I could kick it. Then, looking up, I say, “I’d be stupid to refuse then, wouldn’t I?”

His smirk stays in place while his gaze roams down to my chest again. “How about you let me buy you a drink and we can talk all about this big bad world?”

I look into his eyes—blue—for a couple of seconds, pretending to think it over. Then, “All right, since you asked so nicely. Lead the way.”

A look of satisfaction, stark and almost predatory, flashes through his broad features, and he tips his hat at me. I know he thinks he’s got me, but if anyone’s the hunter between the two of us, it’s me and he’s the bait.

So for the next thirty minutes, I do everything I can to set my trap.

I flirt with my mark as much as I can, whose name I learn is Jensen.

I smile at him. I laugh at his lame jokes.

I touch him. I let him touch me but only to an extent.

As in, anything under my dress is off-limits, but I let his fingers linger on my bare thighs.

It does make me want to throw up on his boots, but I remind myself it’s all for a good cause.

When I suggest getting out of there, Jensen happily and drunkenly agrees, and soon we’re cutting through the crowded bar and walking across the empty parking lot in the back.

The night is unusually hot and dark for summer in Montana, and as we pass by the rows of beat-up trucks, my heart picks up speed.

It’s racing in my chest, pounding. I’m so close.

So fucking close to my prize. My prey. I can taste it.

As soon as we reach Jensen’s black Ram and he opens the door, I move away and say in my best fake apologetic voice, “Oh my God, shit. I just remembered something.”

His brows draw together. “Remembered what?”

“I’m supposed to be at my best friend’s house super early tomorrow,” I lie, infusing my voice with regret. “She’s going away for the summer. The Bahamas. And I’m supposed to help her pack.”

His frown thickens—good—as he almost growls, “What?”

“I know,” I say, shaking my head. “I completely forgot about it. But I think I’m going to have to take a rain check.”

“What the fuck?” he mutters in disbelief.

“It sucks,” I keep lamenting and take a step back from him. “I was so looking forward to being with you. But I have to go now.”

“You have to go,” he repeats.

“But maybe we can meet up some other time, okay?” I say in a breezy tone before I reach up and pat his cheek.

As expected, it enrages him more and he takes a step toward me. He leans down, and his alcohol breath that I’ve been breathing for the past however many minutes makes me want to vomit. “You fuckin’ with me right now?”

I shake my head, giving him a small, cocky smile, my first real one. “Not even a little bit.”

“Are you seriously tellin’ me I wasted my time and my money for absolutely nothing?”

Typical.

“I think you need to back off now,” I tell him, my voice almost bored.

“And I think”—he bends down even more—“you need to stop fuckin’ around and pay up.”

“This is your last warning. Move the fuck away or I’ll start screaming.”

Again, as expected, he doesn’t. “Oh, you’re gonna be screaming, all right.”

With that, he grabs my arms and hauls me into his body before descending over me and pressing his mouth to mine.

I bite his lip as soon as he makes contact, making him howl and rear back, and then I do as I told him I would: I start screaming.

I start struggling against his hold, trying to get free.

But apparently, Jensen is more determined than I thought because his grip barely loosens.

If anything, my resistance is making him stronger and rougher.

He pushes back with his larger—much larger—body before fisting my dress at my thigh, hauling the fabric up.

For the first time tonight, my body clenches in fear.

Terror, pure and unadulterated, washes through my system and my screams get louder, more panicked.

Where is he? Where the fuck is he?

He’s supposed to come for me. He’s supposed to rescue me from this. Like he’s been doing for months now. This plan is supposed to work. It’s supposed to fucking work because I don’t know what I’ll do if it doesn’t. I have no other options. Absolutely nothing else to go on and…

Just then, the pressure on my lungs eases and the suffocating weight on my body goes away.

My relief is so big that it’s a shock to my system.

It leaves me dizzy and wheezing. Even so, I try to focus, to keep my wits about me.

But what I see happening in front of me makes it hard.

A few feet away, Jensen stands with a hand wrapped around his neck.

And that hand is squeezing Jensen’s throat with such violent force that his eyes bug out and his mouth hangs open as he makes choking, pained noises.

The color is quickly draining from his face as he struggles to dislodge the fingers strangling him.

To no avail. And I’m not surprised. Not even a little bit.

Because that hand is large with thick and long fingers, and it covers Jensen’s entire throat.

From top to bottom and from side to side.

That hand, so masculine and scraped at the knuckles, can do anything. Move mountains, crack the ground open.

Rip someone’s head off their body.

I open my mouth to say something, to put a stop to this, but in the next second, Jensen’s eyes fall closed and he drops to the ground with a thud.

For a second I think he’s dead, but then I notice his chest moving up and down and I let out a shaky breath.

My plan didn’t include dead bodies. My plan only involved drawing him out, baiting him out of the shadows.

The man who watches me. Who watches my every move, who followed me to this bar and watched me flirt with another man before almost choking him to death to come to my rescue.

My stalker.