Make Mine a Bad Boy (19 page)

She gave it her best shot, but the guy’s butt and legs felt like they were made of wrought iron. During one wild screaming tangent, the wig came off and her hair swept down to tangle in his legs.

“Nice hair, Pumpkin,” he gloated.

And since the jig was up, she gave in.

“Colt Lomax, you good-for-nothing piece of Texas roadkill, put me down!”

“Now, there’s the sassy little Hope I remembered. I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“You’re going to lose your teeth, if you don’t put me down,” she yelled so loudly, her voice echoed down the alley they passed. But he only laughed and kept going.

She didn’t have a clue where he was taking her, but it took him long enough to get there. He walked a good half block with her screaming and fighting all the way. In another neighborhood, someone would’ve called the police. But here, calling the police was like inviting an anteater into an anthill.

Finally, he turned into a parking lot, and she glanced up at the brightly lit sign. “Oh, no. If you think I’m going into a hotel room with you, Colt Lomax, you can think again.”

Except in a matter of minutes that was exactly where she found herself, bouncing on a flimsy mattress while Colt stood over her, looking none too happy. “Have you lost your mind?” She scrambled off the bed on the opposite side.

He swept his jet black hair off his forehead before resting his hands on his hips. “Funny, but I was about to ask you the same thing.”

She tried not to fidget under the intense look, but it was hard when her heart thumped so loudly in her ears. “I wasn’t the one who kidnapped a person and is holding them hostage in a cheap hotel room.”

“No, you’re just the person dressed up like a hooker and working at a strip club.”

“I’m not dressed up like a hooker.” Hope tried to defend her clothing, but even she knew it was a losing battle.

“Really?” His gaze ran over her, starting at the hem of the short black skirt and moving up her bare quivering belly to the low neckline of the sports bra, where two squares of toilet paper now hung out. “What would you call it?”

“A waitress’s uniform.”

The stiffness eased from his shoulders. “Waitress?”

She placed her hands on her hips, mimicking his stance. “What difference does it make to you, anyway? You never have approved of anything I wear. My cheerleading skirt was too short, my pink boots too bright, my homecoming gown too low. What are you, my daddy?”

His steel eyes flickered. “I liked the uniform you wore when you worked at Josephine’s.”

Her hands dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding. That ugly thing came down past my knees.”

“It was decent.”

“Decent? This coming from a man who dated Marcy Henderson.”

The grin was real this time. “I guess Marcy didn’t exactly dress decent, did she?”

The smile did something to her stomach. Something she tried to ignore. But it was hard to ignore the fact that this was a man who knew her—had known her ever since she was born. Colt might be annoying as hell, but he was as close to home as she had gotten in more than a year. And she missed home. Missed it more than she had realized until that moment.

Flopping down on the end of the bed, she unbuckled the skinny black straps of one of her high heels and slipped it off to massage her aching toes. “Talk about a hooker. That girl screwed anything with pants on. And why you dated her, I’ll never know.”

His hands dropped from his hips, and he moved around the end of the bed and took a seat next to her. “Because I was a horny young kid, and she would screw anything with pants on.”

Rolling her eyes, Hope switched feet and unbuckled her other shoe. “I’ll tell you one thing, the running shoes I got to wear at Josephine’s sure beat these to hell and back.” The shoe slipped to the floor, and she rubbed her sore arch and groaned. “Lord, that feels good.”

“Here.” He reached out and grabbed her foot.

“You are not touching my feet, Lomax.” She tried to pull her foot back, but he refused to let go. And once those strong fingers started to move, any resistance she might’ve had was completely snuffed out.

“Scoot back,” he ordered, and she quickly complied.

Once she was stretched out with her head tucked against a pillow, he lifted her foot to his lap and started in earnest. For a motorcycle bum, he knew his way around a foot. His thumb dug into her arch while his fingers massaged the instep. And when he stretched her toes back, she moaned and dug her head back into the pillow.

“Feel good?” he asked.

She could only nod. Although his next words brought her out of her physical utopia.

“So why are you working there?”

A thousand smartass remarks filled her mind, but instead she told the truth. Foot massages would make one hell of an interrogation tool.

“I need the money.”

“It’s hard to believe you couldn’t find a better place to work.” He pulled on her pinkie toe, and she died and went to heaven.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t spent your fair share of time in strip clubs—tonight being a perfect example. Of course, you got there a little late, didn’t you?”

There was a moment of hesitation before he spoke. “I wasn’t there for the strippers.”

She leaned up on her elbows and stared at the ebony hair curled around the strong column of his neck. “Don’t tell me you were there for the eight-dollar Dr Peppers.”

He glanced back at her. “I was looking for you.”

“Me? But why?”

Still holding her foot, he shifted around on the bed. “Shirlene has been worried about you, so I told her I’d look you up.”

Hope’s stomach dropped, and she tugged her foot away from him.

“So now you know.” She tipped up her chin with as much defiance as she could muster. “Now you can call Shirlene—and whoever else you want to—and tell them that Hope Scroggs isn’t a budding actress after all… just a barmaid at a sleazy strip club in L.A.”

She expected some snide remark, but instead he just stared back at her with emotionless eyes. And somehow that seemed worse.

“Go home, Hope.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Damn it!” In one swift movement, Colt came up off the bed. His eyes were no longer cool and emotionless as he strode around to stand over her. “Why can’t you ever just let things go? You don’t belong here. You’ve never belonged here. You belong back in Bramble—back with Slate Calhoun. So accept it and get your ass back there!”

Hope sat up on the bed, her own anger bubbling to the
surface. “That’s easy for you to say. But I don’t see you going back.”

“Because I was never the town favorite. I was that poor Lomax kid, remember? And who the hell in their right mind would want to deal with that every day of their lives? But you are Hope Scroggs, loved by every man, woman, and child—”

“And that’s the point. I can’t go back there when they believed in me—when they think I’m the next Sandra Bullock. How can I possibly live with myself if I disappointed them?”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she tried to push them back. It was bad enough that Colt had discovered her working at a strip club; she didn’t want him thinking she had turned into a crybaby too. Except her body refused to listen to her brain, and the tears splashed down her rouged cheeks like her apartment’s drippy faucet.

“Admit it, Hope,” Colt sat down next to her. “It’s not about the town as much as it is your own stubborn pride.”

“B-but I thought I had it all figured out,” she sobbed. “I m-made numerous lists.”

“You and your damned lists.” Releasing an exasperated sigh, Colt slipped an arm around her and tugged her close. “Sometimes things can’t be planned, Hope. Sometimes things just aren’t meant to be.”

His show of kindness only made her cry harder. Tucked against his chest, she sobbed out all her anger, hurt, and frustration from the last five years. When she was finally spent, she remained there—a lifeless piece of quivery female.

After a while, his hand lifted from her shoulder and stroked her hair. “How did you manage to get all this up in that wig?”

“It wasn’t easy,” she said, her voice clogged with tears and snot.

A chuckle rumbled through his chest. “Pumpkin. I had my doubts until you mentioned that ornery old pony.”

“He wasn’t ornery.”

“I don’t know what you’d call it. He bit me every time I tried to pet him.”

“Probably because he knew a mean kid when he saw one.”

He laughed. “Probably.” He continued to stroke her hair, and she continued to let him. How long had it been since someone had touched her like this? It seemed like a lifetime. And she didn’t want it to end. Unfortunately, her nose started to drip, and no amount of sniffing would keep it contained. So she grabbed the toilet paper that hung from the sports bra and loudly blew her nose. She didn’t realize how it must’ve looked until she glanced up into twinkling gray eyes.

“So that’s what that’s for.”

“Very funny.” She tried to tear off the used piece but only succeeded in pulling out more. Like a line of silk scarves from a clown’s sleeve, the paper kept coming and coming as Colt’s eyebrows hiked further and further up his forehead. Completely humiliated, she dropped her hand.

“It’s not my fault that men tip better if you’re blonde with big boobs.”

“No, I guess not.” He gathered up the toilet paper, then slipped his hand beneath the bra to get the rest. When his knuckle brushed her nipple, she sucked in her breath and jerked back.

“Sorry,” he said as his hand popped out with the wad
of tissue. Except he didn’t look very sorry. Those gray eyes gleamed with a devilish light. “Here.” He tipped up her chin and wiped beneath her eyes. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”

“I have.”

“Now, honey, that didn’t even come close to some of the zingers we’ve had in the past. Remember the time I told you that you kissed like a three-year-old?” He chuckled. “I thought you were going to tear my head off and spit in my neck.”

“I think you have that memory a little screwed up, Lomax. I was the one who told you that you kissed like a three-year-old, and you were the one who got upset.”

His eyes filled with smoky heat. “Well, maybe we should see if I’ve improved.”

“I don’t…”

The words dropped along with her stomach as his mouth dipped toward her. He didn’t move fast. In fact, she had plenty of time to stop him—to tell him that she had no need to test his kisses. Except she didn’t want to stop him. It was insane. But she had always been a little insane where Colt Lomax was concerned. And as soon as those warm lips touched hers, she gave herself up to that insanity.

His lips swept over hers with a raw sensuality that held nothing back. No one kissed better than Colt. It was as if she was a goblet of water and he was a parched man in the desert. His hands cradled her face as his lips took deep thirsty pulls. Then, as if not completely quenched, he changed angles to drink some more.

She answered him with deep, thorough kisses of her own, her hands fisted in the cotton that stretched over his
chest. Releasing her lips, his hands slipped to the back of her neck as he kissed his way toward her ear. Her breath fell out in heaving gasps as she fought for the oxygen he’d taken. This outlaw. This desperado who had stolen her will to fight. But the sports bra stopped him cold.

“How the hell do you get this thing off?”

She smiled at his impatience, although it faded at the thought of him seeing her breasts. They had never been her best attributes, and she wasn’t about to show them to a man who had found so many flaws. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want to feel those big biker hands on her.

So she leaned over and turned off the lamp before stretching the bra up over her head. His hands were on her before she even got her head through the stretchy Lycra.

“Jesus,” he sighed as he filled his hands.

He gently squeezed before he slid his palms up the sides and over the rigid peaks. As he stroked and teased, he leaned over and gave her another deep kiss, pushing her back to the mattress. Once he had aligned his body to hers, he pulled away from her lips and trailed hot, wet kisses down her neck and along her bare shoulders, before using that talented mouth and tongue on her breasts. Beneath his lavish attention, Hope felt as well-endowed as any one of her dancer friends. And luckier, much luckier, that Colt was the one doing the lavishing. Of course, she forgot all about what he was doing to her breasts when his fingers skated up one trembling thigh and slipped beneath her skirt.

It took all of three flicks to send her skyrocketing.

“Did you just…?” Colt’s breath fell soft against her nipple. “Damn, baby.”

Her orgasm seemed to incite his passion, and his
foreplay became more frantic, his need more evident. He left her for a time to strip off his clothes. There was little light in the room, so she could only imagine the articles being removed. The popping of cotton stitches. The thud of a heavy boot. The metal zing of a zipper. And then he was back—hard biceps cradling her hips—a solid wall of muscles pressed against her lower legs.

He didn’t remove her skirt but merely pushed it higher as his breath fell hot and moist against her panties, panties that were no match for his deft fingers. Once they were gone, his familiar voice reached through her sexual haze.