StrongArmsoftheLaw

Strong Arms of the Law

Cerise DeLand

Rex Martinez is one tough Texas Ranger who’s always gotten
his man. No woman has ever resisted him either. But the saucy little number
currently under his protection makes him nuts. Makes him hard. And makes him
eager to put her in her place…which is, of course, in his arms. And his bed.

Crime writer Skye Chamberlain chafes under Rex’s rigid
rules. He’s too macho, too yummy to stay cooped up with while she’s trying to
remain celibate.

When Skye calls his bluff and demands they embrace their
relationship now instead of later, Rex can’t resist. But his need to keep her
hot and happy makes him drop his guard—which is exactly when trouble comes
calling.

Chapter One

Skye Chamberlain crawled out her bedroom window of the tiny
house outside Alpine, Texas before sunrise on a sweltering August morning,
biting back a shout that she was finally escaping the strong arms of the law.

Who knew she had it in her?

Crime writer. Bookworm. Former ER nurse. Turned fugitive.

She grinned. Even—she thought as she stretched her dangling
toes to reach for the ground—if it meant she’d be in hot water with her captor.
I’m going swimming, Ranger Martinez, before you’re up and learn I’m gone.

She felt the cool earth beneath the soles of her feet and
stifled a sigh of relief. There was only so long she could stand this blazing
August heat. “And the scalding gaze of Rex Martinez,” she murmured to herself
as she tucked her boobs back inside her cotton bra, hiked up her flimsy panties
and flung her towel over her shoulder.

She headed for the pool behind the barn, picking her way
along the pebbles and brush barefoot. She needed to do five laps, maybe more to
get relief from the tension of wanting to jump the bones of the tall, dark
Texas Ranger who had been her bodyguard for more than two months.

He was an ogre, a tyrant, refusing to let her go anywhere
except prowl that teensy-weensy house like a caged animal. But she had to get
away, do something physical, if only for a few minutes. She would melt like ice
cream if she spent one more day enthralled by his gruff cowboy charm.
Denying
we’re headed for bed.

Hell. She hurried along. Any exercise would be better than
another twenty-four hours cooped up with the Texas lawman who played cards like
Godzilla, talked like smart-ass Indiana Jones and took charge like Pancho
Villa.

“Your birdie, buddy, has flown the nest.”

* * * * *

“Coffee’s ready,” Rex Martinez spoke to the closed bedroom
door of the cabin. “Come on out. I made it like you want it.
Weak.
”

He smirked. Skye Chamberlain didn’t act like she wanted
anything watered down. Not her prospects for survival once she testified
against the Gonzaga Familia. Not her hope for a life free of reporters
harassing her for interviews about the Texas drug gangs in cahoots with a local
mayor. So why she liked her coffee less than rocket-ready stumped him.

“Rise and shine, Chamberlain,” he called when he heard no
sounds. Usually she would throw a shoe at the door or grumble at him to leave
her be. Early riser, the buxom blonde booty-licious novelist from Chicago, Skye
Chamberlain, was not. “We didn’t stay up that late watching that movie.”

Nada.

All right, then. You asked for it.

Rex Martinez thrust open the bedroom door, zeroed in on the
rumpled sheets, the empty bed, the curtains fluttering at the wide open window
and heard footsteps crunching on gravel.

He cursed.

She was gone?
Again?

Shit!
He had never met such an infuriating woman!

“You will
not
do this!” he vowed and spun for the
back door, the barn and the sure knowledge that she’d tippy-toed out to the
pool. That Olympic-sized extravaganza was the only outdoorsy distraction to his
confinement with this tempting piece of gorgeous Anglo ass. Best-selling crime
writer Chamberlain and he had been holed up in this hideaway near Big Bend for
long enough to make his cock a permanently stiff medical marvel. So now, horny
and hot and irritated with the fact that she denied their mutual attraction
with her every look and breath, he would eat his Ranger badge if Skye
Chamberlain was going to defy his orders to never leave the house!

Like a jackrabbit, he jumped the porch steps and sprang
headlong for the barn and beyond it, the pool. In a dozen swift strides, he
reached his quarry. He grabbed one slim wrist and hooked an arm around her
naked middle. Bikini underwear and all, she fell backward against him. The feel
of her bare skin shot electric testosterone through him. It was the same jolt
he’d endured ever since the judge had ordered her into his care two long hot
months ago.

“Come on, Miss Congeniality.” She kicked back at him and he
barked, “You are not going swimming. I told you before, woman!”

She tried to buck backward in his arms. “Stop it! Rex!
You’re hurting me!”

“Nothing like I’m going to, if you don’t stop disobeying
me!”

Slowly but surely, he hauled her around to face him. “What
the hell is the matter with you? We’re safe here. You go out and you never know
if one of those roaches’ll spot you!”

“We are thirty miles from the nearest town.”

“Thirty-two point eight miles from the town where you saw
them kill those three women and thirty-one point one miles from the courthouse
where you will testify against them. Not so far, lady, that they can’t be all
around here.”

“Oh, you are infuriating. They are not out here.” She
pointed to the copse of live oaks and tall cacti that surrounded the house they
occupied. “They certainly do not get up at seven in the morning to spy on the
puta
reporter they hate.” She began to walk back inside. “If they are even aware
I’m close.”

“You can bet that they’re looking everywhere within a
hundred mile radius.” He caught her arm. “That’s why you are here with me and
under my care.”

“Don’t you get it? We’ve tried this for two months now,
Ranger Martinez, sir. I am
not
safe here with you!” She struggled with
him, her ponytail springing free of its band and that cloud of Marilyn Monroe
platinum spilled around her slim shoulders.

“Don’t trust me?”
Hell. What would it take to strip these
two scraps of fabric off her? A flick of two fingers?
No.
A court order.

She pushed at his chest to no avail. “I cannot stay in that
house with you cooped up like a prisoner!”

“Yeah?” He checked her expression. Pouting. Demanding. “How
do you think I feel?”

She snorted, pushing herself flush to his poor melting body.
That surprised him. Paralyzed him. She was usually so ladylike, so dainty in
how she spoke and how she moved, that this made him blink. Then she rubbed up
against him, her plump breasts a fiery brand to his shirt as she cupped a hand
over the bulge in his jeans and purred, “Martinez, I
know
how you feel.”

He clamped a hand on her ass, holding her against him. Like
he’d get any relief this way! “No, you don’t.”

“Like now? How could I miss it? With your eyes all over me
for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I cannot pee but what you know it!” She
wrenched away from him and stalked her way down the garden path back to the
house. “Helluva way to hide out.”

He was hot on her classy little tail, grabbing her arm.
“It’s the only way I know to keep track of you.”

“You could at least let me take a swim!” She threw out a
hand toward the pool. “That house was built for midgets. And the air
conditioner peters out at eighty.”

He chuckled. “What can you expect? It was made when Ike was
in the White House.”

She stomped her foot. “Stop being funny!”

“I’ll try mean.” He bared his teeth.

“Do that.” She stifled a smile, but whirled away to hide it.

He was right on her heels. “Where you’re concerned, I’m
dedicated.”

She spun and they collided. “To suffocating me, yeah.”

“To keeping you breathing! No swimming. No walks. No
swinging on the front porch.”

She huffed, turned and kept on walking. “One Ranger. One
tight-ass.”

“Yeah. You got a problem with that, tough shit, lady.”

She tramped up the steps of the porch, the cheeks of her ass
jiggling beneath the skimpy black panties. He forgot to breathe and halted in
his tracks, loving the view.

She yanked open the screen door, tossing back at him. “I
like rules. Law and order. Nothing wrong with them. What I’m tired of is being
tied down with you.”

He blinked.
She was bored with him?
What a crock.
“Thought you liked how I beat you at cards. Chess, too. Every time,” he rubbed
it in.

She spun, hands on her hips. “Why would I?”

He rocked back on his heels and surveyed every inch of the
curvy woman in front of him. “Because you have never had a man beat you at
anything.”

She stiffened.

“Do I detect a little shiver going up that pretty spine of
yours?”

“You do not.”

“You bet I do. I see who you are, lady. Had you pegged after
about a week together. Can’t hide from me.”

She began to turn away.

But she froze when he said, “Never had a man you wanted to
dominate you, did you?”

He watched her profile closely. The up-turned nose lifted a
tad higher. Her trim chin rose a bit more firmly. So.
Can’t find the
gumption to deny it?

“I didn’t think so, darlin’. It’s okay. You don’t have to
admit I’m right. It’s enough that we both know I am.”

“You can’t say that,” she whispered as she stared at him.

The warning in her words only made him madder. He took the
steps in two lunges, hauled her up against him and gave in to the red-hot
torment of her sassy lips. His mouth crashed down on hers. And
damn
. She
was warm, sweet and
Christ
, was she willing. Her mouth opened, her
tongue came out to dance with his, and he got such a juicy piece of her he drew
away, stunned.

She stared at him. Her purple eyes growing wider, her mouth
parting, swollen.

He wrapped her close, the touch of her sleek supple flesh
drilling into his fogged mind and shaking loose one promise. “After this trial
is done, you can bet your next paycheck I’m coming after you.”

She pushed away, their rough play dislodging her thin bra,
the material hooking on the peaks of her nipples and slipping slowly to the
floor. Her heavy breasts bounced as she stepped away.

He watched them. His cock twitched. Tightened.

She shivered as his eyes narrowed.

His tongue slid along his lower lip. “You better go put some
clothes on those pretty things fast.”

She pivoted and made for her bedroom and shut the door with
a click.

He thrust one hand out against the doorjamb, his eyes
closing while he massaged his heavy, unhappy cock.

What was wrong with her?

Cabin fever was one thing.

Horny is another, Skye.

She fell backward against her bedroom door and rubbed her
palms over her aching breasts.
God, how she wanted his hands on her. His
mouth. His cock. His everything.

Two months in the wilderness with the Lone Ranger has you
stupid for him, Skye.
So what if he’s built like the Starship Enterprise?
All right, all right. So he’s droll as John Wayne. Handsome as the devil. Wise
as an owl. And endowed like a rock-hard porn star.

Ohhh, stop this! He’s only interested in you because
you’re his only choice. Bet the girls all drool over him at the local
dancehall. Texas Ranger, white hat, big gun, big hands and huge balls.

Get over it, Chamberlain!

All you want is a good roll in the hay.

But that wasn’t all she wanted. Not from Rex Martinez. No
sir. From him, she wanted more than one great fuck. She wanted all day, all
night. His honed muscles plastered to her body. His thick, rasping bass voice
rubbing her senses, letting her feel him deep inside her pussy, all the way up
in her cunt, his thighs rocking against hers.

She pushed away from the door, strode to her closet and
stepped out of her panties. She wanted to be surrounded by strength like his.

Mountainous strength.

Indomitable.

Like she’d never known.

Like she’d only read about in novels.

A man so centered, so realistic, so sure of himself and what
he was meant to do in the world, that she was in awe of him.

How she even got a few words out to talk with him had begun
to astonish her. And she was never enthralled by anyone. Years in the savage
realities of the ER. She knew it. So did her editor, and it was how she was
able to go into some rough crime areas and do research. How she kept her cool
and her stomach from up-chucking. How she made her living. Even this gig that
had gotten her in so much trouble with this Gonzaga clan, had not frightened
her. At first.

“Blonde, built and begging for it,” was how her editor
billed her desire to come to South Texas and see if she could meet any of the Gonzagas.
“You have to be safe out there, Skye. No series is worth getting killed for.
And you know this
familia
is one of the most cruel along the Rio Grande.
I do not want you kidnapped or maimed. Get another plot. I can do without this
story.”

“But you can’t, Chuck,” she’d told her boss at her
publishing house. “Journalists aren’t going in anymore. Hell, even if a
newspaper has the research staff, they think twice about sending them in to
Mexico. But these Gonzaga boys are women’s worst nightmare. Importing sex
slaves from Asia into Mexico and across the border into Texas. Kidnapping women
from the border towns and forcing them into prostitution in bordellos in
Chihuahua and Monterrey. Last year, they kidnapped two female sheriffs. One
they killed, but the other one we think they have kept alive in Nuevo Laredo.
This makes the basis for a great novel.”

He had agreed to the angle, but hated the fact she would be
such a blonde Anglo target. But she had lucked out. Renting a house across the
American-Mexican border in Nuevo Laredo, she had attracted the amorous
attentions of the man whom many suspected of being the
familia
’s
second-in-command. He was hot for her and ready to make her his own special
puta
,
too, when she’d heard him admit to killing three women. Then the next night,
she’d witnessed his buddy kill three females. Skye had been able to feed
information to the Texas Rangers about that and a raid the Gonzagas planned on
an all-girl’s high school in Texas. They had caught the murderer and then put
the second-in-command behind bars. Skye was their star witness against both
men.