Page 9 of Russian Roulette
“Shit!” he yells, jerking back when I bite down harder. He twists his head away from me and grips my wrists tighter behind my back. “You’ll pay for that later,” he warns in a low, steady tone. His voice sounds calm and in control, with an underlying sense of danger. “If you want to play dirty, baby, then I’m your man. I like it rough.”
He quickly secures my wrists with the scarf. “Ouch! That’s too tight,” I complain, struggling against the cloth. “You’re cutting my circulation off.”
“When you stop fighting like a wildcat and agree to behave, we might consider loosening it,” he says, giving the scarf a couple more tugs to make sure it’s secure. “Not until then. The more you fight, the worse it will be.” His words are direct and to the point, with little room for misunderstanding or negotiation.
“I’ll behave,” I say in my sweetest voice, changing tactics. I glance over my shoulder to give him a fake smile. “I promise.”
“Yeah, right,” he replies coldly. “I bet you will.”
A stream of red blood is pouring down his neck from his ear. My bite had to hurt like hell. I didn’t realize an ear could bleed so much. No wonder the metallic taste of blood is in my mouth. I lean over to spit a mouthful out on the concrete.
A terrible thought hits me. What if he has a disease? Maybe chomping on his ear wasn’t such a great idea after all. Would it be impolite to ask someone I just bit if they’ve been tested lately? I wonder what the protocol is in this kind of situation?
“Let’s put her in the back seat,” he tells Snake Charmer, who stepped back away from me once I started flashing my teeth. “I’ll sit with her, since she’s obviously more than you two can handle.”
In one effortless motion, he leans over, puts an arm under my knees, and scoops me up. I should’ve fought harder before psycho guy got out of the car because I could’ve taken down the other two men, no problem. He shoves me over to the middle of the back seat, then leans in to buckle me up carefully with the seatbelt.
“You’re concerned about seatbelts when you’re kidnapping me?” I raise my eyebrows at him. “If you think you can hold me for ransom, I have a newsflash for you. Nobody will miss me. Not a single person. You wouldn’t get five dollars in ransom for me, so this is a stupid idea. It’s not too late to let me go. I won’t say a word to anyone, I swear.”
And I wouldn’t, because then the police might ask me a bunch of questions I don’t want to answer.
His hands are still for a moment at my words, then he moves on to pull the shoulder strap across my chest, letting his hands lightly graze my full breasts. My breath hitches when his fingertips slide over my taut nipples under the seatbelt strap. His dark eyes glance up at mine.
“We drive fast and can’t have you getting killed in a car wreck,” he answers. He climbs in beside me and links his muscular arm through the curve of mine. The hot skin of his arm is searing against mine. I try not to think about it or how my breasts tingled at his slightest touch.
The car door on the opposite side of me jerks open, and I realize there’s someone else not accounted for. Whoever was driving the SUV. A man stands there perplexed, as if he’s figuring out the best way to climb into the back seat.
No wonder, because he’s huge, at least six-foot-six or more. Long, blonde hair flows below his massive, broad shoulders. He’s wearing jeans and a white shirt stretched tight across his muscular chest.
Oh my God, he’s a real-life Viking.
He ducks his head before slowly climbing inside the car to keep from hitting it on the doorframe. “Scoot over,” he says, without making eye contact. Squeezing in tight beside me, he slams the door shut, bringing his enormous body even closer. He’s so tall his head brushes the ceiling of the SUV. He slides lower in the seat in an attempt to get comfortable, which is impossible since his long legs are shoved against the back of the driver’s seat.
The backseat isn’t big enough for the three of us. I’m completely crushed between them. His massive thighs brush against mine and I move slightly to shift away, but there’s no place to go except closer to a psycho.
The car windows are rolled up, and it’s stuffy. There’s not enough oxygen in the air and I’m having trouble catching my breath. I’m claustrophobic being crammed between the two of them with my arms tied behind my back.
“Let me guess,” I say to the Viking. “Your name must be Thor, right? God of thunder, lightning, and the sky.”
He glances over at me with the lightest sky-blue eyes I’ve ever seen in my life before glancing away. They remind me of a Siberian husky dog I once petted as a child.
Wow, he’s seriously a perfect male specimen.
“Am I right?” I can’t resist trying to goad him into turning those baby blues on me again.
He doesn’t respond and instead crosses his massive arms and turns to stare out the window. His arms are bare without a single tattoo or mark on his skin.
“Don’t get too comfortable over there,” America’s Most Wanted leans forward to warn him. “She’s a spitfire. I wouldn’t turn my back on her if I were you. To underestimate her is a big mistake. Ask Leroy’s balls if you don’t believe me.”
“Your ear doesn’t look so great either,” Thor replies, in an impossibly deep voice I could listen to forever. “She got good licks in on both of you.”
While I’m trying to squeeze myself smaller to make more room, the security guard carefully climbs into the driver’s seat, still moaning under his breath about his balls. Snake Charmer hops onto the front seat beside him.
“Everyone ready to go now?” Leroy Justice asks with a loud sigh when he’s finally belted in. He turns around to peek at me. “How about you, Mike Tyson? All buckled in?” His eyes widen when he glimpses psycho’s ear. “Oh shit, Vulcan! She got you good with those big choppers of hers. You’re bleeding all over the damn place. Don’t you dare get blood on the leather seats back there, I mean it. You need to stop that bleeding. Has anyone got a towel?”
“Vulcan?” I perk up at this new piece of information and turn to the psycho guy. “That’s your name? Weird, but it suits you.”
“Thanks a lot, asshole,” he mutters to Leroy Justice. “Now she knows my name.”