In Bed with Boone

Chapter 3

A night of sleeping on the hard floor did nothing to improve Boone’s disposition. He had planned to ask Jayne if she minded sharing the bed—platonically, of course—but she’d been sound asleep by the time he’d returned to the room last night. Asleep! She either trusted him completely, a frightening possibility, or she had no self-preservation instincts whatsoever. Neither option was good.

If she’d come awake in the middle of the night and found him sleeping beside her, she probably would have come off the bed screaming. Which wouldn’t have necessarily been a bad thing, now that he thought about it. The occasional cry in the night was probably expected.

He rolled up and peered over the edge of the mattress to find Jayne still sleeping. She hadn’t put on his T-shirt as he’d told her to. She slept in a silky white slip. He hadn’t known women still wore slips! All he could see of the undergarment were the straps, one of which had fallen off her shoulder, but last night he’d caught a glimpse of white against the thigh that had escaped from beneath the sheet on his bed. He’d covered that thigh, feeling a little guilty for enjoying the sight so much, and Jayne hadn’t tossed the covers off in the night. If anything, she caught the covers to her more tightly and securely than she had last night, hiding there beneath white sheets and the twisted green comforter.

As he watched, her eyes fluttered, opened, latched onto his and went wide with terror.

Jayne Barrington, demure Southern belle and his unwilling hostage, sat up, bringing the sheet with her. “Oh, no, it wasn’t a nightmare,” she said breathlessly. “You’re…you’re real.”

“Not the response I usually elicit from women I spend the night with,” Boone grumbled.

She took in the makeshift pallet on the floor, and her frightened expression softened. “You could have slept on the couch in the other room.”

“You could have left room for me on the bed, so I wouldn’t have to sleep on the…darn floor.”

Her lip actually curled. “I don’t think so.”

Annoying as she was, the girl recovered quickly. “So, what’s next?”

“Make me breakfast?”

She looked as horrified as she had at the prospect of sleeping with him. “I don’t cook!”

“Of course you don’t,” he muttered, coming to his feet.

She quickly covered her eyes. “You’re naked!”

“I am not!” Boone glanced down at the underwear he wore, a pair of baggy silk boxers that were, by his standards, modest.

She did not drop the hand from her eyes, protecting herself from the sight of his scantily clad body as she continued in a much calmer voice. “Nearly naked. Don’t you have a pair of pajamas?”

Boone stared at her and shook his head. “No.”

“Maybe you could get some.”

He laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion. “I don’t think so.”

Jayne sighed and finally lowered her hand, but she didn’t look at him. Her eyes were turned to the window and the morning light that broke through the sliver of a part in the curtains.

Boone heard a footfall in the hallway outside the bedroom door. When he raised a finger to his lips, Jayne nodded her head and pursed her lips. She was spoiled and rich, a debutante who had no business here, but she was quick, he’d give her that.

He grabbed the corner post of the headboard.

“Not again,” Jayne whispered.

Boone shrugged and began to rock. Jayne lay down on the bed and covered her face with the sheet, squealing softly but appropriately when he reached down to pinch her lightly on one gently curving, sheet-covered shoulder.

Jayne had brushed off Boone’s suggestion that she wear one of his T-shirts and cinch up an old pair of cutoff denims, and dressed in her own clothes. Blouse and skirt, anyway, and shoes. No hose, no jacket, but she had retrieved her pearls from the bedside table and put them on, and she’d brushed her hair. Fortunately one of the hooligans had collected her purse from the Mercedes. Her cell phone was gone, of course, but she had her own brush, as well as a small amount of makeup. Very fortunately the criminal who had reached into the car for her purse hoping for a nice wad of cash hadn’t recognized the name Barrington on her driver’s license, a name her father had made well-known. In truth, she had done nothing on her own accord but to uphold the family name and play hostess for the sociable Senator Barrington when he asked it of her.

She plopped a large plate of bacon and eggs on the kitchen table, and the four men present stared suspiciously at the offering.

“The bacon’s not done,” Marty grumbled.

Doug picked up the strip nearest him, an almost black piece of bacon that had gotten away from her and turned dark before her very eyes. “This one is.”

“Bacon’s not good for you, anyway,” Boone said as he reached for the spoon Jayne had left in the scrambled eggs, took a huge spoonful and dropped it onto his plate.

Darryl grumbled, but he filled his own plate, too, and the four men began to eat. They each took a bite. Three men spit half-chewed eggs back onto their plates.

Boone swallowed, grudgingly. “Sugar, hand me the salt.”

“Salt!” Jayne said, turning around and heading for the kitchen counter. “I forgot all about the salt.”

“We figured that out for ourselves,” Doug said under his breath.

“There’s no need to be rude,” Jayne said as she placed the saltshaker on the table, directly in front of Boone. “I’m not a cook, you know. If you don’t like what I made for breakfast, you can just quietly walk away and either go hungry or make your own breakfast.”

Darryl, the man who had shot Jim, narrowed one eye. He still gave Jayne a major case of the shivers. She didn’t think it was simply his large size that frightened her. He’d shot and intended to kill Jim; he would have shot her without a second thought, without a twinge of conscience. Boone she could handle; the boys who giggled like teenage girls when they thought of sex she could handle. But Darryl…Darryl was much too frightening for her to even consider handling.

“If she’s going to stay here, she’s going to pull her weight,” Darryl said.

“She will,” Boone replied. Without warning, he grabbed her and pulled her onto his knee. “She does,” he added suggestively.

Jayne tried to stand; Boone held her in place. She knew what he was doing and she knew why. That didn’t mean she had to like it. “Not now,” she chided. “I have dishes to do. The kitchen is a mess.” She tried again to stand, and got only a few inches off his knee before he pulled her down again. She landed with a thump on his rock-hard thigh.

“I didn’t bring you here to do dishes,” he said in a voice low enough to be meant for her alone, loud enough to carry to the other three, who ate newly salted eggs and picked at their bacon looking for properly cooked segments. “Doug and Marty can do the damned dishes.”

“Don’t curse,” she said primly.

Boone tightened the arm that encircled her waist and pulled her back. “Don’t tell me what to do.” With that, he nudged aside her hair and pressed his lips to her neck. She couldn’t help it; she let out a squeaky breathless cry.

Doug giggled. “She is a squealer, ain’t she, Becker. Doesn’t that get on your nerves? All that howling?”

“No,” Boone responded, his mouth still against her neck.

“I really should do the…” Something wet trailed across the back of her neck. His mouth…his tongue. “Dishes.”

Jayne wasn’t tough, she wasn’t prepared for a situation like this one, and yet at the moment she felt as if she had absolutely no control. None. The world was spinning, she didn’t know what would happen next…and she was just along for the ride. She hated that, rolling along with no say in the matter, a man’s hands on her body and his mouth on her neck giving her inappropriate and unexpected and unwanted chills. Another man watched, ready to kill her at the slightest provocation. Two other brainless hoodlums looked on, amused.

Boone said that what he did best was lie. It was a game. A deadly one, but a game all the same. If she was to play, perhaps she could gather her wits and play. What would it take to garner a bit of control? Some semblance of order?

She grasped Boone’s wrist and forcefully moved it aside. She stood, removing her neck from his lascivious attentions. When he reached out, she very deftly moved out of his way.

“For goodness’ sake,” Jayne said as she took a step that carried her just out of his reach. “You are incorrigible.” They were supposed to be intimate, and while she knew very little about intimacy, she did know that the woman in such a relationship possessed a power of her own. “All night,” she said, turning to face Boone as she backed toward the sinkful of dirty dishes. “And into the morning. What do you think I am? A…a…” She didn’t have to work hard to manufacture a sniffle. “You should be able to keep your hands to yourself for five minutes. Five minutes! Is that too much to ask?”

Boone lifted two finely shaped dark eyebrows. “You didn’t complain last night.”

“I did!” she said indignantly. Then she remembered his words, what it would take to keep her alive, and she blushed. “At first.”

“This is better than a soap opera,” Doug said with a grin.

“Do the dishes,” Boone finally said, his voice low and his eyes dark.

“You do the dishes!”

“I thought you wanted to do the dishes!” Boone sounded truly frustrated.

“God, now they sound like my parents,” Marty said with a shudder, pushing away from the table.

Darryl slowly rose to his feet, shook his head, clenched and unclenched his meaty fists. Doug popped up, too, not wanting to be left behind.

Marty, still shaking his head, left the kitchen and headed straight for the television in the connecting living room. “Hey, maybe the news about that guy Darryl shot will be on TV!” Darryl and Doug followed.

The expression on Boone’s face changed subtly, darkening. “You missed the morning news.”

“Yeah, but the one station we get kinda clear has an update at ten.” He glanced at his watch. “Just a couple of minutes.”

With his hands positioned so that no one else could see, Boone motioned to Jayne. She had no idea what he was trying to tell her, but she did know one thing: they didn’t want these guys to know that Jim was alive or that she was a senator’s daughter.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said sharply. “You think what happened last night will keep you alive? Piss me off and you’re history, just like your boyfriend.”

Sure enough, a curious Marty glanced into the kitchen. Doug wasn’t far behind. Darryl remained firmly planted in front of the old television, waiting for the update.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she said frostily. “Not after…you know.”

“Sex,” Boone said. “You can’t even say it!” He launched into a tirade, using every foul word she had ever heard and some she hadn’t.

“You…you crude bully.”

As it had last night, the word bully made Darryl laugh. But he didn’t move away from the TV.

“I can be cruder and I can be meaner,” Boone promised.

“Impossible.”

The teaser about the news update came on, sending a shiver down Jayne’s spine. They had a minute, maybe less.

Boone crossed the room and swept Jayne off her feet. “Fight me,” he whispered as he hauled her up and tossed her over his shoulder.

She did, kicking, beating ineffectually against his back with her fists as he carried her into the living room.

“Can’t you do better than that?” Boone whispered.

She tried, but she wasn’t a violent person. As Boone carried her through the doorway into the main room, where Darryl sat before the television, she fought as best she could, feet and hands flailing. “You…you un-civilized brute!”

“Last night you seemed to like that about me, sugar.”

“Don’t call me sugar.” She glanced up to see that the two dim-witted criminals grinned, while a disgusted Darryl shook his head in wonder or dismay. Maybe both.

“I’ll call you whatever I want to call you.” Boone put Jayne on her feet between Darryl and the TV, raising his voice. “Don’t forget who you are, or how you got here, or that I might get tired of you at any moment and then you’ll be in a world of trouble.”

Jayne placed her hands on her hips. “You wouldn’t dare! Not after…not after…” She stopped and gave Boone an exasperated huff. Darryl leaned to one side as the newsbreak came on. With an outraged cry, Jayne turned and gave the television a shove. It wobbled backward, finally falling from the unsteady stand and crashing to the floor with a spark and a puff of smoke. The screen went black.

“I can’t believe you’d say that to me, not after last night. You said…you said…”

The three other men gathered around the remains of the television as Boone grabbed Jayne and pulled her against his chest. “Now, sugar,” he said in a soothing voice, “don’t get all upset.”

Jayne hid her face against Boone’s chest. Oh, Darryl would be furious, but what else could she have done? Pushing the TV off its stand had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now she wondered.

“Becker,” Darryl said slowly, “your woman just broke my TV.”

“I’ll buy you a new TV. That one was a piece of crap, anyway.” Boone’s arms protected her as he brushed off Darryl’s complaint.

“How am I supposed to watch my soaps?” Marty asked, not quite as outraged as Darryl, but definitely unhappy.

“Soaps are for old women,” Boone growled. “You’ll survive a few days with no TV.”

Jayne chanced a quick glance at the three men. None of them were happy with her at the moment. She’d made a lousy breakfast and broken their television. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I just got so upset…” The tremble in her voice was not manufactured; it was very real. She returned her gaze to Boone. “You can be so mean.”

He lifted her off her feet and spun her around. “I know how to make you feel better.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“But, Boo…”

He shut her up by laying his mouth over hers. Immediately she knew why, and even though she had insisted on knowing, for a split second she wished Boone had never told her his real name. Would she always remember to call him Becker when the others were around? If she forgot in a moment of anger or forgetfulness, it could mean death for both of them.

It wasn’t a real kiss, but a necessary caution. Still, his mouth was nice and firm, sweet and gentle. She had a feeling that when Boone really kissed a woman, he did it right.

He took his mouth from hers, a warning gleam in his eyes.

“But, BooBoo,” she said when she could speak again, hopefully covering her mistake. “I still haven’t done the dishes.”

“Marty!” Boone yelled. “Do the damned dishes.”

BooBoo! Oh, this was bad. “BooBoo?” he asked, hands on hips as he glared down at Jayne, who sat on the side of the bed looking composed, calm, perfectly in control. One foot rocked, drawing his eye to her shapely ankle.

“It’s no worse than sugar.”

“Yes,” he insisted with a nod of his head, “it is.”

He didn’t let on that his heart was still hammering. He had thought about shooting the television and then trying to pass it off as a rash moment of rage, but Jayne’s seemingly impulsive shove had worked much better. But for how long? They would meet with Gurza in four days. Four days, after three months of undercover work! And one wrong word could blow it in a heartbeat.

“I shouldn’t have told you my name,” he said in a low voice.

Her face softened. “I know but…I’m glad you did,” she whispered. “It makes me feel so much safer.”

She wasn’t safe, not at all, but he didn’t bother to tell her so.

Boone moved to the head of the bed and grasped the post in his hand.

Jayne sighed. “Not again. This is so embarrassing.”

Boone ignored her and began to shake the bed. The springs squeaked. Jayne covered her face in her hands.

“Come on, sugar,” Boone said softly. “Help me out here.”

For a moment she did nothing. Then she dropped her hands from her face, looked him in the eye and gave a little hop that made the bed squeak even more. “Why Becker?” she asked as she gave another little bounce. “Is that like a middle name? A family name?”

Boone leaned down, placing his face close to hers. “Rhymes with my favorite body part,” he whispered.

She screwed up her nose. “Becker? Becker doesn’t rhyme with…” Suddenly her face turned red. “That’s disgusting!” she said, her voice rising slightly.

He grinned. “Say that a little bit louder.”

“I will not,” she said primly.

He began to bang the headboard against the wall, faster and faster, harder and harder. “Moan,” he whispered.

“I do not moan,” she said, her Southern accent deepening as she protested.

“You poor thing. I guess I’ll just have to pinch you again to make you squeal.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She looked away from him, squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. And then she made some kind of noise. It wasn’t a moan or a squeal. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

“If I can barely hear it, they can’t hear it at all.”

She snapped her head around and glared at him. “You know, I’m sure there are women out there who make love silently.”

“I’ve never met one.”

“You’re vile.”

“You’re a prude.”

It was the wrong, or perhaps the right thing to say. Prude was an insult Jayne took personally, and her response was apparently going to be to prove him wrong. She closed her eyes, tossed back her head and moaned. The sound was low, long and real enough to make Boone’s insides tighten. Her soft voice was the kind that might creep under a man’s skin if he went for her type. Which he didn’t.

Jayne took a deep breath and moaned again, louder this time. Boone tried to convince himself that Jayne Barrington was not his type at all. He liked his women with long dark hair, long legs and plenty up top. Not gentle, delicate curves, but prodigious breasts that made a man’s eyes pop out of his head when the woman walked into a room. He shook the bed harder, faster, his eyes on Jayne.

Head back, throat bared, mouth slightly parted, she was a fascinating sight, with her creamy skin and reddish-gold hair and soft lips. Her throat was nice and long, he noticed. Shapely and delicate, like the rest of her. His body began to respond. Enough was enough.

“Scream,” he whispered.

She laid those green eyes on him and glared. “Maybe I’m not ready,” she mouthed.

He grinned and reached for her with his free hand.

“Okay,” she said softly, scooting away from him. She closed her eyes again, took a deep breath and screamed. Loud and long. Boone banged the headboard a couple more times, for good measure and then stopped. Thank God. He really couldn’t take much more of this.

“Not bad,” he said as he sat beside Jayne on the side of the bed. He took a deep calming breath. “Who were you thinking of when you let loose?”

She looked him in the eye. “Not who, what. Snakes.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Snakes?”

“I’m terrified of snakes,” she said with a shake of her head and a shudder that seemed to rack her from head to toe. “And I don’t care if they’re poisonous or not. I hate all snakes equally.”

“Why?”

Her eyes met his. “I don’t have to have a specific reason,” she said. “A lot of people hate snakes.”

Boone waited a couple of minutes before leaving Jayne, shaking his head as he stood. It had been a pretty damn good scream.

He wasn’t terribly surprised to find a scowling Darryl waiting at the doorway between the hallway and the television-less living room. Marty and Doug were nowhere to be seen, but as he glared at Darryl, Boone heard laughter from the kitchen and then a splash of water. The boys were doing the dishes.

“I don’t get it,” Darryl muttered, his hard eyes on Boone and his arms crossed over his massive chest. “It doesn’t make any sense. You hauled that woman here last night because you wanted her in your bed. She was none too happy about the idea at the time, as I remember. And then this morning she’s calling you BooBoo and screaming her head off. Something stinks.”

Boone grinned. “What can I say? I’m good.”

Darryl was not impressed.

Boone’s grin faded. “She’s a society sweetheart who’s been handled with kid gloves all her life. Nobody’s ever touched her right, nobody’s ever made her scream. Since she’s never had one before, she thinks an orgasm means she’s in love. Three or four and we’re soul mates. Don’t worry about Jayne. I can handle her.”

“What are you going to do with her when we’re through here? I can’t have her coming to her senses and talking about what happened last night.”

“She won’t.”

“You can’t be sure…”

As far as Darryl knew, Richard Becker was a badass drug dealer from Atlanta, looking to move up a notch in the world. An association with Joaquin Gurza would make that happen. Thanks to big brother Dean—who was a deputy U.S. marshal and had all the right connections—and Detective Luther Malone, Boone had the background to make this cover tight. Airtight. Boone would protect Jayne Barrington with his life. Richard Becker wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in his way.

“When I’m finished with Jayne,” Boone said tightly, “I’ll take care of her. She’s the one with the illusions, not me. You have nothing to worry about.”

Darryl nodded, slightly mollified. “Glad to hear it.”

Boone headed past Darryl, intent on the coffeepot on the kitchen counter. He had to keep Darryl and the boys away from the news for the next four days. Could he do it? If Darryl found out that the man he’d shot was alive and that Jayne was a senator’s daughter, he’d panic and insist on doing away with her immediately. And since Boone had told them all that Jayne’s friend Jim was dead, Jayne would likely not die alone.

If they got that far, how was he going to get Jayne, the kid and himself out of here alive?

His life and his mission had just become very complicated.

Chapter 4

Jayne lay back in the bed and stared up at the ceiling. A shower had helped her to feel a little better, but still she wished for a change of clothes—her own clothes—as well as underwear, a soft nightgown, her hair dryer, and an entire package of chocolate-chip cookies. The soft ones.