BILLIONAIRE BIKERS: 3 MC Romance Books (19 page)

"Relax," he murmurs. "You're so fucking tense." He sweeps his thumb beneath my anklebone, and I nearly jolt out of the chair; only the firm grasp of his hand keeps me steadily in place. A rush of heat overwhelms my face as he continues to stroke me through the too-thin material of my black stockings. Why does he have to touch me
right there?
There's no way that could be considered an erogenous zone on a normal person, right? His touch makes me want to squirm in the chair, but I fight my own body's response and hold as still as I possibly can.

Lesher continues this seemingly unconscious act as he sets my left shoe aside and starts for the right. I force a laugh to ease the tension I feel building between us.

"Relax? Are you actually being serious?" I demand. "I'm a hostage! How do I know you won't hurt me?"

"I've been honest with you so far." He pops my next shoe off, and it suddenly occurs to me to wonder
why
exactly he is undressing me. I pull my skirt down self-consciously, but he seems disinterested in looking above my knees—then again, Lesher always
seems
a lot of things. Hell, he seemed like a "Thomas" for the first hour I knew him.

"No, you
definitely
have not," I correct him. "You lied to me from the beginning. You never wanted to open an account."

Lesher chuckles, and I feel the press of both of his thumbs now as he takes hold of my right foot and massages the sole. I shiver, even as I outwardly try to suppress how good it feels. I always hated wearing those shoes, but they were part of the uniform. It makes weird sense that Lesher should be divesting me of them now, as easily as he divested me of the job that I didn't always feels as grateful for as I probably should have.

"No more lying between us," he suggests. "I'll go first. I don't need to open an account because I already have my money taken care of."

"What is this?" I give a small, incredulous laugh. It isn't a bright and happy sound, but it's still a laugh, and I hate myself for rewarding him with one in the next instant. The only reward I'm interested in is whatever the police decide to offer to bring this man in. "Is this a game of twenty questions? Shouldn't you be back downstairs splitting the cash you stole?"

Lesher raises a pale eyebrow at me. "Sounds to me like you want to go first. Fine, I’ll answer your question. I don't need the money. The men you met downstairs will be keeping it for services rendered."

"What do you mean, you don't need the money?" I demand. My leg spasms as if he's hit a nerve, and his tender grip suddenly turns steely. Apparently I won't be moving until he's done with me. "Why did you decide to
rob a bank
if you don't need the money? Why did you…?" My eyes cut quickly to look him over as the answer to my own question sinks in. If it weren't for the plastic ties that bind my hands I would be hunting through the pockets of the jacket he's laid across me. "Wait. I saw you. I saw you take something…something from the vault!" I glare at him triumphantly. He doesn't react, but I'm sure I've hit on the real answer.

I rack my brain, trying to remember those last moments in the backroom before Marcus arrived, but I can't recall seeing what, exactly, it was that Lesher held in his hand. "Is that what all this is about?" I ask.

A get a vicious yank in response, and I'm jerked out from underneath the leather jacket—and halfway off the chair—by Lesher. He grabs hold of my slender ankle, and I realize his hand is almost big enough to manacle my leg. "My turn," he interrupts me. "Do you actually like wearing these?"

It takes me a moment to realize he's referring to my stockings. I have no idea why he wants to bring them up, unless he's trying to distract me from my line of questioning. I must be on the right track, then, when I theorized he was in on the robbery for something else.

"I…" My throat feels suddenly dry, and I swallow.
Buck up, Nancy. Play his game. Who knows what you might learn, and how your information might benefit the police once you get out of this.

Considering that I have yet to figure out how to get myself out of this, it seems like a solid plan. I swallow again. "I've never thought of it before. They're inexpensive, so it's not a big deal that I have to wear them."

"They make you wear them," Lesher infers as his hand glides up the smooth side of my leg. His fingers explore a run, and I realize that this particular pair of stockings is, like the rest of me, completely wrecked by the events of the day. "Pity."

His fingers catch deliberately in another run in my stockings, tearing the hole wider, and I move my knee aside. I clench my thighs together and try to brush his hand away with both of mine.

"Okay. Okay, my turn," I say quickly. I feel his jacket slide down my back, and I'm struck by a sudden inspiration. "What does the patch on your jacket mean? Is it the symbol of your gang?"

"It's the symbol for a life I'm in the process of leaving behind me," comes his enigmatic reply. "It's something I thought I needed, but I see now that it won't help me get what I want."

"Which is?" I prompt him. He surprises me by lowering his mouth to my leg, and I feel the press of his lips above my knee…right where he's just made the hole in my stocking wider.

I freeze as an overwhelming sensation crashes over me. He's hardly touched me, but everything he's done to me so far has been so sexually charged that I can't deny any longer what is happening—and I'd have to be pretty heavily in denial to still think this is all an innocent game when his lips are on me.

"My turn," he reminds me. His mouth forms the words against my skin. "You're turned on right now, aren't you?"

"I'm…" I want to say something to negate what he's saying, to reject and dismiss the truth, but I'm afraid he'll know I'm lying. And if Lesher knows I'm not going to play by his rules, what's to keep him from providing further valuable information? I have the opportunity to interrogate him as much as he is interrogating me. It's just that our lines of questioning differ…as do our methods.

"Tell the truth." His voice is singsong.

"I was…attracted to you when you first walked in to the bank," I admit.
That should be good enough, right?

"Not good enough."

Damn.

"I…don't find you any less attractive now," I stammer. "I mean, physically. But obviously everything about our situation has changed!"

"Has it?" he purrs against my thigh. "Or are you just more aware now of who you're dealing with?"

"There's no way you find me attractive," I scoff. "I mean, come on. I'm so plain my name may as well be Jane, and you're a freaking master criminal with a gang—"

Lesher raises himself off me suddenly and strikes. Before I can think to turn away, he's in the chair with me, his knee propped to one side of the seat as he straddles me. He seizes my hair; I raise my hands up to ward him off, but tied as they are, the gesture is completely ineffectual.

He holds me in place, as he pushes his mouth against mine in a kiss.

The inside of the little room spins. My eyes are wide open. I close them as I try to summon my control, to take back the vestiges of my resistance…but it's harder than I expected. The way his lips knead against mine feels like pure Heaven.

"Lesher," I gasp, but he silences me once more before I can form a real protest. I meant to say "stop," right? I wish I could remember.

"Admit it, Nancy. You like a little danger." He holds his face inches from my own as his hand whisks its way down between us once more. "You liked me then, and you like me now."

The arm that snakes between us forcefully pins my incapacitated hands. If I was helpless before, I feel like a complete prisoner beneath him now.

He's still wearing his riding gloves. I feel the thickness of the reinforced fabric as he shoves his hand up beneath my skirt, delving. I cry out, but there's nothing for me to clamp my legs down over; he keeps his arm out of reach. The flat of his hand presses possessively as it flares along my pelvis, missing what I mistakenly think to be his destination. The core of my womanhood throbs, aching for his touch despite my persisting confusion about whether or not I should be doing this.

No. No, I should definitely not be doing this.

Lesher muffles my sigh of low disappointment with another wet sweep of his mouth. The hand beneath my skirt settles on the waistband of my tights, formerly hidden to the point of inaccessibility beneath the tight cotton of my skirt. He tugs, guiding them down my thighs, the speed with which he undresses me increasing with the escalating intensity of his kiss.

I break away in alarm. "No," I protest suddenly, firmly. Bare legs make this all too real. My perception of the room returns as soon as I've wrenched myself from the intoxicating pull of his lips, and I see the cot in the corner as if for the first time. I feel the bite of zip ties against the tender flesh of my wrists.

This is not how I want things to be. And even if I crave Lesher as much as he seems to crave me, I can't allow myself to go any further. I have to get away, and allowing myself to feel this good wrapped in his arms is only clouding my judgement…

My tights keep descending. Soon he has them down past my knees, my shins, he peels them off my ankles without a second thought.

He carries himself down, lower and lower, following the removal of clothing. Maybe he didn't hear me. If that's the case, time to make myself heard.

I do what any frazzled bank teller in my situation should have done from the beginning. The moment he strips my ruined tights off me, I snap my leg and kick him.

I had only half-hoped I would make any sort of connection, but it turns out his head was exactly where it needed to be to take the full force of my blow. My instep strikes his cheek, rotating him almost one hundred and eighty degrees.

Lesher falls off me with a curse. I'm up and out of the chair before he can retaliate…and I'm sure retaliation is coming. I've just struck the leader of a gang of dangerous criminals.

"Don't…don't come any closer," I warn as I back myself into the corner. "I'm warning you."

"You couldn't have warned me earlier?" Lesher demands. "Shit." He grasps his jaw and works it back and forth; his eyes flare open as he blinks in an attempt to clear his vision. My foot is killing me, but I try not to limp too obviously as I retreat further away from him. I'm certain I'll have a bruise to remind us both of my successful sneak attack.

"I told you 'no'." My words sound strong and more self-assured than I expected, and I soldier on. "I don't care what you think you know about me, or even if you're right…when I tell you to
stop,
I mean it."

I glare at him through a curtain of tousled curls, thinking it would be a wasted effort to attempt to comb them back into place considering my hands are still bound. Lesher rises from his doubled-over position beside the chair, flat blue eyes tracking my movements across the room. He doesn't return my glare, but I don't think he looks amused by my rebellion, either. Good. I need him to quit condescending to me and start taking matters between us seriously.

I'm standing on the cot in the corner right now. Maybe it wasn't such a bright idea to get a bed between us, especially when he's looking at me with such heat…but I don't have a whole lot of room to work with here.

"You said I could trust you," I remind him finally. "Why don't you prove it? Please, Lesher…please prove it to me." I wonder if I've ended my plea weaker than I began it, but I can't help it. I'm not a domineering person like he is; I'm not used to giving orders.

He comes for me. He strides toward me, and I flinch back toward the wall as if I could sink into it and hide from his wrath. I hear the terrifying whisper and click of a weapon being drawn and primed in the same motion, and realize he's pulled a switchblade. Adrenaline dumps into my body, and I can't seem to decide whether to go limp or sprint past him for the door. Before I have a chance to decide, Lesher has blocked any chance I had of escape with his own body. He snatches my bound hands, and I cry out. He jerks the blade upward, and…

… the knife slices right through the zip ties that bind my wrists. He releases his hold on me in the next instant, and I yank my freed hands back to me.

I gaze up into his gorgeous, impassive face, at a complete loss for words. I notice a bruise starting to bloom beneath his right eye, shadowing the cheekbone where I kicked him. Without blinking, he retracts the switchblade and moves back across the room. I release a shaky breath I hadn't been aware I was holding.

So much for trusting him. I need to regain some ground to negotiate between us, and fast.

"If you think you're as…as
magnetic
to me as you claim to be, then at least understand that this isn't the time or place that I would want…" I falter, unsure of how to continue. Clearly I was very ready for this to be the
time
and
place
only seconds before.

"… this isn't how I want things to be," I state emphatically. "You can hold me hostage in this room, or you can let me go. But I won't consent to being seduced by you. Knowing that, it's your call how we proceed."

Maybe I shouldn't have outright said that it was
his call
, but it seems silly not to acknowledge the position of power he holds. Even in this private room, sequestered from the outside world and the leering men downstairs, I'm still his prisoner. He could still overpower me at any moment and we both know it.