“Gee, doesn’t that sound familiar?”
“I mean it, Lydia. Stay where you are. I don’t want to have to get rough with you.”
“It seemed to me you enjoyed getting rough when you were busy slapping me around on the table.”
“Yeah, like you hated it.” He ignored the middle finger she managed to flip at him despite the cuffs and went back to riffling through her clothes. “Don’t you have any jeans in here?”
“I don’t like jeans.”
He tugged a pair of white slacks out of her closet, but she shook her head. “Not the white ones,” she said. “Get the black jogging pants on the end. And I have sneakers down below.”
“You don’t own jeans, but you wear sneakers?”
“Don’t judge me. I do happen to go running, you know.”
“I noticed. Right across state lines.” Nate grabbed the requested items and tossed them on the bed. “But not fast enough to keep me from catching you.” He put his hands on his hips. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just assume we skip underwear and put these on over the bikini.”
“How noble.”
“Here’s how we’re going to do this,” he said. “Turn over and lie flat on your stomach. I’ll do the work.”
The temptation to latch onto that comment fell away as quickly as it came, and she snapped her mouth shut.
When she didn’t move, he took a step closer. “Now, or you can go naked for all I care.”
She flipped over, which wasn’t as easy as it sounded with her hands cuffed. He climbed on top of her, straddling her backward. In this position, her butt was practically in his face, and she held back a moan of disgust at the thought of how eagerly she’d bent over the dining room table while he’d spanked her.
It took some doing, but he tugged on her stretchy jogging pants and went to work on her shoes.
“Look,” he said while she suffered through his feeble attempts at dressing her. “I’m sorry for what happened out there. I admit I gave into a very male opportunity. But let’s not pretend you didn’t put it out there. You wanted it as bad as I did.”
“I thought you were my birthday gift,” she said bitterly. “Not a curse sent straight from hell.”
It took a few tries, but he got her shoes on and stood. “Go ahead and turn around now, slowly,” he said. She heard him blow out a breath. “I’ll help you sit up.”
Again, things easier said than done, but she managed. He kept right on talking while she did. “I should have told you who I was right away, I admit it. I was about to, you know, when you were taking that last drink. Before I could get out my badge and cuffs, you turned around half naked and started groping me. What was I supposed to do?”
He actually wore a guilty expression when she was again facing him. “I suppose stopping to tell me the truth was out of the question.”
Something flashed in his eyes. “You stuck my cock in your mouth, lady. I may be a duly appointed representative of your bond agency, but I’m not a saint. You wanted it bad enough to get on your knees and take it. I just went along with the offer. End of story.”
Her mouth fell open. “End of story, except for the part where you fuck a girl and then take her to jail as if nothing happened.”
“Yeah, well, they don’t call me Nate the Crate for nothing.”
A less-than-polite cackle came out. “Nate the Crate? As in, wooden and stiff with a bunch of holes where substance should be?”
“No, as in strong and unyielding while I’m carting in the goods.” He leaned closer. “Goods meaning you, by the way.”
“Yeah, you’re a real dream come true. Fuck ’em and book ’em.”
“I said I’m sorry about that. I’m just doing my job. And regardless of that look you’re giving me, consensual sex is not illegal for bounty hunters. I’m not the one who broke the law here.”
“I didn’t break the law. I’m innocent.”
A laugh whooped out of him. “Sure you are. Okay, let’s have you stand up and turn around.”
She stayed in place. “You have no right to judge my guilt. You don’t know a thing about me.”
In a flash, he was beside her and had hauled her upright. “Lydia Franklin, age twenty-nine. Single white female, blonde-blue, five-foot-seven, one-hundred-twenty-two pounds.”
She sneered at him. “One-nineteen.”
“Arrested on the fifth of May for embezzling funds from your employer. Bonded out and jumped bail sometime thereafter, my guess would be within twenty-four hours of release.” He shook his head. “And even without knowing all that, let me just say that the fact that you fucked a stripper you had in your apartment for less than sixty seconds doesn’t exactly paint you as an innocent.”