Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(50)

“Come on, let’s get inside where it’s warm.”

“No!”

“Shell, I just want to talk to you. Scout’s honor.”

“You weren’t a Boy Scout,” she scoffed.

“Of course I was.”

“Oh come on, Jake! I wasn’t born yesterday. A man doesn’t rent a hotel room just to talk to a woman.”

“I rented this hotel room as soon as I got into town two days ago, before I knew I’d be staying at your house. If you don’t believe me, you can check at the reception desk. But first, you’ll have to get off the bike.”

“I said no!”

He got the distinct impression she would’ve stomped her foot if she’d been standing. Funny, he’d actually like to see that.

“Uh-huh,” he took a page from her book and rolled his eyes. “And remember what happened the last time you said no? Do you need me to throw you over my shoulder again and haul your sweet ass inside?”

The look she shot him should’ve dropped him like a dumping wave. Instead, he crossed his arms, raised a brow, and waited.

Shell was a smart girl. She knew when she was beaten.

“Fine,” she spat for the second time in fifteen minutes, swinging one bare leg over Viper’s seat and— sonofabitch!—the woman had the best damned gams on the planet.

But that isn’t why you brought her here!

Uh-huh. Tell that to Mr. Chubby in my pants…

“I’m giving you fifteen minutes.” She wiggled her short skirt down her magnificent thighs, and he nearly went cross-eyed. She had the ability to rev him up like no other. “After that, I’m calling a cab and going home to relieve Frank from babysitting duty.”

He followed her to the elevators, only letting his eyes drop down to watch the swing of her ass once.

Okay, twice.

So sue him. Along with a killer pair of legs, the woman had a great ass. He was entitled to give it its due.

He expected her to continue to put up some sort of token resistance. But on the ride to the lobby, they were silent. On the walk through the lobby to the main set of elevators, they were silent. Up to the seventh floor, they were silent. Down the long hall leading to his room…

Yup. Silent.

It wasn’t until he inserted his keycard that she spoke up. “Nope. I’m not going inside with you. We can talk right here in the hall. It’s private enough.”

And there it was. He knew she’d been making it too easy on him.

Wrapping an arm around her shoulders to keep her from bolting, he dragged her into his hotel room.

“Hey! Hands off!” she grouched as he marched her toward the bed. When she saw the direction he was heading, she started backpedaling like he was threatening to throw her headfirst into a volcano.

“Oh, for crying out loud, Shell!” He gently but forcefully pushed her down on the mattress before angrily stalking to the chair shoved beneath the writing desk in the corner. “ Just sit there, and let me say what I have to say.”

Dragging the chair toward the bed, he swung it around backward and straddled the seat. For a long time, he let his eyes wander over her flushed face, cataloging the features he’d fallen in love with the first time he laid eyes on her.

“Well?” she finally asked, squirming uncomfortably beneath his careful regard. “You got me up here to talk. So talk.”

***

“I want to finish telling you about the barracks bombing.”

Oh, crap.

And that was the one thing guaranteed to have Michelle folding her hands in her lap and squashing the urge to run.

Because what had she said she was supposed to do when a fighting man wanted to talk?

Oh, yeah. She was supposed to listen.

Heaven help me…

When he spoke of such things, she had to fight to remember that he was a womanizer like her father, to remember his callous rejection, his abandonment, the years he’d ignored her plea to return to them, to her. When he talked about such things, she had fight to remember he wasn’t just a wounded soldier, a warrior who’d experienced enough horror and pain to last a lifetime. She had to fight to remember that he was Jake, and that the last thing she should do is trust him…

“Where did I stop last night before we were interrupted?” he asked.

Body parts. He’d talked about body parts.

“The crater left behind and the…uh,” she swallowed, “the…bodies of the Marines h-hanging from the trees.”

“Yeah.” He nodded, and she watched the thick column of his throat work over a hard swallow. “We dug in the rubble for two days. But there were no survivors. Not one. And it was at that moment, after forty-eight hours of sorting body parts and tearing my hands to shreds sifting through broken concrete blocks, that I started to hate them. And when I say them, I mean all of them. All those backward, medieval-thinking motherf*ckers and their misplaced fervor and furor. I hated the way they talked, the way they walked and looked and smelled. I wanted to wipe every last one of them from the face of the planet once and for all.”

She nodded in sympathy, trying to imagine anyone witnessing the level of carnage created by that barracks bombing not coming away from it with a heart full of bitterness and rage. One hot, mutinous tear slid down her cheek as the sangria she’d had with dinner turned to vinegar in her stomach.