I smoothed more hair back from my face, eyeing the pathetic form on the gravel. “Give me your damn cuffs,” I snapped at Marc, not the least bit ashamed of myself for dropping my opponent with a knee to the groin.
Marc pulled his own handcuffs from his back pocket. “Remind me not to piss you off,” he said, dropping them into my open palm.
“You still need to be reminded?” Kneeling, I pulled the stray’s arms behind his back and cuffed them. He was still whimpering when I hauled him up by his elbow and half dragged him to the passenger side of the car. At the door, I spun him around to face me. “What’s your name?”
Instead of answering, he leered at the low neckline of my blouse. It wasn’t the smartest or most original response, but it was a definite improvement over the guy who’d tried to take a taste. Still, I was in no mood to be ogled. At least, not by him.
I let my fist fly, and my knuckles smashed into his rib cage. His eyes went wide, and he clenched his jaw on an oof of pain.
“This is the last time I’ll ask,” I warned, focusing on his closed eyelids. “Then I’ll just knock you out and call you Tom Doe. Your choice. Now, what’s your fucking name?”
His eyes popped opened, staring into mine as if to determine how serious my threat was. Whatever he saw must have convinced him. “Dan Painter,” he said, the end of his own name clipped short in anger.
“Mr. Painter.” I nodded, satisfied that he was telling the truth, based on his expression and the steady, if quick, beat of his pulse. “To what do we owe the displeasure of your visit?”
His eyebrows rose in confusion.
I rolled my eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The wrinkles in his forehead smoothed out as comprehension spread across his face. “Just doin’ my civic duty,” he insisted. “Chasing a piece of ass, not that it matters now. Bitch gave me the slip.”
Marc stepped forward. “That must have been some piece of ass, to tempt you into south-central territory.”
Groaning inwardly, I held my tongue. It would have been poor form to yell at my partner in front of the prisoner. Again.
“You got no idea.” The stray looked at Marc over my shoulder. “Or maybe you do.” His eyes slid back to me, and I ground my teeth as his gaze traveled down my blouse and snug black slacks. “This one’s kind of plain in the face, but she’s got it where it counts, huh?”
I felt Marc tense just behind me, and heard his knuckles pop. He was forming a fist. But he was too late.
“Consider this your only warning to stay out of our territory.” My fist flew in a beautiful right hook. My knuckles slammed into the stray’s left cheek. His head snapped back and to the side. And for the second time in four minutes, he collapsed—this time unconscious.
Already flexing my bruised hand, I let him fall. What did I care if he scraped his face on the gravel? He was lucky I hadn’t broken his cheekbone. At least, I didn’t think I’d broken anything. Except possibly my own knuckles.
Behind me, Marc made a soft whistling sound, clearly impressed. “That’s not standard procedure,” he said, his tone entirely too reasonable as he leaned over the stray’s body to open the back passenger-side door.
“Yeah, well, I’m not your standard enforcer.” The rest of my father’s employees had more respect for the rules than I had. They also had much more testosterone and two fewer ovaries. None of them really knew what to do with me.
Marc grinned, pulling my injured hand into the light from the car’s interior bulb. “I won’t argue with that.” He tilted my wrist for a better view, and I winced. “It’s not broken. We’ll stop for some ice on the way to the free zone.”
“And some coffee,” I insisted, already dreading the hourlong drive east to the Arkansas-Mississippi border, where we would release Dan Painter in the free zone on the other side of the Mississippi River. “I need coffee.”
“Of course.” Bending, Marc grabbed the stray’s shirt in his left hand and the waist of his jeans in the other. He picked up the unconscious werecat and tossed him headfirst onto the backseat. “That was one hell of a right hook.” Marc produced a roll of duct tape, apparently from thin air. He tore off a long strip and wound it around Mr. Painter’s ankles, then bent the stray’s legs at the knees to get his feet into the car. “I don’t remember your father teaching you that.”
“He didn’t.”
Marc slammed the door and arched one eyebrow at me in question.
Smiling, I knelt to look beneath the car. “Ultimate Fighting Championship.”
He nodded. “Impressive.”
“I thought so.” On my hands and knees in the gravel, I felt around beneath the car, searching for my handcuffs. I’d lost my first pair diving into the Red River in pursuit of a harmless but repeat offender a month earlier. If I came back without the new set, my father would have my hide. Or dock my paycheck.
My fingers scraped a clump of coarse grass growing through the rocks and skimmed over the rounded end of a broken bottle.
“Need some help?” Marc reached down to run one hand slowly over my hip.
I grinned at him over my shoulder. “You’re not going to find anything there.”
“That’s what you think.” His hand slid up my side as my fingers brushed a smooth arc of metal. I grabbed the cuff and backed out from under the car, and Marc pulled me to my feet. He turned me around to face him as I slid the cuff into my back pocket, then he pressed me against the side of the car. “Let’s take a break,” he whispered, leaning in to brush my neck with his lips.
“Like you’ve been working,” I said, but my hand reached automatically for his arm. My fingers brushed the lines of his triceps, my nails skimming the surface of his skin, raising goose bumps. I loved drawing a reaction from him. It gave me a sense of power, of control. And yet the feeling was mutual; I couldn’t say no to him, and he knew it.
“So why don’t you put me to work?” he purred against my ear, pressing closer to me. His fingers edged between me and the car, moving slowly to cup my rear, his grip firm and strong.
I leaned forward to give him better access. “Do we have time?”
“All the time in the world. Unless you have a curfew I don’t know about.”
“I’m grown, remember?”
“Oh, I remember.” His tongue trailed lightly down the side of my neck, hesitating slightly at the four crescent-shaped scars, leaving a wet trail to be caressed by the warm September breeze. “You’re very, very grown.” His tongue resumed its course, flicking over my collarbone before diving into my cleavage. The sweet spot, he called it. With good reason.
“What about our unwilling guest?” My fingers trailed over his chest, feeling the hard planes through his T-shirt.
“He can find his own date.” Marc’s words were muffled against my skin, his breath hot on the upper curve of my breast.
“I’m serious.” I pulled him back up to eye level. “What if he wakes up?”
“He’ll be jealous.” Marc leaned in to kiss me, but I put a hand on his chest. Breathing an impatient sigh, he glanced through the car window over my shoulder, then back up to meet my eyes. “He’s out cold. Besides, we never have any privacy at the ranch, anyway, so what does it matter?”
Privacy. It had become our most precious commodity, and the supply was never enough to meet the demand in a house full of propriety-challenged werecats—noisy, overgrown children with supernatural hearing and no lives of their own. Marc was right: middle-of-nowhere Arkansas was about as private as we were going to get. Ever. For the rest of what passed for