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But—but sleeping with him would be incredibly exciting. He wouldn’t hurt her. Not in bed. Crazy as it was, she knew that. What he’d do, what he’d make her feel, might be dangerous, but only in ways her suddenly thickening blood told her she’d find pleasurable.
And he’d be in command. Of her. Of himself. Even when he’d searched her, she’d been aware of his sense of control. What would it be like to make him lose that control? To make him forget himself in her arms?
“Well? I’m waiting.”
Mia touched the tip of her tongue to her suddenly dry lips. “I could—I could pay you.”
He grinned. “Now, there’s a thought. How much?”
“How much do you want?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Let me think. How does a billion dollars sound?”
He laughed. Mia felt her cheeks flush.
“You think this is amusing.”
“You can’t buy me off, Mia. Don’t waste your time trying.”
He wasn’t stupid. She had to remember that, just as she had to remember that he was only muscle for hire and she was a trained agent.
A semi-trained agent, she thought, and swallowed a hysterical laugh.
“You could tell Douglas that I escaped.”
“From me?”
That won her an incredulous stare. The arrogance of the man!
“Yes,” Mia said. “From you.”
“Nobody would believe it.”
A hill rose ahead of them, cutting through trees that looked as if they’d stood here for hundreds of years. Matthew eased the swift-moving Escalade around a tight turn and suddenly a valley opened before them.
Towering trees. Lush ferns. A lazy ribbon of sapphire-blue. And a house. Big. Sprawling. A house that seemed to be all glass.
“Is this it? The place you’re taking me?”
No answer. She felt a tightening in her throat.
“Is it?”
“Just sit back and relax.”
“But—but where are we?”
“Where nobody will bother us,” he said in a flat voice and Mia realized, in that instant, that the old cliché was true.
Your blood could run cold.
The road into the valley had not changed.
Narrow. Winding. A dizzying drop on one side and a wall of green on the other. Matthew had loved this place on sight when he first saw it, all those years ago. He’d spent a long weekend here, courtesy of some fat-cat Department of Defense official who’d owned it.
“My wife’s Colombian. She inherited the place from her uncle,” the guy had said, “but I’m gonna unload it. Damned thing isn’t worth keeping, out in the freaking middle of nowhere.”
The fact that it was in the freaking middle of nowhere was what had appealed to Matthew. A determined enemy could find you virtually anywhere, but this terrain made the job ten times more difficult.
