Page 64 of License to Kill

Ack. Nowhere in my plans was room for him trapping me in a bedroom and keeping me there with the lure of his body. He’d get away with it, too. “You already said something like that earlier.”

Well, almost.

“It is worth repeating.”

When Jake meant business, he would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. I considered everything I knew about him and smiled my sweetest smile. “When I win, you will go back to college and get a degree in high school education. Then you will get a job as a secretary so you can watch the real teachers do your job.”

Paybacks were a bitch, and Jake’s eye flashed golden. “When I win, not only will you rejoin the FBI as a special agent, but you will spend all of your vacation time each year in bed with me.”

I arched an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure you told me that’s how your parents ended up stuck with you.”

“I’m thinking we’ll start with two.”

Triple ack with a few extra acks on top. I scrambled to think of the most absurd condition I could, to change the subject away from children. “Start with two? You’re getting ahead of yourself, Mr. Thomas. When I win, you will secure yourself the first assignment requiring undercover work in a strip club. I’ll go out of my way to be hired at that strip club. I’m pretty flexible. I bet I could learn some interesting tricks.”

Jake’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Bingo. With luck, I could secure my victory. “I seem to recall you asking me, once upon a time, if I was dressing as an underaged prostitute.”

“When I win, you join the pack. In the slim chance you win, I’ll do anything you want, just let’s forget the rest of this bargain ever existed.”

“You will be a desk jockey for a year, and we never speak of me returning to the FBI ever again.”

“Six months?”

I shook my head. “One whole year. I’m being nice. I won’t make you give up coffee. There will be no alcohol, however.”

“Fine. But when I win, not only will you join the pack, but you will reapply to join the FBI, even if it means you have to take a desk jockey position until you qualify to return to a position as a field agent.”

Clacking my teeth together, I contemplated dumping the pot of sludge disguised as coffee over Jake’s head. If I submitted to have my medical leave ended, it could be weeks before the FBI found an appropriate psychologist to handle the horror show that was my file. It’d take weeks—or months—for the psychologist to work his or her way through the file. During that time, if I was lucky, I’d be assigned a desk jockey job instead of going through basic training again. It could go either way.

It could take a year before I passed evaluations and went through any training or retraining they required before having a chance to qualify for active field duty.

“Fine. How does this dominance fight work?”

“We fight. I win, you lose. We’ve been over this already.”

“Jake,” I growled.

“Rip my fur out until I beg for mercy. That’s basically what it’s all about. Since you don’t heal as fast, I’ll have to be a bit more careful with you. The idea is to force the other to submit. If you force me to submit to you, you win. When you submit to me, I win.”

“And what exactly happens when you submit to me?”

“Nothing. I request a desk jockey job, and I’ll begin the groundwork of finding a pack that will take us both. Then we’ll spend the next week in our bed making so much noise you’re evicted and you have to come back home where you belong.”

“And in the slim chance I submit to you?”

“You’ll join the pack. Then we’ll spend the next week in our bed making so much noise you’re evicted and you have to come back home where you belong.”

Once again, I had a difficult time figuring out how I lost even if I lost. “That sounds like a lot of effort. Shouldn’t we just spend the next week in bed?”

It was all Jake’s fault, strutting around without a shirt on. No matter how mad I got at him, a peek at his chest did terrible things to me, terrible things that ended in bed. Damn it.

“We can’t have the life-altering sex without making up first. That’s a rule. As the issue of packs is the critical issue, we need to resolve it before we spend the next week in bed. The fastest way to resolve it is through a dominance fight.”

Jake both confused and annoyed me. “So I become a fox, you become a wolf, and we fight until one of us wins.”

“Exactly.”