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Brakes were screeching behind them, and Lily twisted in her seat to see what sort of carnage they were leaving behind. The car that had tried to block them from getting into the left lane was turned sideways in the broad street, with other vehicles at various angles around it. Horns were blaring, and angry drivers were already jumping out of their cars waving their arms and shaking their fists. She didn’t see any bodies on the ground, so evidently all the pedestrians were safe.
“Let me out,” she said furiously. “It’ll be safer on the trains with Rodrigo’s men than riding in a car that you’re driving!”
“I had room to swerve around them until that asshole beside me speeded up,” he said in sheepish defense.
“Of course he speeded up!” she yelled. “This is Paris! He’d have died before he just let you cut in front of him.”
She sank back, breathing hard in her fury. A few minutes later she said, “I told you to let me out.”
“I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “I’ll be more careful. I promise.”
Since he showed no signs of slowing down to let her out, she supposed she’d have to stay in the car with the lunatic. Her only other option was to shoot him, and that was looking more attractive by the minute. That poor woman! If she’d had a bad heart, the fright might have killed her. She’d looked okay, though, because she had been one of the fist-shakers, stepping back into the street to glare at their taillights as they sped away from the mayhem Swain had caused.
After five minutes of careful driving and total silence in the car, Swain said, “Did you see her face?”
Lily burst out laughing. It was awful of her, she knew, but the image of the woman’s red, choleric face going bug-eyed with panic would stay with her forever. She tried to control herself, because what he’d done wasn’t funny at all and she didn’t want him to think he’d got away with it.
“I can’t believe you’re laughing,” he said in disapproval, though the corners of his mouth were twitching. “That’s cold.”
It was, even though he was teasing. She gulped, wiped her eyes, and with sheer willpower forced herself to stop laughing.
She made the mistake of looking at him. As though he’d been waiting for her to do just that, he bugged out his eyes at her in perfect imitation of the woman’s expression, and Lily went off into whoops again. She rocked against the constraint of her seat belt, holding her stomach. To punish him she punched him in the arm, but she was laughing so hard there wasn’t any force behind the blow.
He turned sharply, off the main boulevard, and by some miracle found a place to pull the car off the road. Lily stopped laughing. “What’s happening?” she asked in alarm, looking around for a threat even as she reached down to her ankle holster.
Swain turned off the engine and grabbed her shoulders. “You don’t need a weapon,” he said in a rough tone as he dragged her as far over the console as her seat belt would allow. He kissed her hungrily, fiercely, cupping the back of her head in his left hand while with his right he kneaded and stroked her breasts. After an initial squeak of surprise, Lily let herself sink against him. The gearshift was digging into her hip, one knee was awkwardly bent, and she didn’t care.
She hadn’t felt passion in so long that it took her by surprise, both his and her own. She hadn’t realized how starved she was, how much she’d wanted someone to hold her. Needing more, she opened her mouth for him and wrapped her arms around his neck.
He made love the same way he drove, fast and with great enthusiasm. He barely paused at second base, then drove for third, slipping his hand between her legs and gently massaging. In sheer reflex she grabbed his wrist, but she couldn’t make herself push his hand away. He set the heel of his palm against the center seam of her pants and rocked it back and forth, and Lily went boneless.
Only the fact that they were in the car saved her. Her bent leg began cramping under her and with a gasp she pulled away from his mouth, clumsily trying to twist so she could straighten out her leg, hampered by the seat belt and his arms. She gave one hoarse cry of pain, then ground her teeth together.
“What’s wrong?” he asked sharply as he tried to right her in the seat. They flailed around, elbows banging steering wheel, console, and dashboard, getting in each other’s way and generally looking like idiots. Finally Lily managed to fight her way back into her seat and with a groan of relief stretched out her aching leg as far as she could. It wasn’t far enough; she released the seat latch and pushed the seat back as far as it would go.
Panting, she tried to catch her breath as she massaged her thigh. “Cramp,” she muttered in explanation. Her knotted muscles began to relax and the pain receded. “I’m too old to be making out in a sports car,” she said, heaving a sigh. Leaning her head back against the seat, she gave a tired laugh. “I hope no one videotaped that little comedy.”
He was still turned toward her, the streetlights illuminating his face. He was smiling, his expression strangely tender. “You think we could be blackmailed with it?”
“Oh, yeah. Think how our reputations would suffer. What brought that on, anyway?”
His smile turned wry. “Have I mentioned that I get turned on when you laugh?”
“No, I don’t believe you have. I’m sure I’d have remembered.” He was wrong; she had definitely needed her weapon. She should have shot him before letting him kiss her like that, because now she wasn’t sure she could get through a day without having more of his kisses.
She returned her seat to its original position and smoothed her hair. “If you try, do you think you can manage the rest of the trip without scaring any more pedestrians half to death, almost killing us, or making another detour to attack me? I’d like to get home before midnight.”
“You liked being attacked. Admit it.” He reached for her left hand and took it, lacing her fingers with his. “If it hadn’t been for that cramp in your leg, you’d have liked it a lot more.”
“We’ll never know now, will we?” she asked.
“Wanna bet?”
“No matter how much I liked it, I’m not sleeping with someone I met just a few days ago. Period. So don’t get your hopes up, or anything else for that matter.”
“Too late, on both accounts.”
She swallowed a laugh, sucking hard on the insides oher cheeks. He gently squeezed her hand, then released it and restarted the engine. A U-turn put them back on the main boulevard.
