“Judd, please, don’t…” she breathed huskily when he slowly lifted his mouth from hers.
“You want rape instead?” he taunted softly. He lifted the hair off the back of her neck and pushed her face gently against his shoulder so that he could nibble at the delicate skin of her nape.
“No! Don’t tease me like this,” she wailed, her words muffled by his shirt. The touch of his lips on her nape was sending small shivers down her spine and her fingers clenched spasmodically into the hard line of his waist.
“I’m not teasing you, Honor,” he muttered, his voice thickening as he touched his tongue to her ear. “I’m trying to get some questions answered.”
“What questions!” she stormed unevenly and then realized she was leaning heavily against him as his hand trailed down her back to the waistband of her jeans.
“About what would have happened last [_night _]if I’d taken you there on the floor,” he returned deeply. “Would you be so soft and sweet in a man’s arms, Honor Knight? Or would you be wild and maddening?”
“I’d probably be a lot less interesting to you than your damned airplane!” she rasped tightly.
He used his teeth a little roughly on her earlobe. “Honor, you’re skating on thin ice at the moment. If you have any sense at all you won’t continue trying to provoke me.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, I’m making love to you, or hadn’t you noticed?” His hands slid down to shape her bu**ocks and he propelled her audaciously into the cradle of his thighs. When he heard her small gasp he muttered something that sounded dark and satisfied.
Honor caught the blatantly masculine exclamation and it sent a ripple of new unease through her already tense body. “You’re not making love to me, you’re trying to teach me some kind of lesson,” she accused wretchedly.
“I’m just curious about what I missed last night,” he drawled.
“You didn’t miss anything last night! I wasn’t trying to get you to make love to me. Damn it! Will you stop deliberately misinterpreting what happened? Just let me go, Judd. Please. That’s all I want. Just leave me alone.”
He lifted his hands to cup her face, holding her so that she had to meet the hooded depths of his eyes. What she saw there alternately chilled and warmed her. He was quite capable of desire, she realized. It was there in his gaze, a dark male hunger that could never have been mistaken for anything else. But it was very much under control still. Honor caught her breath. She didn’t understand this man, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was far more dangerous than she had originally realized.
“Honor, I can’t walk away and leave you here. You know that. I have a responsibility to get you back to Arizona. Why don’t you just stop fighting me? You must know you can’t possibly win.”
“You didn’t believe a word I said this morning, did you?” she whispered despairingly. “Not a single word.”
“It was a rather bizarre tale,” he pointed out almost gently.
She shut her eyes against the hopelessness of her situation and before she could open them again he was kissing her once more. She stood trembling beneath the increasing tension the kiss was generating in her, enduring the onslaught with an effort of pure will. How could she be on the verge of melting in the arms of the man who held her life in the palm of his hand? She must be as crazy, as certifiably crazy, as Leo and Nick had implied. Her reactions to Judd Raven made no other sense.
When Judd felt the unwilling softening of her body he lifted his head again to stare enigmatically down into her tortured eyes. “You want to make deals, Honor Knight? I’ll make a deal with you. Stop fighting me. Come back to Arizona without a fuss and I’ll stay with you until I know for sure that the man you call Leo Garrison is your father. That’s the only compromise I’m willing to make, lady. Take it or leave it.”
Honor clenched her teeth together against the frustration of it all. Didn’t he see that by the time she could prove Leo wasn’t her father it would probably be too late? For him as well as for her, if he insisted on accompanying her until she could provide proof.
“You can take your stupid idea of a compromise and go straight to hell, Raven. Your way will get me just as dead as if I went back and threw myself on Leo’s mercy,” she spat out. With a small, violent little twist she jerked herself out of his arms and stepped backward.
“Honor, I’m trying to be reasonable about this,” he began grimly.
“No, you’re not. You’re only trying to do things your way. Don’t ask for your brand of reasonableness from me. I’ll see you in hell before I get into that plane!”
“Or in bed,” he amended speculatively.
Chapter 4
“I feel like the Pied Piper,” Judd remarked laconically an hour later as he opened the door of Honor’s small cottage and stepped out into the street.
From out of nowhere the children began to materialize behind him as Judd walked Honor toward the Cessna at the far end of the village. The little ones must have been waiting and watching ever since young Paco had spread the news about the promised treat. In spite of her own predicament Honor felt a tug on her emotions.
“These children have so little,” she murmured as the youngsters flocked around. “Getting to sit inside an airplane will probably be the highlight of the year for a lot of them ”
Judd eyed the two or three barefoot kids who were vying to catch hold of Honor’s hand. “I wish…” he began and then shrugged.
“Wish what?” Honor prompted.
“Oh, nothing. It would have been nice to have enough fuel to give them all a ride,” he concluded. “But I don’t, so that’s that.”
“Feel free to use your fuel on these kids,” Honor shot back. “You won’t need it for me!”
He gave her a slow, slanting glance. “Don’t you ever stop fighting?”
“Not when my life is at stake! Would you?”
“Honor, be reasonable. That’s the wildest story I’ve ever heard. Did you really expect me to believe it?”
“No,” she admitted. “And I didn’t expect the authorities to believe it, either. That’s why I didn’t go to them with it.”
“Very wise,” he drawled in mocking approval. “I’m sure you would have found the whole thing damned embarrassing.”