“Confident,” she echoed his thoughts. “Because I know I’ve never felt pleasure like I just felt in your arms. And I know for a fact you haven’t either.”
His lips quirked knowingly, though that impression of knowing was the biggest lie of his life. “Sure of that, are you?”
A light laugh drifted through the night. “As sure as I’ve ever been of anything.”
Turning on her heel, she moved quickly through the side yard from his patio to her own.
“And take care of that damned puppy,” she called from the door. “I don’t want to have to listen to her cry like that every night. It’s pitiful, Logan.”
His gaze swung to the animal.
Barely more than a handful of fluff and bones, the tiny pup huddled at the patio door, a soft whine filling the night. And breaking Logan’s heart.
Turning away from her tore a piece of his soul out, just as another piece had been ripped from him when he’d been forced to let her go.
The pup was too tiny, too delicate, to defend herself. The little scrap would be too friendly and too eager to please to ever realize the danger she could be in if hell came calling.
He would give her food and water. He’d have his cousin Crowe put a small shelter at the corner of the patio for her and Logan promised himself he would attempt to get the neighbors to take her.
He’d find her a home, because keeping her meant possibly watching her die.
Just as he had before.
Corbin County was his curse, Logan decided. Because it wasn’t just a damned pup he was risking, he was risking the most vital, passionate woman he had ever met.
He never, ever took a lover from Corbin County, not even for one night. And he’d nearly broken that rule with Skye.
And he knew, knew to the soles of his feet, that the killer that stalked them twelve years before was still out there, waiting, watching, and still, he’d touched her. Still he’d let the hunger for her rage inside him.
A monster waited to strike, to torture and kill any woman Logan and his cousins gave so much as an appearance of caring for. He raped and maimed them, found pleasure in watching them die, and now Logan was risking the only woman who had ever made his heart race out of control.
The only woman who had touched him, and made him ready for just one more caress.
Because of that woman, Logan was standing in the darkness, staring around him, and wondering how he could have her and keep her safe from the monster determined to find and kill any woman he could care for. To keep her from attracting the attention of the demon that haunted them.
The demon he and his cousins were determined to find and destroy first.
CHAPTER FOUR
Like Sleeping Beauty she lay in the middle of her bed, her shoulder-length blond hair tangled around her head and fanned out over the pillow she slept on.
The pillow beside her was empty but for the wide red silk ribbon tied in a perfectly neat little bow.
Learning how to tie that bow hadn’t been easy.
Just finding the girl hadn’t been, he had to admit. He’d only glimpsed her that night he and his boss had followed Logan to Boulder and kept tabs on his movements. Watching, waiting for him to choose a lover.
She had been just a one-night stand, sadly. This one would only warn the Callahans that the game was on once again and, this time, there were no rules.
Convincing his boss of this hadn’t been easy.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to convince his boss to allow him to handle this himself either.
The bastard liked the game, he decided. He liked experiencing his victims’ fear. He liked the tension and the arousal. He couldn’t figure out why his boss refused to participate in the abduction though. He hadn’t yet figured out why he held himself so aloof.
Pulling a Ziploc bag from his light jacket pocket, he pulled a drug-soaked cloth from it silently before bending and placing it over her mouth and nose.
Her eyes flared open.
He had to smile. She had pretty, pretty hazel eyes. Now he saw what had drawn one of the three men known for his love of exotic beauties.
It was her eyes that were a little odd, that drew attention and made her stand out in a crowd. Eyes that were a mix of amber and brown. They were slightly tilted and had a sexy cast.
Holding the cloth in place, forcing her to breathe in the potent drug, he could feel arousal beginning to burgeon in his jeans.
Well, in Callahan’s jeans. He wanted to chuckle, but he was too busy watching, waiting, then giving a little satisfied sigh as the little beauty went slack beneath his hands.
Excellent. Not a single mistake had been made thus far, just as he had promised.
He was well aware of his employer standing in the shadows behind him, watching, his gaze shuttered and as icy cold as always. He was frozen inside, his employee decided as he pulled the blankets back from Marietta’s body and gazed down at her nakedness with anticipation.
His fingers went to the zipper of his jeans.
“Not yet.” Harsh and unyielding, the sound of his boss’s voice had his jaw clenching in irritation. “Dress her. We have to stay on schedule.”
He nodded rather than speaking, and hid the sneer and anger that burned inside him.
Taking the clothing he had laid out when they had first invaded her bedroom, he took his time dressing her. She had to look as she always did when she went out late. Marietta Tyme took care with her appearance.
She wore her jeans carefully pressed, her shirts in colors that would emphasize the odd swirl of gold and brown in her eyes. It was really a shame that she had to die just because she had been with a Callahan.
But it was the course he’d been hired to take, and he had to admit, he did enjoy inflicting the pain, hearing them cry and beg for mercy. He loved it. But this timid little mouse hadn’t seemed his type. There was very little fight in her. And he’d have thought Logan would enjoy that spark of fire.
He couldn’t rape her here, but Corbin County wasn’t too far away. He could have her soon.
No mistakes, he reminded himself as he bent and pushed her sneakers onto her feet before carefully tying them.
The neighbor across the street stayed awake until dawn watching the late-night skin flicks to be found. The neighbor next to her had a surveillance camera that would only glimpse what he and his boss had planned for it to glimpse.
“Sleeping Beauty,” he whispered again. “Sleep just a little longer for us.”
He ran his palm up her leg to her thigh, then the warmth of her inner folds, shielded by her jeans.