Dance with the Devil Read Free

aren’t.” He wasn’t even close to normal. Jack Ryan wasn’t just a large man, he was larger than life. He was a flesh-and-blood comic book hero. Thank God she’d managed to dump him, and her job, before one or both of them had killed her.
    It hadn’t been easy. She’d missed the adrenaline rush.
    â€œI’m charming when I need to be.” That voice of his went deeper, darker.
    â€œBelieve it or not, that’s not a positive character trait.”
    â€œYou never minded before.”
    There were a lot of things she hadn’t minded—or pretended not to mind—because the thought of living without Jack had been unthinkable. Well, that was then, this was now. “This is not amusing. I want to go home.”
    â€œYou were going to have sex with Sloan, weren’t you?”
    She sorta kinda had, and the thought that Jack knew her that well made her face hot and her temper rise. “Since you and Sloan are one and the same, I think it’s safe to say I’ve changed my mind.”
    His other hand slid under their bound wrists before she realized what he was doing. He ran his warm palms over her hip. “You were going to sleep with the guy. Damn it, Mia. How could you?”
    â€œThat guy was you. Jack, how could you?” She never realized how cold she was until Jack put his hands on her. Then she’d always wanted to curl into the furnacelike heat of him. Not now. Not tonight. Not ever again. She tried to shift out of reach. But it was impossible. Mia gritted her teeth. The limo had to stop sometime.
    â€œYou’re wearing my lucky thong, aren’t you?”
    Ah, that thong. They’d both gotten lucky every time she’d worn it.
    â€œNo, Jack,” Mia said coolly while her blood heated and accelerated through her veins. Could a person die if their internal body temperature went over two hundred degrees? The thin silk over her hipbone where Jack’s hand rested heated up as if under a solar blanket. “These are my unlucky panties. Get your hand off me.”
    â€œJesus darling, my body’s hardly cold and you’re ready to sleep with somebody else?”
    â€œIt’s been eight months.”
    â€œFeels like longer.”
    Yes, it did. “I asked you very nicely to leave me alone. I wish you had.”
    His fingers tightened briefly on her thigh, as though staking his claim.
    â€œThis is business, Mia.”
    â€œThat makes the subterfuge even worse. And how did you get my mother to help you set me up?”
    â€œI told her your country needed you one more time.”
    â€œI quit.”
    â€œYou’ve been reinstated for this job.”
    A flush of interest, even excitement, swept through her, but she squashed it fast. “I don’t want to be reinstated. I want to go back home, take a nice warm bath and grab an early night.”
    â€œThis despite donning your lucky panties?”
    Mia sighed. Jack Ryan was like a junkyard dog with a bone. He was the most annoyingly persistent man she’d ever had the misfortune of falling in l—of ever knowing. “What do you want, Jackson?”
    The car crossed the bridge and turned onto a traffic-clogged avenue. A couple in a red sports car pulled up beside them at the light. As the dark-haired girl leaned her head on her boyfriend’s shoulder, he wrapped a beefy arm about her and dropped a kiss on her waiting mouth. The car behind them honked a split second after the light changed. She and Jack had been like that once. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. One time a bum in the park had yelled at them to get a room for Chrissake.
    But that was a long time ago.
    â€œI don’t work for Uncle Sam anymore, Jack, remember? I’m a translator.” She worked for Dysart International Bank. A nice quiet, uneventful job. Jack didn’t need to know that she was bored out of her ever-loving mind every day from 9:00 a.m.