“Could be they haul them to a specific location,” Jason said. “A motel or a house on the outskirts of town, something like that. The women are waiting when the men arrive to take their pleasure.”
“Pleasure.”It made her stomach burn to think of it. She loved sex with Jason, but it was consensual, a joy they both shared. She couldn’t imagine having a stranger greedily using her body any way he wanted.
“If they move them from place to place, maybe there’s no primary location,” she said. “No single place they actually house and feed them.”
“I’m betting they have a facility somewhere, a hub they work in and out of. Could be more than one. And if they’re using pickups and vans to move the women from place to place, they’ve got to park them somewhere. Sooner or later, we’ll figure out where.”
They lapsed into silence after that. As tired and worried as she was, she slept for a while. When she awoke, they were pulling into the apartment Chase had loaned them before, out by the Energy Corridor near the Garrett Resources office. Since there was no record of their stay, no way to track them to that location, it was the safest place they could be.
Jason parked the car beneath the covered carport in the lot. They grabbed their bags and went up to the apartment.
Riding together for hours had heightened the sexual awareness that always seemed to spark between them. As Kate crossed the living room, she could feel the heat of Jase’s body behind her. When she turned, the hunger in his blue eyes scorched right through her, heating her from the inside out.
Desire flared. She wanted him. She always seemed to want him. She replaced the feeling with a shot of anger.
“Not going to happen, big boy. You’re the one who ended things, remember? I’m not going to be your booty call whenever you get an itch you need to scratch.”
His jaw hardened. “That isn’t the way it is, and you know it.”
“Isn’t it?”
“It was never like that. Not then, not now. I wanted you. No one else—just you. I still do.” He stormed past her down the hall into the second bedroom and slammed the door.
Kate just stood there. She was the one he wanted? The only one he wanted? She couldn’t believe he had actually said that. It wasn’t true. Couldn’t possibly be true.
As she had a dozen times, she went over the words he had said the day he had ended their affair.I’m not good for you. After what happened, can’t you see that?
She’d thought it was just a line, the kind men used when they wanted to end a relationship they were tired of.
Now she wondered... Surely he didn’t blame himself for what happened at El Lagarto? Perhaps even the brawl at Mean Jack’s?
Even if he did, it didn’t matter. Just like Andrew, he wasn’t willing to take a chance on her, on them, and she was in too deep to settle for an occasional round of sex. The road to heartbreak was paved with sultry days and hot nights in the bedroom. Hawk Maddox wasn’t leading her down that road again.
Kate stripped out of her clothes and headed for the shower. She dried her hair and went straight to bed. She could hear Jason in the other bedroom, then his heavy weight shifting on the mattress. Clearly he was having as much trouble falling asleep as she was.
Kate’s resolve strengthened. Hawk Maddox was simply too much for her to handle. She wasn’t willing to put her heart at risk again.
The following morning, Jase was up first thing, rousing Kate, who was still half asleep, determined to begin their self-defense lessons.
“Are you sure about this?” she grumbled, yawning. “It’s hard to believe self-defense lessons are going to be much good against a pack of vicious criminals.”
Jase just smiled. “Always better to be prepared.”
He had a couple of hours before the meeting he had set up when Castillo had returned his call. Jase showed Kate how to use an opponent’s own weight against him, how to take a fall without getting hurt, demonstrated how to go after the most vulnerable places on a man’s anatomy.
He didn’t like the gleam in Kate’s eyes when they practiced those particular moves.
They were both sweaty by the time they finished.
“Why don’t you go get a shower?” he said. “We’ll do some more work when we get back.”
If it didn’t kill him. Being that close to Kate, touching her, holding her.Damn. He had a set of blue balls that wouldn’t quit.
Half an hour later, they loaded into the Yukon for his meeting with Castillo. Until this was over he wasn’t letting Kate out of his sight.
“Where are we meeting him?” she asked as they rolled along the busy Houston streets.
Jase forced himself not to glance in her direction, to remember the way her skinny jeans hugged those long sexy legs and curved over her perfect ass. Remember how he’d felt wrapped around her when they had been practicing self-defense. The simple scoop-neck top she was wearing made him itch to cup her pretty breasts.
