Wild Enough For Willa

He cursed the dark and Mexico and the heat that had him dripping with sweat. Most of all he cursed the whore and her soft, alluring drawl that compelled him into this black and forbidding shack.

A bar of moonlight backlit his tall, muscular body and the broken bottle he held raised above his black head. More of that same silver light slipped through the cracks in the mortar left by shoddy workmanship and glistened against dirty, broken windowpanes.

The room was squalid, hot and hellish; its ceiling so low he had to stoop slightly. Plywood had been nailed against a hole in the wall. Corrugated tin was both ceiling and roof. The dirt floor was carpeted with cigarette butts and loose boards. Then he saw a Mexican bullwhip coiled like a black snake around a brand new, red high-heeled pump on the dirt floor, this shoe an exact match to the one he’d found earlier.

He picked the shoe up, turning it in his palm, and whistled. “Cinder-eff-ing-rella!”

“Who are you—Prince Charming?” drawled a small wavery voice, in an attempt at bravery. “What gives? A prince in blue jeans and cowboy hat?”

He liked her spunk.

The yellow-haired girl was tied by her wrists and ankles with remnants of her own nylons to a metal bed in the middle of the room. She lifted her drugged gaze to his.

A board groaned under his weight.

Her eyes bulged when she saw the bottle. Trying to free herself, she squirmed on the bare mattress. Moonlight rippled over her long shapely legs that were spread widely apart.

The room seemed to shrink, and the confines of it were suddenly more stifling. He drew a sharp breath.

Masses of reckless, yellow hair framed her exquisite oval face.

Sexy. Sexy as hell.

He thought, Wow.

He muttered, “Damn.”

It was only natural to want to keep his reaction to himself and to be repelled by it. He averted his eyes from the girl’s face and her awesome legs. But he felt like he’d fallen into a sensual barrel of forbidden delights. A girl with looks like hers made a man think of only one thing.

Images of those endless legs, a short polka-dot dress pushed above shapely thighs, black lace bikini panties and a garter belt had burned themselves into his testosterone-charged brain. Her breasts bulged against a low neckline. And that face…with those slanting eyes that caught the moonlight. Those full red lips…

Ah, such a face would give a saint wet dreams. Not that McKade was a candidate for sainthood. For as surely as there was a devil in hell keeping tabs, McKade’s name would be scrawled in roaring flames at the top of that fiend’s list of sinners.

“Are you going to he-e-e-l-p me…or…”

“Shhh…”

Why did she sound so much like Marcie? Why did she have to be blond?

Don’t look at those legs, or at that face. Don’t notice that her skin is pale and luminous, her shapely lips so moist and bright with paint they make your mouth go dry.

Her makeup, her costume, the mere fact Baines and his goons had brought her here and tied her to this bed to play kinky games told Luke what she was—a whore. As a kid, he’d had fun with her kind.

Was this hellhole her room? Or Baines’s?

Glazed, startlingly blue eyes, lined in heavy black, stared up at him. “It’s our honeymoon. Love me. Love me…P-please…just love me.”

Love?

What Luke felt had a lot more in common with what she would do for a dollar than with love. He wanted sex; she sold sex.

She moistened her lip with her tongue. Then she seemed to suffer a moment’s shortness of breath beneath his direct gaze.

His stomach lurched. She represented sex and the forbidden, all the vices he’d learned young and tried to rise above when he’d crawled out of the gutter. She had designed herself to bring out the beast in him.

She did.

“Shhh…”

With a muted whimper, followed by more slurred endearments, she strained toward him. Black stockings jerked, and she collapsed against the bed.

She was drunk or very high on something. Yet not so high that she wasn’t conscious of him. Nor did she act ashamed to be lying there with her breasts and legs so exposed. Instead, she twisted her hips deliberately to entice him, begging, “Love me.…”

At that honey-soft plea, his breath stalled. His body hardened. Her cheap beauty and suggestive posture paralyzed him. For a second or two, he even forgot about the heat.

He hadn’t changed. His fine suits, his fine house, the fine wife he’d buried only this afternoon…The fine schools he’d attended but hadn’t fit into…His whole damn life was a lie.

This girl was real. Too damn real. And she made him real.

“Don’t play your whore tricks on me,” he snarled even as he sank down on the bed beside her.

On a whimper, she shrank from him. Her wide eyes fixed on the broken bottle in his hand. Strips of black nylon held fast and put her at his mercy.

He saw a brown boy, facedown, in a vacant lot and the bullies standing over him, kicking dirt and rocks at him.

“Be still. I won’t hurt you. I’m going to cut you loose.”

She watched him. He fought not to look at her. Still, sitting on her bed, their hips touching, he felt joined to her in ways he didn’t understand.

He caught the scent of her perfume. Gardenias. Sweet, sweet gardenias. The fragile scent took him back to a summer day, to a cool, shady garden, to a haughty white woman who’d frowned at him with fury when he’d picked that single perfect blossom. He remembered her children in the same garden and the bouquets they’d held.

No.

The heat of the whore against his hip was a wholesome pleasure compared to his bitter memories. Perspiration beaded his brow. Better her. Better this hellish shack than his own shameful past.

The girl stared at his face unblinkingly. “Hawaii? Love…”

He waved the razor edges of the brown glass under her chin. Then he deliberately sliced a brown fingertip across the glass that was like a blade. Blood bubbled, oozed. A single drop splashed her cheek.

She started, whimpered.

“Hold still. Understand? So I don’t cut you.”

Her expression was grave, but she didn’t move when he began sawing with the bottle.

After a few swipes, the nylon gave, and her limp arm fell across her breast. Trouble was, he had to lean across her to reach her other wrist.

The second he felt her female flesh molding his, something hot and dangerous consumed him.