big problem had been the other prisoners trying to kill him for the huge bounty El Mari had put on his head. As miserable as he’d been never coming out of his tiny, dark, sweltering cell, it had been better than getting killed. But three months living in a five-foot-by-eight-foot box had been hellish.
The woman was speaking again. “Look, you’re far from the only guy I’ve debriefed. Nothing you can say to me will shock me. I’ve heard it all before.”
He highly doubted she’d heard anything close to the story he could tell. He’d bet a million bucks his tale would shock her speechless. But that wasn’t a theory he planned to test.
Wincing, he eased himself into a sturdy-looking kitchen chair. It held his weight, thankfully. If he were at anything remotely approaching full speed, he’d offer to help with the meal. Not that he could cook a lick. But he could’ve set the table or poured drinks or something. As it was, the room was starting to spin while invisible bad men poked him with cattle prods. His body jerked spasmodically as the pain assaulted him.
Clenching his teeth, he ground out, “What’s your name?”
She slid a juicy slab of sizzling steak onto a plate and set it down before him. “Jennifer. Jennifer Blackfoot.”
Desperate to distract himself, he concentrated on her name. Blackfoot? That sounded Native American. She looked Native American, too. Her face tended to roundness, her skin was a lovely walnut hue, and her exotic brown eyes were so dark they almost looked black. Her hair was true black with almost blue highlights glinting out of her long braid. He’d wager her hair reached past her slender hips when it was loose.
“What tribe?” he bit out.
“Despite my last name, I do not belong to the Blackfoot nation. My family is Chiricahua Apache. And yes, we were the violent ones who scalped white settlers and kidnapped white children. I am, in fact, a direct descendent of Geronimo, although in our tongue, his name was Goyakhla.”
A warrior woman, was she? Not surprising based on what he’d seen so far.
“Do your friends call you Jefferson?” she asked as she sat bowls of cold Caesar salad and hot green beans dripping with butter on the table.
“No. Jeff,” he muttered as he picked up a steak knife and fork. He swore as his palms cramped so violently he nearly cried out. The utensils clattered to his plate. His hands were too tightly clawed at the moment to master the fine motor skill required for steak carving.
The woman frowned but asked matter-of-factly, “Need some help with that?”
He scowled at her, too humiliated to admit that he couldn’t control his hands.
She leaned down next to him and efficiently cut his steak into bite-size pieces. Through the haze of his despair, he noticed incongruously that she smelled good. It was a floral scent, but not overwhelmingly sweet. It was green and wild and entirely fitting for her. His instincts flared in response to the light musk.
She stepped back a bit too hastily. Scared of him, was she? Smart girl. She mumbled, “If the fork’s too much to handle just now, go ahead and eat with your fingers. It won’t bother me. It’s how my people traditionally eat.”
Too famished to stand on pride, he ended up doing just that. God, he felt like a savage, shoveling food into his mouth with his bare hands. But to Jennifer’s credit, he didn’t catch even a single glimpse of disgust or revulsion in her eyes. He was stunned when she mimicked him and skipped utensils to eat with her fingers. She managed it quite a bit more daintily than him, of course. The compassion of the gesture startled him.
Near the end of the meal, which tasted better than anything he could ever remember eating in his life, she asked, “Any reason you didn’t take a shower?”
Glaring, he muttered, “I need a bath.”
She nodded evenly. “No problem. My bathroom has a soaker tub that even you should fit in. After supper, it’s all yours.”
He made eye contact with her just long enough to nod, but then he locked his gaze on his plate and refused to look back up. There was only so much embarrassment a man could stand.
Jennifer carried the empty plates to the sink as Jeff disappeared down the hall toward her bedroom. What a strange man he was. He’d fumbled with that knife and fork like he had no idea whatsoever how to use them. Which was absurd. The man was from one of the wealthiest families in the world and had the finest in education and lifestyle. Had he suffered some kind of weird memory loss where such basic skills were lost to him? More strange yet, she got the distinct impression that he was appalled at his own eating habits. Why, then, did he persist in eating like a savage?
Surely he wasn’t trying to make some grand social statement, was he? The man didn’t strike her as the type. He wasn’t defiant enough for something like that.
He seemed about equal parts angry and desperate. But desperate for what?
The longer she was around Jefferson Winston, the more the mystery deepened.
Jeff eased into the tub of steaming hot water and was overcome by ecstasy that momentarily overwhelmed his pain. The bliss was so intense as to be almost sexual. He exhaled a long, slow breath of relief.
That same wild, sweet perfume he’d caught before swirled around him as he luxuriated in the water. His body shocked him by responding hard and fast to the scent of the woman. She was extremely attractive if a guy went for that whole earthy, natural thing. Which, he had to admit, he definitely did at the moment.
Just how much comfort was she authorized to give him, anyway? He pushed away the idea of bedding Jennifer Blackfoot. Not only was he in no shape to withstand the physical rigors of sex, the woman was so wary of him she looked about ready to jump out of her skin most of the time. And then there was that shotgun of hers to consider. Did sex constitute harming her? Would she kill him afterward for violating their deal?
That outcome was likely enough that he satisfied himself with merely imagining her slender, bronze limbs wrapped around him, her black eyes sparkling in pleasure, her body taking his into her and satisfying his long-denied lust.
When the additional pain of his aroused flesh became too much to bear, he forcibly turned his thoughts to his mission gone terribly wrong. That first night in jail, to his shock, instead of questioning him, his Ethiopian interrogator had whispered urgently of a conspiracy. Of classified military intelligence from the United States being sold to El Mari and used to ambush Jeff and his team. The interrogator’s last words before the door burst open and a masked man jumped him and garroted him were that El Mari was determined to kill him. Even here in jail, Jeff would not be safe.
The guard had been right.
Thankfully, the other prisoners vastly underestimated his strength the first time they tried to kill him. They only jumped him with a half-dozen men armed with shivs. He beat them all to a pulp, retreated to his cell and never came out again to give them a second chance.
Jeff added more hot water to the cooling bath. When he found out who in El Mari’s organization had stepped into the bastard’s shoes now that the guy was dead, he vowed to himself to take that guy out, too. The unholy work of El Mari’s mercenaries had to be stopped.
But more importantly, he would find and punish whoever in the United States government had sold him and his men out. Five good
