Alaskan Fire by Sara King Read Free Book Online Page B

bindings that held her in place, so
frightened she couldn’t breathe.
    She felt the creature move
backwards, heard Jack clear his throat.  His normal, somewhat gruff, yet human voice said, “All right.  You satisfied I’m not on drugs yet?”
    When she looked, he was wiping
his mouth with the back of his arm.  His hand came away bloody.  As she
watched, he indifferently wiped it on his shredded pants, then pulled his legs
into a cross-legged position across from her, and waited.
    It took Blaze several minutes to
get her breathing and her heart rate back under control.  “You’re not on
drugs?” she finally whispered, her eyes fixed to the dark red stain on his
jeans.
    “Nope,” Jack said.  “Don’t touch
the stuff.  Less control, which is deadly for someone like me.”  Then he
winced.  “Well, deadly for other people.”
    Blaze got a cold chill.  “Please
let me go.”
    He frowned at her.  “I told you
I’m not gonna kill you.  I don’t make a habit of hurting women, okay?”
    “I won’t tell anyone,” Blaze
babbled, eyes still on the stain.  “I promise.  I’ll just pack up everything
and leave, no questions asked.”
    Jack was beginning to get agitated. 
“No one’s telling you to leave, sweetie.  I just thought you were horning in on
my territory, but looks like I was, uh, wrong.”  The way he frowned at her,
though, made Blaze wonder if he wasn’t so sure.
    After a moment, Jack delicately
offered, “Is there anything…special…about yourself that you wanna tell me,
considering what I’ve shown you?”
    Blaze stiffened, thinking of the
feather her father had willed to her.  For you, Blaze.  May you someday
discover its true value.   A hundred different priceless artifacts in
her father’s house, and he had given her a damn feather.
    Jack tensed, his big shoulders
tightening in muscular knots as his knuckles whitened on his knees.  “What is
it?”
    Blaze bit her lip and glanced at
the stove again.
    “Lady,” Jack warned, “I got all
damn week.”
    In a desperate, sarcastic sneer,
Blaze said, “Well, gee, let’s see.  I’m six feet four inches tall, I generally
don’t need a bra because I’ve got A-cup tits, my hair’s the color of
carrot-filled babyshit, and my feet are somewhere between a Size Fourteen and a
Size Seventy-Two, as you so thoughtfully pointed out this afternoon.”  She
laughed, a wretched cackle of despair that tore at her chest, and then looked
away.  Staring at the wall, because staring at him was scaring the shit
out of her, she whispered, “What do you want?”
    Jack’s chuckle sounded just as miserable
and full of despair as her own.  “Truthfully?  To be able to take back the last
hour and pretend it never happened.”
    “I can do that,” Blaze said,
quickly swiveling to face him.  “Just let me go, I’ll go get on a plane, and
you’ll never see me again.”
    Jack gave her a flat look.  “Do I
look stupid to you?”
    Blaze looked him up and down. 
“You look like you could use a few thousand dollars to buy groceries.  Let’s
say…ten?”
    Jack hesitated, still out of
kicking range.
    “I can make it fifteen,” Blaze
whispered.  “That’s as much as I can afford.”  She had already dumped massive
quantities of her capital into the state-of-the-art sprinkler system that the
bank financing her pretty new fishing-lodge had made as part of the requirement
to signing the loan.  If she dumped any more than fifteen thousand on this
bastard, she wouldn’t have enough to get the lodge running.
    “How old are you?” Jack asked,
completely ignoring her question.
    Blaze frowned.  “Twenty-five. 
Why?”
    He winced.  “Around the same time
as that last Mount Redoubt eruption, right?”
    “How the hell would I know?”
    Jack took a deep breath, then
sighed and tilted his head back against the wall.  “Shit.”
    “Shit what?” Blaze growled.  “And
are you gonna untie me or keep me here all damn night?”
    He lifted