Page 38 of Ransom
He held my jaw for a beat longer. Then his thumb slid across my lower lip once, slow, painting the blood across it, and he pulled his hand back and looked at his thumb like he'd finished a sentence with it.
"Open."
I opened.
He pressed his thumb into my mouth. Salt and copper flooded my tongue, and I closed my mouth around his thumb and sucked it clean.
I am a Texas Ranger,I thought,and I would do anything he asked me to do right now.
His pupils blew wide.
"Yeah," he said, soft. "There you are."
The pad of his thumb traced down my throat and across my collarbone, and his other hand came up and settled at my belt, fingers loose, an inch from the buckle. The headlights threw the whole turnout white. I could feel him deciding. My cock throbbed, and I held still on the hood and waited to find out who he was going to be tonight.
He didn't move for a long second.
"I should be thinking about killing you," he said, almost to himself. His thumb traced my collarbone again. "I'm thinking about owning you instead."
Then his hand left my belt, and he stepped back.
"Pick your weapons up off the hood, Ranger."
My tongue flicked out over the blood smear on my bottom lip. "Ransom."
"Pick them up."
I pushed off the hood. Slow. My legs took a second to remember what they were for. I picked up the knife and holstered the gun.
When I turned around, he stood three feet from me with his face in shadow, the headlights behind him, his bandana balled in his fist and his shoulders set like they'd been when he'd led me into the desert.
"Why?" I asked.
"You came onto my land lying," he said. "And I almost just bent you over my boss's truck on a public highway."
"Ransom—"
"You told me a story. I listened to the story. The story doesn't track, and you know it doesn't track, and I'm tired, and my nose is broken, and I'm not doing this with a liar." He worked his jaw. "When you want to tell me what you came up here to do, you come find me."
"I don't have anything else to tell you."
"Then you don't have me." He looked away, out toward the mesa, and the moon caught the line of his throat. "You can keep what almost happened. I'm sure it'll be useful to you in the shower."
"Christ, Ransom—"
"Get in the truck."
I stood there a second longer because some last part of me thought if I just held my ground he'd come back across the gravel and put his lips on mine, but he didn't. He walked around to the passenger side and opened the door, and got in.
I stood in the headlights for one more breath before I followed him.
I pulled back onto the highway and didn't look at him.
The dark closed in on either side and the headlights ate a hole through it. Somewhere behind us the turnout disappeared into the scrub. Somewhere in front of us was Pae Saco. Betweenthe two was a silence I didn't know how to break, and Ransom Lanza, who didn't seem to be in any hurry to break it for me.
After a while he reached up and wiped his bandana across his lips. "You should've told me," he said, not looking at me.
"I told you what I came up here to do."
