Fire and Ice - Anne Stuart [74]
Though, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he had to wake her up the same way he had last time.
No, she wasn’t in shock—she’d been conversing normally with Taka. And being told he had no interest in her anymore was a lot milder than blowing someone away.
“Are you going to just sit there and ignore me?” he said, determined not to sound irritated. All his adult life women, annoyed with him, had tried to get to him with the silent treatment, and he was immune to it.
Nothing from her, not even a glance. “Well, that certainly makes things easier,” he said, stretching out on the cot and trying not to think about what he’d been doing there a few short hours ago. “Taka may or may not be able to come up with some help. In the meantime, I don’t intend to sit around waiting for an execution.”
She didn’t even blink.
“If Taka can get out of this place, so can I,” he continued. “I’m even better at picking locks.” Of course there was no doubt that the silent treatment was extremely annoying. He was just able to ignore it, not let it irritate him into showing any emotion. Emotion was what led him into this mess with her in the first place, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
“I’ll give it a couple of hours. If Taka doesn’t make it out, they’ll come for us—no need to keep us hanging around if they’ve got what they wanted.” He glanced up at the bare lightbulb overhead. “I’m going to sleep for a little while. If anything happens you can wake me.”
To his astonishment he heard a noise coming from her direction. She didn’t have the stubbornness he expected—he thought she’d hold out longer than that. It wasn’t speech actually, just a derisive snort.
He lifted his head, but she still wouldn’t look at him. “You know, it’s your fault we’re here. If you hadn’t gone racing off like that, I wouldn’t have had to follow. We’d both be safe back in that hotel room. Or at least you would—I would have been trying to figure out what was going on.”
Silence. “It’s nice being able to hear myself think for a change, without interruptions. The question I’m trying to figure out is what they’ve done with my grandfather, and whether or not he knows how far things have gone. Hell, whether or not he’s still alive. But I know he is—he’s been my only family, aside from Taka, for most of my life. I’d know if something had happened to him. I’d feel it inside.” That sounded a little too sentimental, but it didn’t matter since she was ignoring him.
“You know, if I have to choose between keeping you alive and saving my grandfather that I’ll go for my grandfather. You’ll be on your own. I expect if Hitomi decides to torture you, you can always talk him to death. Unless Azuki gets out of the hospital and decides to go for revenge. He knows he can’t kill me, but he won’t think twice about blowing your head off. Sorry, didn’t mean to remind you.”
That was exactly what he’d meant to do, but she still didn’t react. She leaned forward to rest her face on her drawn-up knees and she looked very young. Very sexy.
Snap out of it, Reno! he told himself. You’ve just managed to rid her of any romantic notions. Don’t blow it by thinking with your dick again.
The funny thing was, it wasn’t his dick that was giving him trouble. Yeah, for some crazy reason he still wanted to screw her when he should be concentrating on other things. But even more, he wanted her lying on the narrow cot with him, her body crammed up against his, her arms around him, her face against his shoulder, her heart beating against his.
Hell, it was worth a try. “There’s room on the cot if you want to be more comfortable.”
He got another derisive snort out of her, a small triumph. As long as she was fighting back, he was doing fine. Now he just had to figure a way to get out of there and find his grandfather. Before Hitomi realized that getting rid of all of them would be the smartest and easiest thing to do.
He knew what was stopping Hitomi-san. There were enough members of the kobun who had, if not enough loyalty, at least respect and admiration for his grandfather, and they wouldn