StrongArmsoftheLaw by Cerise DeLand

Chapter One
     
    Skye Chamberlain crawled out her bedroom window of the tiny
house outside Alpine, Texas before sunrise on a sweltering August morning,
biting back a shout that she was finally escaping the strong arms of the law.
    Who knew she had it in her?
    Crime writer. Bookworm. Former ER nurse. Turned fugitive.
    She grinned. Even—she thought as she stretched her dangling
toes to reach for the ground—if it meant she’d be in hot water with her captor. I’m going swimming, Ranger Martinez, before you’re up and learn I’m gone.
    She felt the cool earth beneath the soles of her feet and
stifled a sigh of relief. There was only so long she could stand this blazing
August heat. “And the scalding gaze of Rex Martinez,” she murmured to herself
as she tucked her boobs back inside her cotton bra, hiked up her flimsy panties
and flung her towel over her shoulder.
    She headed for the pool behind the barn, picking her way
along the pebbles and brush barefoot. She needed to do five laps, maybe more to
get relief from the tension of wanting to jump the bones of the tall, dark
Texas Ranger who had been her bodyguard for more than two months.
    He was an ogre, a tyrant, refusing to let her go anywhere
except prowl that teensy-weensy house like a caged animal. But she had to get
away, do something physical, if only for a few minutes. She would melt like ice
cream if she spent one more day enthralled by his gruff cowboy charm. Denying
we’re headed for bed.
    Hell. She hurried along. Any exercise would be better than
another twenty-four hours cooped up with the Texas lawman who played cards like
Godzilla, talked like smart-ass Indiana Jones and took charge like Pancho
Villa.
    “Your birdie, buddy, has flown the nest.”
    * * * * *
    “Coffee’s ready,” Rex Martinez spoke to the closed bedroom
door of the cabin. “Come on out. I made it like you want it. Weak. ”
    He smirked. Skye Chamberlain didn’t act like she wanted
anything watered down. Not her prospects for survival once she testified
against the Gonzaga Familia. Not her hope for a life free of reporters
harassing her for interviews about the Texas drug gangs in cahoots with a local
mayor. So why she liked her coffee less than rocket-ready stumped him.
    “Rise and shine, Chamberlain,” he called when he heard no
sounds. Usually she would throw a shoe at the door or grumble at him to leave
her be. Early riser, the buxom blonde booty-licious novelist from Chicago, Skye
Chamberlain, was not. “We didn’t stay up that late watching that movie.”
    Nada.
    All right, then. You asked for it.
    Rex Martinez thrust open the bedroom door, zeroed in on the
rumpled sheets, the empty bed, the curtains fluttering at the wide open window
and heard footsteps crunching on gravel.
    He cursed.
    She was gone? Again?
    Shit! He had never met such an infuriating woman!
    “You will not do this!” he vowed and spun for the
back door, the barn and the sure knowledge that she’d tippy-toed out to the
pool. That Olympic-sized extravaganza was the only outdoorsy distraction to his
confinement with this tempting piece of gorgeous Anglo ass. Best-selling crime
writer Chamberlain and he had been holed up in this hideaway near Big Bend for
long enough to make his cock a permanently stiff medical marvel. So now, horny
and hot and irritated with the fact that she denied their mutual attraction
with her every look and breath, he would eat his Ranger badge if Skye
Chamberlain was going to defy his orders to never leave the house!
    Like a jackrabbit, he jumped the porch steps and sprang
headlong for the barn and beyond it, the pool. In a dozen swift strides, he
reached his quarry. He grabbed one slim wrist and hooked an arm around her
naked middle. Bikini underwear and all, she fell backward against him. The feel
of her bare skin shot electric testosterone through him. It was the same jolt
he’d endured ever since the judge had ordered her into his care two long hot
months ago.
    “Come on, Miss