Free Good As Dead (Dying To Meet You Book 1) by C.P. Mandara

in here, isn’t it?” he commented, and looked thoughtfully at her body. His eyes narrowed with mischievous intent and two hands began tracing a line around the lapels of her jacket. “Perhaps we should take this off?”
    Lainey watched with dismay as his hands reached inside her jacket and loosened the neckline at her shoulders. He was dragging the moment out to torment her, but she had no doubt he would carry through with his threat. As the material slowly slipped down her arms, the urge to cover her exposed body was great but her arms were not under her control. When the last wisp of material slid down her back, she wanted to close her eyes but he denied her even that small action.
    “It’s not nice being controlled, is it?” Those burning amber eyes saw straight through her and even though he couldn’t read her mind, he knew exactly what she was thinking. “You can’t outwit me, Lainey Hargreaves, because you’ll learn the hard way that I don’t play fair. Folding her jacket up neatly, Mercer then sat on it before releasing her from his hold.
    She managed to rein in her initial action of wanting to run down the aircraft aisle screaming because she was half-naked and it wasn’t going to be a good look. As long as the vamp sat alongside her, she could sink into her seat and be mostly shielded from view.
    “I hate you,” she bit out, and the fury and loathing contained in that short sentence was so intense she hardly recognised her own voice.
    Mercer lifted his glass of champagne to his lips and impossible as it might seem considering her humiliation, Lainey felt her insides clench with need. This situation was fast becoming intolerable.
    “I know, but we don’t have to like each other to work together,” he said, licking his lips before dabbing at them with his napkin.
    Lainey growled turning her head back towards the window and focused on the grey mist of clouds surrounding them. Her champagne remained untouched on the tray table in front of her and after a few minutes of silence, she heard the scrape of glass against plastic and knew he had drained it in one gulp. For some reason, that action annoyed her more than the disrobing had.
    Turning around to face him, she ventured. “Shouldn’t you be trying to stay sober, oh almighty protector?”
    His infuriating grin didn’t falter.
    “Two tiny glasses of champagne aren’t going to do too much damage to my faculties. I need two or three bottles of liquor before things start getting interesting. Any other pressing questions you feel the need to ask before we disembark?”
    As soon as he’d asked the question, the captain’s voice came over the speakers and announced that they were coming into land. If she didn’t want to walk off the plane in her current state of undress, it looked like she was going to have to do some begging. “Yes. Could I please have my jacket back?” Oh, if only it were that easy.
    “You have to give me something in return, Lainey. I need a little something to work with, even a scrap. If you refuse, then my earlier promise of keeping that delightful body of yours untouched will be worthless. I will know those secrets, princess. If I can’t go inside your head for them, I bet I can find them inside your pants.”
    He placed his hand back on her thigh in order to drive the message home, and it felt as if he’d branded her. She had to stop the instinctive pull to shuffle away knowing he would take that as a sign of weakness, and she couldn’t afford to show any hint of vulnerability in front of this vampire.
    Taking a deep breath, and trying desperately hard to calm her erratic heartbeat, she knew she had lost this fight. She couldn’t tell him anything. If she had to walk naked through a stadium full of rabid men then that was the option she would take. People had seen breasts before and she’d get through this brief interlude of unpleasantness with her skin intact, if not her pride.
    “You won’t find anything in my pants