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

so I wouldn’t bother looking there. I believe you confiscated them.” She arched an eyebrow at him to let him know that she was far from defeated, and damn him to hell, the vampire laughed out loud.
    “If that’s the way you want to play it, Lainey, so be it but you should know that your body is my property now, and I always get want I want. There are no exceptions.”
    She then had to endure his hand on her thigh for the longest twenty minutes of her life, and when she saw the seatbelt sign finally extinguished, she shot up like a jack-in-a-box in order to escape it. He knew exactly what he was doing, and the look in his eye as he slowly stood to retrieve his holdall, told her that his every move was calculated. She’d just entered the lion’s den and its claws were fully extended.
    Marching with her eyes downcast for the majority of the journey through the airport, she found the combination of moving walkways and tiles made her horribly dizzy. Completing the entire length of Paris’s Charles De Gaulle airport with her hands crossed tightly over her chest, she did not lower them even to stumble onto escalators. Standing at the immigration desk, although Lainey smiled politely, her arms stayed firmly where they were. Thankfully, whatever passport Mercer had obtained for her was acceptable and the officials waved them straight through.
    Enormously conscious of her lack of her underwear, every step taken in the restrictive suit was murder on her libido, made worse by Mercer’s constant presence at her side. When they stepped outside to the taxi rank, she should have frozen to death in the cold December air but her whole body was in meltdown, and her thermostat had rocketed up to the max. Staring at the drab curve of concrete that formed the circular airport terminal, her eyes tried to cut through the darkness and into the road beyond but for the first minute or so, she couldn’t see a thing as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The vampire, however, suffered from no such problems.
    Waving down the first taxi available, Mercer had a conversation in seemingly fluent French with the driver, none of which she understood. She didn’t care. As soon as the door was open, she nearly dived inside in her hurry to get away from the vamp but he followed quickly settling himself down beside her.
    He patted her leg once again and she had to bite down on the scream that was forming in her chest. She was beginning to wonder if death might actually be preferable to a couple more days in the company of one extremely arrogant ass.
    “I see you are delightfully eager to get to our hotel room, darling. Don’t worry…I’ll have you splayed out on a nice big double bed before you know it.” He gave her a wink, which their driver found most amusing. Lainey closed her eyes and prayed that the drive would be a short one.
    It wasn’t. An hour later after weaving in and out of some of the most hideous traffic she had ever seen, they finally hit the centre of Paris where everything got considerably worse. There appeared to be a, who-can-honk-their-car-horn-the-loudest, competition going on and if that wasn’t distracting enough, the French seemed to be having lots of fun making three lanes of traffic into six. Every car they passed had a dent in it somewhere and some were missing important parts of their anatomy. It got to the stage where she couldn’t watch and she found she was much happier with her eyes closed.
    “You’re missing the Arc de Triomphe, sweetheart. It’s one of the most beautiful sights in France and stands in honour of the soldiers of the Napoleonic war—brings back memories, although that was not a particularly pretty time in history. Muskets were not very accurate and bayonets were very messy.”
    Lainey’s eyes snapped open at that comment and though he divulged no further details, the implications were clear. He had fought in that war. He might well have fought in hundreds for all she knew.
    “How old are