"And do what?" Zed asked.

She screamed, "Get drunk! Eat a gallon of chocolate ice cream! Cry! I don"t know!" She beat her fists softly against Zed"s chest and allowed the sobs to flow with her words, "All I know is that I left something wonderful six years ago and things can never go back to what they once were."

Zed pulled her into his chest and trapped her arms between them. "Some things haven"t changed," he said and then he placed his mouth on hers. It wasn"t really a kiss. Their lips were pressed together. His mouth was slightly open, but it was as if he were staying at the edge of an actual kiss and leaving the final decision to her.

Christie would never know for sure if it was her mind or her body which made the final decision as she pushed her mouth more tightly against Zed"s and slid her tongue forward to lick the edge of his lips.

He had asked and she had answered "yes". An intense heat immediately boiled up within both of them as they clawed at each other"s clothing. Christie could vaguely remember pulling the covers from the bed as they fell back onto the pale blue sheets.

Zed"s lips burned across her skin as his mouth sought out her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His hands stroked fire into her legs and back as they roamed across her body. She tried to pull him into herself, but he held back and continued to drive her farther and farther into the hottest flames at the center of the fire of her pa.s.sion. Finally, his mouth returned to hers and he forcefully kissed her as his substantial member slid into her body.

Six years it had been since she"d had a man. She had dated a few times, but had not gone beyond some kissing and petting. She knew that some of the people in the office called her "Agent Tease" or "The Ice Queen," but neither name was true. It wasn"t that she was cold or cruel, it was that none of them had been Zed.

Tonight it was Zed, and her body was responding with a fire that could melt an entire ice kingdom. She bucked and threw herself upward to meet to meet his thrusts. If she never got out of this captivity, at least she would have this one night with Zed. Her career-her life itself-might be forfeit, but nothing would ever be able to take this moment away from her.

With a long, loud, guttural moan, she climaxed, shaking and shuddering under Zed"s continued movement. Soon he, with a much quieter groan, erupted within her.

They lay intertwined on the bed, sweating and breathing heavily. Then Christie"s facade of strength began to crumble and she started sobbing softly.

"What"s wrong?" Zed asked, pulling her over onto his chest.

"You mean besides the fact that I am a prisoner here and the rest of the Ryswells want me dead?"

"Yeah, besides that," Zed answered with a chuckle. This was the old Zed. Maybe the new, harder Zed would reappear as soon as he stepped back out that door, but right now it was the old Zed that was cradling her and letting her cry.

Zed waited for her to answer his original question. He was very good at waiting people out. Christie"s sobs finally stopped and she said softly, "This just isn"t right. I"m a federal agent. You"re a gunrunner."

Zed took a deep breath and said slowly, "I told you that it can cost you a lot if you always have to be right."

"It has already cost me a lot," she said sadly. "What happens now?"

"Do you mean, am I going to kill you?" He asked in reply. "Am I going to ship you south to some friends of the Ryswell Brothers on the other side of the border?"

This time it was Christie who waited for Zed to answer his own question.

"No, I am not going to kill you. And I won"t give you to the club so they can have their fun and send you south. But I don"t think that the fellow members of the club will stand for me letting a federal agent go if she is just going to report everything to her superiors."

Christie pressed her head against Zed"s chest and said very softly, "Then that doesn"t give you much choice, does it? If you can"t let me go, what other options do you have?"

"It"s not me who has to make a choice," he replied. "It"s you."

"What do you mean?"

"I can"t let a federal agent go," he explained, "IF she is just going to report everything to her superiors." Zed stroked her back gently for a moment before continuing. "But if she didn"t report anything to her superiors... in fact, if she reported TO US what her superiors were planning, that would be a totally different matter."

"I can"t betray my badge," Christie answered. "I swore to bring evil people to justice. I keep my promises."

"I"m not asking you to totally betray your badge and stop bringing evil people to justice. I"m just asking you to be our drone flying over the ATF. You will report only to me, and all you have to do is let me know what is happening. All I want is information about their plans concerning me. I promise you that I will never ask you to do anything directly against any of your fellow agents. And I keep my promises, too."

Zed waited patiently for Christie to answer. His hand continued to softly stoke her back in the extended silence. It was quiet in the room for many minutes. Finally she spoke. "Make love to me."

"What?" he asked.

Christie turned her head so that she could stare directly into Zed"s eyes. "Make love to me. Let me be totally yours and you be totally mine once more before I answer. That way if I... or you... or the club... or... just make love to me like we"re all by ourselves up at the cabin. Then I"ll know that you love me no matter what. "

Zed continued to softly stroke her back, but now it was different. What he was doing wasn"t different. His hand was moving in the same way across the same path, but Christie"s response was different. It was as if her body was drawing heat... love... life from Zed as he slowly swept his hand from her shoulders down to the beginning of the swell of her b.u.t.tocks.

She moaned softly and Zed brought his other hand up to stroke the side of her breast. There was a sharp intake of breath as he brushed across her swollen nipple. They had just made love a few moments ago, but that had been a frantic need for each other. This was different. This wasn"t need. This was desire.

The difference between need and desire is like the difference between a warm bonfire and a raging inferno. One would warm you, but could consume you, the other would certainly do both. Christie luxuriated in the warm bonfire which flowed from Zed"s hands into her body. And as that warmth spread throughout her body, her own fires began to grow hotter and hotter.

"Say it," she breathed heavily. "Please say it."

Zed struggled to ask, "What?"

"That you love me," she panted. "I want to hear you say it, Zed."

Zed pushed slightly on her shoulder to roll her over onto her back. He positioned himself above her and lowered himself until the tip of his p.e.n.i.s was just parting the petals of her s.e.x. And then he said, "Yes, Christie, I love you. I always have... I always will."

It had probably been Zed"s plan to slowly enter her, but before he could move, Christie arched herself up to meet him and impaled herself on his manhood. The bonfire was now an inferno as desire and need, fear and hope, love and l.u.s.t all boiled up together within them both. Driven by the heat of the flames, they thrust their bodies against each other with such force that there was a real risk of them toppling from the bed.

They both continued for many minutes as if their lives depended upon them staying in that glorious moment of ecstasy just before climax. Finally, before the fires could totally consume them, they peaked and lay panting on the now-sodden sheets.

When their breathing had finally returned more or less to normal, Christie asked, "Now what?"

"We need to get you back to your gun and your car before somebody finds them," Zed said quickly.

"I rode my bike," she answered.

He looked at her, slightly startled, and she continued. "You don"t think I got a car all the way out into those hills, do you?"

"Whatever," he snapped, and then laughed slightly to relieve the tension that his curt remark had suddenly created. "Car or bike, we need to get you back out there so you can show up at work tomorrow like nothing"s happened. If your office thinks you went missing, and then you just show up, they"ll suspect something."

He thought for a moment. "If you need something to keep them off-balance, you could tell them to check out that old abandoned mine on the west side of Frenchman Mountain. Some idiot thought there was gold in that hunk of rock back in the day and started a small tunnel. It doesn"t go very far in, and the entrance is pretty well concealed, but there just might be two cases of Zastava M70"s hidden at the very back."

Christie looked at him with a questioning look on her face.

"We can"t get them out anyway. A "compet.i.tor" knows they are there and has a couple of men camping up in the hills waiting for us to try to move them. Shipment losses are expected in this business. A couple of cases of AK47 knockoffs aren"t worth dying for."

He looked over at her and shrugged, "Use it if you have to. Now let"s get the h.e.l.l out of here."

"But will the club let me leave?" she asked.

Zed laughed and then in a mock Chinese accent replied, "Confucius say: "Sometimes it is better to beg forgiveness than to obtain permission."" He laughed again and said, "You know, he did actually say something very much like that. And that is exactly what we have to do. I take you back and then I square it with the club afterwards. There"s only one person I have to convince for us to leave."

With that, Zed yelled loudly, "Leroy, get in here."

There were two loud clicks of locks opening and the gentle giant was suddenly standing in the doorway... only now he didn"t look very gentle. He was standing in a wrestler"s pose as if he were about to attack, and his face was contorted almost as if in anger.

"It"s okay, Leroy," Zed shouted quickly. "It"s okay. I"m okay. Everything"s okay. Everything"s fine. I just need to talk to you."

"Okay boss," he responded, and suddenly the gentle giant was standing there, listening patiently.

"Leroy," Zed began. "I love Christie and she loves me. We have loved each other for a long time. She has agreed to be a mole for us in her office. She will tell us everything we need to know. But in order for her to do that, I have to take her back to her bike before morning. I don"t have time to explain this to the whole club and get their permission, but if you say it is okay, I"ll do it."

"I don"t know, boss," Leroy answered slowly. "Some of the guys wanted to do her last night... I mean kill her... well, both, but it was "cause she"s a Fed. She"s a cop. They won"t like me letting her go."

"That"s why I"m asking your permission first," said Zed softly.

"I"ll be your drone, flying over the ATF," Christie said. "They use drones to watch you, and now you"ll have one to watch them."

Leroy"s smile was all the answer Christie needed.

"I"ll leave the doors unlocked," he said. "If anyone says anything, I"ll explain it to them."

I"ll bet you will, thought Christie.

As Leroy left the room, Zed said quickly, "Get dressed. We don" t have much time."

Christie suddenly realized that she had been lying there naked and uncovered the whole time. She reddened with embarra.s.sment. When she realized that if Leroy had been just outside the door, he would have heard everything, her blush deepened even further.

Soon she and Zed were hurrying up the stairs and out into the back parking lot of the club. "Get on," he said. Then he gave a slight laugh and added, "On back." Christie"s old Zed was back.

The sky was just beginning to turn from black to purple when they reached the split in the rocks where she had first been captured. Her weapon and phone were still sitting on the large rock. The battery and bullets were still on the sandy ground beneath it.

Zed stopped a hundred yards or so away and said, "You can walk from here. That way, if you change your mind, I"ll be gone before you can get your gun put back together."

Christie got off the back of the bike. She turned to give Zed a kiss, but he gunned the bike and, spinning gravel into the air, rapidly left. She gave a deep sigh and walked over to where this all had started-was that just hours ago?

The first thing she did was to wrap her pistol belt around her waist and place her Glock back in the holster. She did not risk putting the now sand-contaminated clip back into the weapon. That, and the loose cartridge, she put in her pocket, along with the battery from the body finder. She screwed the two pieces of the beacon back together and it went into a different pocket. The last thing she did was to pick up her cell phone and replace the battery in the case. As she walked back to the motorcycle which she had concealed a short distance away, her phone beeped and chirped several times as it rebooted.

As she was rolling her bike out of its hiding place, her phone message alert chimed indicating that she had just received a text. She unlocked the screen and tapped the message icon. A text appeared on the screen. It was from Zed and said simply, "Promise me, Christie..."

Liked Promised Ride? Below are some of Joanna Wilson"s other works to enjoy! Tap the covers for a sample

Drink Deep, Ride Hard.

Emily Stone.

Sarah"s Place was a white adobe building on the highway halfway between Reno and nowhere..., and there is a lot of nowhere in Nevada. The bar wasn"t one of those fake stucco buildings built as a tourist trap back in the 1960"s. Its thick walls were real old-fashioned adobe brick.

No one was quite sure when the structure was first built. The white-painted exterior walls showed a heavy influence from 1920"s architecture with a double row of cap bricks that formed a rounded top in front and four ma.s.sive square pillars built into the face of the building. But Sarah knew that pillars and front facade were not original. They were part of a remodeling that was done in the 20"s when the place had been a speakeasy known as "Judy"s Joint."

There were only three things about the building about which the locals were very sure: It had originally been built as a bar, it had always been a "rough place," and it had always been owned by a woman.

Sarah didn"t know who ran it before Judy, but the stack of post-prohibition liquor licenses in a corner of the office showed that Judy sold it to Debbie and it became "Debbie"s Bar and Grill." Debbie eventually sold to Sue and Sue to Connie, and so on through the years. It was "Rose"s Tap" when Sarah Atheron bought it eight years ago and renamed it "Sarah"s Place."

Rose was one of those women who seemed to have stopped aging somewhere just north of 50. She had a winning smile, but was built as solidly as the building itself. She also could out-swear any truck driver on the road and cook better than their mommas. She had hired Sarah as a bartender when she was just barely old enough to legally serve drinks in the state of Nevada.

"You be nice," Rose had instructed her on her first day behind the bar, "but don"t you take no s.h.i.t from any of these sons of b.i.t.c.hes."

There were two baseball bats hanging behind the bar and a pump shotgun in a wooden gun rack on the back wall. "The short bat is for when you"re behind the bar and somebody gets out of hand. Tap it once on the bar to get their attention." Rose tapped the bar. "Then their shoulder..." Tap. "Then their head." Tap.

The long bat was for if you had to come out from behind the bar to break up a fight. "Use it like a spear," Rose showed. "Swing it and you"re liable to kill somebody by accident. Plus, it"s too easy for somebody to take that sucker away from you with your arms out like that. Pop "em in the back or the gut with the tip of the bat and they"ll generally come to their senses. If not, get your a.s.s back behind that bar and rack that twelve-gauge."

The pump shotgun held five sh.e.l.ls. The first was salt; the second was bird shot; the third was full double-ought buckshot; and the last two were deer slugs. For some reason, several portions of the ceiling near the bar had large circles that had a crystalline sparkle to them when the light was right.

There was also an old colt 45 automatic held upright under the bar just below the cash register. The clip was full and there was a cartridge in the chamber. "Money ain"t worth killin" for," Rose repeatedly told Sarah. "But it d.a.m.n well ain"t worth dying for neither. If they"re armed, give "em the d.a.m.n money and let "em go. But if it looks like those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are going do something, fire twice through the bar and at anybody who doesn"t run their a.s.s out the door."

Located as it was out in the middle of nowhere, the bar had been robbed on several occasions in the time that Rose had owned it. She had never resisted the gunmen... except once. For some reason the robber stopped just as he was leaving and turned to point his revolver at Rose standing by the cash register. She dropped him in the doorway with two to the chest. "Dumb son of a b.i.t.c.h could have had the money and been gone," was all that she would ever say about it.

Rose taught Sarah everything she knew about running a bar and "keeping order," as she used to call it. Then one day Rose asked Sarah if she was interested in buying the place. A year later, Rose moved out of her apartment above the bar and drove east "to see family in Chicago."

Sarah never heard from her again, but four years later someone mailed her an obituary from a Chicago newspaper. The picture was Rose"s, and the obituary said that she had died at the age of 81 after running businesses in Nevada for many years.

Now Sarah ran the bar and lived above it. She hired a cook because her skills were more along the lines of people and liquor than burgers and eggs. Most of her clientele didn"t order the fancy mixed drinks that were normally served in Reno, but when some tourist stopped by and asked for one of those city drinks, she knew what was in it even if she didn"t necessarily have all the ingredients on hand.

Most of her orders were for beer or shots. Neither took a lot of skill. What did require skill and talent was "keeping order." Sarah"s Place wasn"t exactly a biker bar, but the "No Colors" sign posted next to the front door was a good indication that many of her customers arrived on two wheels.

Sarah herself wasn"t affiliated, so the bar was considered neutral territory, but once or twice Sarah had been forced to add new decorations to the ceiling to encourage rival groups in the bar to back off from each other. Once, a particularly disgruntled man in the middle of a brawl turned to her and said, "I ain"t afraid of no f.u.c.kin" salt, b.i.t.c.h."

His opponents that backed away from the fight tapped him on the shoulder and said to him, "Read the d.a.m.n sign above her head."

Many years ago, Rose, or perhaps the owner before her had put up a large sign which ran the length of the wall above the mirror behind the bar. It showed five large shotgun sh.e.l.ls with words painted on each of them in a very square, dark print. The sh.e.l.ls said, "Salt, Bird Shot, Double-Ought, Deer Slug, Deer Slug."

The man softened rapidly and said, "Sorry Sarah, we"ll take it outside."

"Nah," said one of the others. "Ain"t worth fightin" out in the hot sun. I came here to drink anyway. We"ll settle it some other time. ... Agreed?"

Everyone who had been fighting nodded their heads in agreement and returned to their tables.

"In that case," Sarah had said, "What can I get ya?"

Sarah hadn"t changed much other than the name when she took over the bar, but that phrase was original to her and had become her signature. Since her first day behind the bar, she greeted every customer who came through the door with a bright smile and the words, "What can I get ya?"

Over the years, it had gotten to the point where many of her regulars would pause just inside the door and wait for that smile and those words before continuing on over to a table or up to the bar itself. The top of the short-order menus even carried the words "What Can I Get You?" in fancy script at the top of the page.