Jayne tried to stand; Boone held her in place. She knew what he was doing and she knew why. That didn’t mean she had to like it. “Not now,” she chided. “I have dishes to do. The kitchen is a mess.” She tried again to stand, and got only a few inches off his knee before he pulled her down again. She landed with a thump on his rock-hard thigh.

“I didn’t bring you here to do dishes,” he said in a voice low enough to be meant for her alone, loud enough to carry to the other three, who ate newly salted eggs and picked at their bacon looking for properly cooked segments. “Doug and Marty can do the damned dishes.”

“Don’t curse,” she said primly.

Boone tightened the arm that encircled her waist and pulled her back. “Don’t tell me what to do.” With that, he nudged aside her hair and pressed his lips to her neck. She couldn’t help it; she let out a squeaky breathless cry.

Doug giggled. “She is a squealer, ain’t she, Becker. Doesn’t that get on your nerves? All that howling?”

“No,” Boone responded, his mouth still against her neck.

“I really should do the…” Something wet trailed across the back of her neck. His mouth…his tongue. “Dishes.”

Jayne wasn’t tough, she wasn’t prepared for a situation like this one, and yet at the moment she felt as if she had absolutely no control. None. The world was spinning, she didn’t know what would happen next…and she was just along for the ride. She hated that, rolling along with no say in the matter, a man’s hands on her body and his mouth on her neck giving her inappropriate and unexpected and unwanted chills. Another man watched, ready to kill her at the slightest provocation. Two other brainless hoodlums looked on, amused.

Boone said that what he did best was lie. It was a game. A deadly one, but a game all the same. If she was to play, perhaps she could gather her wits and play. What would it take to garner a bit of control? Some semblance of order?

She grasped Boone’s wrist and forcefully moved it aside. She stood, removing her neck from his lascivious attentions. When he reached out, she very deftly moved out of his way.

“For goodness’ sake,” Jayne said as she took a step that carried her just out of his reach. “You are incorrigible.” They were supposed to be intimate, and while she knew very little about intimacy, she did know that the woman in such a relationship possessed a power of her own. “All night,” she said, turning to face Boone as she backed toward the sinkful of dirty dishes. “And into the morning. What do you think I am? A…a…” She didn’t have to work hard to manufacture a sniffle. “You should be able to keep your hands to yourself for five minutes. Five minutes! Is that too much to ask?”

Boone lifted two finely shaped dark eyebrows. “You didn’t complain last night.”

“I did!” she said indignantly. Then she remembered his words, what it would take to keep her alive, and she blushed. “At first.”

“This is better than a soap opera,” Doug said with a grin.

“Do the dishes,” Boone finally said, his voice low and his eyes dark.

“You do the dishes!”

“I thought you wanted to do the dishes!” Boone sounded truly frustrated.

“God, now they sound like my parents,” Marty said with a shudder, pushing away from the table.

Darryl slowly rose to his feet, shook his head, clenched and unclenched his meaty fists. Doug popped up, too, not wanting to be left behind.

Marty, still shaking his head, left the kitchen and headed straight for the television in the connecting living room. “Hey, maybe the news about that guy Darryl shot will be on TV!” Darryl and Doug followed.

The expression on Boone’s face changed subtly, darkening. “You missed the morning news.”

“Yeah, but the one station we get kinda clear has an update at ten.” He glanced at his watch. “Just a couple of minutes.”

With his hands positioned so that no one else could see, Boone motioned to Jayne. She had no idea what he was trying to tell her, but she did know one thing: they didn’t want these guys to know that Jim was alive or that she was a senator’s daughter.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said sharply. “You think what happened last night will keep you alive? Piss me off and you’re history, just like your boyfriend.”

Sure enough, a curious Marty glanced into the kitchen. Doug wasn’t far behind. Darryl remained firmly planted in front of the old television, waiting for the update.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she said frostily. “Not after…you know.”

“Sex,” Boone said. “You can’t even say it!” He launched into a tirade, using every foul word she had ever heard and some she hadn’t.

“You…you crude bully.”

As it had last night, the word bully made Darryl laugh. But he didn’t move away from the TV.

“I can be cruder and I can be meaner,” Boone promised.

“Impossible.”

The teaser about the news update came on, sending a shiver down Jayne’s spine. They had a minute, maybe less.

Boone crossed the room and swept Jayne off her feet. “Fight me,” he whispered as he hauled her up and tossed her over his shoulder.

She did, kicking, beating ineffectually against his back with her fists as he carried her into the living room.

“Can’t you do better than that?” Boone whispered.

She tried, but she wasn’t a violent person. As Boone carried her through the doorway into the main room, where Darryl sat before the television, she fought as best she could, feet and hands flailing. “You…you un-civilized brute!”

“Last night you seemed to like that about me, sugar.”

“Don’t call me sugar.” She glanced up to see that the two dim-witted criminals grinned, while a disgusted Darryl shook his head in wonder or dismay. Maybe both.

“I’ll call you whatever I want to call you.” Boone put Jayne on her feet between Darryl and the TV, raising his voice. “Don’t forget who you are, or how you got here, or that I might get tired of you at any moment and then you’ll be in a world of trouble.”

Jayne placed her hands on her hips. “You wouldn’t dare! Not after…not after…” She stopped and gave Boone an exasperated huff. Darryl leaned to one side as the newsbreak came on. With an outraged cry, Jayne turned and gave the television a shove. It wobbled backward, finally falling from the unsteady stand and crashing to the floor with a spark and a puff of smoke. The screen went black.

“I can’t believe you’d say that to me, not after last night. You said…you said…”

The three other men gathered around the remains of the television as Boone grabbed Jayne and pulled her against his chest. “Now, sugar,” he said in a soothing voice, “don’t get all upset.”

Jayne hid her face against Boone’s chest. Oh, Darryl would be furious, but what else could she have done? Pushing the TV off its stand had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now she wondered.

“Becker,” Darryl said slowly, “your woman just broke my TV.”

“I’ll buy you a new TV. That one was a piece of crap, anyway.” Boone’s arms protected her as he brushed off Darryl’s complaint.

“How am I supposed to watch my soaps?” Marty asked, not quite as outraged as Darryl, but definitely unhappy.

“Soaps are for old women,” Boone growled. “You’ll survive a few days with no TV.”

Jayne chanced a quick glance at the three men. None of them were happy with her at the moment. She’d made a lousy breakfast and broken their television. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I just got so upset…” The tremble in her voice was not manufactured; it was very real. She returned her gaze to Boone. “You can be so mean.”

He lifted her off her feet and spun her around. “I know how to make you feel better.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“But, Boo…”

He shut her up by laying his mouth over hers. Immediately she knew why, and even though she had insisted on knowing, for a split second she wished Boone had never told her his real name. Would she always remember to call him Becker when the others were around? If she forgot in a moment of anger or forgetfulness, it could mean death for both of them.