Rook Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want Elena to notice his physique. It was that she was discussing it at a table full of his colleagues that was causing the tips of his ears to heat.

  Sequence, who was arguably the only member of the team who was more built than Ced, jabbed Cedric in the ribs. “All that crossfit’s finally paying off,” he teased him.

  “Fuck you, gym rat. Seven years in the military is what paid off.”

  Cedric, Rook, and Geo were the only one’s who’d served. Atlas and Sequence had come by their muscles the old-fashioned way: psycho parents who’d made them work on their family farm morning, noon, and night.

  Elena was watching Cedric from across the table, a question in her eyes, but the game moved on and she didn’t ask it.

  Elena put her eyes back in her head and attempted to slow down her heart rate. She’d known Cedric was attractive, with his flattish nose and midnight blue eyes. All that auburn, umber hair, the color of cinnamon swirled into perfectly browned pancakes. He was nice to look at, duh. But she hadn’t known that he was downright beautiful. His crisp, white undershirt strained over his chest and cut two bright lines over his shoulders. His skin, naturally pale, looked gold in the dim light of the living room. His tattoo caught the shadows, moved when he moved, and looked to Elena like a living, breathing organism. It looked like a creature, some secret part of him that was manifested and walking around outside his body. Elena couldn’t help but feel that his tattoo was a secret window into him.

  If she could have, she might have snapped her fingers and frozen them all in this game night tableau. Every member of the team frozen solid. Atlas mid-laugh, trying to get a peek at Geo’s cards. Geo flipping him the bird. Sequence frowning down at his cards and rubbing at his aching shoulder. Rook staring off into the middle distance, like his mind was turning over some secret problem. And Cedric, puzzling over his cards, splitting his attention between the game and his attempts to figure out if Elena was having a good time or not.

  If she could have frozen them, she would have risen on perfect, patent heels, black of course, to match her trench coat, because this was a fantasy, okay? She would have touched the shoulder of each one of the frozen team members and dissolved them into thin air. It would have left Cedric. Frozen in a frown, staring at his cards. She wouldn’t touch him.

  No. She’d just finally look her fill. She’d follow every intricate line of his tattoo with her eyes, an inch away, like she was reading a map on a dark, country road.

  Elena snapped herself out of her fantasy when, for the hundredth time that night, her gaze clashed with Cedric’s. At this distance, across the shadowy table, his eyes looked merely dark. But she knew that they were the same blue as the sky when she woke up thirsty a half hour before dawn, when she knew sleep was receding for the night and all there was to do was watch the day arrive.

  That was the blue of Cedric’s eyes.

  Oh boy.

  Elena attempted to get her racing thoughts to behave. All this because Cedric was sitting across the table in an undershirt? Whoops, uh oh. Looked like he’d lost another hand and the undershirt wasn’t long for this world either. Yeah. There it went, slicked up and off his body and folded carefully next to his chair with the rest of his clothes. Cedric was shirtless and Elena tried to clear the sex from her eyes as she surveyed him across the table. He was staring at his hand of cards, but she knew, she knew, that he was really using his peripheral vision to look at her.

  He knew she was looking at him. She knew he knew. This time, when their eyes locked for a moment, a strange, electric glitter started to tremble in her gut. Elena, unsure whether or not she liked the feeling, severed their connection, looking away at her cards and clucking her tongue at Atlas for dealing her such a bad hand.

  She kept her eyes to herself as well as she could for the rest of the night. She had the sense that, across the table, he was doing the exact same thing. She knew that if either of them pushed this thing even a tiny bit further, a smile, a wink, a lengthier stare, it would become something they definitely had to address.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy a flirtation. It was that it hadn’t happened to her in so long. Elena was no stranger to the weight of a man’s turned-on eyes. She was no stranger to a hand at the small of her back in a dark bar. She was certainly no stranger to a dirty promise in her ear or a pair of large hands stripping her clothes off her body. She’d had many affairs in her travels across the world. Many men with interesting names and interesting stories. Men who shared her values and men who didn’t. Men who’d fancied themselves in love with her.

  But she’d never been with anyone she actually knew. Who knew her. It wasn’t that she’d avoided it. It was that she’d simply never felt an attraction for someone who had any longevity in her life. Before the attack those weeks ago, her life had been filled to the brim, with no room for love. She’d worked, traveled for work, spent time with her family. The end.

  Cedric was beautiful. And he calmed her down so well. Like a huge teddy bear. But, like, a really sexy one. But she didn’t want the electric glitter with him. She couldn’t process it or handle it. All she wanted these days was a good night’s sleep. She couldn’t have a crush on one of her bodyguards. It was going to make everything way too confusing and complicated and all she really wanted was simple. She took a deep breath and kept playing cards.

  It was midnight when Cedric was down to his briefs and they finally called the game. Geo was falling asleep in her chair and Elena was down to her underwear, bra and T shirt. As fun as strip poker was, she didn’t actually want to get naked in front of these people who were paid to stick to her like taffy.

  “Bedtime for me, too,” Elena said, yawning and stretching and standing up out of her chair.

  Only one set of eyes followed her bare legs as she grabbed her yoga pants and shoes and socks in a bundle in her hands.

  It was midnight, which meant that the shifts had switched over. She paused at the edge of the table, assuming that Cedric was going to rise and walk her up to the crow’s nest so he could start his duty. But it was Rook who stood up and pushed his chair back.

  Right. It was Cedric’s night off. Which meant that he was going to sleep in his actual room. Which meant that Elena was going to sleep in her own bed. Across the hall from Rook.

  Huh.

  She waved at Atlas, Sequence, and Cedric and followed Rook out of the room. She was safe. She’d just had a really fun evening. But for some reason, she felt like she was getting marched to the principal’s office.

  She said a quick goodnight to Rook in the hallway and disappeared into her room.

  She didn’t sleep that night. Not a wink.

  ***

  The following night it wasn’t even 12:30 yet when Elena came banging into the night duty room. Cedric sat up straight in surprise as she slammed the door behind her and immediately crawled across his feet to her usual spot against the wall.

  “Quite an entrance,” he noted.

  “Mmmrph,” she grumbled, face-first into the pillow.

  “Was that English?”

  “MMMRPH,” she grumbled even louder.

  Cedric chuckled and she tipped her head to the side to come up for air.

  “I’m so tired I can’t see straight,” she told him.

  “You didn’t sleep last night?”

  Rook had logged an uneventful night. Cedric had checked. Elena had gone into her room at 12:15 and she hadn’t come out. Not even for tea. Cedric hadn’t been sure what to make of it. Either it meant that she’d laid down and gone to sleep in her own bed, which most likely meant that she’d ended her sleep-drought and would sleep in her own bed from then on. Which also meant the end of her nightly visits to him. Or she’d tossed and turned on her own all night because she didn’t trust Rook the way she trusted Cedric.

  If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure which alternative he’d wanted to be true. On the one hand, he wanted Elena to be healthy and independent. On th
e other hand, he’d started looking forward to their few late-night hours together.

  He purposefully wasn’t examining that phenomenon very hard.

  She stretched out over top of the covers, her little toes pointing and her golden legs vibrating with the stretch. “Mmm. No. Completely sleepless.”

  “That sucks,” he grimaced. “Here.”

  Cedric pulled the covers out for her and she crawled underneath. He stayed on top.

  “No movie tonight,” she told him, as if they were in already in the middle of an argument about it. “Just sleep.”

  “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  “Don’t ma’am me.” She punched the pillow and flipped it to the cool side. “Why are you ma’aming me?”

  “Because this is the first time you’ve actually been a demanding client.” He couldn’t help but smile down at her as she scowled up at him.

  Her eyes drifted closed and Cedric had just put his earbuds in to continue listening to his audiobook when she spoke up again.

  “I thought you’d been working here for five years.”

  He took the earbuds out. “I have.”

  “But you told Sequence last night that you got your muscles from seven years in the military.” She was adorably sleepy, her hair cascading over the pillow and her eyes half closed.

  “That’s right.” He wasn’t sure where she was going with this.

  “But we graduated high school twelve years ago.”

  He furrowed his brow and looked down at her. “So far, you’ve proven your math skills are top notch.”

  “But I thought you had a full ride to Alabama.”

  Oh. There it was, what she was getting at.

  “I didn’t take it. I enlisted instead.”

  “Why?” There was genuine confusion in her question, but it was kind hearted, as if she were genuinely curious instead of judgmental.

  He thought about his answer for a long minute before he replied. “Because I knew what laid ahead for me in college. Football and mortal fear in every one of my classes. Yeah. No. I’d already done that for all four years of high school.” He sighed and scratched at his auburn beard. “I just knew that if I did it in college I’d be signing my own death certificate. That would just be who I was. The big, dumb football player. For the rest of my life. And I didn’t want that. I wanted to feel proud of myself.”

  “And were you? Proud of yourself?”

  “Hell yeah,” he dipped his head. “Being a Marine is an unchangeable part of who I am. And I was good at it. Really good at it.”

  “Why’d you stop?”

  He looked down at her heavy eyelids, the covers bunched under her chin. “Doesn’t really make for a good bedtime story.”

  “Hmm,” she mumbled, like she wanted to protest but didn’t have the energy. Ten seconds later, her breaths were even and she was out like a light.

  Cedric was as vigilant in his duty that night as he was every night. He checked the surveillance monitors regularly, went over the security back-up systems and made sure he knew what everyone’s schedules were for tomorrow in case something got messed up and needed to be switched around.

  He was tempted to open up his laptop and dive back in to his research, but it was too absorbing, too distracting. Even though he was 99% sure that nothing dangerous would happen tonight, he was thorough in each aspect of his job. And night duty was a defensive position. Not an offensive one.

  At about 3 am, Elena kicked off the covers, apparently she was hot.

  Ten minutes later she rolled from one side to the other.

  Cedric kept his eyes on the security monitors, his audiobook playing in his earbuds.

  She rolled again and he glanced over at her. His eyes skittered away immediately when he saw that her sleep shirt had scrunched up around her waist and he could see a bright white strip of underwear against her golden skin.

  She rolled again and this time, when he glanced down, he could see her entire pair of white hipster undies and the curving arch of one hip.

  Yikes.

  Wowza.

  Red alert.

  Cedric’s eyes bounced to the far wall and he let out a long breath. He needed to get out of this bed stat. It was one thing to sit next to her in bed while they watched a movie together. It was another thing entirely to recline next to her while she rolled around half naked.

  He was just shifting to get out of the bed when she succumbed to the gravity of his weight and rolled against him. One of her arms flung across his hips and her nose nestled into his ribs. He froze.

  He didn’t breathe for at least half a minute. She was sleeping, right? She was definitely sleeping? He realized that holding his body in this stiff position was not going to be sustainable for much longer. Cedric tried to slide away, out of her grasp, but she groaned and tugged him a little closer.

  He gave up. Gave in. Surrendered.

  Because the thing was, he wanted to lay there on the bed with Elena’s nose buried in his shirt. He wanted it. Sue him.

  He leaned back against the headboard and gently rearranged his legs so that he’d be more comfortable. Cedric picked up his phone and turned his book back on.

  Elena breathed deeply, her breath warming his ribs through his shirt. Somehow, Ced’s arm found its way around her, his fingers tangled in the hair cascading down her back.

  It was hours of that familiar torture/pleasure that Cedric had always associated with Elena. He wanted nothing more than to be close to her and for some reason or another, he always could never have it. So close yet so far. Like swimming across the ocean just to drown in an inch of water at the edge of the beach.

  She continued to torture him through the night. With little shifts of her weight, little snuggles closer to his body heat.

  He felt himself sliding further and further into the warmth of the bed. It was 7 am when he realized how it would look when Geo came to take over his shift at 8 am. The windowless night duty room’s door was closed and it was lit only with the dim lamp on the bedside table. Cedric was flat on his back, one arm crooked around Elena and her legs were tangled in his. Her bare legs. She had most of her weight shifted onto his body, her nose buried in the curve of his neck.

  They were tangled together like lovers.

  There was no other way to slice that particular piece of pie. In no world was this an appropriate way to lay with a client. But he’d spent hours trying and failing to slide out of bed, away from her. At this point, he figured he was going to have to disclose this indiscretion to Rook anyways, so he might as well enjoy these last few warm moments with her.

  That didn’t mean he wanted Geo to catch them like this though. So at about 7:30, Cedric was just trying to figure out how to slide out of bed without waking her when Elena spoke, her voice rough with sleep. He could feel her breath on his collarbone. He was sure she was raising goosebumps.

  “I watched you play football once.”

  He wanted, very badly, to sweep a palm down the slope of her back. But he didn’t. Instead, he lay completely still under her. It seemed to him that freezing was his only defense at a moment like that. She’d cuddled him in the night without her own knowledge. He’d let her. He didn’t want her to think, even for a second, that this closeness between them was anything more than that. He knew that they should probably talk this whole thing out, but if she wanted to talk about high school, then he wasn’t going to be the one who shined a bright light on the fact that the warm cradle of her hips was lying flat over top of one of his thighs.

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “In high school. After we did that project together.”

  “You came to a game?”

  She nodded again.

  “With friends?” he prompted, curious now to hear the rest of the story.

  “No. I went by myself.”

  “Why?” For the life of him, he couldn’t picture bookish, brilliant Elena wasting time at dumb old high school football game of her own free will.

  “Becau
se I wanted to see you play. I guess I was just curious.”

  She’d come to see him play football in high school because she was curious? Elena Vasquez had come to a football game? For him? Somewhere in another dimension, the high school version of Cedric was lighting fireworks and dancing the hula.

  “I wish I would have known,” he said gruffly.

  “Why?” She didn’t lift her head to look at him and neither of them moved. He had the suspicion that she was as worried about breaking the spell of their surreptitious snuggling as he was.

  “Because I would have…” he trailed off. What would he have done if he’d known Elena was in the stands and watching him? “Come over and talked to you? Probably would have taken a crack at getting your number?”

  She chuckled and finally rolled off of him, stretching.

  Cedric stretched and then hauled his big body out of bed. He couldn’t lay there next to her and keep his mortal mind.

  She popped up too, her hair a messy haystack and her eyes still sleepy. He waited for the awkwardness to hit them. For her to realize that they’d crossed a line.

  “Question,” she said, looking up at him. “Do the windows in my room have to stay locked? I just want a little fresh air in there.”

  “Oh.” He scratched the back of his head. “I can open them for you an inch or two. They’re just tricky.”

  Elena followed him across the hall and into her bedroom. She winced at the mess she’d left everywhere. Open books on the bed, clothes strewn about, shoes haphazardly kicked everywhere, three half empty glasses of water on the desk. He went straight to the windows and she ducked sideways into the adjoining bathroom and started brushing her teeth.

  She barely recognized herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed, she had bedhead, and there was a strange, pulsing energy coming off of her. She had the annoying idea that if she were to really take stock of the way she was feeling, she’d find electric glitter in her gut. So for that exact reason, she didn’t pay particular attention to her emotions.

  She’d spent the night in Cedric’s arms. He was just a friend, she reminded herself. She only had friendly feelings toward him. Cedric was a good man. An attractive man, sure. And last night, he’d felt very much like he was her man.