Wolf had long ago memorized the script for one-night stands, and though logic screamed Anna couldn’t have gone far, he couldn’t help the immediate sickness seizing his insides and twisting his stomach into something unrecognizable. The fleeting concern the night had been too much for her. With everything she’d seen and experienced, with her emotions running rampant, tossing sex into the mix had probably been the worst of all bad ideas. But she’d come to him, and he’d been too much in need of her to refuse.
All concerns evaporated the second he sat up. Anna had seated herself at the small complimentary desk, dressed in one of his tees, his laptop at the mercy of her fingertips, a flash drive protruding from the USB port.
He relaxed, but the sensation didn’t last. The look on her face… “Anna?”
She started and met his eyes, a small, shy smile overwhelming her features. “Oh, good morning.”
“Is it still morning?”
Anna licked her lips and nodded. “Yeah. Not even nine yet.”
“Guess you weren’t that tired.”
“I couldn’t sleep. I had a nightmare about Monroe. About what might happen today.” She sighed, her eyes turning back to the computer screen. “I was just waiting for you.”
“Me?”
“I didn’t want to send this to Molly without your permission. I don’t know much about computers, but I know enough to be aware it would be a very bad idea for me to send anything from your laptop without you telling me it was okay.”
“I think you’ve seen too many spy movies, kitten.” Wolf smiled and swung his legs over the bed, the sheet falling away. He caught her sneaking a peek and grinned in spite of himself. In many ways, though blushing virgin she was not, she still found a way to fit the role. “My computer won’t implode if you touch it.”
“I think I’m just paranoid.” Anna’s eyes lingered a second on his cock before dragging their way upward.
“You have every right to be.”
She nodded and turned her eyes back to the monitor. “I was on the ball.”
“About what?”
“The files. God, I don’t know why it took me forever to look. I guess I was afraid seeing this.” Anna sighed heavily. “It’s all here. Crisis control, the first hundred days, which Islamic country to blame it on. It’s all here. In black and white.”
Wolf didn’t know what to say to that. He opted for silence.
She sounded smaller when she spoke again. “I don’t like being right. I knew I was, but I didn’t want to be.”
“I know, kitten.”
“So, is this what most morning afters are like?” Anna asked, her voice slightly strained now. “Guy tells girl to go ahead and use his spy-gear to stop an evil mastermind from fulfilling his devious plan?”
“Not in my experience.” He frowned and took a step forward. She’d alluded to it all night without saying much more, but he wouldn’t let it slide this time. It seemed one thing while inside her, feeling her gasp and clench and drench his cock. It remained another when she sat across the room, shoulders tense and cheeks burning as though she’d done or said something wrong. Whoever it had been had certainly done a number on her.
The thought made his temper flare, and people got hurt when Wolf got pissed. “Who was it? Who hurt you?”
Anna glanced up sharply. “What?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“No one hurt me.”
“Yeah, not buying that. I know the signs, and you’re painted in them.”
“I promise, Wolf, no one hurt me.”
“Not talking burns or bruises. You asked me not to leave you, to be here when you woke up.” A brow domed. “Not exactly pillow talk.”
“Sorry.”
An agitated nerve exploded without warning. “No! Not sorry, don’t be sorry. All I wanna know is what happened.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because you matter, you nit!”
Her nose wrinkled. “Hey!”
“Tell me!”
“Tell you what, exactly?” Anna clicked a button on his laptop, carefully set it aside before bounding to her feet. Almost as quickly as it had sparked, the fire in her eyes died, leaving her looking confused and vulnerable. A long sigh coasted through her body. “I don’t know why I’m fighting this.”
“Makes two of us.”
“Last night—or this morning, whatever—was amazing.” She smiled softly. “And no, I have never had that before. It was just… There have been two before you.”
He inhaled sharply. “Two?”
Anna nodded, bowing her head. “Michael was my first, in college. I wasn’t a prude or anything but I did want to feel loved the first time and I really thought he loved me. Turns out he loved his frat even more, and seducing a virgin had been part of his hazing. It kinda soured my view of sex.” She licked her lips but didn’t meet his eyes. It seemed like a good idea because he didn’t think she would like what she saw. “And then a few years ago, I was out with Charity and she was trying to convince me that my one experience wasn’t typical. Only that night reinforced my opinion, so I’ve been a nun ever since.”
Wolf swallowed hard. Until last night. Until she’d come to him. “And you chose me? Last night, when you came to me…”
Anna grinned. “You chose me, Wolf.”
“But you didn’t. Last night wasn’t about gratitude or—”
“I told you, I wanted you. You made me want you, and I’ve had no man make me want him in a very long time.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what it means, but it was something to you too. I know you’re a master of disguise or whatever, but you looked at me the way no one ever has.”
He sighed, his shoulders sagging. He wanted to tell her he loved her, for real this time, not just a post-coital slip of the tongue. It would be incredibly unfair—it’d shove her already heightened emotions into a place where she’d have to reevaluate more than simply where her life had taken her. More importantly, it’d be wishing for a future he knew they would never have together. Introducing love into a situation like theirs only welcomed danger, and he knew better.
He’d had two weeks to follow her, grow to know her, get a feel for her. She only had less than twenty-four hours with him—beyond too soon for fuzzy feelings to transform into love, even by his standards. Realistically, he knew she wouldn’t want to stick around after the ordeal was behind her. He stood as a simple pit-stop on her journey. He wouldn’t share it with her.
The knowledge made his heart wrench.
“That scares me,” Anna said a minute later.
“What’s that?”
“The way you look at me like you’re seeing someone that isn’t there, Wolf.”
He blinked at her.
“You keep telling me these things about, well, me, about how you see me. That’s just not who I am.”
“Anna—”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do, but it’s fucking ridiculous.” Wolf ran a hand over his head. “I’m not blind, sweetheart. I know you have your faults. Quick to judge, a bit self-righteous—”
Anna threw her hands in the air. “I didn’t realize you had a whole list.”
He grinned. “I can’t win.”
“Not even a little bit.” Anna licked her lips and drew a step toward him. “But it does scare me. I don’t want to be anyone’s last chance for anything. Do you have any idea how terrifying that is? To think—”
Wolf swore under his breath and closed the space between them in a blink, taking her face into his hands and drawing her into his kiss. It seemed to shut her up, filling the air with gasps and murmurs in place of arguments he didn’t know how to win. How could he convince her he couldn’t see anything but her?
Perhaps he put too much on her, but he didn’t see the harm. She didn’t need to be flawless, she only needed to be his.
“I don’t need you to save me.” Wolf sucked her lower lip between his teeth. “I just want you.”
She blinked as though in a
daze. “For how long?”
“However long you’ll have me.”
“Really?”
Not the response he thought he’d receive. No disgust or fear, rather hope. And hope gave him hope. “Yes. God, yes.”
He again bit back the urge to give the words that would change everything more than they had already been changed. He couldn’t tell her he loved her without turning her fear into downright terror. There seemed nothing he could tell her to fill the gap, no truth he could replace with the truth he had to avoid. Instead, he simply brushed loose strands of hair from her eyes and kissed her, and by the time they came up for air, it seemed she’d forgotten saying anything at all.
* * * *
“Well, that’s it.” Anna snapped her cell phone shut. “Molly got my files.”
Wolf smiled at her, sending a rush of pure lust down her spine. God, she’d never get used to melting under a man’s eyes or finding herself overwhelmed with the need to rip off someone’s clothes. She didn’t know where they would go from here, but she didn’t want to lose it.
“What’s next, then?”
Anna wanted to know the same thing. “Um, well, Monroe is definitely not sitting out of the speech anymore and they’re moving the State of the Union to a different venue. It’s a safety precaution while the Secret Service and FBI scout out the Capitol for explosives.” Anna frowned. “My life is so strange.”
Wolf smiled but she wasn’t finished. “Monroe being arrested isn’t going to stop him from trying to kill me, is it?”
“Not a chance, kitten. Not for the moment, at least.”
“So I can’t go back.”
He paused, visibly weighing his words. “You can eventually, after everything gets quiet and you become old news. You can go into protective custody if you’d like, or—”
“And what would happen to you?”
“I’d be gone in a blink.” A pained smile crossed his face. “Don’t get along too well with authorities, as you might imagine.”
“So I’d never see you.”
He nodded. “Just the way it works.” Wolf inhaled deeply and turned away, and her breath caught in her throat.
She didn’t want to give him up.
“Even if I did go into protective custody, I wouldn’t be going home, would I?” Anna slipped her phone into her purse. She again wore the skirt and camisole she’d donned the previous night. Before they did anything else, she needed to hit an outlet mall. “It’d be more like witness protection or something.”
He nodded. “If they do their jobs right, you wouldn’t see your place for a long time. Can’t afford to. There’s no telling how many assassins Monroe contacted and how many more are still coming with a mind to collect.”
“Where will you go? Another job?”
“No.”
Hope soared but she didn’t dare betray it. “Really?”
“Not if you’re with me.”
Forget soaring. She blasted out of the stratosphere. Her heart thundered so hard it seemed a miracle the damn thing didn’t shatter her chest.
Anna had never had the chance to do this part right. She didn’t know what did or didn’t rush a relationship or if normal standards even applied for something as crazily abnormal as the world around them. But she knew what she’d heard, and she clung to it with absolute resolve. “Wolf…”
He rumbled what sounded like a nervous laugh. “I think you can call me Nathan, now. We’re more than just acquaintances, right? After all we did last night—”
Anna’s eyes widened. “Nathan?”
“My name.”
“I remember your name. I just got used to Wolf in my head.”
“There’s always Nate, if you like.”
Another second passed before she broke into a soft smile. There was something about a powerful, strong, confidant man rambling anxiously that couldn’t help but melt her heart. “Nathan.” The name tasted exquisite. “I like that.”
“Good. And I mean it. You come with me and I’m done. We can move around nicely on the money I got stashed—”
“I can’t believe this.”
“Take a nice vacation. Get to know each other better. God knows how much you deserve it.” A hard sigh rushed through his body. “I know I’m not the kinda man you want, but I can provide. When we feel it’s safe, we’ll come back. You can see your friends. We’ll find a way. But for now…”
“You’re asking me to come away with you.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“What about my sister?”
“We’ll find a way to see her.” He didn’t blink at the mention of a sister they had not discussed, and she couldn’t summon surprise. There wasn’t much she figured she could tell him that he wouldn’t already know. Wolf smiled softly, though his eyes betrayed anxiety. “I won’t keep you from your family, Anna.”
She nodded, focusing on something distant. “Where will we go?”
“Anywhere you want to go.”
“For how long?”
“Until you get sick of me.”
“You understand this is nuts, right? This is absolutely nuts.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, well, I’ve never been known for doing the smart thing. Just what feels right. And you feel right, Anna. All of this does.”
It did beyond imagine. The worlds they lived in might as well be parallel universes, but there stood no rule against letting them try. They had a real chance at something, and they wouldn’t know what unless they gave it a shot.
Anna had known him for less than a day and she already wanted to love him.
“All right.”
Wolf’s eyes widened. “What?”
“I said all right.”
“You’re joking. This is a joke. You’re telling me a funny joke.”
Anna laughed and shook her head, tossing her purse aside and stepping forward. “No, I’m coming with you.” Her nose wrinkled. “Though we really have to go back first.”
“Why?”
“I left Miss Kitty alone, and though she’s an exceptionally smart cat, she doesn’t know how to operate a can opener.” Anna licked her lips and shrugged. “That’s the deal breaker. I’ll go anywhere you wanna take me, but Miss Kitty has to come too.”
His eyes searched hers for a long minute. “You’re sure you’re not joking?”
“Not about my cat.” She winked. “Yes, I’m coming with you, dummy!”
“Oh, thank Christ.” He covered her mouth with his before she could get in another word.
She had no idea where they were going, not in the slightest, but she knew she would enjoy the journey. Whatever they had felt real. Her fears remained as did his, and though they might not have all the answers today or tomorrow, they would work toward them. It wouldn’t crash and burn if they threw in a good fight, and they would.
They would fight together.
About Rosalie Stanton
www.lyricalpress.com/rosalie_stanton
I’m pretty new to the publishing world, though I think I was born with a pen in my hand. I’m most familiar with writing stories with a paranormal edge, but I’ve recently found myself drifting toward contemporary romances or romantic suspenses.
My mother would say I have a massive bad boy complex, and I suppose, in literature, that is very true. Most of my favorite male characters are the definition of the sort of man you shouldn’t bring home to dinner. While I have written and very much enjoyed the “nice guy who finishes last” story, I find myself drawn to rough, slightly damaged alphas and the strong, intelligent women who drive them nutty.
I like quick banter and usually write scenes around dialogue, though I’m trying to branch out and challenge myself. I also love pushing myself toward projects that seem, at first glance, too large to conquer. Thus far, I’ve mainly published novellas, and while I like the novella format, I’m typically more attracted to large, involved plots.
Thank you for reading! There’s a lot more to come!
Rosalie’s Website
:
http://rosalie-stanton.com
Reader eMail:
[email protected]
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