by Amy Andrews
“Know?”
Seth narrowed his eyes. Was the old man being deliberately obtuse? “About me. About what I’m really doing in her life. This is an unexpected development, but as we’re going to be in much closer proximity, it changes things, and it doesn’t feel right lying to her about who I am.”
Keeping an eye over her from afar was vastly different to lying to her face day after day.
“No.” The response was swift and vehement. “I promised Ivy her freedom. She’ll never forgive me if she knows I’ve been having her watched or had protection on her. I couldn’t live with that.”
“She’s going to be pissed at me if she finds out.”
The Colonel snorted. “I can live with that.”
“It could jeopardize her security, sir. If the shit hits the fan I’m going to need her cooperation and I can’t protect her if she doesn’t trust me.”
Trust was essential to building a good relationship with a protectee, and that would be non-existent if his cover was blown.
“So make sure the shit doesn’t hit the fan,” the Colonel snapped and then hung up the phone, the disconnect tone loud in the silence of the room.
Seth pulled the phone away from his ear. The shower wasn’t running anymore. He started to pace as he waited for her to appear, going over the Colonel’s express directive to keep his identity a secret. He’d been given an order and expected to obey.
But that wasn’t so easy anymore now they were witnesses to murder, holed up in a hotel room together, other people controlling their fates.
Controlling his fate.
Goddamn it. Rock, meet hard place.
He sure as hell hoped it didn’t drag on, forcing the cops to dig a little deeper for clues. He didn’t want to have to look Ivy in the eye if they uncovered who he really was and what he’d really been doing—secretly invading her privacy.
He was fairly certain Ivy would never speak to him again.
And up until tonight that hadn’t mattered. In fact, never seeing her again had been part of the plan. But it was different now.
The itch returned.
Seth was still pacing when Ivy stepped out of the bathroom in a shower of steam. The rising sun was making its presence felt through a crack in the curtains near the door, not that he’d been paying much attention. His brain had been buzzing with strategy.
“Sorry,” she apologized as she walked toward him gingerly. “It was harder than I thought trying to dry off and get dressed with my shoulder, but it’s all yours.”
Whatever thoughts had been churning around inside Seth’s head fell away as his gaze feasted on an Ivy he’d never seen before.
Her face was scrubbed of makeup. Her hair was wet. She wore a purple tank-top and no bra, her nipples erect.
Do not look at her nipples, man.
“Better?” he asked, dragging his gaze off her chest. Damn it, he wasn’t supposed to get this close.
“Much.” She grimaced, looking up at him through her fringe the way she always did. But she wasn’t blushing now. She looked pale and tired and was walking like a ninety year old.
“You’re in pain,” he said as she walked past him, heading for the bed farthest from the door.
“A little. The painkillers are kicking in, though.”
Seth watched helplessly, clenching and unclenching his fists as she carefully sunk down onto her bed and slowly lifted one leg onto the mattress.
“You need a hand?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.” She lifted the other leg and slowly wiggled down until she was flat on her back, a palm flat against her stomach. She shut her eyes with a sigh that reached right inside his gut and squeezed hard.
“God, that feels good,” she moaned. She opened her eyes and looked directly at him. “I can’t remember ever being this exhausted.”
Seth swallowed hard at the effort it took to keep his eyes on her face. “You’ve been through a lot tonight.”
“Mmm,” she said, eyes shutting again. “Are you getting in the shower?”
His gaze ate her up, all pale limbs and sweet curves. Yep. A shower was just what he needed. A cold one.
“I’ll have a quick one now.”
Very quick.
There was an unmarked cop car in the carpark and the door had three solid locks, but Seth wasn’t going to feel in control until he had his eyes back on Ivy.
Not that eyes on Ivy was good for his control, either.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Okay. I’ll be here, sleeping,” she murmured, a slight smile curving her mouth at her little joke.
“Remember what the police said,” he reminded before her eyes shut again. “Don’t answer the door. No matter what. They’ll ring if they want to come in and see us.”
“Mmm, yes, sir,” she said, her eyes growing heavy again.
It wouldn’t pass muster in the military but his dick didn’t seem to mind her sleepy yes, sir.
His dick didn’t mind at all.
Chapter Three
Five hours later, Seth was sitting on the sofa that separated their two beds, his bare feet propped on the coffee table, using his electric razor as he watched cable news.
It was impossible to sleep with the relentless ringing in his ear.
Normally, when the tinnitus was bad, he slept with ear buds floating soft music into his head, but he couldn’t afford to have his hearing muffled now.
He blinked at the television with eyes that felt as if they’d been rolled in shell grit. His colored contacts weren’t helping. He turned the razor off and checked his watch. Two more hours till the cops dropped in.
Seth shut his eyes, leaning his head against the wall. He’d been wearier, but not for a long time.
Seconds later a small cry startled the crap out of him. Before he could check the impulse he was stalking over to Ivy, who was flailing her arms around wildly and kicking at the covers he’d placed on her earlier.
“It’s okay,” he said, kneeling beside her as he reached her side.
He flipped on her bedside lamp and a yellow glow lit the room as she sat bolt upright, breathing hard. Her big green eyes were wider than usual, her hair, which had dried now, was in disarray. She stared at him like he was a complete stranger and she didn’t know where the hell she was.
“It’s okay, Ivy. It’s Dean.” The lie slipped off his tongue as easily as it always did. “You’re in the hotel, remember?”
Slowly the confusion cleared and she let out a deep breath. “Oh God, sorry,” she muttered, pressing her hand to her chest.
“Bad dream?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice croaky as she pushed her messy pink hair back and looked around. “What’s the time?”
“Nearly ten.”
“Wow.” She cleared her throat. “I crashed.”
“You did.”
She frowned at him. “You don’t look like you slept at all.”
Seth shrugged as concern added a husky vibrato to her voice. He’d always liked her voice. So many females had a higher pitch, which made it difficult for him to hear. “I’m okay.”
She inspected his face, her eyes roaming all over for what felt like an age. She lifted her hand and for an awful moment, Seth thought she was going to touch him. Stroke her fingers along his jaw, maybe. Fortunately she winced, stopping the impulse dead in its tracks, and she lowered it gently to her side again.
“Still hurts?”
“A little. Not too bad.”
Seth inspected the dressing. There was a patch of dried blood. “I’ll redress it for you with the stuff the hospital gave me unless you want to go back to sleep?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Come over to the couch.”
She was too sleep-tousled and sexy in her bed. Too tempting. He’d been in the protection game for five years and never been tempted to break protocol and kiss a woman in his care. Sure, it was an occupational hazard for guys in his positon and some did cross that line.
Although he’d be crazy not to see he was vulnerable where Ivy was concerned. There was no point trying to pretend it was some distant fascination anymore when she was so close he could just lean in and take what he wanted.
And he wanted that mouth.
He’d been obsessed with it and its owner from the beginning.
A good specialist was able to identify their weaknesses and rectify accordingly which, for Seth, meant getting the hell away from the bed.
He stood and took a step back as Ivy swung her legs to the ground and pushed herself off the mattress. She screwed up her face and sucked in a swift breath.
Seth frowned. “Shoulder?”
She shook her head. “Hip.” She blew out slowly through her mouth. “It’s fine.”
It didn’t seem fine to Seth. “Let me see,” he said.
“It’s just a bruise,” she dismissed, taking her first tentative steps.
“Ivy,” he said, placing his hand on her arm. “Show me. It might need to be checked out again.”
She rolled her eyes at him but bunched up her tank-top a little as she pulled down on the waist band of her shorts, dragging her underwear with it, exposing her hip.
Seth gaped. The bruise was the size of a football and the color of crushed plumbs. “Jesus. Ivy.”
Without thinking about it, he laid his palm against it. It was hot to touch and bigger than this hand. He heard the hitch in her breath as she glanced up at him in that familiar way through her fringe, her cheeks flooding with color.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. Being gentle hadn’t been a consideration when he’d grabbed her and pulled her down.
She smiled at him and his eyes followed the contours of her mouth. “You saved my life, Dean.” Her voice brimmed with vibrato. “I think that makes you some kind of hero. What’s a bruise or two?”
Seth hated that word—hero. He was just doing his job.
He dragged his gaze off her mouth. Pulled his hand away. Took a step back. Cleared his throat.
What the fuck was he doing?
“Maybe we should get it looked at again?”
Logistically, if they needed to run, Ivy was going to be severely hampered by that injury. He needed to throw that into the mix and come up with a contingency plan.
She pulled up her shorts. “It fine,” she insisted, pushing past him. “It’ll be better in a few days.”
She was right, of course. Bruises weren’t a permanent hindrance and Ivy was young and fit which would aid the healing process. He just hoped everything went fine with the police and he didn’t need to go rogue for any reason.
Because he would if he had to and he’d drag her with him.
“Do I vaguely recall they said something about food last night?” she asked, heading toward the tiny kitchenette area. “I’m starving.”
“I’ll get it,” he said, striding ahead of her, her slow progress cranking his guilt up another notch. “Go and sit down on the couch.”
It said a lot about her level of pain that she didn’t resist. “What is there?”
Seth looked at the supplies he’d unpacked onto the counter. “Cereal, milk, bread for toast, some spreads, some chocolate bars, apples, grapes—”
“Grapes,” she said as she settled herself slowly into the couch.
“You need something more substantial than that,” Seth said. “There’s some microwave meals in the freezer as well.”
“Later,” she dismissed with a wave of her hands.
He let it go. She could eat grapes while he tended to her dressing and then he’d put a meal in the microwave for both of them. It had been a few hours since he’d eaten those four slices of toast.
He grabbed the bag with the grapes and set it on the coffee table right in front of her, dragging it closer so she wouldn’t have to hurt her arm reaching. Next he went in search of the dressing supplies from the hospital.
“Do you mind if I turn the sound on?” she asked.
“Nope,” he said, handing her the remote as he switched on the lamp beside the couch and plonked his butt on the coffee table. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
She glanced at him as the room filled with the sounds from the television. Her eyebrow quirked. “Chivalrous to the end.”
Seth rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.” If she knew some of the things he’d done to her in his head she wouldn’t be so complimentary.
“Oh come on,” she said, a smile breaking across the loveliness of her face and glittering in her big green eyes, “you’re not still going to deny it, are you? First”—she ticked the point she was about to make off her thumb—“you rescue me from Jamie, next”—her index finger joined the fray—“you snatch me away from a man with a gun who was trying to kill me and then, to cap it all off”—her middle finger scored a tick, too—“you mute the telly so I can get my beauty sleep.”
She put the remote on the coffee table, looking at him expectantly. “I think underneath all that big bad bouncer act is a great big softie.”
Seth’s breath caught in his throat at her playful tone. He’d seen her in action with others, but he’d never been the focus of her friendly banter. And he wasn’t quite sure how to play it.
What he wanted to do was lean forward and kiss that smile right off her mouth.
Show her how hard he could be.
But that wasn’t an option.
So it was probably best to keep being the person she thought he was.
“Let me take a look at your arm.”
Carefully she shimmied to the edge of the couch. Seth feigned interest in the contents of the hospital bag as her knees brushed close to his crotch, his widely spaced thighs now bracketing her legs.
“This okay?” she asked, her low voice husky, her gaze not quite reaching his, centering somewhere around his throat as he detected a slight shift in the air between them.
She wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Fine,” he said, keeping his eyes off those legs as he leaned forward at the hips, fingering the waterproof dressing. “Fast or slow?”
She peeped up at him, her gaze drifting to his mouth momentarily, and he wondered if she liked her kisses fast or slow.
“Slow.”
Yep. He could imagine that. Had imagined it. Sliding his mouth along hers, taking his time to savour the taste of every sexy contour.
“Dean?”
Seth blinked as her soft inquiry dragged his mind off her mouth. Her gorgeous green eyes were two huge pools of tourmaline.
“Slow it is,” he said, pulling himself together. She looked away. “You squeamish about blood?”
“No.” She winced as his fingers got to work. “It just reminds me of that guy crumpling to the ground.” She turned her eyes on him. “Why do people do that to each other? I don’t…understand.”
Seth had been in the thick of a lot of killing and bloodshed and he didn’t understand either. He could tell her why he’d taken up a gun and killed when necessary. Tell her how he’d played a part in defending local communities in Iraq and Afghanistan and a way of life that should be everyone’s birthright.
But could he justify someone cold-bloodedly putting a gun to the head of an unarmed man and pulling the trigger?
No.
“Greed,” he said as he cleaned her wound. “Hate. Power. Revenge. Drugs.”
“God,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve led such a sheltered life.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“I know…I’ve been pissed about being over-protected, but I guess it has its upside.”
This was his cue to delve into her life and find out what had happened to make the Colonel so damn protective. But he already knew too much.
He grabbed another waterproof dressing and stuck it over the wound.
“Were you scared last night?”
Her quiet, unexpected question startled him into glancing at her. Big mistake. Her pink mouth was right there, her teeth worrying her b
ottom lip.
“Yes.” He’d been scared to death when he saw Kade lift his gun and point it at Ivy.
“You didn’t seem to be. You looked…so in control.”
“It was just my training.”
“I didn’t even thank you.”
Seth shook his head. “I was just doing my job.”
“No.” She lifted her hand and her finger traced along his jaw to his chin. “Your job is to provide security for the club. Not put yourself in danger for me.”
Her fingers moved to the line of his cheekbone. Frantic signals from his brain urged him to pull back, but her touch had bewitched him.
Bad idea, man. Whatever you’re thinking.
“You’re…part of the club, too, Ivy…” Her fingers slid to his lips, stroking them. “And the outside is just as much my—”
She leaned in and cut him off, pressing her mouth against his and whatever he’d been going to say disappeared as his dick took the con.
It was a simple kiss. Nothing hot or urgent about it. Nothing demanding. She didn’t move her lips against his or open her mouth, just stayed where she was, pressing into him.
It was sweet, almost…shy, but it grabbed him by the balls and squeezed hard. For a few long moments, he shut his eyes and let the delicious thrill of it rush through him.
Until her tiny, little throaty whimper yanked him right back to reality.
…
Ivy almost cried out when Seth wrenched his mouth away from hers. She blinked at the swiftness of it. At the way he stood up and stepped back, as if he’d been hit by an electric cattle prod, stumbling over the bag of dressings by his feet.
Her brain scrambled to make sense of what had just happened—the kiss and his rejection of it. The way he’d leapt away from her as if she’d been wielding the prod.
Crap. What had she done?
“Oh God,” she said, looking up at him as he stared at her in disbelief. “I’m so, so sorry, I…don’t know what came over me.” Warmth flooded her cheeks and she pressed her palms to them, cringing at what she’d done and at his rejection.
He looked like he wanted to take a bath in disinfectant. “We can’t do that, Ivy.”
“No, of course not.” She nodded vigorously. What was she thinking? No doubt women tried to kiss him all the time, sophisticated ones with a lot more skill and panache, but Ivy did not go around kissing men.