Protecting Medusa

by Elizabeth Andrews

  He studied her for a moment, his smile softening. “I need to go find this guy, but I’ll be back later,” he said at last, sliding his thumb along her lower lip.

  She ignored the tingling his touch left behind and tried to turn her mush-brain into a functioning organ once more. “You don’t expect me to be waiting up, do you?”

  His low laugh sent a ripple of heat into her middle. “I can find my way.”

  Her eyes widened. “Find your way where?”

  “Back to you.” He bent to kiss her once more, hard and fast.

  She shook her head. “Not a good idea.”

  He kissed her again, his mouth slanting over hers so his tongue could delve deep, stroking, sending fresh heat spiraling into her chest, her belly.

  Obviously, she was weaker than she’d ever realized.

  “You’re mine now, witch,” he breathed against her mouth. “And I’ll see you later.” He straightened, still too close.

  She slid along the side of the truck carefully, away from him, before she stepped onto the sidewalk to face him. “The guest room is downstairs, Ryder. Your things will be waiting there.” She wished her voice wasn’t so unsteady.

  He just grinned at her, the cocky grin that both aggravated and excited her.

  Before the heat in her belly could fully combust all over, she turned and hurried back to the house. Even after she’d gone inside and re-armed the alarm, long after the rumble of the truck’s engine faded away, she leaned against the door, legs shaking and heart racing.

  The man was dangerous. Maybe just as dangerous to her as the Harvesters, though in a far different way.

  She finally pushed away from the door, her legs wobbly as she made her way to the closet in the first floor bathroom.

  When Jason was younger, they’d put dowels on every window in the house so they couldn’t be raised far enough for anyone to get in or out of them. Clearly, the upstairs windows were a weak spot in the house’s defense, so child-proofing would help, at least until Ryder’s friend came to expand the alarm system. She gathered the dowels from the back corner of the closet and started on the window right there in the bathroom.

  She concentrated for a few minutes on physically securing the house, wedging the dowels into every window on the first and second floors. When she’d finished her task, she sat in the center of the living room floor, concentrating on slowing her breathing. Imagined herself reaching deep into the ground to draw up the Earth’s protective energy, which she envisioned wrapping securely around the house, keeping out anyone who wished her family ill. She used only what she needed, then grounded the rest back into the Earth and thanked the Gods.

  By the time she finished, she felt a bit calmer. All the curtains were drawn tight, and she resisted the urge to peek out the front window. If the Harvester had returned, he didn’t need to know exactly where she was.

  Philomena moved to the couch, trying to decide what would work best to relax her. It had been an extremely tense evening.

  Not to mention hot.

  She covered her face with one hand and shut her eyes, taking a deep breath.

  Having sex with her sister’s long-ago ex was far from the smartest thing she’d ever done. Outside in the snow, when the Harvester knew where to find her, for crying out loud. At least the nearest neighbors lived about a mile away. She put her other hand over her face, too, laughing softly. Desi had always been the dumb one about men, not Philomena.

  Apparently, Ryder Ware brought it out in women.

  She sat up straight. She didn’t have time to worry about him or her own shocking lack of restraint.

  She turned off the lights in the living room, then went to the kitchen where she’d left her purse and tote bag, digging her laptop out. She left only the work light over the sink on, so Ryder could find his way into the house. Carrying her computer upstairs, she went to the room she’d used as a teenager, the room she still used often--when she wasn’t suffering through her period and PMS from Hades. Or, rather, from Athena.

  She sat cross-legged on the bed and booted up, then realized she hadn’t brought her water with her. Sighing, she left the laptop on the bed and returned to the kitchen, grabbing her water bottle from the counter. She took a sip as she climbed the stairs, thinking about the Harvester.

  She hadn’t seen his face, so she wouldn’t recognize him. She couldn’t sense them--not like answering the phone when one of her cousins was calling and knowing which one before they spoke, her very own personal caller i.d. And apparently, the protective warding she’d done previously around her mother’s property wasn’t strong enough, or he couldn’t have climbed in the bathroom window. Or maybe it had just been too long since she’d refreshed it. She made a mental note to refresh the protection around her own little house as well.

  She sighed and stretched across the bed, tapping keys with one hand. Her email screen came up, and she scrolled through the list. A few new business queries. She smiled when she got to the end of the list and clicked on the mail from her cousin Electra.

  “Hey, Philomena, it’s been far too long since you’ve come visiting, though I imagine you have a lot going on there. How is Jason doing? Getting huge, right?

  “I wanted to let you know I heard from Desdemona last week.”

  Philomena’s smile faded.

  “She mentioned maybe getting back to visit with you and Jason, and I thought you should have a heads-up, because I know she’s not good about advance warning people. Of course, she may never show at all, but I wanted you to know. Just in case.

  “She said she’d talked to Jason’s dad a while ago, that he has some new secret gig, and he opened a security firm. I suppose you already know about it, since you and Aunt Aggie talk to him more frequently than Desi does.”

  Not if she could help it.

  “Anyhow, just wanted to give you that warning. And to check in. Maybe one of these days when you haven’t got visiting pets, you can take a drive up to see us. Love, E.”

  ‘Visiting pets’. That was Electra’s tactful way of saying ‘sporting deadly snakes on your head’.

  Her pulse thudded in her ears. Ryder’s new secret gig. Until tonight, she would have assumed he’d taken on another job for the government. Now she wondered if it was Harvester hunting.

  She tapped a couple more keys on the laptop and closed the email program, her mind spinning.

  Ryder shouldn’t even know what a Harvester was. Most normal human men didn’t. But he happened to have gotten tangled up with a family dealing with curses meted out millennia ago by ancient Greek deities.

  Today was one of those days when she wished she’d never heard of Harvesters either.

  Her stomach lurched at the thought of the man in her mother’s house, bent on murdering her. That would be a horrible thing for her mother and Jason to come home to. Not to mention for her.

  She inhaled slowly and pushed herself upright once more. She’d never sleep at this rate. She pulled her laptop onto her knees and opened the file for the website she’d been designing before her period hit. She worked on tweaking it until she couldn’t see straight, finally shutting it down around eleven-thirty. She stripped and climbed into bed, huddling into a ball under the covers and hoping she actually slept.

  She pulled the sheets and blankets tight around her. She wished the Harvester had been killed instead of just winged.

  But she didn’t want to think about the man who’d wounded him. Nope.

  She certainly wasn’t going to think about what had occurred between them earlier in the dark winter night. Absolutely not.

  Chapter Two

  Ryder gave up his hunt before twelve. He’d found the bloody trail his quarry left hours earlier, but it had vanished along the main street in town. Obviously he’d gotten into his rental car and driven off to patch up his bullet wound. He wouldn’t go to a hospital, since gunshot wounds required police notification. Plus Ryder knew from his discussions with Kallan that Harvesters had abnormally quick healing abi
lities. By morning, the wound would be mostly healed, as long as it wasn’t mortal, and there hadn’t been enough blood to indicate that.

  He’d found himself a dark corner table at the bar the Harvester had been visiting the past few nights. Ryder waited there a while, sipping soda and eating pretzel sticks in case the other man came for his customary beer, while he tried not to think about Mena. When the Harvester hadn’t arrived by ten after eleven, Ryder had to admit defeat, at least for tonight.

  His blood warmed at the thought of the woman waiting for him.

  Or more likely, not waiting for him. He grinned as he steered his truck out of the snow-packed parking lot.

  She’d been shocked earlier, but also aroused when they were in the bathroom after the Harvester’s escape. Her green eyes had darkened to an incredible shade of emerald when she’d realized he was turned on. Her nipples had tightened under her sweater, and he’d be willing to bet her panties were wet. They sure had been later, outside.

  His body tightened just remembering how responsive she’d been, the way her mouth softened beneath his. He hadn’t intended to take her up against his truck in the cold of the winter night. Just to tease her a little.

  But when she’d wrapped those long legs around him, all his good intentions had evaporated.

  He swallowed hard. All these years of her avoiding meeting him in person, and now this... He’d imagined what it would be like to have Mena in his arms and in his bed, had planned for the eventuality, but he hadn’t thought it would be quite so instant.

  And now that he’d had her, he wanted more.

  Her dig about his long-ago non-relationship with her sister made him smile. Desi had been nothing more than a fling while he’d been home on leave for a couple weeks, and he’d been the same for her while she was on spring break. Neither had intended it to be a forever thing. He’d never had any intention of forever, with anyone. He hadn’t believed in it.

  He smiled again, thinking of Philomena’s very first phone call to him after Desi had left Jason with her and Aggie just weeks after the baby’s birth.

  She’d demanded he take responsibility for this child he hadn’t even known existed--while he stood in a tent in Afghanistan, covered in several days’ worth of sand and dust, stunned. He’d been careful while he was with Desi, as he was careful any of the rare times he indulged in a fling. Clearly, this was a cosmic slap alongside the head to change his methodical, blinkered way of thinking. Just a month after he’d re-upped for another three years with Uncle Sam. The universe had a twisted sense of humor.

  When he’d finally rotated back to the States twelve months later, he traveled straight to Pennsylvania, to his son. Aggie and Mena had sent him pictures and updates regularly, so he’d had time to wrap his head around the fact that he was a father, to watch his son’s progress from birth. He still wasn’t prepared. But when he’d seen the baby tottering around the living room of the old farmhouse, he’d fallen instantly in love. His son had been wary of the big stranger for only a few minutes, until Ryder offered his hands to help Jason stagger-step across the floor, and the delighted smile on the baby’s face had wrapped itself around Ryder’s heart.

  It had taken a lot longer to warm up to Mena, mostly because she managed to be away every single time he arrived. Aggie had made her excuses--work, last minute client appointment, things like that--for a long time, but Ryder realized quickly she didn’t want to meet him. He just didn’t know why. Perhaps lingering disapproval over his fling with her sister. Perhaps because she’d been saddled with someone else’s child.

  They’d spoken on the phone regularly, and he’d been polite at first. Her own tone was more reserved, eventually defrosting to something like civil.

  He decided, however, after talking with her and with Aggie, it had nothing to do with raising Jason. She obviously loved his son and took exceptional care of him.

  He’d found himself teasing her after a while, via email and on the phone, hoping she’d warm up to him. After all, she was important to his son. More important even than Jason’s actual mother. Still, he only ever got a cool, polite tone from her.

  Eventually, Aggie had confided in him about the family’s curse.

  He hadn’t believed her, of course. Who could believe a claim so crazy? A curse carrying through centuries, turning one unlucky woman in the family each generation into a snake-haired creature for three days every month, that had another family still hunting them several thousand years later? It was too ridiculous. Until he’d met Mena’s cousin Andrea and her husband Kallan Tassos. A Harvester.

  In his travels around the world, Ryder had heard a lot of tall tales and folk stories, but this one, it seemed, incredibly, was true.

  He wanted to talk to Mena about it, but as usual, she was nowhere to be found during his visit. Instead, he spoke to Andrea and Kallan for several days, learning everything he could about the curse and the Harvesters.

  It made him realize some things about Mena.

  Like...she wasn’t always away simply because of him. Aggie confirmed that later when he’d asked.

  Like...she was determined to protect her family. Which meant going away every month to keep them safe from herself.

  Like...she would be especially reserved with her emotions. After all, who could one trust with a secret of that magnitude? Family, yes. Anyone else, probably not.

  The next week, he gave his notice to the small intelligence agency where he’d been working since leaving the military. He’d taken on some high-paying freelance gigs after that, but he spent a lot more time trying to keep an eye on his little family to make sure they were safe.

  He parked the truck in the driveway beside her car. The back porch light shone, and inside the door, he saw the alarm blinking, “armed”. Smiling, he let himself in with the key Aggie gave him several years ago, then reset the alarm. In the kitchen, a low light shone over the sink.

  Even though she’d pushed him away earlier, she’d still made sure he could find his way into the house.

  He stuck his head into the guest room behind the living room and found his duffel bag in the middle of the bed, just as Mena had told him it would be. He imagined her planting it and thinking ‘so there’.

  He grinned, moving out of the room and heading for the small bathroom off the kitchen to brush his teeth.

  But he didn’t plan on sleeping in the guest room. Not now. He would have any other time, would have even tonight, except for what occurred earlier.

  When he stepped out of the bathroom, he made his way up the stairs, only a small train engine night light in the second floor hall showing the way. The door to Mena’s room was shut tight, which made him stifle a chuckle, right before he opened it and stepped inside. The night light let him see far enough to gauge the distance to the bed, several steps away, and, as his eyes adjusted, to make out the lump on the opposite side that was Mena.

  He braced himself on the footboard to untie his boots, toeing them off with only muffled thuds on the wood floor. He stripped and fumbled for the edge of the blankets. Quilt, comforter, cotton blanket--no, there were two--then the flannel sheet. Grinning in the dark, he slid in.

  Mena murmured something in her sleep, curling into a tighter ball when he reached out and found her bare back. He rolled closer and wrapped her in his arms. She was warm. Soft, skin like satin.

  Unsurprisingly, his body responded to the feel of hers, but he ignored the stirring arousal. He had excellent self-control, and she’d need her rest for what was coming.

  Whether she liked it or not--and he’d stake his life she wouldn’t like it--Mena Gregory was going to let him protect her from the men hunting her.

  She shifted in his hold, her breast grazing his forearm.

  He clenched his jaw as his dick jerked against her soft ass. Sleep. They both needed to sleep, because tomorrow would be a long day.

  He took a slow breath, inhaling the sweet scent of her. A little flowery, faintly spicy. It made his blood thicken in his veins.
Made his body harden still further.

  Ryder shut his eyes tighter and concentrated on counting his heartbeats. The distraction always worked.

  It wasn’t working now.

  Especially when she stretched one of her legs out, the sole of her foot sliding down from his knee to his shin.

  He swallowed back a groan, his pulse thrumming too quickly. “Mena, baby,” he whispered. He didn’t want to release her, though.

  She made a sleepy sound and shifted so one of her curls brushed his mouth.

  He’d imagined this a thousand times, and now he was finally here, she was sleeping.

  He grinned in the dark, burying his face in the loose mass of her hair. It tickled his skin, sliding, smelling of the same sweet scent on her skin.

  Her breathing faltered. “Ryder?”

  “Right here,” he rumbled, feeling goosebumps lift on her skin. “Go to sleep.”

  She didn’t move for a moment, then took a deep breath and her breast brushed his arm again.

  His cock throbbed painfully.

  “You’re warm,” she whispered, shifting closer to him.

  He couldn’t stop the moan this time.

  She dragged her fingers along his arm, lazily.

  “So are you.” He nipped at her earlobe, hearing her breathing hitch. And slid his palm up from her ribs to catch her breast.

  The taut peak burned his fingers. A surprised sound escaped her when he tugged gently.

  “I won’t lie and say I don’t want you, Mena,” he whispered, too aware of how rough his voice was, how thick with desire, “but you should get some sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

  She slid her foot back up his leg, which pressed her ass harder into his erection. She shifted her leg forward, and he moved his hips so his cock could slide into the tight, damp space between her thighs.

  “Oh, Mena,” he breathed. Now that he’d had her once, he wanted more, even if he knew it wasn’t a good idea to press so soon.

  She inhaled unsteadily, and he felt her body’s reaction, the wetness bathing the top of his erection.