Protected by a Hero

by Susan Stoker, Cristin Harber, Cora Seton, Lynn Raye Harris, Kaylea Cross, Katie Reus, Tessa Layne

  He moved them fast onto her back, and he hooked one of her knees, spreading her wide, opening her deep, and he pistoned inside her. There was immaculate pressure against her clit, perfect to reach that crazy spot, but it was the strain and focus and determination in his eyes that made her fall apart. She came again, crying his name, and as she finished that insane roll of orgasm, he dropped her leg and thrust hard and deep.

  God help her, he was going to make it happen all over again. She was ultra-sensitive, and he changed to deep and slow, drawing out every inch of him until she begged for more. The low rumble of another earth-shattering climax started. His tense body bucked with hers. With delicious, bruising force, he growled his release, holding her tighter than any man had before.

  The stars shined in her closed eyes. Tendrils of glowing aftermath raced through her system as they collapsed together. Their hearts beat where their temples and cheeks touched.

  Minutes lingered on until he gently kissed her forehead and pulled away. “Damn. You are so… worth it.”

  And honestly, not because he’d said it but because he’d made her feel it, she agreed. “You too.”

  He kissed her again and pushed out of bed to ditch the condom. “Back in a sec.”

  She sighed and tried to melt into the bed, to drown in the down comforter, burying herself away from anything that would ever erase how she felt at that moment.

  From far away, the familiar sound of her phone ringing brought her from her happy la la land. Shadow? Lexi snapped out of it and jumped up, tugging on her shirt and wrapping the blanket around her hips because there was no time to try to pull those tight leather pants back on. She found the phone in the pocket of her jacket and checked the screen. Meredith.

  Not Shadow, and she was seriously beginning to worry about him, but talking to her sister was a rarity. No telling when she could get her again, so she hit OKAY and slid onto the couch in a loose-limbed haze. “Hey, Mere.”

  “Hey, yourself. So is the girl I know and love back?”

  Lexi laughed quietly. “I hope so.”

  “Your bike is gone, your clothes are picked through, my makeup’s missing, and my doorman has been babysitting Bacon. So you dumped the loser?”

  “More or less.”

  “What’s with that happy sing-song tinge in your voice?”

  Meredith was always so good at reading her. “Just happier, I guess.”

  “Huh.”

  Lexi tugged the blanket high on her chest. “I have to run. I just wanted to say hi since I keep missing you.”

  “Sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I had someone to lean on.”

  “You sound really good. Malcolm said that smile I hear might have to do with a man?”

  She happy-sighed. “It does.”

  “Well, thank God for that. He better be a good one.”

  “He is. I know it seems so fast, but I’ve known him forever. I’m just totally, completely”—she stretched, loving how wonderfully sore her insides felt—“absolutely in l—” As she repositioned from her stretch, there was Parker. Standing. Listening. Watching her confess her deepest feelings to her closest confidant. “Mere, I have to go.”

  “Wow. Okay. Call me as soon as you can. I want—”

  Lexi hung up, unable to read his face. “Hi.”

  He wore just his pants, which hung low on his hips, unbuttoned. “Hey.”

  The creases on his forehead said he’d heard every embarrassing word. She wanted to be mad at him—that conversation had been for her sister only. It was the first time in a long time she’d felt taken care of, and the words had rushed out. But he’d also said amazing, incredible things to her, so it wasn’t news to him where her head was.

  The sweet tension from before had shifted. He was concerned, and she felt stupid for wandering around in a sheet and forgetting that they were in a safe house with motion-activated cameras lining the common areas.

  “I need to take a shower,” Lexi said.

  He nodded. “I’ve got some work to do.”

  “Sounds good.” With her chin up and shoulders back, she walked past him in her ridiculous blanket wrap. With the cameras on them, his chest bare and pants unbuckled, she felt as if she was taking the walk of shame.

  Her feet padded down the hall, part of the blanket dragging, when Parker called her name.

  “Yes,” she half-whispered, studying the floor.

  Parker paused for a long time. “You’re a very special person. I hope you know that.”

  Her cheeks burned. What had she expected? Just because she was clearly in love with the guy, and he was pretty into her, that didn’t mean that saying—or even thinking—things about love was a good idea. It was enough to chase a guy away.

  “I do. Thanks to you.” Then she dragged herself to shower, where she could hide her fall from love-drunk heaven.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Parker’s ears burned. She loved him? She hadn’t said that, but it had sounded like the lead up to that kind of confession. He hadn’t meant to listen, but those few seconds had felt like eternity, and he couldn’t walk away.

  It’d been only a few weeks since she showed up on his doorstep, yet she loved him. Maybe that could classify the unexplainable reactions he’d had lately. A chest ache that wasn’t heartburn. An urge to take on the world even if he didn’t know what was wrong.

  Christ.

  He’d far past fallen for her. His visceral reactions were trained to jump at thoughts of her, and when she’d hustled by a few minutes ago, he’d felt like an asshole who should’ve said something intelligent. Instead it came out like a Hallmark not-so-fast greeting card.

  The shower shut off, and wandering around the kitchen, he couldn’t have been more aware that she was still naked nearby. For the second time in recent history, Parker found his fingers biting into a countertop. Problem was, this time he’d already been with her and knew how great her mouth felt on his dick, how she rode his cock with a finesse that made his mind explode, and how they were supposed to be in bed, drowning in goddamn orgasms.

  His fingers flexed into the counter as his ears pricked. Bare feet padded down the hall, coming toward him. He took a deep breath and turned, jaw gaping at the temptation displayed before him.

  “Hey.” She wore a towel wrapped around her, squeezing her breasts. Again with the towel-dried hair that hung around her face, and that was maybe one of his favorite looks on her. “I hung up on Meredith and jumped in the shower like I had something to hide.”

  “You don’t.”

  “That whole time, I was… embarrassed that you know what I think. But really, I’m done hiding. It didn’t do me any good with Matt, and I don’t want that to happen with you.” She shook her head, her cheeks pinking. “Not that you’d hurt me, not that you’ll propose to me. God, what I’m trying to say is—”

  He grabbed her in his arms and kissed her quiet. “You don’t have to explain anything.”

  “Are you sure?” She toyed with a strand of damp hair, spinning it around her finger.

  “Positive.” Even though he wanted to hear the words again, wanted to see how his chest would have felt if she’d finished that conversation with Meredith. I absolutely, completely, what? Love? Sounded as though that was what she had almost said. Hell, he could finish her conversation for her because he absolutely, completely…

  Wanted her? Check.

  Liked her? Check again.

  More than that…? Yeah, maybe so.

  “Two years,” she said, biting her lip. “And only a few months of it was worth making a memory over.”

  He dropped his head and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Really, Lex. You don’t have to say anything.”

  “I moved through the stages. I mentioned before… I didn’t have a family, and he filled the void. I felt nothing… like I do now. What I’m trying to figure out how to say… is…”

  “Lex, we’re good if you don’t want to s
hare.”

  She pinched her eyes closed. “I haven’t had a man touch me because I wanted him to in a long time. And now that you did, I’m crazy scared that you think I’m confusing sex and anything else.”

  He stepped back, hating and loving every word that’d fallen off her lips. “I’m not—”

  “You are the guy for me. Code and numbers and MIT? Black and Silver, partners for years. You are way more than Matt ever was. I want you to know that, no matter what you feel or say or think after hearing me talk on the phone. How I feel has nothing to do with the scars you can’t see. Nothing.” She closed her eyes and breathed deeply then leveled her icy blues on him. “I’m in love with you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Dawn’s light bled through the safe house bedroom as a ringing cell phone tugged Parker from sleep. He took a deep breath and relaxed his body against hers, her blond hair in his face. After ending the night in bed, her words had weighed heavily on him, but she seemed comfortable with what she had said, what he hadn’t said. So he’d fallen asleep holding beautiful. His lips quirked at that. Beautiful wasn’t tangible. His analytical brain wanted to scream over how stupid that thought was. He was holding her. She was beautiful. But it was more than looks, and everything gathered in his arms was beautiful. The girl. The feelings. What she represented to him.

  Didn’t make sense. At all. But he didn’t care.

  “Hello?” Her sleep-drenched voice sounded like a dream. “Hello…? Wrong number.” Lex dropped the phone back on the nightstand and crawled back into his arms. “Morning.”

  He bent over, lightly pressing a kiss to lips that had him mesmerized. “Morning, Lex.”

  “I like waking up next to you.”

  He brushed her hair with his fingers, nonchalantly toying with the strands and thinking that her sleepy grin was too damn sweet. “Another one of my favorite things I get to do with you.”

  That made her pretty features morph to almost embarrassed, and her fair skin blushed. With a quiet giggle and an almost shy cast of her eyes, she whispered, “You have a lot of favorites?”

  Morning wood was quickly morphing into a not-to-be ignored hard-on, and he cursed quietly against her lips. “Wish safe houses stocked condoms. Actually, they might.”

  She quietly moaned as his hands found purchase under the baggy white shirt she’d found folded in a dresser. That was all she had on. His boxer briefs weren’t doing him any favors as his length rubbed against her. Parker smoothed his hand down her stomach, between her legs, and found her wet with arousal. His stomach spun. His mind was just as turned on as his body, and she made the sexiest sound as his fingers strummed over her folds.

  Kissing him in a drowsy, needing morning wake-up sex kind of way, her hands also drifted south, sliding over the rigid length of his shaft. Parker sucked in a breath as her thumb circled his crown.

  “We could,” she whispered, torturing him with her deft hand movements. “After I went dark, I, um, went to the doctor’s, just to make sure and all. Doc checked everything from bruises to… um, testing. So… I’m okay.”

  “I’ve never not with a condom.” Which didn’t mean he couldn’t with her…

  Her hand stilled. “Right, sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “Are you on birth control?” he asked.

  “I get a shot, few times a year.” She nodded, all cute, sweet, and nervous. Little things like birth control made her blush, but bold statements like I love you she was so damn confident about.

  That feeling like a time bomb was going to blow in his chest, like he couldn’t get close enough, deep enough, in her head enough.

  “Parker…”

  He slid down and kicked off his boxers then tugged off her shirt to bare her sinful body. With his heart in his throat, her phone rang again.

  He held her hand. “Don’t answer it.”

  She cringed. “What if it’s Shadow?”

  Shit, he had no argument against that, and he nodded.

  “Hello?” Her eyebrows rose. Then she shook her head, pressed a button on the phone, and dropped it. “No one again.”

  “Wait a minute.” He reached for the phone, his senses firing as much with worry as with arousal.

  “It wasn’t Shadow. It won’t be Matt. Just you and me.” She brushed her lips across his skin and let her hands roam until she had the weight of him in her hold. “I need this, us.”

  And thank heaven for that. He didn’t just need her; he had to connect with her, to feel her in every way, because his exploding heart and emo-drunk mind were almost more than he could survive. He pulled her to him, needing to be inside her to alleviate the deep ache that threatened his sanity.

  Lexi lifted her legs, hooking them over his thighs, and with that little gesture, the head of his cock was dangerously close to her center. Hot and wet, he throbbed to push inside her. His eyes sank shut as he inched in. Bliss. Fucking heaven. Her tight pussy on his bare cock was out of this world.

  She sucked in a breath as he pushed deeper. On their sides, he kissed her, thrusting gently, waking her body up with his. Tangled in the sheets, they were hidden from the world, and the deeper he reached into her, the longer he wanted to stay there. There was no letting go of Lexi. He couldn’t dream of this with another woman and didn’t want it anyway.

  Her mouth gaped, her breathing escalated. Their eyes locked, his dark blues to her icy ones, and just the same as last night, he fucked her in a way that made love, that made him reach past everything that made sense of his world. This wasn’t about him giving a woman some gigantic climax, him getting his in the process and everything as it should be. It was just so them…so fucking catastrophic.

  He flipped them, powering into her as they rolled. He didn’t only want her today, tomorrow, whenever. He wanted her. Period.

  Lexi met his every move, her fingernails tearing into his back. “God, yes.”

  Buried bare in her, her mouth open and moaning his name, her legs wrapped tight around his hips, he lost himself, living for the moment that she came. Her core clenched, her eyes pinched shut, cries and pleas fell from her lips, and everything she asked for, he gave. She came hard, rippling her most intimate muscles over his throbbing shaft, sinking her nails into him. Parker stilled and strained, releasing his climax as she spasmed with him.

  He stared at the most important thing he’d ever held. His mind spun as he fell onto her, rolling them, still connected and locked in every way. “I love you too, sweetheart.”

  Her smile reached her eyes, which slipped shut as he kissed her. “We should wake up like this again and again.”

  “We should—” Her phone rang again. What the motherfuck? As he slid from her, he grabbed it. “Who has this number?”

  “No one really. You, Shadow, my sister, um…”

  “Matt.”

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  Buzz kill. But that wasn’t what bothered him. His senses itched, and as he pulled from Lexi, now that he was momentarily sated, his brain went into overdrive. “He’s been calling and hanging up?”

  She shook her head. “Unknown number.”

  The hour didn’t sit right. Matt was a party guy, and it was seven fifteen in the morning. So either he hadn’t gone to sleep yet or… it wasn’t Matt.

  “Get up. Get dressed.”

  “What? Why?”

  “No idea. We’re compromised. Let’s go.” He tugged her hand, dragging her from the warm sheets.

  “Parker!”

  “Someone’s tracking you down. Pinging closer to your location every time you answer.” His mind raced. “Have you talked to Shadow at all since he ran after the laptop guy?”

  She shook her head, realization that they were being hunted clouding in her eyes. “I am not cut out for all this real-life BS.” She sat upright. “But what about Shadow? What about him?”

  Now wasn’t the time to explain that Shadow’s phone likely wasn’t in his possession anymore, and if neither of them had heard from him through alternative
methods, he also likely wasn’t breathing. “Get dressed, Lex.”

  She tugged on her clothes as he did the same. For as talented of a hacker as she was, as much of the underground as she was aware of, she still couldn’t see criminal activity. It wasn’t in her training to sense, wasn’t in her mind to search out. It should have been in his mind, but he was too stuck on the woman to see what was happening around them.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Fuckin’ hell. Are you kidding me?” Guess they’d learned from trying to pick his lock last time. He ducked under the bed, running his hand around the frame until he found a Glock. He pulled the magazine, checked his count, and snapped it back in. “Let’s go.”

  “Could just be Girl Scouts? Jehovah’s Witness folks? Right?” But her face said she didn’t buy it. Nervous energy radiated from her as she clung to his hand.

  “It’s seven in the morning.”

  Her worried face pinched. “Crap.”

  “Just in case, stick close and duck the windows.” He held her against the wall then rounded a corner. All clear.

  Parker held her again and snagged the keys for his bike as she grabbed her jacket. He followed, doing the same, and picked up their helmets. He opened a closet and snagged two Kevlar vests.

  “We don’t really need that, do we?”

  “Better to be safe…” He pulled one over her head and cinched it tight then did the same for himself. If someone was at the front door, they couldn’t see the garage, and they’d have to round the house to get to them. Parker and Lexi had a few seconds of head start if they rolled out on his R1.

  “Helmet.”

  She took it and slipped it on.

  “Now stay put. Just give me a second.” He took her hand and pressed the Glock to her palm. “Anyone comes in here not me, just shoot.”

  She nodded, and he ran back into the house from the garage. Parker reached the room farthest from Lexi as the doorbell rang again. Just in case it was some pushy-ass cookie seller macking her entrepreneurial skills at the crack of morning, he peeked. Nope, just a guy in his twenties. Parker snapped a picture with his cell then ransacked the linen closet, finding a couple of cherry bombs amongst the stash of weapons and ammo. He took them and slipped into the front room again.