by Nicole Snow
My cock hurts, my job is on the line, and I haven’t even had a cup of pitch black coffee.
I don’t think I’ll ever quite shake the soldier in me, even if I was only on deployment in an active combat zone for a few years. Old habits die hard.
You learn to make your environment a part of your body. Learn to extend your senses into the area you’ve claimed as your home turf, until you feel an intruder, clear as if they’d just run their grubby fingers down your spine.
That's almost how having Kenna in my space felt – except, with her, it's someone constantly running soft, caressing fingers across my skin, melting every muscle in my body. Churning awake a deep, forbidden animal part of me that needs her flat against the nearest surface, legs spread, teeth sunk in my shoulder as she tries her damnedest not to scream.
Having Milah Holly here, that's more like scraping your teeth against unglazed porcelain. Intrusive, unwanted, and totally nasty.
And that feeling sure as hell woke me up when the sound of not one, but two women who shouldn’t be in my home drifted up the stairs and dragged me out of bed.
Right into a fucking mess I don’t know how to deal with.
Not when I want to tell Miss Holly to take her presumptuous ass out of here and chase after some easy dick that'd kill to be in her. There must be three billion men on the planet who'd love to fuck her spoiled ass.
I'm the odd man out.
Especially when I can't get the other woman in my house out of my skull. Not when I can't shake this vicious, biting need to throw little Reb over my shoulder, carry her up to my bedroom, and finish what that kiss in the kitchen started, what it promised, what it ignited hot and hard and heavy in my blood.
Everything I know I absolutely, positively can't do.
I'm torn. My brain, heart, and cock are all at war, and there’s only one of them I should be listening to.
Brain first.
Deal with the problems as they crop up. Reb’s upstairs, and Reb doesn’t pay my bills, so Reb can wait.
Milah’s still here. Looks like she skipped finding her room and detoured outside. I see her through the windows, out by the scorched beach house, stomping and picking around in this way that says she’s trying to pretend to be curious about the burned-out wreck, but she's really just waiting for me to swoop in and show that I care she’s upset.
God, I hate human beings sometimes.
Part of me is tempted to just ignore all of it and go for a swim. Lose myself in the coolness, the depths, forgetting time.
Forget everything.
I’ve got enough money to live on for a good long while. I don’t need Enguard.
But it’s something I built with my own two hands, and my pride – and Dallas Reese’s voice taunting in the back of my mind – won’t let me give up on this. I've got my people to look out for, too.
Good men like James and Riker. Talented women like Skylar. It's not just signing their checks. In Skylar's case, this job gives her fucking sanity. A chill runs up my back when I think of what that woman would be out doing with a missing niece she loved like hell, and nothing else in her life.
There's more, too. Some strange part of me that feels like if I just do this right, if I make Enguard Security what Crown Security was always meant to be, then somehow I can erase the past and undo my old man's sins.
I’m not scrambling. Or closing down. Or running.
Like hell.
I take the time to make a cup of coffee, even if I fall back on the Keurig instead of the drip brewer for the sake of speed. Not a huge K-Cup fan when they taste just a little plastic and artificial, but right now I care less about the nuances of pure Kona beans and more about lifting the caffeine content in my bloodstream to tolerable levels.
Once I’m fortified, I pull on a shirt, jeans, and shoes, and then head out to deal with my little problem princess. When she hears me coming, she stiffens her shoulders up and lifts her chin in the air, tossing a pouty look over her shoulder at me before turning her nose up. Part of me wants to remind her that I’m not her boyfriend, I’m just her employee, but…
Professional. Right.
So, I stop a professional distance away and wait, hands in my pockets. She says nothing for a long while, this tense silence where I know I’m supposed to speak first, to beg, to grovel, but it’s not happening.
She’s the one upset, so I’ll wait until she’s said her peace, then remind her she has no right to be upset about what I do in my life beyond professional boundaries.
Especially when she barged into my house unannounced and – technically – uninvited by anyone but herself.
Finally, Milah makes an offended sound in the back of her throat. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just fire you right now.”
She’s trying for icy, bitchy, and superior. It comes across as fake as her on-camera little-girl lisp. “Dallas Reese and Crown Security would never treat me so rudely, you know. Dallas is a gentleman.”
Then go try to fuck Dallas, I snarl inside my head, but restrain myself fiercely.
Even if Milah’s a brat, my knee-jerk reaction to the mention of that asshole isn’t her fault.
I take a slow, deep breath. “Because I know what you don’t. My old man founded Crown. It was supposed to be mine. I left because they’re just that bad at what they do under Dallas' management.” It’s not the only reason, but it’s the only one she needs to know.
“Think for a minute, Milah. Think hard. And then think about the fact that I know what I’m doing. So much that you don’t even know what my crew saved you from this weekend.” I pause, waiting for her to bat her eyes. “We blocked three psychos trying to break past security. One of them had a knife. Rambling about how you were Marilyn Monroe's second coming and how you killed Kennedy. They never even got close enough for you to know what was happening.”
Her eyes widen. It’s not fake shock, or even indignation.
It’s real surprise. Real fear.
It shows how young she really is, and how damn clueless, too. It’s part of why I haven’t kicked her to the curb yet even though she’s a royal pain in my ass. Nobody, no matter how spoiled, deserves to be threatened or made to feel that kind of terror.
I can’t stand her ass, but I’m not going to let anything happen to it, either.
Of course, she doesn't need to know that.
She just needs to know I can do the job, and she needs to stay on her side of the line.
She hasn’t said anything. I’ve got the advantage here, now. Knowing the real danger she’s in and the possibility that Dallas can’t protect her? Has her off-kilter. That’s what happens when reality slaps people in the face when they’ve been in denial.
Heh. I’m a fucking hypocrite, aren’t I?
Kenna-driven thoughts try to shove their way in. My father, too.
My old man and that question that’s remained unanswered for five years, a promise I made and haven’t yet fulfilled. My focus right now is on Milah, and making sure she knows I can keep her safe, and second, I don’t have to if she really wants someone like Dallas.
“You’ve made a lot of enemies,” I say into the silence, speaking slowly, firmly. “Honestly, after the way you’ve been acting, you’re lucky I’ll even do the job. But I don’t want to see you hurt in Dallas’ incompetent hands. That’s the real reason I’m willing to stay on. No pile of money in the world could make working for your entitled ass worth it.” This time, her widened eyes are definitely offended, but I don’t give her time to snap back. “Think about it and make your damn decision,” I bite off.
Then walk away and leave her fuming, sulking, little sputtering sounds chasing after me.
I'm past caring. She can make the right choice that'll leave her alive, or go for the pretty boy who feeds her ego, but I can’t force it on her.
Besides, I have bigger things to worry about, right now.
Like why, with every word I’d said, I could still taste Kenna Burke on my lips.
&n
bsp; * * *
After she’s been trying to talk to me for days, it’s almost laughable that now I can’t fucking find her.
I’ve got two cats trying to wrap around my ankles like leg warmers, but no Reb. She’s not in the kitchen, not in her room. I prowl through a few of the common rooms and find nothing.
Shit.
Maybe I did finally scare her away.
Why does that twist a knife through the pit of my stomach?
As I pass the open French doors leading out to the upstairs deck, though, the fluttering sigh of wind against paper catches my attention. I pause, glancing out. That black book she’d been writing in sits open on the deck table, the pages fanning in the sea breeze.
My eyes narrow. When I’d caught her writing in it, she'd looked almost guilty.
I shouldn’t look, should I?
But if she can pry on me, ripping my damn soul out in the process, turnabout is fair play.
Even if it's not. Deep down, I know it’s not. I know it’s not fair. I know it isn't justified.
But I’m also painfully curious, and I’m only fucking human.
Human enough to want to know what’s in those pages, that she might feel so guilty about. It’s just a book, right? Fiction?
Oh, fuck yes, it's hers. I find that out when I drop myself in a chair and flick the pages open.
It’s her book, her story, her make believe...but it’s also an ode to my body, and I don't know whether to be confused or hard.
Some men weren't meant to be men. They were born beasts, powerful and primal. Every time they move, thick muscles bunching and slinking, you know them for what they are: the wild, chafing against their human skin, ready to break out any moment with flashing eyes and bared teeth and hackles raised. All growls and sensuality, raw feral power.
That’s Logan Kane in a nutshell, the asshole next door in his cabin, secluded from the world. It’s why he’s so unpredictable. So frightening. So frustrating.
And so desirable.
I shouldn’t be watching him like this. I was supposed to get the laundry in off the line when I heard a splash in the river behind our house, bigger than the sounds usually made by fish or small animals. We’ve had park ranger warnings about bears getting too close to people’s houses lately, so I was worried there might be one on our property.
I’d peeked out past the fence just to be sure, in case we needed to call animal services.
Instead, I found Logan Kane. Stripping down on the shore, boldly and gloriously naked, erasing any questions about what he was even doing on our property, when he’s been sneaking away from his awful family to swim in our river since we were children.
But he’s definitely no child now.
Somehow, Logan grew up when I wasn’t looking. He’s hardened, bronzed, his body a litany of battle scars telling a tale I don’t know how to comprehend.
Those scars blend seamlessly into the stories written across his body in raging ink, darkly spiraling and swirling designs like spells cast in flesh. They cast a spell on me, winding down his arms and over his chest, darkening his already bronzed skin to a point of sin. There’s a bruise on his shoulder, as if he’d been in some kind of brawl recently, but it only adds to the raw, primitive edge of his feral beauty. He’s breathtaking, with his dark hair falling across his lightning blue eyes, and that pensive blue gaze staring across the water.
Breathtaking, magnificent, and someone I…
I can never have.
Logan? Logan. Like that’s really such a stretch from Landon.
Fuck my life, McKenna Burke is writing a romance novel about me.
Those are my tattoos she’s talking about. Black hair. Blue eyes. Even the bruise that even now makes my shoulder hurt like a motherfucker even though it’s starting to fade into tinges of green and yellow.
It's me. Obviously.
And the girl in this story, the one I flip through, reading about the trademark frames on her face and the day she found this Logan asshole's diary...
I don’t even realize my mouth has been hanging open half the time I’ve been reading until I realize how dry my tongue is. Or how my heart has gone straight to my cock, beating like it's ready to tear through my pants.
I swallow, closing my lips forcefully. My face feels like I just stuck my head in a damn oven, my chest is tight, and my balls burn molten.
I don’t know if I’m so fucking turned on I’m furious about it, or so fucking furious the raw adrenaline of it is getting me up. I don’t know how to feel. Maybe five years ago I’d have found this sweet and funny, but now? After everything?
It’s insane. Confounding. Frustrating. Sexually and mentally.
And, yeah, hot as hell.
How could it ever be anything else? It’s this weird kind of high, not quite an ego rush, but more like this powerful fucking hit of being desired, and it’s just tangling my feelings about that gorgeous human train wreck up even more.
I flip through a few more pages. Her writing gets rougher, and there's a few scrunched, angry lines on the blank side of a page, most of them half-scribbled out. Barely legible.
My eyes drift over it, taking in character names, places, and then a name I finally recognize.
Landon, you're an ass. A lie. A memory. A sin. A yesterday I shouldn't want so badly becoming tomorrow.
You're cruel. You're gorgeous. You're beautiful. If you could pull your head out of your own ass for two seconds, you'd even realize you could still have the world. And the painful truth, the one I'll never tell you to your stuck-up jerk-face, is you could have me.
Because you never lost me with your words. Or your looks – the ones that leave me confused whether you want to fuck me or stab me to death. You lost me because you shut down, closed off, and because you ran. All the things I want so, so badly to do, and never can.
Because here's the truth, you prick. It's not over. It never was. And maybe it never will be.
You've moved on. Still snarly and handsome as ever in your screw-the-whole-world attitude. You're still something, at least. Still a man. Still living.
And me? I'm still this battered, messed up wreck you left behind. Still a girl-shaped ruin, trying to reassemble in a world that ended the day you cursed me to my face. I'm still not over you, you fucking prick, but someday, God willing, I will be.
There are no words.
None, whatsoever, for these piercing angst bomb words. Or for their author.
That gorgeous human train wreck who is, right now, standing over me with her soft eyes wide and her face so brilliantly red she looks like a cherry tomato.
I’m ripped from my absorbed reading by Kenna’s spluttering sound, only for the journal to fly out of my hands a second later. She slams it closed and then hugs it protectively against her chest. “You...you read my book?” she demands. “What the hell?! I never said you could!”
Never said you could read mine either, I almost snap back, but don’t.
Once in a blue moon, I can be a damn adult.
“It’s not bad,” I can’t help mocking, though. “You’ve come a long way from fan fic.”
She scowls at me, and somehow manages to go even redder. I’m almost worried she’s about to pop a vein. “It’s just ideas for the book.”
“Ideas based on me.”
She makes a gargling, bizarre sound that almost makes me laugh. “It’s not based on you!”
“Uh-huh.”
I curl my knuckles against my temple and lean on my elbow, just watching her. Even red down to her collarbone, she’s adorable. Delectable.
She's coming apart in all the best ways a woman can.
Her green eyes wide, her luscious little pink mouth open, her chestnut hair pulled down and wafting around her face in wild, witchy tangles that catch on her glasses and tease at her lips and make me want to brush those teasing tendrils from her face and kiss her and do something about this fucking hard-on that’s getting worse the more she stammers and fumbles and acts exactly like the n
erdy little monster I used to adore.
And now hate more than anyone in this world save for one.
I let her dangle for a few moments longer, then say, “It’s fine. Consider us even for that fake girlfriend thing. You bailed me out there, so I’ll let you license my breathtaking, magnificent body in your story.” I can’t help the smirk. “Good thing we’re not fucking for real. I’d get pretty pissed if you called me Logan in bed.”
It’s like the day goes still, a blanket of silence falling over us, while this wavelength yawns between us. This connection made by those words, that possibility I’ve put between us. The idea of us, in bed together.
And I can see it, too – how her flush changes into something breathless and delicate, deep in denial, in how her lashes tremble around her gaping eyes, in how her breath picks up in subtle, shallow puffs past her parted lips, making her throat move in flutters and her chest lift and fall against her loose tank top. Her instinct is an invitation to take those sweet tits in my palms and suck them raw.
She’s thinking it, too.
In her vivid little imagination, she’s seeing exactly what I am.
How she'd look in my bed. Pale against my dark sheets, her shoulders dotted with the little golden freckles she’s started to pick up after just a few days on the beach.
Her glasses tossed aside to leave those clear, vulnerable, sweetly questioning eyes looking up at me with so much trepidation and such complete trust.
That way she has of telling me with a single glance that she sees who I used to be, and not who I really am. Sees someone I can never be again.
But when I think of her naked skin soft and yielding under my palms, when I think of her back arching and her breasts thrusting against my chest as I touch and tease her, kiss and taste her, exploring every inch of her until she’s tossing against her wild mane of chestnut hair, clutching at me...
