by Tawna Fenske
Nothing. You didn’t do jack shit.
He caught her ankle in his palm, turning it carefully to the left, then right. “You’ve got some pretty bad abrasions from your climb up the tree,” he muttered, trying not to let his eyes travel too far up her thigh.
But hell, the marks from the bark went all the way up. Was she wearing anything under that stupid oversize sweatshirt? She’d had those tiny little shorts on earlier for sleeping, but maybe she’d changed. She’d kicked her boots off by the door, so there was a whole lot of bare leg staring him in the face right now.
He should probably get dressed himself. He’d thrown the flannel shirt on when he jumped out of bed after Sherman barked. He hadn’t bothered to button it up, and the boxer shorts he was wearing didn’t do much to conceal the fact that touching Janelle’s leg was starting to have an effect on him.
He studied her other leg, which bore more angry red scratches on the knees and thighs. “Does it hurt?”
“A little.”
He let go of her leg and moved to the side to scrub his hands at the sink. He used plenty of soap, figuring the least he could do was avoid getting germs in her wounds. He dried off on the green towel hanging beside the sink, then turned back to face her.
“I have a first aid kit.”
“Okay.”
“It’s in the cupboard under you. I just need to get in there.”
He expected her to tuck her legs up to get them out of the way. Instead, she opened them wide on either side of the cupboard door, leaning back against the mirror. He closed his eyes, trying his damnedest not to look.
“Okay, sure—that works.”
He opened his eyes and looked down, taking a breath before he ducked into the space between her legs. He yanked the cupboard open, banging himself in the head and sending a tumble of towels and toilet paper onto the tile floor. He shoved it all back in, grabbing for the little red medical kit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it, but he pulled it to his chest and stood up.
The dizziness hit him right away, but he wasn’t sure whether to blame his blood pressure or the fact that he was now standing squarely between Janelle’s bare thighs.
“Right,” he said, taking a steadying breath. “I think I’ve got some ointment here somewhere.”
He set the kit on the counter beside her and fumbled it open. He pawed through the spools of bandages and little pill bottles until he found a white tube of first aid cream.
“What’s in that?” she asked.
He glanced at the side of the tube and looked at the ingredients. “Bacitracin, polymyxin, salicylic acid, a bunch of other shit I can’t pronounce. Why, are you allergic to something?”
“No. Just wondering if it had any natural ingredients.”
“Natural ingredients?”
“I did some graphics for a spread in a women’s magazine last spring. Did you know willow bark has salicylic acid in it? The same stuff that’s in aspirin.”
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m down at the creek and have a headache.”
She smiled, and he was so dumbstruck by the flash in those pale blue eyes that he dropped the cap from the ointment. He bent down to retrieve it as Janelle chattered on.
“I didn’t know there was a creek nearby,” she said. “How far is it?”
“Less than a quarter mile west.” He stood up, dizzy again at the sight of her thighs on either side of his torso. She had to be wearing those little satin shorts, or at least some panties, right?
“Will you take me there sometime?”
“Take you—oh, you mean the creek?”
“Yes. I love the water. It’s one of the things I enjoy most about San Francisco.”
“Sure. Sometime.” He set the cap aside and squeezed a little ointment onto his fingers. He started to reach for her leg, then stopped himself. What the hell was he doing?
“Here, you should put this on yourself,” he said, reaching for her hand.
She drew it back, biting her lip. “Can you do it?”
“Me?”
“Please?”
“What the hell for?”
“It always hurts more when I do it myself. Sort of like a Brazilian bikini wax?”
“What?” There was no blood left in his brain. None at all.
“It stings more when I do it myself. Besides, you just washed your hands. Come on, Schwartz—lend me a hand here.”
A hand was not the body part he wanted to lend her, but he grabbed her leg again, trying not to let his frustration translate into unnecessary roughness.
“For crying out loud,” he muttered as he began to stroke the ointment onto the worst-looking mark on the inside of her left knee. He tried to be gentle, but her skin was so soft and everything about her felt tiny.
He heard a sharp intake of breath and looked up to see her wincing. “You okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just cold. It’s okay, keep going.”
He massaged the ointment into her knee, using every damn shred of self-control he had to stay detached and clinical. It was just a knee, for crying out loud. Just a mess of ligaments and cartilage and bones and the softest, sweetest, most satiny skin he’d ever laid a hand on.
He grimaced and kept going, pausing to squeeze more ointment on his fingers as he continued up her thigh. God, were her legs naturally this smooth, or did she shave all the way up?
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it…
“Looks pretty bad right here,” he said, and looked up to see she’d scrunched her eyes shut. “Does that hurt?”
“No.” The pale length of her throat moved as she swallowed. “Not at all. It feels really good.”
Something in her voice sent the blood surging from his brain to spots he really didn’t need any extra blood at the moment, but he forced himself to keep going.
She’s hurt; she needs you to help her, not grope her.
“There,” he said, grabbing more ointment as he reached for her other leg. “I think you’re covered on that side. Can you scoot just a little this way?”
She obeyed, and Schwartz gave himself a mental pat on the back. He’d been standing here between her thighs for a good five minutes and hadn’t done anything unseemly. That counted for something, right?
He got to work on the other leg, dabbing ointment on the worst-looking spots and trying his best to minimize the amount of contact between his fingertips and her bare flesh.
“There,” he said, screwing the cap back on the tube. “All better.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He stood there like an idiot, not walking away, not running, not getting the hell out of the damn bathroom like he ought to. Hell, he was barely breathing. Janelle’s gaze held his, and he felt like he was trapped in some sort of force field. He couldn’t look away.
But he could still move, so he took a step back. Or tried to, anyway. Janelle stuck her legs out, digging her heels into the backs of his thighs to make him stumble forward.
“What the—?”
He didn’t finish the question, and she didn’t give an answer. Not with words, anyway. She locked her ankles together behind his ass and pulled him to her, her thighs snug and warm around his hips. Part of him wanted to resist, but it sure as hell wasn’t the part pressing into the heat between her legs.
“Stop,” he murmured, or at least that’s what he meant to say. It came out sounding more like “Yes,” which probably wasn’t the same thing at all.
He wasn’t sure how his mouth found hers, but suddenly he was kissing her. Kissing her hard and deep as he pressed her back against the bathroom mirror. She let go of the tiled counter and reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. Her fingernails dug into the back of his scalp, which felt way better than it ought to.
Her lips were warm and soft beneath his, and the alarm bells in his brain were no match for all that heat. For such a soft woman, she was kissing him with surprising ferocity. L
ike a woman who hadn’t been kissed for years, at least not like this. His breath was coming hard, and he twisted his fingers in her hair to tilt her head to the side.
She moaned against his mouth and deepened the kiss, her heels digging hard into his tailbone. He was dimly aware of a damp heat pressing against the thin fabric that separated them, and the knowledge of how wet she was made him want her more. He slid one hand down the side of the bulky sweatshirt, then under the hem and up again. She was still wearing that damn flimsy tank top, but his fingers found the hem of that, too, tunneling up and under it before his brain could catch up and tell him it was a really dumb idea.
He was cupping her breast in his palm now, the weight of it making him insane with need. His thumb found her nipple and stroked it, making her cry out against his mouth.
“Don’t stop,” she gasped, and threw her head back, smacking it against the mirror.
He started to pull away, to check and make sure she was okay, but she gripped his hair tight between her fingers and forced him to meet her eyes.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” she said. “I’m fine, I am not hurt, but I will be in serious agony if you take your hands off my body for any reason at all.”
“Right,” he growled. “Can’t argue with that.”
One of his hands was still cupping her breast while the other twined in her hair. He released his grip on her head and grabbed the hem of her sweatshirt. His sweatshirt.
“Never said you could borrow this,” he muttered.
“My mistake,” she said, smiling up at him with her eyes flashing in a beam from the skylight overhead. “Better take it back.”
“My pleasure,” he said, and yanked it over her head.
She laughed as he tossed the garment aside and started to reach for her again. But she was already grabbing the hem of her pink top, pulling it off before he could ask himself if this was a good idea.
“Great idea.” He claimed her mouth again.
His hands covered her bare breasts as his brain registered the fact that he had a beautiful woman on his bathroom counter wearing nothing but a tiny, silky pair of shorts. Panties, really, that’s pretty much all they were. He was still wearing boxers and the flannel shirt, but Janelle seemed determined to remedy that. She clawed at the shirt, yanking it off his shoulders so hard he thought he heard something rip.
Schwartz closed his eyes and began kissing his way down her throat, his lips and teeth and tongue devouring every inch of warm flesh he encountered. Her breasts were weighty in his palms, and he was dying to taste them. He slid his tongue over her nipple, making slow circles as she gripped the back of his head and arched against him. She cried out as he moved to the other side, licking and sucking and feeling her writhe against him.
She had a death grip on the back of his head with one hand, but he felt the other hand sliding over the front of his boxers. Her fingers gripped him through the thin fabric of his shorts, and he bit back a curse as she began to stroke him.
“So it’s true what they say about a guy with big hands and big feet,” she murmured against his throat.
Schwartz licked the underside of her breast, making her groan. “Big gloves and big boots?”
She laughed and kissed the spot where his neck met his shoulder, then kept going, kissing his throat, his jaw, his ear; all the while her hand was making him mindless as she touched and stroked and teased him through his boxers.
Then her hands were slipping beneath the elastic of his waistband, sliding lower and lower until—
“Christ,” he hissed as she began to stroke him. His brain was flashing back to high school summers of heavy petting in the back of a beatup truck, but his body assured him no teenage grope-fest compared to the magic Janelle was working with her hand.
He closed his eyes, wondering if he’d ever felt anything this good in his whole damn life. Her palm was soft and her grip was firm and somewhere in the middle of all that was the most perfect sensation he could imagine. He heard himself groaning as she pushed his boxers down his thighs, shoving them aside as she continued moving her hand over his shaft.
“God, you feel good,” she murmured, and Schwartz opened his eyes to see her gazing down at him in apparent wonder. He’d never had a woman look at him like that, and he suddenly wanted her so badly his thighs ached.
He kicked the boxers away and pushed against her, pressing himself into the thin strip of satin between her thighs. God, she was wet. The heat was dizzying, and he moved his mouth to the column of her throat so he could kiss his way down toward her breasts again. He ground himself against the damp fabric, losing his mind as she gasped and cried out.
“Yes!” she hissed, pushing against him with equal vigor. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He kept going, grinding against her, dimly aware that the only thing preventing him from burying himself inside her was this flimsy scrap of satin. He needed her naked. Now. Badly.
He clawed at the waistband of her shorts, smacking his elbow against metal. Something cracked, so he’d either busted the toothbrush holder out of the wall or broken his arm. Did it matter? He just wanted her naked and wrapped around him.
Her lips brushed his ear. “Do you, uh—do you have any protection?”
Protection.
The word felt like a fifty-pound bag of lead slamming into his gut.
Protection. You’re supposed to be protecting her, asshole.
He jumped back, pulling his hands off her like her skin had scalded him. It damn near had.
Her mouth opened, and her hand still cupped the space where his ass had been seconds before. The toothbrush holder hung half off the wall, and Janelle sat there looking disheveled and beautiful and completely off-limits. Schwartz dragged his hands down his face and took another step back.
“No,” he said. “No.”
“Hey, it’s fine. I think I have a condom in my purse in the other room if you want to grab—”
“No!” he said again, more harshly this time. “We can’t do this.”
What the hell was he thinking, riding her like some kind of horny teenager? Had he lost his fucking mind?
“What’s wrong?” She blinked at him, still looking so dazed and flushed and so fuckable he had to grip the doorknob to keep from reaching for her again.
He gritted his teeth. “I’m here to protect you, not to fuck you.”
“You can’t do both?”
“No. When people get distracted, people fuck up, and people die. It’s as simple as that.”
He raked his hands through his hair, then bent and grabbed his boxers. He struggled to put them on, missing the leg hole on his first try. When he finally got himself covered up, he stooped again and grabbed her pink shirt. He tossed it toward her without looking to see if she caught it. He didn’t care. He just needed to get away as fast as he could.
He turned and fled toward the bedroom, hating himself more now than he had in almost ten years.
Chapter Six
Schwartz never came right out and told Janelle it would be a bad idea to share the office that afternoon, but she kind of assumed it from the way he stomped over to the desk, grabbed her laptop, stormed into the living area, and set her computer on the dining room table before marching back to the office and slamming the door behind him.
Now that she’d had a few hours of working quietly by herself out here, she had to admit he had a point. Fine, sleeping together would probably have been a bad idea. She could see that now with the fog of lust lifted. Truth be told, she felt a little stupid for throwing herself at him like she had. She wasn’t normally like that. Hell, Jacques had spent months wooing and courting her before she’d even agreed to go on a date with him, let alone have sex with the guy or agree to marry him.
Fat lot of good that did you, she told herself as she took a sip of the battery acid her brooding protector had sworn was coffee. She clicked “save” on the Illustrator file she’d been working on, still kicking herself for this morning’s epi
sode.
The last guy you fell for turned out to be a drug dealer and a murderer. You don’t know the first thing about Schwartz Patton.
But she did. It was stupid, but she felt like she knew Schwartz better than she’d known any man in ages. There was a sweetness behind the gruff exterior. A gooey center under the layers of dark chocolate.
Janelle glanced at the coffee mug and wished for a chocolate espresso.
That’s not all you’re craving.
The office door flew open, and Schwartz stomped into the living room. He gripped a small black telephone in one hand, and he held it out as he approached.
“Here,” he said, thrusting the phone at her. “It’s a throwaway phone, and I’ve made sure the call is untraceable. Talk to your sister.”
“Anna?” She sat back in her chair and looked up at him. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Mac’s watching her.”
There was a tinge of pride in his voice and a flicker of sadness in his eyes, but Janelle didn’t have time to think about it. She snatched the phone and pressed it to her ear.
“Anna? What’s wrong—is everything all right?”
“I’m fine, sweetie. Everything’s okay. But there was an incident.”
Janelle’s heart was slamming against her lungs, making it hard to breathe, but she forced herself to keep her voice even. “What sort of incident?”
“I had a wedding to do in San Francisco this weekend, so I drove by your apartment just to check things out. You know, to make sure no windows were broken out and no mail had piled up on the doorstep.”
“Anna, that’s not safe—”
“I know, I know. I didn’t get out of the car, and I was only driving around the neighborhood for three or four minutes, but someone followed me.”
“What? Who? Jacques?”
“No, not Jacques, but the guy looked familiar. I recognized him as one of those bodyguard types Jacques had with him that last time he tried to talk to you. I got scared, so I called Grant.”
“But Grant’s up in Washington at Fort Lewis.”
