Although Rose loved to play with the young guys, she didn’t feel much of a spark with that one, so she decided she’d have to wait until they went out dancing later that evening to pick up a nice guy. Well, not really a nice guy, Rose liked her men a little more naughty than nice.
Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her thin body tightly secured in the safety harness. Rose knew that she wouldn’t fall out of the harness, but it still felt rebellious to let go of her brake chord and support strap. She screamed out in delight as her body barreled through the air.
The zip line was long, and Rose took in the rush of air as she sped down the course. Her head was turned up to the sky, and she took in all the clear beautiful air around her. It was turning out to be a much more pleasant afternoon than she had thought it would be.
“Pull the brake,” she heard a man’s voice screaming at her off in the distance, which shook her from her delightful mood. “Pull … the … brake … oh, shit!” the man’s voice yelled out.
Rose looked up to see she was only a few yards away from the next zip line tower. There were two men standing at the tower, and both were screaming at her by the time she realized what was going on. She reached for the brake cord and pulled it with both hands, but she was coming in much too fast to stop herself. Rose braced for a hard impact against the tower support pole.
With her eyes closed, Rose held onto the brake as tightly as she could, but instead of slamming into the support pole of the tower, the two men broke her impact. One of the men, the one wearing a staff issue red polo shirt, had been the one screaming at her. The other looked like he was a fellow zip liner like Rose; he was probably from the group before her and her friends.
The momentum of her body hitting one of the men almost threw him right off of the tower, but the second man grabbed a hold of him and prevented it. The staff member quickly pulled the other male zip liner to safety, and they both reached up to help Rose get unclipped from her line.
“Shit, sorry guys,” Rose said as she effortlessly unhooked herself from the zip line without the assistance of the staff person.
“You need to hang onto the brake at all times,” the man said kindly to her, although he looked very annoyed at what had just happened.
“I’m sorry. I was so distracted by the view.”
“It’s okay, no harm done. Bronx here caught you.”
Rose glanced at the man who she had almost kicked off of the support tower from the impact of her landing. He was a delicious looking surfer type with shaggy blond hair and a tan that showed he wasn’t an office job kind of guy. No guy got that good a tan working in Washington D.C. Rose instantly thought he must have been on vacation there as a tourist or something.
“Well, thank you Bronx,” Rose said seductively as she shook his hand.
Her eye contact was intense, and she knew it excited him by the way his cheeks blushed at her. Rose wasn’t all that much older than Bronx, but she certainly carried herself like she was. At 29 years old, Rose felt like she was going on 40 most of the time. People most often described her as a bitch, and they were right. Rose didn’t have the patience to be nice to people unless they were in her close inner circle. If they were people she didn’t know, Rose barely managed to be civil most of the time.
But she did like the company of young men like Bronx and knew how to seduce them when she wanted to. Rose estimated that Bronx was in his early to mid-twenties. He was wearing a Rolex watch, so he was either supported by his family money or made his own through some sort of adventurous outdoor work. He was exactly the type of man she liked in her life; well, at least the kind she liked in her bed for the night.
“I couldn’t let a beautiful woman like yourself get hurt up here.”
“Well, thank you again,” Rose said as she connected her zip line to the next line.
“Ma’am, you need to wait for the guide. There is no one at the next tower yet,” the staff member said.
“Bronx here will go with me. Won’t you Bronx?” Rose said as she unclipped herself and eyed Bronx.
Bronx looked at the employee and then back at Rose. It was clear that she was going to take off on her own if Bronx didn’t go first. He obviously had no other option than to be chivalrous and go first so he could catch her on the other side.
“Sure thing,” he said as he shrugged his shoulders at the staff member and smiled.
The two men seemed to be pretty familiar with each other, and the staff member didn’t argue at all with Bronx taking the lead. The staff member nodded in agreement and then turned back toward the line that Rose had just come down as he waited for her friends to make their way to the next support pole.
“Wait five minutes until you go please,” the staff member said as Bronx took off. “The next tower is a long way down there, and I need to make sure he’s secure before you take off.”
“Yes sir,” Rose said, flirtatiously saluting the man.
“You’re not much of a rule follower are you?” he joked.
“Not on the weekends.”
Rose waited the obligatory five minutes before connecting her zip line and taking off. She saw one of her girlfriends heading into the tower she was just at and was slightly relieved to be moving on before she had to hold a conversation with Elsa. Rose loved her friends, but the amount of times they consistently wanted to talk about her dead husband was exhausting. Nothing was going to bring him back, and Rose had no desire to talk about him anymore, especially with her upbeat, high energy single girlfriends.
Rose held onto the zip line brake like she was supposed to as she made her way over the tree top canopies of Virginia. They were just outside of Washington D.C. and in one of the most beautiful areas of the state. Although Rose was certainly a city girl, she loved getting out into nature on the weekends. Frankly, she loved getting away from her life whenever possible, but that was going to get harder and harder now that she had finished her law degree. Now she had to get back into the real world and start working again; it wasn’t ideal, but at least she would be busy.
What had started as a fun way of using her time after her husband’s death had turned into a new career for Rose. She tried to drag out her law school as long as possible and continue to have fun and be without responsibilities, but the time had finally come for her to start working again. It was a new adventure, and something that she was excited to start, but the idea of having to deal with people again was a little overwhelming to her.
She pulled hard on the brake as her zip line slide gently into the next pit stop. Her new admirer, Bronx, clapped sarcastically at her as she stopped exactly where she was supposed to. Rose couldn’t help smiling at his effort; she was a big proponent of sarcasm and loved a good witted playboy like Bronx seemed to be. She liked any man who was a little outside the norm of society, probably because she felt like she was outside the norm of society.
“I think I deserve something more than a clap for that excellent landing,” Rose said softly as she walked up to Bronx.
Her body was only inches away from his as she looked into his blue eyes. Her hands gently pressed up against the muscles of his chest, and Rose was officially moving in for the kill. She had made up her mind that she wanted Bronx, and she was going to have him; that’s just how things worked for her. When she wanted a guy, she made sure she got him.
“Whatever you’d like,” he said with a little less shyness than he’d had before.
“Whatever? Hmmm, you shouldn’t give a girl like me a blank check like that.”
“Oh, I mean it.”
Rose smirked at Bronx as she took a step back and looked him up and down. He was a delicious piece of man. Muscular, tan, and obviously in great shape. He would do just fine for what she needed him for.
“Come here,” she beckoned, motioning with her finger.
Her eyes stayed locked on his as Bronx walked to the tower support pole that she was now leaning against. Rose had her hooks in him and wasn’t about to let go. The adrenali
ne of that moment was what she sought out. It drove her when she was away from her studies, and it kept her body occupied with distraction. She wasn’t a huge daredevil and not particularly fond of zip lining, but she did love to bring a nice boy home to play in her sheets.
“Oh, yes ma’am,” Bronx teased. “Are you always this bossy?”
“Kiss me.”
Rose grabbed hold of Bronx by his T-shirt and pulled him into her. Bronx didn’t fight her at all. He was used to playing with beautiful women, even if he wasn’t used to them being so forward with him.
His hands moved up to her face and cupped her cheeks gently as he showed off his kissing skills. His lips were soft, yet firm as they explored Rose’s lips. There was a definite chemistry between the two of them. Perhaps it was brought on by the adventurous activity they were doing or the fact that Rose had taken charge like a cougar on the hunt, but no matter the reason, there was electricity in the air between them.
Rose let her hands slide down to the button of Bronx’s shorts. She loved to make her men understand just how far she was willing to go. Of course, she wasn’t going to fuck him right there on that zip line tower, but she was going to have him; that was for certain. And she wanted a little preview of what he was packing in those cargo shorts so she could prepare herself for the night she had ahead of her.
“Well, let’s … um … wait a second,” Bronx said as he clasped his hand over hers to prevent Rose from unbuttoning him.
The staff member was on his way to the tower, and Bronx wasn’t about to let whatever was going on between them get too far out of hand. Rose liked that side of her new play toy, a little shyness was always fun to play with.
“No fun at all,” Rose teased as she let her hand slide down the front of his pants and cupped his rock hard cock in her hand. “Now this seems like more fun for sure.”
Rose didn’t wait for a reply from Bronx before she clipped her zip line onto the final stretch of the course and took off. She could hear the staff member yelling something after her, but it was too late, and she was already gone and on her way to the next one. One thing that Rose didn’t have patience for was sitting around and waiting for things to happen; she had no time for that nonsense. She didn’t have patience for much of anything at all, though.
As predictable as a man could be, Bronx was right behind her as she landed at the final tower and climbed down. Rose didn’t wait for him, and she didn’t look back at him; she simply made her way into the building and turned in her supplies. As she unbuckled all her safety harnesses and prepared to hand them over, she heard Bronx come into the building behind her.
“Wait, are you at least going to tell me your name?” Bronx said as he jogged to catch up with her.
“Come by my place tonight. We can continue where we left off,” Rose said as she wrote down her address on a slip of paper from the counter.
“Name?” Bronx asked again.
“Be there at ten,” Rose said as she walked back out to greet her friends who were now finishing up their final leg of the zip line towers.
“Now that’s a girl you shouldn’t disappoint,” the worker behind the register said to Bronx.
Rose couldn’t help smiling as she heard the two men start to talk in the distance behind her. She loved the feeling of mystery and knew that Bronx was going to show up at her house. No man had ever refused the offer, and Bronx didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would refuse her either.
“Rose, you could have waited for us,” Elsa said as she climbed down the tower.
“Oh, you know me; I’m not much for waiting around.”
“I’m starving, should we go eat some food?” Elsa asked.
The two women waited for Kimberly and Ava to finish up and then the four of them continued to talk and decide where they wanted to go eat. Rose put on her socializing face and smiled with the girls. She knew if she didn’t, they would certainly start talking about the sadness of her past, and she wasn’t going to allow that. She was used to pretending to be just fine, that was how she got through almost every single day of her life since losing her husband; it wasn’t something new to her.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Bronx talking to all three of the zip line staffers. They were all of similar age and seemed very familiar with each other, and the whole group of men who had gone before Rose and her friends, except Bronx held himself with much more confidence as the men talked.
Rose didn’t allow herself to look for long, but she did take in one last glance of Bronx before she headed out for dinner and drinks with her friends. Saturdays were their days to let loose, drink, and dance, and Rose couldn’t wait to get started on all three of those things.
Chapter 2
Letting loose, drinking, and dancing were probably as far as possible from what Rose actually felt like on a daily basis. But her friends felt better when they saw her out partying with them, so she had grown to enjoy her Saturday evenings the best she could.
Drinking, dancing, and flirting with men were all great ways for her to keep her mind busy and her body moving. Everyone at the clubs was always younger than she was, but no one really knew how old Rose was. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, and only her close friends knew otherwise. Sometimes guys guessed she was a little older than them, but that was only because she took charge of the situation and didn’t wait for the men to hit on her.
Elsa was the only one of her friends that really knew Rose from when she was married. Both Kimberly and Ava were other single friends that Rose had connected with through Elsa. All three of the women were twenty-five years old and still in the partying stage of their lives. They were single, had high-paying government jobs, and used their weekends to let off the steam from stressful weeks.
Rose envied the simple life that came with her friends’ lives, though. They didn’t know tragedy like she did, and they were able to have joy like she no longer felt. Instead of joy, Rose was content to have ambition. It was her new best friend, and she was going to hold onto it with all her might.
Her husband had had a lot of ambition, and Rose felt closer to him when she was working hard at school. She thought she might also feel closer to him once she had a job and was working hard at it. Although she had a little money saved up still from Derek’s life insurance, most of it had gone to her schooling and paying her bills over the last few years. She had to start working so she could support herself. Plus, it felt like it was time for her to start a new chapter in her life.
“Oh, my God, did you see that guy over there. I swear he’s been looking at you all night long,” Ava said as she pointed to a tall, thin man at the other end of the club.
“I’ll bet you twenty dollars I can go over there and get him to kiss me within sixty seconds,” Rose said as she downed the shot of vodka she had in front of her.
“Don’t take the bet,” Elsa said to Ava.
“Oh, I’m taking it. Even a knockout like Rose has to warm a guy up a little. Sixty seconds from the moment you arrive over there. I’m going to time you. If it goes to sixty-one seconds, you owe me twenty bucks.”
“Yep. Elsa will keep time.”
Rose shook hands with Ava and set off across the club to the tall, good looking man in the corner.
“Hi Rosaline,” he said with a grin when she arrived.
“Hello Noah.” She smiled back. “I can’t explain, but I need you to kiss me.”
Noah didn’t hesitate more than a second before he grabbed her and dipped her down in a dramatic kiss. His lips were gentle and seductive against hers, and Rose felt her body react and kiss him back instinctively. She couldn’t help herself, he tasted so good. As he brought her back up, he steadied her on her feet.
“Should we do it again?” he questioned.
“Nope, that’s good. How are you? What are you doing here?”
“I know; is it that obvious that I’m too old for this place?” Noah said as he looked around the club.
Club Door, or just Door as people
usually referred to it, was a very young crowd of people. The women were almost exclusively under thirty, as were most of the men. So Noah, who was near forty, was a little out of place, but his good looks would get him by just fine for the night.
“I’m sure you can find yourself a young sugar baby if that’s what you’re looking for.” Rose winked at him.
Noah rolled his eyes. He hated how Rose always teased him about the young women he dated. Noah had been friends with Rose’s late husband, and when Noah had brought a woman over to meet the two of them, Rose had always given him grief; mostly because she thought it was funny that Noah never dated women his own age.
“You know I’m a fan of all women,” Noah said as he moved closer to Rose.
Rose knew that Noah cared for her. If she would allow it, they probably could have had an exciting romance between the two of them, but Rose wasn’t going to allow it. Noah reminded her too much of her late husband, Derek, and she couldn’t have a man around all the time that reminded her of the love she lost.
“Now, now, we are going to be working together starting on Monday. You’ll be my boss. We can’t go breaking any office rules.”
“I’m the boss; I make the rules,” Noah said as he kept his hand around Rose’s waist.
She saw the desire in his eyes. His bright blue eyes had shown desire for her for at least the last year. He wasn’t a jerk trying to steal his friend’s woman or anything, but five years had gone by since Derek’s death, and Noah was still there looking out for Rose. He genuinely cared about her, and she appreciated that, but she wasn’t about to give into some primal desire for Noah. He was too special to her, and they had a great friendship going on between them.
“I’m pretty sure Elaine wears the pants in your partnership.”
Mine to Protect Page 42
