Guardian

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  “Really?” Jarrod asked with interest. “Wild in what way?”

  Self preservation kicked in as Marilyn studied him uneasily. “Uh … I don’t know.”

  He chuckled. “Why did you say wild, then?”

  Marilyn frowned, tempted to deny she had. “Just … if I’m partying I keep partying, but if I get quiet I get sleepy.”

  He took her glass. “We can’t have that then! You done?”

  Marilyn looked at her plate and was horrified to see how much she’d eaten. “Oh, yeah. That was enough for two days.”

  He grinned at her and took both plates and headed into the kitchen. When he came back, Marilyn was punching buttons on the transporter. “I can’t find a station,” she complained.

  “Station?” he asked, catching her around the waist and swinging her away from the machine.

  “Yeah. Thought I’d play some music on your stereo.”

  “Ah. You want music? Fast or slow?”

  “Not particular.”

  He spoke to his computer. Music filtered to them in a matter of moments, slow, sensual music. He pulled Marilyn close and began to move slowly around the room with her.

  She felt good. It felt really nice to hold her, but his sense of tenderness gave way to desire fairly quickly. He pulled her a little tighter, but that only fanned the flames. Finally, he stopped and moved her just far enough away to make it possible to reach her mouth.

  She responded to his search by lifting to meet him and offering her lips.

  His chest tightened at the gesture of desire and trust.

  It made him loathe to move as quickly as his libido was urging him.

  He did not want to risk frightening her when he had waited so long to hold her.

  Instead of immediately conquering her mouth, therefore, he merely brushed his lips back and forth against hers teasingly until her lips parted. Then he delved the crevice, gathering a light taste of her and finally, when she sucked in a heavy breath laden with his own, he pressed deeper into the moist cavern to sample her heat and taste, to breathe her essence into himself.

  It was far more intoxicating than the two glasses of wine he’d drank.

  It was enough to satisfy him for a time. He explored her mouth until he felt like he would pass out and then broke the kiss and explored her throat and ears and then returned to her mouth.

  She grew heavier and heavier in his arms until he began to suspect she might have passed out … or maybe gone to sleep.

  He broke the kiss to examine her face for signs of life.

  She lifted her eyes brows several times and finally cracked her eyelids and licked her lips. “We aren’t going to stop here, are we?”

  “No ma’am,” Jarrod responded, promptly scooping her into his arms and heading toward his bedroom where he sprawled on the bed with her and started trying to ‘unwrap’ his prize and undress himself at the same time.

  Before he could lose his hard on and explode with frustration it occurred to him that he only needed to bare one spot—on each of them.

  He resumed the kiss when he saw he’d aroused more awareness than sexual desire while he fumbled with the clothes, contenting himself with pulling her boobs through the neck of her shirt and then delving under it when he realized it was a lot loser that way.

  Her pants were easier to maneuver than he’d expected, too. They were loose and there was no zipper or faster. All he had to do was jerk them down and shove his hand and arm down the front.

  She was so hot and wet and ready by the time he tested the crevice, he lost his mind for a few moments.

  Fortunately for both of them he could not instantly plug the hole he found. He was forced to offer her more love play while he struggled with logistics.

  By the time he’d figured everything out—maneuvered his cock out of his pants, parted her thighs and made a spot, she was gasping and begging.

  Frantic with his own needs, his hand was shaking so badly he thought he might need both hands to find the spot and finally burrowed his face in the bedding to hold his position and found the spot with one hand and guided his cock with the other.

  He was convinced he had missed the hole at first when he dug holes in the bedding with his toes and made no progress.

  Gasping for air, he backed off and checked again.

  Right place.

  Not enough lube.

  He dragged his cock back and forth through the moisture that had gathered along her cleft and then plugged the head of his cock into the hole again. That time when he dug his toes in the bedding, he could feel a little bump and yielding. Heat baked the head of his cock instantly and he lost the last of his wits.

  Grabbing her in a bear hug, he tried forcing her down over the cock awhile and plowing for a while. Finally, when he was wet with sweat and so winded he thought he might pass out, he reached the bottom of the cavern of delight.

  He did not realize it just at first. He kept heaving until it finally filtered into his frying brain that he could get no deeper.

  Levering himself up, he sucked in a few cooling, life giving gulps of air, anchored his darling with his arms and began to pump into her. Waves of the most amazing pleasure washed over him with every thrust and retreat, feeding a hunger that seemed insatiable, impatient. He moved faster and faster, trying to appease it, felt a familiar coiling in his belly and raced to grab it.

  Fortunately, since he was mindless by that time, he felt her tense and then gasp and suddenly he felt her body milking his. It wrested the little control he had left away from him. His body exploded in response, pumping his seed into her.

  Darkness began to gather in his mind when the convulsions finally abated.

  He fought it briefly, but it was just too damned enticing to ignore.

  He gathered enough strength to roll off of her, shivered as chilly air washed over him the minute they separated and then just passed out.

  Marilyn lay drifting for a while after her climax, floating, thinking dreamily that sex with Jarrod had surpassed her wildest dreams by light-years. Slowly the heat from their vigorous love play disappeared, though, until she felt chilled and began a drowsy search for warmth.

  Jarrod stirred, rolled onto his side and grabbed her, tucking her close to his belly and settling a heavy arm across her.

  He felt like a heater.

  She was warm enough in a few minutes to drift off again, feeling amazingly content and safe.

  It was the chill of night air that brought Marilyn upward to skim the surface of full consciousness. Thinking rather vaguely that she’d lost her cover, she felt around for it.

  It was under her for some strange reason.

  She tugged on it a few times and gave up when she felt herself beginning to lose her grip on sleep. For a few minutes she struggled to reclaim the deep sleep she’d had, but she was chilled and too aware of the discomfort now.

  And it still took an effort to rouse enough to sit up and try to figure out how to get under the cover that was under her.

  That was when she realized she wasn’t in her bed.

  That was when remembrance flooded into her sluggish mind and she looked around the strange bedroom.

  The headache she always got from wine kicked in big time.

  Massaging her pounding head, she looked around for Jarrod, trying to think where the bathroom might be.

  The apartment seemed to be laid out like her own, though, and she stumbled out of the bed and headed in the direction she thought the bathroom must lie.

  She found a closet. After staring at the black hole for several moments, as if the bathroom had vanished, she closed the door again and turned around.

  It was a mirror of hers, she discovered, finding her way to the bathroom at last.

  Which was when she discovered Jarrod had made a deposit.

  “Damn it!” No condom?

  If that wasn’t just like a man! They never wanted to wear a condom, but just get pregnant and they were pissed off because you had ‘tricked’ them a
nd they weren’t ready to pay child support!

  That discovery was enough to bring Marilyn wide awake.

  She was still wearing everything she’d worn to Jarrod’s to dinner and semen was flooding her panties.

  Chapter Seven

  Marilyn jerked all of her clothes off and jumped in the shower before it had even had time to warm up to a comfortable temperature.

  Deep down she knew it was wasted effort.

  She’d been asleep and the damn sperm was probably swimming around her womb at that very moment, looking for egg.

  And she couldn’t for the life of her remember when she’d last had her period.

  Damn it!

  Her gynecologist had warned her that it was like playing Russian roulette to go without birth control, but she had scoffed at the woman instead of telling her it had been a year since she’d gotten laid. She had no prospects. And she thought she could control herself long enough to use a condom—which was almost as effective as the pill and a lot less dangerous.

  Except when you got so het up you forgot the damned condom!

  When she’d gotten out and dried off, she wadded her panties up and shoved them into the pocket of her pants instead of putting them on again. The crotch of the pants was damp, but she thought it unlikely the sperm had made it through even if the seminal fluid had.

  She discovered when she left the bathroom that Jarrod was not only not in the bed, he wasn’t in the apartment.

  “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t experienced the ‘wham bam, thank you ma’am’ before that craven men were inclined to treat women to when they thought things might get too uncomfortable. But this was the first time one had abandoned their own apartment to get away before she woke up and launched a tirade about being wined, dined, and then had her brains fucked out.

  Not that she would have, damn it, but clearly he thought she might!

  She was hurt and angry.

  Just about the time she stalked to the door with the resolve never to speak to the bastard again it occurred to her that he’d left her in sole possession of his apartment.

  Now was the time to snoop if she really wanted to.

  But did she?

  Did she still think things weren’t adding up with Jarrod?

  In the end it was the very fact that he’d so skillfully soothed her feathers that she was suspicious all over again.

  Conmen, after all, were very, very good at that or they wouldn’t get away with it so often.

  Deciding to just take a quick look around, she moved to his worktable and studied everything on it, opened drawers that were totally devoid of anything and then closed them again and looked around.

  She saw electronic components that seemed to bear up his assertion that he was an inventor.

  She’d made it to the kitchen before it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen one single thing that had his name on it. In fact nothing—no magazines, no books, no bills. She went back and looked again. She finally found a few slips of folded paper, but they were all blank.

  Her belly knotted as she scanned the room, remembering that she’d thought it was almost like a movie set.

  Not real.

  It was as she was scanning the room, unfortunately, that she spotted the glowing light of a hidden camera.

  Her hair felt like it literally stood on end.

  Gasping in terror, she raced to the door and wrestled with the knob for several moments before she realized it was locked. She was almost sobbing by the time she made it out of the apartment and raced down the hallway to her own.

  She didn’t feel safe even after she’d raced inside her apartment and collapsed weakly. Shoving to her feet, she checked every inch of her apartment, checking her locked door each time she passed it and finally decided she was as safe as she could be.

  For the moment.

  She couldn’t sit still, though, and she damned sure couldn’t go to bed. She glanced at her clock and saw it was three o’clock.

  Where would he be at that time of the night that could be ‘innocent’?

  Nowhere, that was where! There wasn’t a single, solitary thing that came to mind as an answer that wasn’t illegal.

  He’d said he was an inventor. He hadn’t gone off to work if he worked in his apartment.

  He hadn’t gone off to buy groceries or get parts he needed—not in the middle of the night.

  And he had a recording, now, of her searching his apartment!

  Was she in real danger?

  As in dead?

  She chewed the nails off of all ten fingers while she contemplated the chances of him just ignoring the tape.

  Why would he have a camera for surveillance, though, if he didn’t bother to check it?

  It was the thought of the recording that she finally zeroed in on, though.

  She’d run away like a coward and an idiot instead of getting the damn proof she’d left that she’d searched his apartment.

  She’d left proof that she’d intruded instead of getting proof that he was up to something!

  Stupid!

  The urge to retrieve it instantly warred with her fear of running into Jarrod in the middle of such a task, but the fear of ending up in jail finally outweighed the fear of being caught.

  There were two impediments to that one possibility of saving her ass from the wrath of Jarrod and/or the cops.

  She was pretty sure the door had locked behind her. Hers was the type of door lock that did. She had to manually unlock it if she didn’t want it to lock behind her.

  And she ran the risk of being spotted by somebody if she tried to break in to his apartment.

  Contrarily, she’d no sooner acknowledged the impossibility of recovering the damned video than she began to fret to make an attempt.

  Moving to the window, she stared at the ledge that she knew ran all the way around the building.

  It was wide—unless one considered walking around the second floor on it.

  It was just two floors! She could survive that even if she fell.

  Don’t be such a pussy, Marilyn!

  She pushed the window up and looked out. There was a flower bed directly below—not concrete and she checked the ledge width more closely.

  Her belly knotted, but she had to try to get that recording!

  She had to succeed or end up in a morgue or jail cell instead of a hospital bed.

  Pulling back in, she surveyed what she could see from the window.

  The area looked dead—not a mouse stirring.

  She left the window and raced into her room, jerking clothes out until she found a pair of black pants and a dark hoodie.

  Without allowing herself to consider the situation any longer, until she had time to talk herself out of it, she stripped and jerked the dark clothing on and then moved to the window again.

  She managed to get all the way out the window on her hands and knees before a gust of wind hit her hard enough she felt like it was going to carry her off. She stayed perfectly still, leaning against the wall for all she was worth, until the gust died.

  She was panting with fear by that time.

  After staring at the ledge in front of her for some time, she finally managed to convince herself to back up—very slowly—toward her window.

  She was so shaky by the time she got back in she couldn’t even stand up. She just sort of melted toward the floor.

  The urge to burst into tears assailed her.

  She was in so much trouble!

  Sniffing, she managed to push herself up and headed into the kitchen to find a thin knife to pick his lock and then headed to her apartment door, stuck her head out to check the hallway, and then made sure she unlocked her door and headed down the hall to Jarrod’s apartment.

  She was just going to shove the knife in and try to depress the latch until it occurred to her that she had been gone long enough Jarrod might have come back.

  She tapped on the door and stuck her
ear to it to listen.

  She thought she heard distant footsteps, but she couldn’t tell if they were inside his apartment or somewhere else.

  Deciding it wasn’t him she’d heard, she slipped the knife between the door and jam.

  She’d been working on it all of five seconds when she heard someone behind her, felt a presence and looked up to discover it was Jarrod.

  She gaped at him, struggling to think of something she could say to explain something that really had no innocent explanation.

  She forced a smile as if she was relieved to see him. “There you are! I … uh … misplaced my panties,” she said on inspiration, her face reddening as soon as it occurred to, “and then I discovered the door had locked behind me.”

  His expression was patently disbelieving and the smile was more than a little scary. “Really? Sorry about that. Let me unlock it for you.”

  “I woke up and you were gone,” she said as he fished his key out and opened the door, making a grand gesture of bowing her inside.

  “I decided to go out and get breakfast for us …. The fixings.”

  Marilyn looked at his empty hands and back at his face.

  He grinned easily, moving closer. “I was sure I remembered seeing an all night grocery just a few blocks down the road,” he murmured, swooping low to cover her mouth with his as he yanked her into an embrace that plastered her fully against his length.

  Marilyn was mentally braced because she was anxious about how he might react about the search when he saw the video. She was emotionally braced because of the wham bam round they’d had earlier.

  And neither guard held.

  She was just as thrilled by the feel of his mouth on hers, by the envelopment of his heat, and warmth and strength as she had been the first time he’d taken her into his arms and kissed her.

  She didn’t have the wine still singing in her veins to boost the temperature or deafen her to reason, but that didn’t matter either.

  She felt intoxicated by the heated adhesion of his mouth, the restless exploration of her mouth with his tongue. His scent and taste wrapped her in a vibrant cocoon that made everything inside of her pulse with the jungle beat of primal mating urges.