Against Protocol (Protocol Series Book 1)

by Eden Butler

  It was the fire in my bedroom that I stared at as Cruz and the other agents stood post outside the building. There was no noise. No activity that held my attention but the liquid dance of the red flames against the blue gas as I stood in front of the fireplace, a sweating glass of whisky loosely held in my hand. The bottle was nearly empty.

  Sleep would not come, but then it hadn’t for me since the night of Linc’s assassination. He’d been a bad husband. He’d been a womanizer who didn’t deserve me. But no one should die the way he did—bloody, scared, and trying to hold onto a life that had been too brief.

  “Lia...” he gasped, reaching for me, eyes wide, terrified as his shirt darkened with blood. “Lia...you’re hurt.” And he touched my shoulder, head tilted like he cared. Like the graze on my shoulder was something he found so offensive. “What they’d do to my girl?”

  “Lincoln...”

  I should have said something profound. I should have promised that I forgave him, that I wanted his forgiveness, too, because we’d both made a mess of our marriage, but there wasn’t time. Seems like there is never enough time when we are faced with a final goodbye.

  Instead, Lincoln left this world worried that I’d been hurt with a sad, mournful frown making him look much older than his forty-nine years. I got left with blood staining my skin and the haunting memory of my husband’s death and the chaos created by it that kept me from sleeping.

  Like most nights since the assassination, I self-medicated, preferring hard liquor to wine and silence to the distraction a book or piece of music would give me. I needed to remember. I wanted to keep the details straight, recall every second of that night to see if there was anyone, any small clue, about who had killed the president and who likely wanted to kill me.

  That intention had grown. It festered in my head and sprouted throughout my body. I needed to know who’d done this. The problem, however, was that nothing came to mind. Nothing seemed odd or out of place.

  For what must have been the hundredth time that night, I closed my eyes, squinting tight to bring back the recall of standing on that stage with my hand in Lincoln’s right palm as he waved with his left to the crowd. Richard Hill was running for re-election in Virginia and needed Lincoln’s support. The speech had gone well. The crowd had still been infatuated with their president.

  My temples ached as I closed my eyes, seeing thousands of faces in front of us, around the auditorium, and the bright, blinding lights as they lit up the room. The clapping was deafening, so loud, in fact that I almost didn’t catch the loud snap of the gun as it fired.

  Those faces...blurred...became haze and...

  “Damn it,” I said, dropping the glass in my hand when the scene in my head sped forward. Something was always amiss. Like someone had extracted a piece of information from my memory. The crowd. The snap and then Lincoln was on the floor in front of me.

  The glass shattered on the floor at my feet, the sound a slap of shocking noise that brought a loud knock to my door.

  “Great,” I muttered, abandoning the broken glass to answer the clamor Cruz made against the door. If I didn’t, either he, Johnson, or Nelson would kick it in and the place was new. Roni had done a lot of work to make it nice. “I’m fine,” I said, forgetting the time. Forgetting my robe as I jerked back the door, pissed that my babysitter had spooked right as I tried to piece my fractured memory together.

  “There was a noise,” Cruz said, holding a finger to his earpiece before he barged into my room. He surveyed our surroundings, heading straight for the window before I could explain what he heard.

  “I said I am fine.”

  Whisky warmed in my veins and the quick brush of Cruz’s large body against me as he moved into the room and the smell of his skin made me dizzy. He smelled better than the whisky. Bet he tasted better, too.

  “Are you sick?” he asked, pulling back the curtains, back facing me as I shut the door and stood next to the small bench at the foot of my bed. When I didn’t answer he moved his head, body still stiff and on alert, eyes sharp, but curious. “Ma’am?”

  My mind played tricks on me then. It always did when I stared too long at Cruz. It was that mind tricking thing that had taken me back to college the first night on the campaign when Cruz walked into the hotel lobby and introduced himself to my husband, then candidate Harris. We’d stared and smiled and didn’t speak long enough that I had to explain to Lincoln how we knew each other.

  “Old friends,” I offered, but old friends didn’t look at each other the way we did throughout the campaign, on the long road to the White House and then, in passing in those hallowed halls.

  In every glance, every secret smile, there lived a dozen memories, a million sensations. I could recall the shape of his mouth as he kissed me and the warm, wet feel of his tongue against my nipple. I’d nod to him at a state dinner and despite his stoic expression, there’d come the sleepy memory of his hands and the strength in his long, perfect fingers as he slipped them inside me.

  Now he watched me, worry crowding his features, growing the longer I stared at him and my breath caught, my heart quickened with the realization that those raw recollections wouldn’t ever leave me. It hadn’t on the campaign trail. It hadn’t in the White House. It wouldn’t now.

  “Mrs. Harris,” he finally said, that voice sharp, the sound of it like a tease against my skin.

  “I’m...” Breathing again, I moved, hurrying to the glass on the floor to keep myself from staring at him like a kid after a melting chocolate bunny on Easter Sunday. “I told you, I’m fine. I dropped my glass.”

  He watched me. I felt the heat from his searing gaze as I knelt to pick up the shards of glass. My skin felt electrified and it was only then, as he watched, as warmth spread over my skin that I realized how undressed I was. My nipples pebbled, then hardened at his scrutiny, standing to attention against the black satin and lace of my nightgown.

  Cruz grunted, a low, disproving sound I tried to block out, but then he was in front of me, stilling my hand with those large fingers around my wrist before he pressed against that ear piece, muttering a low, “all clear,” before he glared at me. When I glanced at him, a little surprised that he touched me, the man tilted his head, gaze slipping over my features before he moved his chin to the floor and the mess I’d made. “It’s four a.m.”

  “I don’t sleep,” I told him, moving back, not sure I wanted him to release me.

  “So you drink?” He frowned then, likely irritated by the long sigh I released, but Cruz didn’t let up, wasn’t put in check by my irritation. “You’re bleeding.”

  He didn’t wear his shades. The townhouse was dark, the room around us lit only by the peek of light coming from the ensuite bathroom and the blue and red flames from the fireplace. His face was angular, strong, and the thick vein along his neck throbbed as he swallowed. He was a distraction that took me from the moment and whatever worry I heard in his voice when he spoke. What had he said? “I’m...what?”

  I followed when he stood, letting him lead me into the bathroom, his grip tight but not constricting. “Here,” Cruz said, motioning to the empty space between the two sinks on the counter. “It looks deep.” He moved me like I was featherlight, releasing my wrist long enough to hold me around the waist with one arm before he hit the tap on and held my palm under the spray of water. “Drinking at four in the morning.” The words came out in a mumble of sound, half irritated, half concern. “Not deep enough for stitches.”

  It was only when he moved my palm closer to the faucet that I felt the sting from the cut. “I honestly didn’t notice it.”

  “You drunk?” His voice was softener now, but still firm, like he fought with himself to stay mad at me. A small shiver of sensation chilled my skin when Cruz rubbed his finger against the soft bone at my wrist.

  “Are you getting familiar, Mr. Solano?”

  He grunted again, this time not hiding his frustration as he focused on the task of doctoring my small cut. “I’ll get fam
iliar, Mrs. Harris when it’s warranted.” It was when Cruz acted this way, when the alpha surfaced stronger than it normally did in the process of his job, that I found him the most attractive. That deep, delicious voice, the forceful clip in his tone, the look of worry hidden beneath his narrowed gaze, holy shit, did it make me feel hot and needy and a million other things I knew better than to feel.

  When I went silent, deciding any stupid flirting would be obvious and sad, Cruz exhaled, seeming to let some of his irritation ease. His voice was softer when he spoke and some of his worry twisted between his words. “Why can’t you sleep?”

  Ah. That.

  Just his question had the sweet lick of fire his caveman tone had worked up in me dosed cold and dull. I couldn’t sleep for a lot of reasons, but the main one should have been obvious. The irritation I felt came on me in a wave and the biting tone moved from my mouth before I could stop myself.

  “I watched my husband murdered right in front of me. I’m not exactly comfortable in my own skin just yet.”

  God, that sounded pathetic. But, it wasn’t an exaggeration. The memory of blood and fear was constant. It covered me like a second skin and I hadn’t been able to free myself from it for even a second.

  “Lia...” My name came from his lips like regret—a whisper of sound that felt like a sigh, but Cruz recovered, stopping his movements to watch me and the one thing I didn’t want to see from him instantly crossed his features. He moved his mouth down, the muscles around his lips tight. “You know...you have to know, I’d never let anyone hurt you.”

  I hated pity. It made me feel weak. It made me feel damaged and so I deflected to make myself feel better and went on the defensive.

  “Except yourself?”

  He dropped my hand, head tilted, eyes rounding like he couldn’t believe the insult I’d just spat at him. “That’s...that’s not fair.”

  “Nothing ever is.” Even to my own ears, I sounded weak, pathetic. I didn’t want anyone’s pity, but here I was courting it. Cruz had left me to make a life for himself, one that didn’t involve his drunk father and the sisters who tried to run his life. He wanted more and the only way he knew to get that was to take opportunities when they came to him. That meant leaving behind New Orleans and everyone in it—even me. How could I ever fault anyone for wanting to better themselves and why the hell was I so eager to unbury the past I’d laid to rest years before?

  “Cruz,” I started, rubbing my face with my free hand when he frowned at me. “I’m sorry. I’m being stupid. I’m...” What was I? Exhausted? Frustrated? Lonely? Take your pick. “I’m... tired and a little drunk and haven’t slept well in weeks.”

  “You...relive it?” When I frowned, wondering why Cruz was digging, he shrugged, waving off my irritation by refocusing on bandaging my cut. He didn’t look at me when he spoke, but I knew he was aware of how hard I stared at him. “I mentioned...my time in the special forces to you before. After...after I left...after I graduated.”

  “You did, once or twice during the campaign.” There’d been a few nights catching up when he first joined us on the road. Lincoln had been irritated that he didn’t have all my attention, but he was busy enough to let me catch up with my old friend.

  “I was in Afghanistan,” Cruz said, glancing at me before he pulled a brown bottle of peroxide from the medicine cabinet and continued to clean my cut. “I...was...doing...things I’m not at liberty to...”

  I nodded, motioning slowly to let him know I didn’t need details. “Understood.”

  Those broad shoulders lowered and some of the tension eased from the straight set of his body, though he’d never relax completely. “Saw three of my men get ambushed in broad daylight. Didn’t get to them in time.” The memory of what he’d seen, no doubt guilt he probably still carried, moved into his eyes then. Those black irises seemed to darken, his stare going glassy before he blinked and reached for a washcloth to dry my wet hand. “You don’t brush that off easy.” He didn’t watch me as he spoke, keeping himself busy with examining the small gash in my palm and pulling out the largest of the Band-Aids from the box. “Don’t figure you’ll brush off what happened to the president easy either, but you can’t keep up this schedule. It’ll make you old before its time.”

  “Too late.”

  “It’s not.” My cut cleaned and covered, Cruz didn’t release my hand. Instead he held it, his massive palm over my knuckles as he looked down at me. I wondered what he saw. Stupidly, I hoped that he remembered all those nights in his apartment back in New Orleans and the moments we stole from the pressures of our lives before my husband had him reassigned.

  Cruz straightened, coming closer, and I glanced at his fingers against my wrist before watching him, breath held when his grip tightened just a bit. “And when I say I won’t let anyone hurt you, that’s you included. I’m not above being a pain.”

  His tone was too serious, the promise laughable and I did what I’d always done with him when things became too heated and there wasn’t time or place to act on the electricity moving between us. A small grin and I released an easy laugh, warning him of the pending teasing.

  “If memory serves, you have a particular aptitude for that.” It wasn’t a lie. Cruz was talented at getting what he wanted and he used those talents frequently when I was being stubborn. They generally involved him on his knees, mouth against my naked skin, or his fingers dipping and digging, teasing and touching until I gave him everything he wanted. I didn’t mind so much him being a pain then.

  He didn’t react to my small jibe, focusing on something he kept to himself. “Well...have you...tried exertion?”

  When he was around, walking right into those inuendo-latent openings I just couldn’t keep myself from acting like a kid. He did that; brought out the flirty girl in me. “You making me an offer?”

  Cruz stood up straight, taking a half-step back as he shot his gaze to me. Eyebrows shooting up like he was surprised and a little happy that I’d asked the question, before he recovered, releasing my hand. “That might violate...”

  “Protocol, I know.”

  “I was going to say your guidelines.” He leaned against the counter, head tilted as he watched me. There was a smile, a hint of one at least, as though he didn’t seem too irritated by my stupid flirting. “Besides, I meant something else, like taking a run before you turn in for a night. We brought a treadmill in and put it in the downstairs bedroom. Ms. Sanchez mentioned you might want to get back into running again.”

  For most of the campaign and the first six months in the White House, Cruz was my running partner. We’d find trails or indoor tracks and then the grounds to exert ourselves from the increasing pressure of our lives and the dangerous connection we had to each other. Those were the moments I found myself looking forward to every day. Those were the moments I missed the most when Lincoln sent Cruz away. I’d stopped running altogether when he left the White House. It seemed unnatural to take those runs alone and I couldn’t share them with anyone else. Felt too much like cheating as stupid as the notion was.

  Now he was back, reminding me of the exercise I’d loved the most. Telling me it was available to me again even if he wasn’t.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” He smiled then, this time not keeping his obvious pleasure from his face. It was a good smile, sweet and welcoming and far too tempting, so I did the only thing I could—make things stupid and awkward because it seemed only Cruz could make me be either of those things.

  I attempted a smooth exit from the counter, nodding a thanks for his quick handiwork as I waved the bandaged hand to him and slipped down, my long nightgown catching on a hinge in the half-opened bottom door and I misstepped, falling right against Cruz as he moved to help me off the counter. The impact was brief but had the effect you’d imagine—our chests came together, my low-cut nightgown revealing the tops of my breasts and Cruz gripped my arms to steady me, then immediately stared downward, his gaze locked on my cleavage. He went on watching, getting his f
ill of skin and curve before me clearing my throat brought his gaze back to my face.

  “Ah...thanks for... patching me up.”

  “My...pleasure.” He took another glance at my chest, his voice rising with the small moan of a sound before he swallowed. There was no denying what that expression on his face meant. Cruz Solano, despite his professions of there being nothing between us anymore, really liked what he saw and yet again, that flirty brat in me surfaced.

  That angular jaw I liked so much flexed and tightened when I stood in front of him, killing the tiny distance his half-step back had created. He went still when I watched him, taking in the shape of his mouth and the width of his glorious shoulders like a rancher sizing up a prize thoroughbred.

  “Is there...anything I can do for you?”

  He shot for professional, trying hard to squash the surprise that immediately cornered in his eyes at my question. There was a suggestion he hadn’t suspected in my words and for a second Cruz the agent got reduced to Cruz the man. A small, mournful grunt and then he inhaled, tightening the tension in his features even further. “Ma’am...I...” I took another step and he held me back, those large fingers curling around my biceps.

  Something flickered in his eyes. That small glint reminded me of the man underneath the protocol and rules. Some small hint of who he’d been with me, only with me and the quiet times no one expected anything from us, when we existed in a world made only for ourselves, and dignity and obligation and those damn guidelines I suggested we keep in place all got forgotten for half a second. He used to call me mami when he was being who he truly was. When he wanted me. When he wanted me to know how happy he was with me. No one got that but me, not ever and I half hoped that he’d use the endearment again.

  No matter what either of us said, no matter how proper and right and controlled he was, I was still basic and open and desperate for something that reminded me of who I’d been before I’d become the First Lady—when the only lady I was belonged solely to Cruz. He was like the sweet, succulent honey waiting to be taken from the comb and I had a sweet tooth.