by Cecilia Lane
Lilah’s heart lurched into her throat. She stumbled when he set her back on the ground near the door. Heat flooded her cheeks and the rest of her body. “That was...” she added an extra step between them. “That was entirely uncalled for!”
She did not stomp her foot. Not one bit.
Her heart hammered against her breastbone when she lifted her chin and met the shifter’s eyes. There, again, the tiniest spark of gold flashed at the center. Trick of the light? Like hell! He was a lying liar who’d probably eat her in her sleep!
Seth once again reached around her to open the door at her back. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m going to check the perimeter.”
Lilah seethed at the expert dismissal. She crossed her arms and glared at the shifter until a door stood in the way.
A quick tour of the joint didn’t reveal any bodies, but she didn’t know what secrets lived in the attic or crawlspace. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a small living room winged by an equally small kitchen were paced within minutes, leaving her to wait while Seth did whatever was involved with walking fifteen steps from one corner of the lot to the other.
She continued her inspection, opening kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator just to give herself something to catalog and put her mind at ease. A whole lot of not much sat in the fridge and frozen meals stacked up neatly in the freezer. More nonperishable boxes and cans filled one cupboard, with a small but workable set of cookware and dishes in another. Whoever had stocked it last took the drink variety to heart. Lilah snorted at the two boxes of green and black tea.
She found the bathroom similarly stocked when she cracked open the medicine cabinet. The contents were like a tiny pharmacy. Antacids and cold meds nestled up next to sleep aids and bandages. Lilah paused with the mirrored door halfway closed and eyed the sleeping pills.
Hm.
She’d been attacked. Sent home. Attacked again. Her bodyguard was something other than human and her tolerance for monsters that could kill her with a swipe of their claws was at its freaking limit. And he wanted to plop her in the middle of a town swarming with more like him? Who very well could whisper her location to the ones sniffing after her? She’d take hitchhiking over sticking with Seth any day.
Lilah calmly sat at the table and sipped at a mug of tea when Seth graced her with his presence again. She ignored the shiver that worked down her spine when his eyes fell on her and jerked her chin at the other mug. "There's tea if you want some."
Seth eyed the woman across the table. He'd tried to give her enough time to settle and maybe even slip into a bedroom for the space she obviously wanted from him. The yard was checked and double-checked, and Jaime updated on what had happened back at the apartment. She'd been near apoplectic with rage over the SEA agent not watching closely enough and vowed to get to the bottom of things by their next call.
And still, he stayed away.
His head ached and his stomach clenched the longer he kept his vigil outside. He was off balance. Unsteady. Given the chance, he’d have found a fight and sunk into that faint sensation of the lion that didn’t exist and gladly dealt with the pain the next day. Or drank until he passed out and woke with the world still spinning. Those, he understood. Lilah was a damn mystery.
Something about her hit him harder than any of the punches he’d taken over the years. She set his heart to racing, made him want to pant with need, drained the color from the rest of the world so she seemed the brightest object in the universe.
She effortlessly got under his skin and now offered him tea?
Suspicious, he took a seat in front of the mug laid out for him. “Thank you,” he said gruffly.
Lilah flashed him a smile that didn’t hit her eyes and wrapped both hands around her mug. Her fingers twitched like she wanted to drum them against the ceramic. She stopped herself and rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “I wanted to apologize for acting like a pouting child earlier. This has been… difficult, to say the least. It’s not every day a girl finds herself the target of a hit.”
Seth softened. "Not every day someone survives what you did. That takes luck and some balls."
“Thank you,” she murmured. She ducked her face and took a sip of her tea. “So, do you have many stash houses for your unwilling charges?”
Seth barked a laugh. “It belongs to the security company I sometimes work with. You never know when you’ll need to cut and run to keep a troublesome woman safe.”
He raised the mug to his lips. Sourness hit his tongue.
Seth glared over the rim of the mug and spit out his sip. Carefully, trying not to frighten the already on-edge woman, he set the mug on the table. “What did you put in this?” he asked in a hard voice.
Her long lashes shaded her eyes before she lifted them to meet his look. Pure innocence stared back at him, at odds with the wariness in her scent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her pulse jumped. He could hear the beat plain as day and see the throb along the column of her neck. “I’ll search you if you don’t cut the shit. This is your only warning.”
Her scent shifted. Fear disappeared. Irritation stung his nose when she lifted her chin and met his gaze. “What? I won’t like you if you’re angry?”
Seth snorted. He was almost impressed. When push came to shove, she unsheathed her claws.
Up against him and full-blown shifters like Jasper, though, she was still just an overconfident cub that didn't realize the danger she faced.
Fire built in his center. For the fuckers who wanted to hurt her. For her own stubborn refusal to accept his protection. He shot out of his seat with a growl and rounded the table in the time it took her to startle back against her chair.
He wrapped a hand around Lilah’s wrist and pulled her to her feet. One quick twist spun her around and pinned her between him and the table. He flattened her hands on the surface, then skimmed his palms up her arms.
Heat flared under his touch and something brushed against his mind. He wanted to grab a handful of her hair and tilt her head to the side. Expose her neck. Inhale her sweet scent and mark her as his own.
Focus. Seth squeezed his eyes closed. He opened them again when his hands reached her shoulders. He didn’t have time to figure out what the hell was going on in his head with a task at hand.
“I’ll ask you again,” he said thickly. “What did you put in my drink?”
Lilah tried to rear back, but his hands on her shoulders kept her locked in place. “Let me go,” she hissed.
“Your choice,” he growled. “Dangerous games, Lilah. I can’t guard you if you try to poison me when my back is turned.”
“I don’t know you,” she shot back. “I can’t trust you.”
From her shoulders, he ran his hands down her back. That sensation pulsed against his mind, stronger than ever. He could almost feel fur sliding under his skin.
At her hips, he spanned around her front and slid his palms down her thighs. So close, he couldn’t smell anything but her citrus and lavender scent. His mouth watered and blood rushed straight to his cock. It was a relief when he stepped away from her body to crouch at her side. No worry of her knowing how fucked his response was to her nearness when he didn’t press against her.
Lilah’s breath turned ragged as he dragged his hands down one leg. “Stop,” she whimpered.
Sweet fuck. Seth bit back a groan as the thin thread of her arousal hit his nose. Spit and hiss at him, try to poison him, she, too, felt that odd connection between them.
It was almost like the reaction between mates.
Seth nearly fell on his ass. Impossible. At least for him. He didn’t have an animal half. He didn’t have fangs to claim her. Those instincts didn’t exist in him.
She was just a job. Not a mate. He didn’t have a mate because he wasn’t a full shifter. He really needed to cut ties with everything supernatural once Lilah wasn’t in danger. He’d clearly cracked.
“You can stop this.” Fuck. Was that his voice? Lo
w and hoarse? Seth swallowed hard and cupped her other ankle. He swept up her leg. “Tell me what you put in my drink.”
She trembled when he reached her stomach. He stood again and felt his way to the curve of her breasts. Just a job, he reminded himself. Just a pat-down. Nothing could happen between them.
The rustle of plastic drove that point home.
Seth spun Lilah around to face him. He stared down his nose at her as he dipped fingers under the collar of her blouse. Instead of silky skin, he found the crinkly edge of a plastic bag stuffed inside her bra.
She sagged against the edge of the table, looking halfway admonished as he rolled the pills flat inside the bag.
“Sleeping pills?” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. Still keyed up and wrapped in her scent, he struggled to imagine anything but her mouth wrapped around him. Not the time. Not the place. She wasn’t even the person for him. “What was your plan when you laid me out?”
Not likely. He doubted she ground up enough to knock him out for long.
Lilah’s silence burned through the lust riding him. Frustration filled the void. He’d had terrible clients. Mean ones. Stupid ones. Never had he dealt with one intent on rushing for the edge of the cliff and jumping.
He had to keep her safe. If she wouldn’t listen, he’d truss her up and lock her deep in a cave where no one could get to her.
He had to keep her.
Seth growled. At himself. At the dangerous thoughts that swirled in his head. At the woman taking shuddering breaths inches from him. He stuffed the bag into his pocket and snapped a hand around her wrist. Lilah dragged at him and tried to pry his fingers away from her skin, but he wasn’t budging. “If you want to act like a child, you can be sent to bed like one.”
He shoved her through a bedroom door and let her stumble to a stop.
Seth turned to leave and froze at the threshold. He didn’t want to go. He couldn’t let her out of his sight. Whatever storm had kicked up inside him when he had his hands on her demanded he stay.
He swept back into the living room and returned a moment later to wedge a stuffed chair through the bedroom door. Once inside, he closed them both in darkness and took a seat in front of the exit.
“What are you doing?” Lilah demanded.
Seth leaned back and stretched his legs long. “Just making sure you don’t go slipping out the window.”
“How do you expect me to sleep with you staring at me in the darkness?”
Fucking hell, she didn’t know when to quit.
Seth reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the sleeping pills he’d taken off her. He shot one into the air like a champion basketballer and landed it somewhere on the bed. “That should help,” he growled.
Stuffy silence answered him.
Chapter 7
Lilah startled awake to an earthquake shaking her bed. She shot straight up, ready to head for cover, before reality crashed down.
The outline of a hulking man stood at the foot of the bed. Light spilled into the room from the hallway. Nothing else moved or rattled, except for her hands and all her nerves signaling her brain to run, run, run.
She was being hunted. She’d had her life broken into pieces and her carefully crafted sense of comfort destroyed. The only thing that stood between her and the devils on her tail was the man looming over her while she slept.
Seth gave the bed another kick. “Let’s go, woman. We can’t spend all day in bed.”
Anger burned through her and squashed the nervous churn in her gut. She craned her neck to fix him with a glare. “I’m awake. You can stop.”
The nerve of the man. To send her to bed, then wake her so abruptly? She’d tossed and turned for a long while before sleep finally claimed her. She’d expected nightmares of lions and bears coming for her in the darkness, and those pushed at her, true, but all the dangers faded the moment a lone figure appeared on the horizon.
Was it any wonder he intruded in her dreams, too? He pushed and prodded her in real life. Of course he had a starring role in her dreams.
She shivered as she remembered his hands on her in the real world. Professional. As professional as one could be patting someone down who'd just tried to slip them some drugs. His thick, husky voice was better suited to late nights in the dark, with slick skin and sliding hands, than a bright living room and a body search. Her dreams had been more than willing to fill in the gaps between reality and imagination.
Lilah swung out of bed and stretched. Her body complained, muscles taut. Too bad her aches and pains came from the real world horrors and not nighttime delights.
She trudged after the too-chipper man, then stopped as she hit the living room. Shock erased all hopes for a cup of coffee before the day kicked into gear.
“What happened to your face?” she asked bluntly.
Sickly yellow and green bruises colored Seth’s face. Which would have been fine if they were days out from the attack in her apartment instead of a handful of hours.
He stared at her before shaking himself. “What?”
Unease prickled up the back of her neck, but she stepped closer anyway. “You look almost healed.”
Seth swept past her and down the hall. The bathroom light flicked on, then right back off. “This is nothing,” he said gruffly as he stomped back into the living room. “Just normal healing.”
And yet, he refused to meet her eyes.
Not a shifter, he claimed. Even if she’d been mistaken about the gold in his eyes the night before, there was no denying that he’d healed extraordinarily fast.
Then again, if he was a shifter, wouldn’t a few bruises completely disappear overnight?
Lilah eyed Mr. Not-a-shifter warily while he replaced the chair he’d moved into the bedroom. He looked as uncomfortable as she felt, with shoulders tight and tense as he did a final pass.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
Seconds ticked down and she didn't know which way to turn. He'd saved her life. That added to the scales in his favor. He'd seen right through her attempt to get clear of him and the whole sucky situation. That, too, proved he wasn't a slouch in the protection department.
Lilah pressed her lips together and silently followed him back into his truck.
About an hour after dawn, Seth took an exit offering gas stations and food. Lilah’s stomach rumbled when she followed him into a little diner after he’d filled the tank. Expected, she figured. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast the previous day. After everything that’d happened, it may as well have been a decade.
They sat stiffly and quietly after placing their orders, only breaking the silence with murmured thanks whenever their server swung by to offer refills of hot coffee. Lilah didn’t need to look up to know Seth watched her. She felt his sharp focus whenever she shifted in her seat, and a lesser study when she remained utterly still.
After the third time of glancing up to see his eyes dart away, she tucked her hair behind her ears and drew in a deep breath. “So,” she started, wrapping her fingers around her coffee mug to keep them still, “what’s the plan?”
Seth’s dark eyes met hers without a flicker of any other color. “Wolfden, south of here. I already updated Jaime. Plus, the Conri pack has no love for lions. Or anyone else, for that matter. Snooty fucks. You’ll be safe there.”
“Me?” Lilah blinked. “You’re not staying?”
Seth grunted. “Isn’t that what you wanted? You were desperate to get away last night.”
“I…” Looking at him in the light of day made all her actions and attitude seem silly. Humiliating, even. He was just a man. A very intense, no-nonsense, done-with-her-shit, man.
She felt his eyes on her again. It was… unnerving, to be honest. Even on dates, she never commanded such attention.
Not that they were on a date. She may not ever date again. She might not even live to see the end of next week.
Cold hit her like a wave and left behind a rising tide of guilt. Here she was, not even a full
day since a colleague died next to her, and she was thinking about her dating life. That was what near-death experiences did to a person. Those brushes with the other side took all her collected thoughts and feelings and split them into five thousand tiny pieces of an impossible puzzle, then threw them high into the air. She needed time to pick through them and piece herself back together.
Seth’s hand fell over hers. “Lilah,” he said softly. “You’re going to be okay.”
Calm rolled over her. She wanted to lean into it, let it envelop her like a warm blanket. He had no reason to comfort her or do more beyond the barest of actions to keep her secure. Even after she behaved abhorrently toward him, he offered her reassurances.
“I…” she started again, unsure of what to say. Sorry, probably. That was a safe start.
Seth snatched his hand away as the server appeared at their table. The sudden movement pierced the bubble of quiet around them. All her nerves spiked at once, leaving her mouth dry and a shudder rushing down her spine.
Cedric was dead.
Jasper and his lions had tried to kill her twice.
She was stuck with a man who was making the best of a very complicated situation while she did nothing but add to the trouble.
Her stomach turned, and she rushed to her feet. Bathroom. Even if she didn’t spill the bile in her throat, she’d rather have a completely legitimate panic attack without intense eyes watching her every breath.
Three steps away from the table, Seth pulled her back around. “Lilah.”
His voice commanded her to stop and listen even more than the hand around her wrist. “I need a moment,” she whispered. “Please.”
His thumb stroked over her skin. Heat flared to life, warming her against the ambient chill of the diner and settling that blanket of calm around her shoulders. She tugged away, but he only tightened his grip. He stared at her for a beat longer, almost eating her alive with his gaze, then let her loose.
“I’ll be waiting,” he said in a voice thick with gravel, dropping his eyes.
