by Shania Tyler
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Major
I watched Ruby walk away with guilt in my stomach. I should never have offered to buy her a drink. I should have simply let her walk toward the restroom like I was sure she would have done if she hadn’t seen me standing there. I should have let her get on with her life and not put myself in front of her but with the way Tommy had been pushing me to go for it, I just couldn’t bring myself to stop. I wanted that woman and the animal inside of me wanted to do everything possible to make that happen, yet my mind knew better, and I knew better.
“What the hell happened?” Tommy slid up beside me just as Ruby disappeared from view behind a guy who was far too tall for me to see her smaller frame. “What did you say to make her run off?”
God damn it, you idiot. I thought over the last thing I had said to her. It was a sure way to scare her off by reminding her what kind of relationship we really had when it came down to it. She was my boss, and I was her employee. That was all there was to it.
“I… I reminded her that she’s my boss.” I barely managed to stop myself from slapping myself with the palm of my hand to the face in a ‘doh’ motion.
“Way to go and not get yourself laid.” Tommy laughed at me, and he patted me on the shoulder. “Let me get you another drink.”
He waved his hand to the barman and waited for him to come over before he began to place his drink order.
“No thanks.” I shook my head and downed the final dregs of my beer before I placed it on the counter in front of him. “I think I am just going to head home. I’ve got to be up early for work in the morning.”
“Don’t be silly!” Tommy protested. “The night is still young, and there is still plenty of time for you to find a nice woman to go home with.”
I shook my head at my friend and, for the first time, realized that was the last thing I wanted to do. The old me would have jumped at the chance to take just about anyone home and bury myself in them for a little while to forget my miserable life but something had changed in me over the last few days, and it no longer appealed to me.
“I just want to go home on my own.” That wasn’t one hundred percent true but the only woman I would even consider going home with had just run out on me. “I’m not in the mood for this tonight.”
“Don’t leave,” Tommy protested but I was already in the process of doing just that. I headed through the crowd in the same direction that Ruby had gone, heading for the front door and the alleyway beyond.
I distantly heard Tommy calling after me above the music, but I didn’t turn around or stop. I simply continued going until I reached the alleyway and finally stopped to give myself a minute to breathe.
The air outside the club was much less heavy, and I found it easier to breathe as I sucked air into my lungs. I closed my eyes for a second, allowing my breathing to calm me and my racing heart. My entire body was tense with frustration and not simply because all I wanted to do was go home. I was frustrated because Ruby had turned me on to high hell in that tight black lace dress and there was nothing I could do about it.
Why the hell did she have to be my boss? I was about to give up and head home when I suddenly heard a muffled scream coming from halfway down the alley.
I suddenly remembered that there was a slight bend before you made it to the street farther down. Something about the sound I’d just heard filled me with dread, and I found myself rushing forward to the aid of whoever was in trouble.
“Get off me!” I heard the familiar voice hit my ears just before I turned the corner and my blood instantly began to boil.
The sight that met my eyes was more than enough to make me explode on a good day but the fact that this was Ruby caused me to fly at the guy who was pinning her to the wall of the alcove she was standing in.
“Please, leave me alone,” she begged him, but the stumbling drunk guy didn’t seem to hear her. He didn’t seem to care that she didn’t want the attention he was giving her and the way his hands traveled up and down her body caused my entire body to burn with hatred.
I grabbed hold of the back of his shirt and ripped him away from her, hearing the tearing of material as his hand fisted in the front of her dress. On a normal day, my male brain might take over and I would have gazed down at her overly exposed breasts bouncing in her black lace bra but now I was simply too angry.
I whipped around with the guy’s shirt still gripped in my hand and shoved him against the other wall. “Didn’t you hear her?” I growled as I got up in his face and the stench of alcohol on his breath almost took my nose off. “She said get the hell off her!”
“Hey, man! I was just having a little fun!” the guy protested, and his hands flew up in the air in surrender. Now both of my hands were in the front of his shirt, and I was almost lifting him up off his feet against the wall.
“I don’t think she saw it that way,” I snapped at him. “Did you see it that way, Ruby?”
Even as I spoke, I never took my eyes away from the gaze of the other man, who was only half my size. My teeth were gritted with anger, and I could feel the red mist rolling in. I knew that if I allowed it to continue much longer, I would not be able to control myself. There was one thing that was true about me in the newspapers—when somebody got me angry, it was hard for me to control it. I’d spent my entire life trying to control my anger, but it sometimes got the best of me.
“Major!” Ruby’s voice hit me through the fog. “Major, please! Let him go!”
For a moment, I couldn’t do as she asked. I was just too wound up. My fists tightened further in the guy’s shirt, and I felt myself lifting him ever higher.
“Major! You are strangling him!” she gasped at me and when I felt her hand land on my shoulder, the spell was suddenly broken. I stepped away, releasing the guy from my grip.
“Get out of here,” I warned him. “Before I change my mind and dash your head against those bricks.”
The guy looked absolutely terrified as he scurried away like a frightened rabbit. When I turned to look at Ruby, she looked just as horrified as he was, and my chest began to ache with guilt all over again. The last person I wanted to look at me like that was Ruby. It made my heart hurt to see that expression on her face.
“I’m sorry,” I told her gently as I breathed in slowly, attempting to calm myself down. “I just can’t stand it when I see a woman in danger.”
“That… that’s okay.” She reached up and placed her hand on my shoulder again, squeezing it gently. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t turned up.”
I shivered at the thought of it. I couldn’t bear to think what might have happened if that guy had gotten what he wanted from her. Would he have stopped at a little grope or would he have gone even further? Would he have completely ruined Ruby’s views on men?
“I would never have let that happen,” I promised her, and she smiled warmly to me though we both knew that there would have been nothing I could have done if I hadn’t turned up just at the right moment.
“Can I buy you a drink to say thank you?” she asked me.
“I thought you had to leave.” I raised my eyebrow. We both knew the real reason why she had been leaving but I couldn’t bring myself to let her go on that one so easily.
“I shouldn’t have run away like that.” She shook her head. “I should have at least gotten hold of Tessa and told her we were leaving.”
“I guess everything happens for a reason.” I realized that had it not been for that man holding her up, I might not have been standing with her right now. Everything certainly did happen for a reason, even if we couldn’t see it right away. Perhaps that was the real reason why I’d gotten my big break. Perhaps it wasn’t to coach the Houston Buckskins. Perhaps it was because I was supposed to meet this woman and be standing here right now with her.
“Then let me get you a drink.” She smiled at me.
“There is no way I am letting you go back in there like that,” I told her as I glanced down at her chest
just long enough to show her that she was overly exposed.
“Oh, my!” she gasped, and she reached up to grip hold of the front of her dress and pull it shut. “Maybe I should go home after all.”
“My place is just around the corner,” I told her as I pulled my jacket off my shoulders and wrapped it around hers to help cover her up. “I’ve probably got an old shirt lying around you could borrow while we have a nightcap?”
Ruby took my jacket willingly but at my last comment, she raised an eyebrow at me. “I’m not so sure being alone is the best idea.”
“I’m a big boy and you are a big girl,” I told her with a grin. “I’m sure that you can keep your hands off me.”
“What if you can’t keep your hands off me?” she asked.
“Who says you are even my type?” I winked at her and she scowled. Another score for me. “Come on. I can’t let you go home in this state.”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and instantly felt her trembling beneath me. Though she was putting a brave face on it, I could tell she was still traumatized by what had happened.
“What about my friend?” she asked.
“You got a picture of her?” I asked as we paused a little farther down the alley.
“Yes, of course, I do; she’s my best friend. What has that got to do with anything?”
“Give me your phone.” I held out my hand, and she scowled at me with a raised eyebrow but reached into her handbag and pulled her phone out anyway, “Put a picture of her into a text and then give it to me. I’ll handle the rest.”
She did as I asked and then I took the phone. I dialed Tommy’s number into the top of the text and typed a quick message asking him to make sure that my boss’s best friend got home okay because there had been a small incident.
“I don’t know him,” she protested. “He could be anybody and you have just given him a picture of my best friend. What if he hurt her? I’d never forgive myself.”
“Tommy is my best friend, and I can assure you that I would trust him with my life,” I told her. “Now come on. Let’s get you back to my place before you catch your death out here half naked.”
* * *
14
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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Ruby
What the hell am I doing here? That was the first thing that came to my mind when I stepped into Major’s hotel room. Similar questions had been flying through my mind ever since I left the Black Orchid with his arm wrapped around my neck, but the truth was I just couldn’t face the thought of going home alone right now. Not after what had just almost happened to me.
I could still imagine that slime ball’s hands as they roamed all over my body and the way his breath had stung my eyes as he’d tried to slap a big kiss on my face. He had been so drunk that he’d missed and gotten my cheek instead, but he was almost twice my size and there was no way I could have pushed him away, even if I had been completely sober. I’d felt my heels wobbling beneath me as he’d pushed me back against the wall and my heart had hammered in my chest. I’d been frozen, paralyzed beneath him as though he had injected me with something, although I’d never felt the sting.
I had always told myself that in that kind of situation, I would react better than I did then, but I now knew that wasn’t true. If Major hadn’t come out just in time to rescue me, I would be just another sad statistic by now. The thought of that brought tears to my eyes.
“Are you all right?” Major asked as he handed me a crystal glass of whiskey. I sat on his couch with his jacket still wrapped tightly around me. I was shivering, though I wasn’t sure whether it was the coolness in the room or the fact that I was still in shock. I stared at a fixed point on the floor in front of me as I took the glass, unable to look him in the eye as I nodded. I knew that he could see that I was not in fact all right.
“I’m just worried about Tessa.” I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s all.”
“I promise you that your friend will be fine with Tommy,” Major assured me, and the serious tone of his voice told me that I could trust him. I guess I must have been able to trust him to a certain extent, otherwise, I never would have hired him to coach my team in the first place. “That’s not all that’s wrong. I know you are still shaken up by what happened in the alley. That’s why I thought you could use something a little stronger than beer.”
He gestured at the glass in my hand, and I nodded as I took a swig of the silky brown liquid. It burned the back of my throat, and I almost gagged on it but when it slipped down my throat, it began to warm me from the inside and definitely helped with the trauma.
“I really don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t turned up,” I admitted, and I felt myself beginning to shake even more as images began to go through my head all over again of what might have happened if he hadn’t turned up. I distantly remembered wondering where Flash could have gotten to and why the bouncer wasn’t around to help me but then I remembered the huge queue that had been waiting to be let in and knew there was no way he would have even been able to hear me over all the noise they were making, not to mention the music blaring from the club. I was lucky that Major had been able to hear me from down the alley or I would have been done for.
“Don’t worry about it.” Major wrapped his arm around my shoulder as though he realized that I really was in need of a little comfort right now. “I’ve got you.”
It was nice to simply be held by a man without the knowledge that he wanted something more from me. From the way that Major had spoken to me in the alley, I knew he wasn’t interested in me for anything like that and it was a pleasant relief to simply be able to be myself around a man who didn’t see me as something he simply wanted to stick his dick inside. To him, I was an equal. Yes, I was his boss, but I was also his equal, or at least that was how he made me feel.
I found myself turning my face up toward his and before I even had a chance to realize what I was doing, my lips pressed firmly against his. His body stiffened against my own and for a moment everything seemed to hang in time and space. We were simply pressed against each other, holding each other, kissing each other.
Then Major suddenly pulled away and shook his head, turning his gaze away from me and unwrapping his arms from around me. I instantly felt disappointment wash over me as he pushed himself to his feet. “I can’t allow that to happen. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears pricked in the corners of my eyes. I had no idea why I felt the need to cry. Perhaps it was because of the trauma I had just been through or the fact that the guy I was so attracted to had just rejected my advances. There was no way I was going to cry in front of Major Lawsen of all people. “I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“We’ll chalk it up to the alcohol,” Major sighed, and I was relieved to have that excuse at least.
“Perhaps I should just go home.” I pushed myself to my feet and unwrapped myself from his jacket to hand it back to him. I couldn’t help but admire the way Major averted his gaze from my sudden state of undress. There weren’t many men on the planet who would have the strength to do such a thing.
“I don’t like the thought of you going home in this state on your own, and I’ve had too much to drink to give you a lift even if my truck wasn’t still at Tommy’s bar.” Major shrugged his shoulders.
“I can call myself a cab,” I protested but the second I reached into my handbag for my cell phone, I realized it was almost dead.
“There’s no way you are getting in the back of a cab with a pervy taxi driver looking like that,” Major gestured at me, without glancing down, and I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment, “No, you can stay here for the night and in the morning, I’ll grab my truck from Tommy’s and take you home.”
“But we have work in the morning,” I protested, “I can’t be late.”
“Yo
u are the boss. Of course, you can be slightly late.” Major scowled at me. “I’m sure nobody would even notice if you just gave them a flutter of those dark eyelashes of yours.”
“I might be a woman but that doesn’t mean that’s how I get the job done,” I protested, and I placed my hands on my hips, standing a little taller before I realized that my breasts were popping out of my ripped dress even more. I quickly adjusted my position to hide them a little better.
“It was just a suggestion,” Major said with his hands raised in surrender. “Don’t shoot me for being a typical guy.”
Something about Major Lawson that told me he was far from being a typical guy. I didn’t know many men who would have a half-naked woman in their hotel room and not try to sleep with her, even if she was his boss.
“If you are going to hold me against my will, you can at least tell me where I can sleep,” I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest in an attempt to cover up most of my nudity.
“You can take the bed.” He gestured over to the four-poster bed on the other side of the room. “I’ll take the couch.”
“No, I’ll take the couch,” I protested, “This is your hotel room and I am an intruder.”
“You are a guest, so do as I say and take the bed,” Major ordered and I saw a flash of that anger that had rescued me in the alleyway earlier that evening.
“All right! All right! Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” I told him, and I couldn’t help but smile at the way his eyes flashed with anger all over again. Score for me.
“You women can be so infuriating sometimes.” He glared at me, and I found myself wanting to goad him on some more but the yawn that ripped from my throat stopped me. “Get yourself to bed, and I’ll fish out something for you to slip over that dress in the morning.”
“There is no way I am sleeping nude in your hotel room,” I told him. “Have you got anything I can wear tonight?”
