by Megan Hart
“Explain it to me, then.”
She didn’t have to. She owed him nothing but her protection. “It’s not something I would do again without considering all the ramifications.”
“You told me, ‘Once you’re mine, you’re mine all the way.’”
Nina’s brow furrowed. “Yes. That’s true.”
“But not about fucking,” Ewan said. “Or at least, not about fucking me.”
This had gotten more serious than she’d intended it to be, so she considered her words carefully as she met his gaze. “No. But it’s still true.”
Ewan drained his glass and poured another while the server brought in an enormous cake frosted with white. Nina could smell the lemon at once, and her taste buds smarted, but she grinned. Lemon cake was the one she liked best.
“My favorite,” she said.
“I know. You’re not the only one who did homework.” Ewan asked also for coffee, and the server disappeared back into the kitchen.
Nina shook her head. “Not sure if I should be flattered or concerned. Now you know all my secrets.”
“Most of them,” Ewan corrected. “Not all.”
She glanced at him as she sliced two thick pieces of cake and gave one to each of them. “And here I thought I really didn’t have any.”
“Everyone has secrets,” Ewan said and waited until the server had left the coffee and disappeared again before pouring them each a cup.
They both sat back in their chairs with the cake and coffee, and the next couple minutes were silent, without conversation. Nina didn’t mind. They’d started off light and flirty and ended up going a little more serious than she’d meant to. Besides, the cake was above and beyond delicious and the coffee . . .
“Real coffee,” she murmured, sipping. “So, so good.”
“I trust you with my life,” Ewan said, somewhat abruptly.
Nina paused in relishing the coffee, both her hands wrapped around the cup. “I’m glad. And honored.”
“I don’t want there to be anything that comes between us that would affect that,” Ewan continued.
“Because you think that if we were intimately involved I wouldn’t be able to keep you safe?” She shook her head in protest, but he interrupted her.
“No. I trust your skills and talents no matter what else is going on . . .”
“Thank you.”
He gave her a look that seemed meant to shut her up until he’d finished, so she went quiet.
“I’ve seen you work. I fully believe that no matter what was happening, you’d be able to protect me from any harm. I also believe you’re entirely capable of separating intimacy from the job.” Ewan’s gaze pinned her. “And I’ve certainly had my share of casual encounters. Go ahead, make a joke if you want.”
“I don’t need to make a joke,” Nina answered. “I don’t care much about your love life. It’s really not any of my business, and I shouldn’t have made a joke about it before, either.”
“The tabloids make a big deal about my relationships not lasting. Money can’t buy love. That sort of thing.”
“You said yourself you didn’t believe love could last. Why should you let those sites bother you?” Nina asked with a scowl.
Ewan sipped coffee and shook his head. “I don’t really care about any of that. Any of the women I’ve taken out were interested in my money, and I knew that right up front. We usually had a generous agreement between us. An understanding. The few, the very few, times I ever thought about trying to make it work with someone seriously, it ended pretty quickly. Usually by them, usually because they said I was too distant. Too occupied with my work. A few of them said I didn’t have a sense of humor.”
“They were wrong,” Nina said.
Ewan looked pleased, then frowned. “Most of them also complained about my lack of emotional connection.”
Nina took a bite of cake, enjoying the rich frosting and delicious tang of lemon. She sipped coffee. “Did you tell them what you told me? About not believing love can last?”
“Some of them,” he said. “I stopped bothering when it became clear that even if I did tell them there was no possibility of our relationship ever becoming more than physical, they didn’t believe me. Women always think they’re going to be the one to change a man.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Nina told him. “I can’t fall in love with you, remember? So even if I did go to bed with you, and trust me, if I did, it would blow your mind, you wouldn’t have to worry about me trying to make it into something more.”
She’d been teasing him, but this time, Ewan didn’t so much as crack a grin. “But you’re not going to.”
“No,” she told him and waited to see if his ego would prompt him to ask her why.
“Does it bother you? Knowing about me and other lovers?”
“No.”
It did bother him, she thought. “I can sense the change in your temperature, not to the exact degree, but enough. I can, if I focus just right, hear how fast your heart is beating. I can’t tell a hundred percent if someone’s lying, but I can generally get a very good idea if it’s likely.”
“You think I’m lying?”
“I don’t know why it would bother you to know that I have, in the past, gone to bed with a client while on the job, but there’s something you should understand. This . . .” She gestured at herself, her gear, the table, the room, then let her hand settle on her harness with her fingers touching her shockgun. “All of this is not the job. You are the job. And so long as I am on this job, you are my priority. Whatever you need to keep you safe, that’s what I’ll do.”
* * *
“Not including fucking me.” Ewan’s words fell flatly off his tongue and tasted sour beneath the sweetness of the lemon cake he’d had the kitchen make especially for Nina.
She frowned and dragged her fork through the last of the icing, then licked it off the tines carefully before setting it back on her plate. “If fucking you saved your life, yes, I would do it.”
He barked out a short, sharp, and harsh laugh. “Somehow I can’t really imagine a scenario where that would be necessary.”
Nina gave him a brief sideways glance he could not interpret and sat back in her chair with a hand on her lean belly. “They seem to make it happen in a lot of terrible viddyporn.”
Ewan got up from the table. The dishes rattled. “I’m not in the habit of begging for anything. Much less sex. I was just asking out of curiosity.”
“Of course you were,” she said, clearly scoffing and calling him out. “And because I didn’t leap at the chance, suddenly you didn’t mean it. Are you going to tell me I’m ugly, now, too? Toss in a fat-shaming comment? Oh, I know. You could imply or come right out and call me a slut because I have fucked other people, but I just said no to you.”
Her words, measured and steady, were a hail of bullets, each of them hitting their mark. Ewan took a step back, his hands going up as though he could protect himself from that onslaught. His stomach twisted, but although he opened his mouth to deny her accusations, a part of him knew, ashamedly, that she wasn’t entirely wrong.
Nina hadn’t finished. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Donahue. If I choose to kiss you, or if I choose to let you touch me, or if I choose to fuck you, those are my choices to make. I do not choose to be with someone intimately who’s going to wish as soon as it’s over that we’d never done it to begin with. Do you understand me? If we are together, it will be because I feel like you really want me, Nina Bronson. Even if it’s only for the time we are together, I’m not going to get involved with someone who doesn’t see me, the entire me, not just a convenient place to get his dick wet.”
Everything about her had set him on edge. He couldn’t get the memory of her straddling him out of his head, but now it was overlaid with an imagined scene of her with someone else. Many someone elses. He watched her finish her coffee with a contented sigh. When she slicked her tongue along her lower lip, muscles low in Ewan’s stomach tightened. His
cock thickened. He made a conscious effort at slowing the sudden hitch of his breath, too aware that she could probably sense his arousal the same way she did a lie.
“Brandy and cigars in the library?” Nina asked abruptly, and it took him a second or so to follow her line of thought.
How was it that despite his desire to keep a distance between them, to ignore the way she turned him on, Nina could also get him laughing with seemingly no effort at all? Genuine laughter, not forced or faked. She joined him, the crinkles at the corners of her gleaming amber eyes so sexy he couldn’t stand it.
“You don’t drink on the job, and I only have vape cigars,” Ewan said as she pushed back from the table.
“How about a viddy, then? Something funny,” Nina offered. “Seems to me that we could both use a good laugh.”
In the media room, she helped herself to the touchpad on the viddy screen and pulled up a popular series that Ewan had heard a lot about but had never watched. Without asking permission, Nina raided the snack cabinet for some popcorn and fizzy drinks, then settled onto the synthleather sofa to prop her feet on the ottoman. She gestured for him to join her, and he did.
To his surprise, because he’d thought the premise of the program was so stupid it couldn’t possibly be funny, they spent the next half hour guffawing. He snuck a look at her while the next episode loaded. She’d made herself completely at home, her face alight with humor, and yet he knew without a doubt that at any second she could turn from giggling to fighting.
“You never take that off?” he asked, pointing to the harness and all her gear. He’d received a list of what she carried when he’d signed the contract but had to admit that he had no idea where half the items were, even if he believed she had them on.
“Only to shower, and even then it’s close at hand. It’s waterproof, anyway,” she said, tapping the straps.
“Doesn’t look very comfortable.”
Nina stretched, tipping her chin up to the ceiling for a few seconds before turning her face toward his. “It’s custom sized and built to exactly match my specs. It’s almost like a part of myself, at this point.”
“It’s got to be heavy,” he said.
Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yeah. It’s heavy.”
“I’m sorry,” Ewan said suddenly. “For the conversation at dinner.”
She nodded, mouth twisting. “We’re in a weird sitch, you know? Artificially intimate in a lot of ways, but it doesn’t automatically cross over to a true friendship. Or attraction. It’s easy to let it override the reality of things. Easy to confuse this with closeness, either emotional or physical, but we both have to remember it’s not real.”
“You say that as though it’s something I could turn on or off, like a switch.” He wondered if that was how she saw him, as a man who could control his desires with such precision. Actually, until Nina had come along, he’d prided himself on being exactly that sort of man.
“I think your parade of exes who all told you that you’re incapable of making an emotional connection with them might prove at least part of a truth,” she said after a moment. “You can turn off your feelings. It must have been hard and scary and depressing, to lose the last two people who were supposed to be protecting you. They did their jobs and lost their lives, and maybe you think you don’t feel anything about that at all, but I bet you do.”
His throat closed. His eyes burned. He’d sent money, lots of it, to the families of the two men who’d died in his service. He’d made sure to take care of those who’d been left behind. Yet until this moment with Nina, he’d never spoken aloud about how he felt about any of it.
“I am a selfish, self-absorbed prick,” Ewan said aloud and blew out a breath of something that felt like relief. “I should feel guilty for their deaths, and I don’t.”
Nina sat up on the couch, leaning toward him. “You hired them to do a job, and it was their lack of attention or skill or simple bad fortune that they died while doing it. Anyone who takes on work like this knows the risks. You can’t be held accountable for it. You’re not the person who arranged the attacks. Unless you were being an arrogant dingle and ignoring their advice and putting them in danger because of it, then you don’t have to feel guilty. Were you? Because I think you and I both know that you have a wee issue with taking orders.”
“They weren’t as strict as you,” he said.
She smiled. “Uh-huh. But admit it, you kind of like that about me.”
Denial rose to his lips, especially because he was fairly sure she was teasing him again, but instead Ewan said, “I do.”
He expected laughter, perhaps more gentle teasing. Instead, Nina weighed him with a steady, intense gaze. She smiled, her head tilted. Unexpectedly, she leaned to cup his cheek for the barest of moments, the touch of her fingers enough to make him take a long, deep breath and close his eyes, but only for as long as it took for her to sit back in her place.
“And you don’t like that you like it,” she said. “I understand.”
She’d accused him of not understanding her already tonight, and he thought about doing the same to her. The problem was, Ewan wasn’t sure he understood himself, at least not about this. He shook his head.
“Nothing about you is anything like I thought it would be,” he told her.
Nina tilted her head for a second. “Good.”
It wasn’t good. It was distracting. Disturbing. It left him unsettled, and Ewan Donahue did not like to be anything but in control. Another flash of that same memory nudged him, of Nina dropping him to the ground and straddling him. He thought it would be in the back of his mind forever, that moment, and his reaction to it.
“You don’t like that, either,” she said softly as though she’d read his mind.
It took him a second to realize she didn’t mean his feelings about having her on top of him. Ewan pushed back to get some distance between them. “I don’t. None of this is what I wanted, or thought would happen. I hired a service. That’s all. You came recommended as the best.”
“I am the best,” she told him. “But only you can decide if I’m the right choice for you.”
There were layers of meaning in her words that Ewan did not want to explore, so instead he turned his face toward the viddy screen and shut her out.
CHAPTER NINE
The blond man in the ridiculously trendy outfit was trying not to show it, but Nina had infuriated him. She hadn’t put her hands on him or anything like that, but she had put him in his place, and it was not the one he was used to. Nina didn’t give a good onedamn about the daggers shooting from Petro Vanslyke’s eyes, nor did she care about the insults he was dropping. The rest of the guests at Ewan’s dinner party, two women and one other man, weren’t quite as vociferous as Vanslyke about their opinions, but on the other hand, none of them contradicted him. Ewan’s guests were all donors to his campaigns, so it was no shock to her that they were all bigots, nor that he would be interested in keeping them happy so they’d keep funding his lobbying efforts. What surprised her was how much it bothered her, the longer the jabbing went on, that Ewan was not making any attempts at defending her.
She didn’t need him to, of course. She hadn’t needed anyone to stand up for her in years. Still, Ewan was simply allowing this guy to make snide comments, one after the other, without so much as a blink, and no matter how much she didn’t want it to, it was digging into her guts.
Ewan had been distant and cool with her over the past few days, ever since the heart-to-heart in the media room. Nina had taken the hint and backed off. Way off. She’d caught him looking at her a few times when she knew he thought she wasn’t paying attention, but she didn’t have the luxury of being able to really ignore him.
She would never get used to it. Being made to feel as though she didn’t quite make the grade. She didn’t accept it; she did not believe it. But she would never be able to simply toss it off as though it didn’t matter what anyone thought about her. Ewan could deny he’d meant
it, but she’d been there the day he had argued, while the whole world watched, that she was somehow less than human. He didn’t need to have meant her specifically for it to have been, and to remain, personal. Compared to his grouchy refusal to comply in the first week of this gig, these past few days of chilly distance also felt personal. Gone were the little jokes and teasing, and she hadn’t dared drop any innuendos.
It was not her job to prescreen any of these people as dangerous; that was up to Ewan’s security staff. She was here to take care of the problems that might arise if the sec team hadn’t done their jobs. She’d made sure to scan each of the guests upon arrival for any hidden weapons or signs of aggression toward Ewan. Too bad she couldn’t scan them for being sphincters, because she’d have banned Vanslyke from the premises immediately.
“I had a friend once who allowed his dog to sit at the dinner table with us,” Vanslyke said with a steady gaze on Nina.
She’d taken the seat next to Ewan, which put her directly across from Vanslyke. She was more likely to kick him in the shins than play footsie, but for now kept her boots tucked neatly beneath her chair. She might not be dressed for dinner like the rest of the guests, and it didn’t seem likely that she’d grown up with the same social and financial backgrounds as they had, but at least she did have manners and knew how to use them.
“I had a friend who kept his parrot on his shoulder all the time,” piped up one of the female guests from her end of the table. She wore a blue tunic and had piled her silver hair into a tangle of curls that Nina knew for a fact could easily be removed as a single unit and stored in a special box. She’d added a few electives to her eyes, including a rotating band of color around the iris. She’d done something to her skin, too, an overlay of some sort that shifted the subtle bronze tones of her natural skin color into an iridescent spectrum that changed in the light. “It was very messy.”
“But could it speak?” asked the man sitting at the end of the table. Dima something-or-other. He didn’t look up from his plate, his thick dark hair hanging over his eyes.
