by Anya Summers
Spencer chuckled and Jack fought back the urge to throw a punch. He had said something to that effect. After Spencer had destroyed the bull.
“Piss off,” he said without a lot of heat behind it. Spencer was right. He was acting like an idiot tonight.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you’re not taking me up on the offer, I’m heading out. Meghan’s waiting on me.”
“I still can’t believe you’re married,” Jack said, feeling more than a little like the last man standing.
Spencer shrugged. “I’m enjoying it more than I ever thought I would. Maybe you should give it a try.”
Jack recoiled. He might think that Rayna was hot as hell and that he would like nothing more to have a few sweaty bouts with her in his bed, but that didn’t mean he wanted to legally tie himself down. And perhaps, he hadn’t evolved as much as he thought he had during his time away due to the gunshot wound if this was his knee-jerk reaction.
At Jack’s horror, Spencer chuckled. “I’m going to enjoy watching you with her. And dude, you deserve to be happy. If that’s what you want, I say go after it.”
Now that was a thought. “Get on out of here. Give Meghan my best.”
“Will do.” Spencer left him sitting at the table. His horror was a knee-jerk reaction. He had to admit, a part of what he had been feeling, for longer than since he’d been shot, was lonely. Over the last few years, every single one of Jack’s buddies had gotten married and were making babies. Carter and Jenna had just had their second kid, little Emma. Mason and Emily followed with their little boy, Max, a few weeks after. Cole and Mia were expecting a little girl in August. And he was sure the rest of the bunch weren’t far behind.
They would all rather be at home with their wives than out at the club. This place had been such a fixture in their lives. A place where they would meet up for drinks and a few good fucks. Suddenly Jack felt incredibly old and alone.
“Can I get you another beer or interest you in anything else?” Jack turned his head and absorbed the knockout impact from Rayna’s eyes. He’d always thought she had sad eyes, for all her bravado. But now he knew why.
She brought out his protective and possessive instincts like no other woman he’d ever met.
His initial gut reaction to her question, the way his dick twitched again at her nearness, was that the first response to her question would be yes: her bent over the nearby sawhorse with her ass bare.
Jack knew he was in deep shit. The last thing he could do was screw the woman he was trying to protect. But someone should tell his dick that because it wasn’t listening to him.
Chapter 6
Rayna breathed a sigh of relief when it was finally her time to clock out for the night. Business had been steady for a Tuesday night. Between her two jobs, she had put in more than twelve hours today. Her feet and back ached at the abuse. One would think her body would be used to doing it after all this time but it wasn’t in the slightest bit.
Plus, she had been uneasy all night. Why was that?
Because of Jack, the hot, melt her panties off, detective whose hazel gaze had tracked her movements all night long. It was unnerving. She’d felt like she was under a microscope the entirety of her shift. This was the first time she had ever seen him in the club with his shirt on. A pity, really, because his chest and shoulders were among the finest she’d ever come across. Although having his chest covered didn’t diminish the potency of his presence, with his tawny, sun-kissed hair, stubble, direct stare and, the most important piece of all, the way he exuded testosterone like most men breathed air. He was an alpha manly man to the core of his being. Jack made her body go haywire whenever he was near.
Yet tonight was the first time since she’d started working here that he didn’t get his freak on with one of the subs. He had sent Tibby off with what amounted to a pat on the head while staring at Rayna all night long. Why?
She dismissed the idea that he could be interested in her. Rayna had given him no signals that she could think of—other than having dinner with him tonight, offering to buy him steak, and then offering massage therapy for his injury. Those had been harmless. In the almost two years she had lived in Jackson, they had barely spoken to each other. No more than a handful of conversations, nothing that warranted any interest from him. They had been more the friend of a friend acquaintances type, where they said hello and then ended up in different parts of the gathering where they didn’t have to mingle with one another.
She had waited on him at the club and at the diner a few times, come to think of it. But still, nothing that would inspire his rapt attention. And while they had enjoyed each other’s company earlier in the evening and the air had been congenial, she didn’t think a simple conversation over some brats was akin to foreplay.
It begged the question; was he interested in her? He’d turned Tibby down tonight. None of the single Doms in the place turned Tibby down when she gyrated their way. Rayna liked Tibby, she was a hoot to be around and impressed the hell out of her with how she balanced her needs and raising a daughter on her own.
Then again, for all Rayna knew, it could be what he had mentioned earlier, that he was bored out of his mind for company while he was on medical leave. Perhaps he was still in enough pain that sex was off the table for him.
She tried to imagine the sexy detective being forced to abstain when she knew he had a healthy sex drive. Nope. She couldn’t picture it. Not after witnessing him in more than a couple scenes. Then again, he had been shot and nearly died. Who was she to measure another person’s pain levels?
So either he was interested, or he was still hurt from his injuries and needed company.
She opted to go with the latter explanation, because she had no idea what to do with the former. Rayna hadn’t had sex in forever—four years, to be exact. And the thought of being on the receiving end of his wicked passion made her knees tremble.
She grabbed her purse from her locker and stuffed her tip haul inside it. Not bad money for a weeknight. It was one of the reasons she didn’t mind wearing the skimpy outfits, doing so got her better tips. And she didn’t care that she was using her body to make money. Luckily for her, she had a good figure which she maintained through exercise. Long ago she had learned, if you couldn’t beat the bad guys physically, you had to make sure you could run faster. In the basement of her townhome, she had her very own gym set up, with a treadmill, elliptical, bench and free weights. She tried to get a ninety-minute session in four days a week. Since she worked on her feet, it was more than enough.
Plus, most of the time, for a job like this one, where she showed a little skin, the bosses tended not to ask a whole lot of questions or dig too far with the background checks. The WITSEC program was thorough in building a person’s new persona. But there was always that fear present that there would be a glitch.
Especially with people like her boss, Spencer. He ran a thorough background check, but for different reasons. It was more about protecting the clientele because of the exclusivity of the club and what they did here. All her background information checked out, courtesy of the US Marshalls, although it had been the FBI who had sent her into witness protection.
She retrieved her keys from her purse as she walked to the elevator and rode the lift to the main floor. It was almost two in the morning. And tomorrow, she could sleep in. Hallelujah! She had the day off from the diner on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Her days off from the club were on Thursdays and Sundays.
That left her those days free to do her day trading. She had turned the thirty grand—half of what the government had provided to get her set up again—into nearly a hundred grand in the last two years, playing the market.
She pushed open the back door, mindful of the darkened parking lot. There were street lamps in the corners of the lot but beyond that the alleyways were dark, black, and full of shadows. Most people weren’t afraid of the dark, thought that nothing bad truly happened in them. Rayna knew better. She scanne
d the parking lot as she walked to her Jeep Cherokee. An owl hooted in the distance. Nights in Jackson Hole were quiet. The majority of the tourists were already back at their hotels, sleeping.
The scrape of a booted foot against pavement made her jump. Her heart racing, she searched for where the sound originated, telling herself as she did so that she was panicking for nothing. Her breath caught in her throat as panic crawled up her chest. Against one of the alley walls there was the distinct outline of a man in the shadows. He leaned against the wall. He wasn’t moving, just staring in her direction, his face hidden by shades of pitch-black night.
A torrent of adrenaline, fueled by terror, burst through her system. Rayna didn’t hesitate. She raced over to her vehicle, keeping an eye trained on the man. He stood still as a tomb. Not moving. Just watching her. It made her skin crawl.
Rayna climbed into her vehicle. Hit the locks and slid the key in the ignition. She kept checking the man. Her hands shook as she started her car. She backed out of the parking spot, then saw the man move and begin walking toward her.
Holy shit!
He was coming after her. What did he want?
She threw the car in drive and peeled out of the parking lot as if the hounds of hell were nipping at her tailpipe. She sped down the alley in the opposite direction, not caring that she was going the wrong way or if she got pulled over. She would be more than happy to get stopped for a ticket and explain the guy after her in the alley. Perhaps she should call the police and tell them about the stranger. She glanced in her rear-view mirror.
Where had he gone?
Shit.
Rayna turned onto the main drag and continued to look over her shoulder every few seconds. Who was the man? Why had he been standing there? And why had it appeared like he had been standing, waiting for her?
The drive back to her place was the longest, most tense she had experienced in years. She pulled into the driveway, but only because there hadn’t been any cars behind, following her.
Jesus! Did she need to call David?
Maybe.
Spooked out of her mind, she exited her vehicle with her keys in her hand. She glanced over her shoulder once more, shaking so badly she thought she was going to be ill.
And ran into a solid, warm wall of muscle.
Rayna let loose the scream that had been trapped inside. It was bloodcurdling, and loud enough to wake the dead. She’d been fighting it back since she first spied the man in the alley. And for one horrible, terrible moment, she thought he had followed her home and she’d missed it somehow in her panic.
“Hey, Rayna. What’s wrong? It’s me. What happened?” Jack’s soothing, deep bass filtered through her fright. Strong, capable hands held her biceps.
Fighting against the terror decimating her control, she lifted her eyes and stared up into Jack’s steady gaze. She shook her head, striving to beat back the fear and losing the battle. Tremors racked her body.
“I’m sorry. You startled me. There was a guy in the alley by the club that I thought was watching me when I left. I didn’t see his face or anything, just his outline in the shadows. He started to approach me when I got into my car. It freaked me out. I think I broke a few laws speeding. Then you came walking up and I didn’t see you.”
She inhaled oxygen into her lungs, trying to corral her panic back under control. Her mind kept telling her body one thing, and her body basically gave her mind the middle finger.
“A man in the alley? Did you notice anything about him at all?” In the half light from her front porch, she watched his gaze flip from concerned neighbor to cop eyes. If she would have blinked, she would have missed it. She knew that look well. Remembered it. She trusted that look.
“No. Like I said, the alley was dark beyond the parking lot. You know how it looks this late at night. I’ve never had any problems until tonight. It weirded me out, is all. I’m sorry I screamed, I wasn’t expecting anyone here.” The incident had more than weirded her out, it had scared the hell out of her. She couldn’t get her trembling under control.
“Have you ever seen him or anyone else before, standing outside the club like that?”
“No. If he was there before tonight, I never noticed him. And I always look.” She never forgot that bad things could and did happen to anyone at any time.
Jack released her arms and took a step back. His face was stern and filled with confident authority. She wanted the warmth of his body back. It was ninety degrees and she was chilled to the bone in her fright. He said, “If you see something like that again, immediately go back into the club and get one of the guys to walk you to your car. I want you to promise me that you will do that.”
“I will. I swear. Sorry for screaming at you. I’ll get out of your hair.” Rayna left him standing in the middle of her driveway. She sensed an epic meltdown was on its way and did not want any witnesses. She’d not had one of them in years. She had worked hard to push past her fears. But this had dredged everything back up.
Rayna made it to her front door. It took her three tries to get the key in the lock, her hand trembled so badly. She pushed open the door and her throat closed as she stared at the vacant space. She hesitated. Her heart thumped a wicked beat. And she hated the fear the most.
“Jack,” she whispered, her throat raw and weak as she turned back to him.
“Problem?” He had not moved from his spot on the driveway.
She sighed. “I hate to ask but after everything, would you make sure my place is empty?”
“That I can do,” he said and sauntered over, his long legs eating up the distance.
She held the front door open for Jack, worrying her bottom lip. He entered and infused the space with his presence. He intimidated her, mainly because of the desire she felt toward him. But in this instance, his calm, steady presence was exactly what she needed.
She stayed downstairs while he checked, leaning against the kitchen island, her arms wrapped in front of her body in a protective measure. Her anxiety was sky high. His footsteps creaked upstairs. The sound of doors opening and closing reached her ears, which meant he was checking in her closets. Hopefully he looked under the bed too.
She held her breath when he jogged back down the stairs and joined her in the kitchen.
“Anything?” She searched his face, feeling like she had been stretched thin with fear.
“No. Everything is clear. You should be good for the night.”
Her shoulders slumped and her knees gave out.
Jack caught her before she hit the ground. He pulled her up and tugged her into his arms. “Hey, you’re all right,” he said, his voice soothing as he rubbed a hand down her back. His warmth, his strength, surrounded her.
She wanted to burrow into him. Tremors wreaked havoc on her system. Her breath came in shuddering gasps. And through it all, Jack held her, let her lean on him. It had been years since she had leaned on anyone. She’d had to be strong for so long that she wanted to stay like this for days. Let someone else worry for a change of pace.
“I’ve got you. No one is going to hurt you. Not on my watch,” he murmured.
She clung to him until well after her tremors had subsided. He smelled like a sandalwood forest after a spring rain, and raw, untamed alpha. His scent made her want to keep her face burrowed against his chest. She rose out of her panic attack and realized that at some point she had wrapped her arms around him, her hands gripping his back. His extremely rock-solid, muscular back.
She became physically aware of him as a man and his arms enveloped her.
Rayna shifted, lifting her face until their eyes met. The air grew heated and dense with need. This close, she could discern golden flecks amidst the deep emerald green and nutmeg brown of his hazel gaze.
Inside her body, tendrils of heat stirred. They were lined up, hips to torso. He towered over her, making her feel delicate and protected. When was the last time she had felt safe? It had been too many years to count, before the breaking apart of her world.
Rayna wondered what it would be like to be reckless, to toss away her common sense and give in to the carnal heat rising between them.
Frozen in indecision, her glance kept dipping to his firm mouth.
No. She couldn’t do this. He was a cop and would dig into her background too easily. What if he discovered who she really was? It would be a disaster in the making. Rayna released a pent-up breath and took a step back. His hands slid off her slowly as he retreated.
She gave him a tepid smile. “Sorry for the meltdown. I know it was silly of me.”
He shook his head. “Rayna, no, it’s not. You had a scare tonight. Your response to that is understandable. Don’t be sorry. I’m glad I was here to help. Would you feel better if I stayed here tonight?”
“What?” she sputtered as images of the two of them in her bed filled her mind.
The corners of his mouth turned up, like he’d surmised what she had been thinking. “On the couch,” he clarified.
“Oh, um.” A blush rose in her cheeks. She felt the heat flush her face, causing further embarrassment to flood her system. How should she respond when in truth, she wasn’t as opposed to the idea of him in her bed as she would have liked? And that there was a part of her that was a teensy bit disappointed that he hadn’t meant that exactly.
“I think I should be all right. But thank you for the offer.” She wanted to stomp her foot that her voice had sounded breathy and not at all firm and in command, as she would have liked.
“Give me your phone.”
“Why?” she asked, suspicion lacing her voice. She couldn’t help it.
He gave her a look. The only way she could describe it was badass alpha ready to go Dom on her. Like he would make her, and she would enjoy every second of it. It was only her phone, not the entire contents of her safe deposit box.
He scowled. “Just hand me your phone.”
Fine. She would do it his way. She yanked it out of her purse and handed it over with a raised brow. What did he intend to do with it? Listen to all her audiobooks?
