Finding Serenity

by Eden Butler

  God, I’m a freaking idiot.

  “You’re smarter than that. You had me pegged that day in the coffee shop, knew almost exactly what I’d done after I came home and yet you didn’t notice that the guy you just happened to meet tonight matches the description Mannie gave us.”

  Some badass I am, she thinks, falling to the bed. For all her rearing, for all the caution and warning her father had given her, Mollie let her frustration over her situation cloud her judgment. Thick knots collect and throb in her stomach, burning until she has to look away from him. She doesn’t want to confirm that he’s disappointed in her, that everything he thought about her was true.

  “Maybe you are more of a kid than I thought you were after all.” The second he said the words, Mollie knows he wants them back. Vaughn scrubs his face again before he moves from the dresser, tries touching her shoulder, this time seeming uninterested in doing more than apologizing. “I didn’t mean…”

  “I’m tired.” She doesn’t want to hear excuses. She doesn’t need them, she tells herself. Rejection was something she knew well. How often had it been directed at her over the years? Her mother, her sister, men who didn’t believe a girl would make much of a DJ; it had become a familiar sensation—little bits of her resolve eaten away by people who didn’t believe in her.

  “Just go, Vaughn. Leave me alone.” She brushes away his hand as it inches closer to her shoulder.

  “Mollie.”

  “God, will you just go?” And this time, he listens to her. This time he doesn’t argue. The door closes with a click and Mollie finally lets the quiet become a refuge.

  Vaughn doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s tried pushups. He’s tried distracting himself with something mindless on the television. He even dug in his duffle and got out his phone, hoping something loud and full of fury would keep his mind off of Mollie and the deflated, hopeless tone of her voice.

  Nothing worked. Pushups only pumped his blood until he had to stick his head under the sink in the kitchenette. He didn’t care about some rich rednecks making duck calls, insulting each other on television and Slipknot only made him want to punch someone.

  When the bathroom door clicks open, and Vaughn hears the racking sound of coughs, as if Mollie is choking on something, all his frustration, anxiousness dissipates, replaced with fear, with the quick thunder of his heart. It does not slow until he bursts into the room, but when he enters, sees Mollie, the jackhammer of his heart speeds for a different reason.

  An instinctual wild flash of lust moves right through him. Mollie is bent over the bed, her suitcase emptied on the mattress and a water bottle on the floor. With her free hand she holds a towel against her breasts, but it is not large enough to conceal all of that skin or wipe dry the small drips of water from her back.

  Her head whips in his direction and Vaughn tosses out a half-hearted excuse. “Sorry, I thought you were dressed. You were… um, coughing.”

  So not sorry, he thinks.

  “Drank too fast.” Mollie’s hold on the towel tightens and she turns away to glare at Vaughn from the mirror on the other side of the room. He can’t help it. There is so much skin, too many lines of muscle, toned curves that keep his eyes on her. He is frozen by the round curl of her ass, barely covered by the towel. A small slip of that terry cloth that Vaughn doesn’t think is accidental and he steps behind her, gaze locked with hers in the mirror.

  They watch each other and Vaughn doesn’t think that Mollie’s anger is still present. Not the way she’s looking at him. Not how she doesn’t tell him to leave. Not how her lips part and her breath accelerates. He’s been cruel, he knows that and if he is honest with himself, lashing out at her has as much to do with how that asshole stood too close to her as it does with her safety. He knows the look the guy gave her. He himself has looked at Mollie the same way more than once. Even more frustrating is how she has held on to her anger with him. He wants to see her smile again. Despite himself, despite everything that shouts at him to keep her at arm’s length, to keep things professional, Vaughn wants to put that smile back on Mollie’s face.

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” She blinks once when they continue to watch each other in mirror. Her skin calls to him like a song and he can’t help himself from reaching out to touch her when an errant drop of water slides down her neck. One touch, just a fingertip, and her skin is dry, then chills with a sprinkling of gooseflesh. He does that to her and the idea of him having any effect on her has him wanting to replace that finger with his mouth.

  “What do you want?” she says, tone soft, low. It is a loaded question that Vaughn knows better than to answer.

  “It doesn’t matter what I want.”

  “Why?”

  He can’t tell her the truth. Not if he doesn’t want her running off. Really, he is a pathetic excuse for a bodyguard. He couldn’t save Tony Williams in Afghanistan. He couldn’t save his father. He couldn’t save—Vaughn brushes the thought away, not wanting to let the past trip him up. Not now. Not with Mollie’s question hanging in the air. Why? Because he doesn’t deserve her. And the fear ran through him that perhaps he doesn’t deserve anyone, ever again.

  “I can’t have what I want. I can never have what I want, Mollie.” Despite his words, he touches her, his hand resting on her shoulder again. He likes the softness of her skin and the way she has forgotten how hopeless, how tired, he makes her. His t-shirt dampens against his chest when Mollie leans back, her neck exposed and tempting. “I want a lot of things. I want to taste this skin.” He kisses her shoulder. “This neck,” he leans down, places a small kiss right over her throat. “I wanted to kill that asshole tonight just for looking at you.” He looks in the mirror at her, hands circling her waist, fingers gripping the seam of the towel. “I knew that look. It was familiar.”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  His eyes snap to hers, the honesty of her question and the context behind it startling him. “What?”

  “Does it surprise you that someone could want me, Vaughn? You called me a kid. You think I’m a kid. Even after you saw I wasn’t, even after you said you were wrong, deep down, you still think that.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You do. No matter what you say, what you tell me, you still see me as not enough. Not near enough for you.” She turns around and he moves back, just a half step. She looks nothing like a kid now and reason begins to settle back in his mind. He needs to leave this room. He needs her to not move toward him the way she is. But he is paralyzed by the smell of her and the water dripping across her chest to disappear beneath the towel. “Even with all the times you told me how badass I was, you still think I’m untouchable, that I’m too young, too stupid for you.”

  Is she crazy? Did she miss that part just seconds ago when he kissed her skin? “I never said that. If I did, I didn’t mean it.” Brilliant, yes. Beautiful, yes, but she’s not too young and she sure as hell isn’t stupid. But the mission, it was the mission that had him pulling away from her, that had him restraining.

  This was a mistake, being here, watching her without guarding his expression. He knows she can see what he wanted. He knows she felt what he wanted just seconds ago when that round, supple ass was leaning against him. But he has a job to do. He has to protect her, to keep her safe. Everything hinges on her safety. If he can’t do that, then Mojo will pull out and all that Viv has worked for these past six months would be for nothing. “I don’t think that, but you’re right. You are untouchable.”

  “Because I’m a kid?”

  “Because you’re off limits.” That settles it. That should, he thinks, make her understand that no matter what he says or how badly he wants her, he can’t touch her again. Vaughn turns, the door just feet from him. He is almost there, just in reach of the space he needs to force between them. She has to see reason. She has to understand that the mission is what matters, not what either of them wants.

  “Vaughn?” There is something in her voice that is
different. Determination maybe? Certainty? Whatever it is, Mollie has never used that tone with him and he knows it would be a mistake to turn around. His gut tells him that turning around would disintegrate any hope of resistance. But her feet drag on the carpet and he can feel the soft wisp of her breath against his neck and he is helpless. He manages a glance, tells himself that is all he will allow her, but when he sees her face, sees how calm she is, how confidently she sets her shoulders, he moves, comes to face her fully. “I’m not a kid.” And then, she drops the towel.

  “Fuck.” It is the only word that Vaughn can manage to utter. It is the only thing to cross his mind as he watches that towel slip to the floor. Mollie stands before him completely naked, her skin still red from the hot shower. “What are you doing to me?” he asks her when he had better hold of his tongue.

  “What you want.”

  Any vestiges of the kid he thought he had met six months ago, is gone. She moves like a woman, touching him with certain fingers, with sweet swipes of her hands that threatens to make his knees give out. And when she presses against him, when the hard peaks of her nipples rub against his thin cotton t-shirt, Vaughn loses all sense of control. He can only think of burying deep inside her, of feeling every inch of skin his mouth can find. He shouldn’t give in. He shouldn’t threaten the case, but when Mollie takes his mouth, when her tongue slips inside to touch his, Vaughn stops caring about all the shit he shouldn’t do.

  In a tumble of limbs and groping hands, they move to the bed. Mollie’s hands are a flurry of movements, gripping his shirt, pulling him to her, fingers down on his stomach and he couldn’t stop her if he wanted. She pushes him against the mattress, knocks her clothes, her suitcase onto the floor and straddles him. His hands instantly cup her breasts.

  “You’re fucking perfect.” He tweaks a nipple to watch her reaction, loving how her eyes moves up, how she sucks on her bottom lip at the sensation. Vaughn sits up, grabbing her around the waist as he moves them back against the headboard.

  He hesitates just for a moment, not sure if he can manage to be slow, to be calm enough to make this last, and it is that small hesitation that has Mollie cocking her eyebrow at him and pulling on his neck so that their mouths are only inches apart. “What are you waiting for, Semper Fi?” A small, teasing peck and she nibbles on his lip. “Fucking touch me already.”

  “Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

  Her skin is softer than he imagined, feels like silk against his calloused fingers. He pushes away the thought that his hands are too rough to touch her, that his gnarled and scarred body would look sullied and broken against her flawless legs, her flat, tempting stomach. At the moment, he doesn’t care about anything but making her scream, about her coming around him.

  She tastes sweet, like vanilla, just a bit too much sensation that forces Vaughn to calm. But he doesn’t stop her from lowering his zipper or himself from latching on to those round, dark nipples.

  “You feel good.” Her voice is high, elevates as she grips him, pumps up and down his hard dick. “You feel fucking amazing.”

  He returns the touch, working his fingers up her thighs, teasing her clit with his thumb and Mollie’s hand quickens, shooting hot licks of sensation straight through him. Her moans rock around the room, urging him on, forward, to work faster, harder as she shakes on top of him, forgetting his body for a moment to concentrate on how he touches her, on the slip of his finger inside her.

  “Oh God. Shit.” And a minute later Vaughn watches her fall apart, dampening his fingers with the heady, intoxicating smell of her climax.

  He doesn’t let her come down from that high, doesn’t let her settle in the slightest. Vaughn moves their bodies, already shoving his jeans down his legs, freeing himself from his boxers before Mollie’s breathing returns to normal.

  “Shit,” he says, remembering that he hadn’t prepared, hadn’t thought that this was a remote possibility.

  “Wh-what?”

  Nostrils flaring in his heavy inhale, Vaughn looks down at Mollie who is already looping her legs around his, spreading herself wide for him. “I, fuck, I haven’t done this in a while. I don’t have anything.” He rests his forehead on her shoulder trying to control the throb already aching in his balls. “I don’t have a condom.”

  Mollie tugs on his hair, makes him look at her. “I’ve been with exactly four guys and the last time was seven months ago. I’ve been tested, I’m clean and on the pill and right now I give zero shits about not having a condom. Please, Vaughn, I need you.”

  “You sure? I’m clean too, but you sure?”

  “Fuck’s sake—” Mollie trails off, doesn’t finish her thought and moves her knee up, forcing him forward so that the head of his dick slips easily into her.

  “God.” One inch, maybe two and he’d be fully inside her. He can feel how wet she is, how her body would cradle him, and Vaughn smiles at the clear pleasure on her face, the way her downcast eyes watches them nearly joined. Before he completely enters, Vaughn moves her chin, makes her gaze meet his. “You sure you want this? I’m a dirty, fucked up Marine, Mollie. I shouldn’t be touching you.”

  “And I’m a trashy biker’s kid with a meth dealing daddy in prison. You sure you wanna touch me?”

  He laughs, moves his mouth just inches from her wet, full mouth. “Beautiful, I don’t ever want to stop touching you.”

  Vaughn arches back, encouraged by Mollie’s lithe fingers pulling his hips forward and the moment is nearly there, inches now keeping him out and he feels her squeeze, feels how tight she is as he moves further in.

  Suddenly his cell phone starts clanging with the god awful Pointers Sisters song, “We Are Family” Viv had assigned herself in his phone. A quick glance at the clock on the bedside table tells him something is wrong. Viv wouldn’t call at three a.m. unless something bad had happened.

  “Shit,” he shouts both at the impending trouble and at being forced away from Mollie’s welcoming body. Cringing at the instant coolness that slaps over his naked body when he rolls away from her, Vaughn pulls his cell from his jeans pocket on the floor and answers the call. “Viv? What’s wrong?”

  “Mr. Winchester, this is Emily, Ms. Winchester’s personal assistant. She’s been attacked. She’s asking for you.”

  There is a buzz working through his limbs. He isn’t shaking, isn’t letting fear overwhelm him, but there was a sense of dread, of wild terror that flashes scenarios of carnage through Vaughn’s mind.

  The last early morning call his sister had sent him made Vaughn vomit. Death. Loss, it all came to him a year ago with Viv’s four words: “Sweetie, Daddy didn’t make it.” Now Vaughn expects another string of words that could undo him. Viv is the only family he has left. She is what remains of his only blood. If she were—no. He won’t let himself think that way.

  At his side, Mollie has retreated back into herself. She keeps moving her gaze around the hallway, to the cops milling around. She doesn’t like them, he knows that, but there hadn’t been time to secure her anywhere. Bringing her to one of her friends would have raised too many questions and Vaughn didn’t trust the university’s security. They had started to hover around campus a week before and by the looks of them, Vaughn figured they were little more than rent-a-cops. So, he had been forced to keep Mollie with him. Besides, he had wanted to get to his sister.

  Casting a quick look at her, at the way her eyes surf around the hall as they speed down it, Vaughn wonders if it was more than the presence of law enforcement that has her on edge. Back at the hotel room, he’d nearly had her completely. He’d wanted it. She’d wanted it, but now there is this strange awkwardness that keeps them from even incidentally touching. Initially, he told himself it was because he was worried about Viv. Maybe he hadn’t acted like he was as sorry as she seemed to be that they didn’t get to finish what they started. Whatever it was, Mollie is pulling away from him, not giving him any indication that she wants his touch. That stings more than he thought it would, but he doesn’t hav
e time to figure her out right now.

  “Sammy?” The security guard nods to Vaughn as they reach just outside of Viv’s office. He is one of the good ones, one Viv had brought with her when she was promoted out of the public defender’s office. What remained of his hair is white and curled tightly against his scalp. He is missing three of his bottom teeth and his green security jacket looks too snug across his shoulders.

  Sammy claps Vaughn on the arm, his smile easy, and the gesture makes Vaughn relax just a bit. “She’s okay.” They walk through the front lobby of the D.A. offices and Sammy leads them past the secretary’s desk. “She was down in the parking garage and someone came at her. Thank God Emily was just behind her. Scared off whoever they were.” He opens the door for them and, spotting Mollie, he smiles. “How are you, pretty lady?” The old man’s flirting makes Vaughn smile. No way Mollie would be interested in a sixty-five year man, but the old bastard still seemed eager to try. “What you doing with this ugly son of a bitch?”

  “Pity fuck,” Mollie’s says, not missing a beat. She earns a hard laugh from the old man.

  “Oh, I like you, sweetheart.” His smile grows wider when she winks at him. “You tell me if this dumb Marine ain’t sweet to you. I’ll straighten him out.”

  “I’ll be sure to do just that. Thanks.”

  “Find your own girl, you old pervert,” Vaughn tells him with a grin, leading Mollie through the door and straight to where Viv reclines against a leather sofa. When she spots him, his sister slaps away the paramedic cleaning the blood from her forehead. But before Vaughn can reach her, Alex, Viv’s other assistant, steps in front of him.

  “Mr. Winchester, how are you?” This guy always annoyed Vaughn. The asskisser liked to ride coattails; was a pleaser who didn’t have ambition beyond scheduling Viv’s meetings and seeing how far his sister would take him. Vaughn thought Alex hoped that Viv’s ambitions ran higher than D.A. in a small Tennessee town. He also looked a bit too scrawny, a bit too stupid to do more than answer Viv’s phone.