by Marie Harte
John was surprised she was awake. She was still curled into his side, quiet, unmoving, but apparently cognizant.
Within just a few minutes Duncan pulled into her driveway. He circled the vehicle to retrieve John’s chair.
John’s face heated as they waited for him to shift off the seat and drop down. All of the attention should have been on Shannon, and her comfort. Instead, he was making her wait on him. He must have made some involuntary movement because she reached out and grabbed one of his hands, turning it palm up. She gasped at the sight of his ripped-up palms and seeping blood.
“Jeez, John. Why didn’t you say something?” Duncan growled.
His skin glinted with glass. When he looked at Shannon’s face, he was dismayed to see her eyes full of tears again. “Aw, Shannon, I’m fine. It’s no big deal.”
She shook her head and pursed her lips, then stepped behind his chair. “I know it pisses you off to be pushed, but you’re going to let me this time, John Palmer. Do not touch those wheels. Duncan, thank you for the ride.”
“No, problem, Shannon. I’m just glad we made it there when we did. Don’t worry about work. Take as long as you need. And John,” he continued, “I expect you to be with Shannon while she’s off. There’ll be two guards posted for the next forty-eight hours, as well.”
John snorted but didn’t argue. Of course he’d be with her. Actually, the guards would be welcome. The two of them could rest without worry.
Shannon rolled him up the ramp as Duncan pulled out of the driveway. Somebody had cleared it of snow while they were gone, but he gritted his teeth in humiliation. He was damn heavy and she’d been through ten hours of hell. Forward motion slowed at the top of the ramp and he reached down to help her, but she snapped at him to not touch. Biting his tongue, he crossed his arms over his chest, struggling not to completely lose his shit.
*
SHANNON PAUSED TO retrieve her cluttered key-ring from the pocket of the borrowed coat. Harper had secured the house when he reconned and given the keys to John. When he handed it to her, she’d gotten choked up at that glimpse of the familiar. And as she pushed him inside the entryway, she felt it again. She never thought she’d see home again. Tears dripped down her cheeks, but she brushed them away and straightened. John was hurt.
She didn’t realize until afterward where they’d kept her, less than five miles from her own house. She’d seen the glass on the ground, but it just hadn’t registered. Heck, John had probably had a hell of a time even getting to her with all the debris littering the warehouse floor. Her throat tightened at what he’d obviously gone through to get to her. She looked at the wheels of his chair. Glass glinted there as well.
“John, we have an issue.”
He turned his head to look up at her, and something about the way he looked, pissed and grumpy, made her heart ache. She pressed a solid kiss to his forehead before she motioned to the wheels of his chair.
“Fuck!”
She grinned at the familiar expletive and shook her head. “I think what we need to do is, you need to sit here for a minute while I go strip off these clothes and grab tweezers. Once we get as much as we can out of your hands maybe you can shift to my desk chair and we’ll work on the wheels.”
His solid jaw was clamped shut and he looked furious that she had to do all this for him, but he gave a tight nod. “Go ahead and hop in the shower. I’m not moving.”
As quickly as she could she went to her bathroom and ripped off her bloodstained clothes, shuddering at the clammy feel. Thoughts of Jimmy coming at her again clouded her mind, but she shoved them away and stepped under the spray. John needed her. And she needed the distraction of John needing her.
Within just a few minutes she had scrubbed and washed her whole body twice. She also took a few seconds to brush the sickness from her mouth. In the bedroom she slipped on a pale pink set of sweats, then went to the bathroom to gather medical supplies. Tweezers, gauze pads, a warm bowl of water, a paper cup and a towel. It wasn’t until she was leaving the room and saw where John had blasted the lock trying to get to her that she realized she harbored no fearful feelings of her bedroom, even though it was where she’d been taken.
John was in the same spot as before. He’d started taking the larger pieces of glass out himself, making a little pile on his jeans-clad thigh. Shannon swung the office chair from her desk on the other side of the room and positioned herself directly in front of him, her knees pressing against his. John glowered but held out his hands when she wiggled her fingers. “Don’t get cut,” he told her gruffly.
Shannon smiled at the words. He took care of her better than anybody ever had before. Even when she was trying to take care of him. “I’ll be fine. Just hold still.”
For a solid twenty minutes she hunched over his hands and plucked slivers from his bloody palms. He never said a word. The calluses he had built up maneuvering the chair had also kept him from feeling as much pain as a normal person probably would, and the bleeding was minimal. “I think it looked worse than it actually is.” She looked up at him with a smile and was taken aback by the intensity in his dark gaze.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he ground out.
Her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them away on her shoulders. “Not right now, damn it. I’ll never get through this without breaking down if you don’t talk about something else.”
He clamped his jaw shut and looked away, though she thought she caught a sheen of moisture in his eyes.
Blinking rapidly, Shannon took a deep breath and rinsed his hands in the water, running her own fingertips over the skin. It felt clear, but she had a feeling she’d missed a couple deep ones. She cleared her throat as she set the supplies away. “I think you’re good enough now to shift to this chair.”
John looked at the armless desk chair and frowned. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll brace it while you shift over. Just remember not to touch your wheels.”
A maneuver easier said than done. Even though she braced as hard as she could, John was a lot bigger than she was, and at one point they both almost went to the floor. But John’s strong arms saved them. Finally, he was settled in the seat.
They both then went to work on the wheels of his chair, which had a lot more glass in them than his hands had.
“I’ll have to get Chad to bring over my backup chair. This rubber is going to be Swiss cheese.”
Shannon snorted and nodded her head. “Wonderful ride, I’m sure.”
“Not!”
They laughed together and Shannon appreciated the normality. When his wheels were as clean as they were going to get them, he shifted back into his seat. Shannon surveyed the cup of green and brown glass and shook her head. Definitely not what she had planned to be doing tonight.
She waved a hand at him. The dark blue t-shirt he wore had bloodstains on it from contact with her shirt. “Why don’t you go take a shower?”
He nodded slightly and rolled away. “Stay in the house, okay?”
Shannon threw the cup away and rinsed the water from the bowl. His warning was not needed, though she did plan to check on the kittens in the garage.
Pickle was especially glad to see her, twining about her legs over and over again as she carried the kitten box inside. She picked up each of the little cats and fondled them beneath their chins, setting them to purring before she placed them back in the box. Boohini clawed his way to the top, demanding his share of the love, and Shannon sat down on the kitchen floor to cuddle. It seemed so mundane to be petting a kitten after the ordeal she’d been through, but she soaked up the quiet, broken only by his diligent purr. Her world began to right itself.
When John rolled into the kitchen twenty minutes later, she was stir-frying at the stove.
“I hope you’re hungry. I made a lot more than I’ll ever eat. Seems like the hunger just caught up to me.”
“I’m very hungry, actually. And it’s the adrenaline rush fading that’s made you hungry.”
/> She steamed rice in the microwave and threw a couple of eggrolls from the freezer into the toaster oven. Within a couple of minutes they were eating. Shannon actually ate more than she expected to, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Almost directly afterwards, though, tiredness began to set in. She glanced at the kitchen clock and was shocked that it was going on seven o’clock at night. She and John had been home for hours, though it felt like minutes. It was almost like she’d been wading through sludge.
John spoke, snapping her out of her reverie. “I think we should go lie down.”
Shannon nodded, tired beyond reason, but she didn’t move. John rolled to her side and motioned to his lap. With a sigh, she lay across his legs and wrapped her arms around his neck. Time completely stopped as she curled into him to absorb his heat, inhaling the woodsy scent of the body wash he used.
She must have dozed off because they were suddenly in her bedroom, and John was urging her to her feet to get under the covers. Shannon did as he directed, then reached out her hand. “Will you lie with me?”
“Yes.”
That one little word made her incredibly happy. A few minutes later, when John snuggled in behind her, she sighed in relief. She could relax now. Tension leached from her body as his warmth invaded her bones, and she drifted away.
*
JOHN WOKE TO Shannon curling into him, her hand across his belly. The house was silent other than the tick of a clock in the hallway. He looked down at her face resting against his chest. The moonlight filtering in gilded her features silver, and the tracks of tears glistened on her cheeks. “What’s wrong, babe?”
She rocked her head against his chest. “I just…didn’t actually think I’d have to kill anybody. I mean, you told me I might, but I never really considered it, you know?”
He heaved a heavy breath. Thoughts of young men saying the same thing to him years ago filtered through his mind. “Killing a person isn’t easy, but you have to be willing to step up and realize that your safety is paramount. If you hadn’t pulled that trigger, you would be dead right now. The end. The most important thing you can do is get back to your family.”
“So, who did you have to come back to?” she asked softly. “That it allowed you to protect yourself that way?”
John’s throat clogged with emotion, and it took several long seconds for him to be able to talk. Nobody had ever thought to ask him that before. “Well, I didn’t have the family, but the kids I was training did. I fought so that some of those kids wouldn’t have to feel what you are now.”
Shannon’s tears flowed faster then, and he knew she’d just have to work it through in her head. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she needed to believe it herself. After several minutes of emotion, she drifted back into a deep, restful sleep.
The tension that had furrowed her brows was gone, and she looked peaceful. The fact that he had eased her humbled him. He hadn’t done anything to justify her belief in him, but he would take this last little escape for now, until the guilt overwhelmed him.
He watched her for hours, until the sky began to lighten outside and she shifted.
Her eyes fluttered open and her lush lips spread in a smile. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he whispered back. Awareness trickled down through his body as she shifted, rubbing her breast against his side. Deliberately or not, he couldn’t tell.
Until she drifted her hand a little lower.
Craning his head around, he raised his brows at her. Rather than answering him, she rolled out of bed to pad to the bedroom window, twisting the rod on the window blinds to seal out the morning light. He was a little curious about her actions, but marked it up to insecurity.
As she walked back to bed, she slipped her sweat pants down over her hips, then her sweatshirt over her head. Her dark nipples were already pebbled from the coolness of the room, and she shivered as she slipped back under the covers beside him. John lifted her up to drape over his chest, and she took it one step further by straddling his hips. The awareness that had curled through him intensified, and he felt himself harden between their bodies.
Shannon rested her chin on her interlaced fingers and gave a subtle wiggle. John clutched her hips in his hands and ground her into him. She gasped and moved again as if she couldn’t help herself. The heat of her core aligned with his hardness.
She pulled away and pushed the blankets back to expose his body. Grinning seductively, she grasped the elastic of his underwear and dragged them down his legs and off his feet.
John felt a flash of insecurity and she knelt above him, glorious in her nudity. He wished he looked just as good for her.
But she didn’t let him linger on his uncertainty. Her gaze latched onto his hungry cock and she paused, then licked her lips. “My mouth just watered.”
He grinned in spite of himself. “Really? And what are you hungry for?”
“You. And to feel alive.”
She reached forward to wrap her hand around his hardness. John moaned and let his eyes fall shut so that he could focus on the feeling. Her thumb located his slit and began to rub gentle circles against it. Her other hand drifted between his legs to fondle his balls, lifting and tugging.
He was in heaven. And hell. He didn’t deserve this after the way he’d let her down. The fact that he wasn’t there for her just reinforced all the fears he had initially. Even though she appealed to him more than any other human being ever had, he had nothing to offer her other than trouble and work to take care of him.
“Hey, whatever you’re thinking about, you need to stop. We were on a roll.”
John looked down the length of his body and felt his cheeks heat. He needed to get his head back in the game, so to speak. “Sorry.”
Shannon leaned forward to kiss him and smoothed his brow. John closed his eyes and just absorbed her touch, so thankful that she hadn’t been seriously hurt.
His dick started to take interest again and he flexed his hips up into hers. Shannon gasped against his cheek and lifted enough to grin down at him. “I love it when you do that.”
Holding her hips in his hands, he centered her exactly over top of him. Her moist folds spread and wrapped around his shaft, as if to welcome him in, but he didn’t enter her. Instead, he guided her hips in a forward and backward motion. At the top of the slide, he worked the head of his cock against her clit. She gasped and sat up enough to rest her hands on his pecks. “My God, more, please.”
For several minutes he did that, until she moaned and grew impatient over top of him. Her nails dug into his chest as he dragged her hips faster over himself, but he had to pause. His own climax wasn’t far away, and her excitement fed his own. He refused to come before she did this time. Panting, he tried to catch his breath. Shannon wiggled over top of him, until he growled at her to hold on a minute. He actually lifted her out of contact with his body and dragged oxygen into his lungs, slowing down.
Shannon moaned and kneaded his chest like a cat, leaning down to press kisses to his mouth and down his neck. John’s cock continued to reach for her heat, until he couldn’t deny himself any longer. Tilting her hips, he pushed her down onto his aching length.
They both cried out at the incredible union. It was all he could do to hold off his straining release. Pushing her shoulders up, he sat her astride him. He moved his hand to where they were joined and worked the pad of his thumb into her wetness, finding and circling her hard nub.
Shannon cried out and bucked her hips. John’s hand followed her movements, working in tandem with her. And when she cried out in joy, arching over top of him, John was ready. Her rippling orgasm forced him over his own edge, and he was lost to everything around him except her body depleting his.
*
SHE FELL ACROSS John’s chest, quivering from being used and manipulated so well. Chair or not, legs or not, John was a master lover. He’d made her body dance, over and over again.
And forget.
But the memories started to filter back, flashing before her eye
s like a movie on a screen. Mere hours ago, she’d been on the verge of being murdered. Now she’d just experienced passion like she’d never tasted before.
It was a struggle for her brain to process the dichotomy.
Tears leaked from her eyes and rolled across the bridge of her nose to land with a splash on his bare chest. She felt him shift beneath her, and he tipped her chin up. “What did I do wrong?”
The tears came harder then. “You didn’t do anything wrong. At all. You’ve done everything right.”
He snorted. “Not even. I damn near got you killed.”
Shannon jerked upright in alarm, her tears clearing. “No, you didn’t! If it hadn’t been for you, I would have been dead.”
John shook his head on the pillow, looking mulish.
“I’m serious. If you hadn’t made me start carrying my pistol, I would have been shit out of luck. As it was, I just barely got it out in time.” She waved a hand. “And we were all sucked in by Lisa. Never in a million years would I have suspected my friend of being out to kill me.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could tell by the look in his eyes he wasn’t hearing her.
Shannon left the bed and padded to the bathroom. When she came back she put on the same pink outfit she’d had on before. John was sitting up in the bed, getting ready to transfer into his chair.
She grabbed his underwear from the floor and held them out to him. Fury darkened his expression and he snatched them from her hand. “I can get my own fucking underwear!”
Shannon turned away so that he wouldn’t see the fresh tears in her eyes. She’d only been trying to help. John seemed particularly aggravated right now, though, and she didn’t know why. “What’s wrong?”
He clamped his jaw and refused to look at her as he settled into the chair and turned for the bathroom. “Nothing, Shannon.”
Nothing, my ass. The shattered door lock caught her eyes, and she thought of the glass in his hands. He’d done everything he could to get to her, and he hadn’t been able to. Hell, he’d been the one to send her into her bedroom to get out of the gunfire.
