The Alpha Bodyguards Books #4-6

Chapter Thirteen

I stepped in front of her.

My gaze hit her lips, and my fist clenched. For the twenty-seventh time in the past ten minutes, I told myself I would not touch her even though she was the only woman I ever thought about. Obsessively, resolutely, completely—I thought of her. Every day. She was my biggest mistake. I knew it the second Rollins had walked back in the house seven years ago.

I’d fucked up.

But now wasn’t the time to make that right. I’d waited this long. I needed to wait a little longer. I would not touch her.

Not yet.

The memory of brushing her hair back last week still fresh in my mind, I told myself that didn’t count. I hadn’t felt her soft skin or brought my mouth to hers like I’d done once before.

I didn’t kiss her.

Past and present merging, I stared at her lips.

Five years ago, when I’d first stepped back on American soil and saw her holding another man’s child, I broke. But I hadn’t been able to walk away from her. It took me two years to reconcile the fact that she was a mother because of another man. I seethed, I grieved, I blamed myself, and I followed her.

I couldn’t let her go.

One day, I followed her to the park and saw her with him.

Her son.

Brown-haired, brown-eyed, innocent and beautiful like her.

I wanted them both to be mine. So I’d made a plan. Then I’d calculated, executed, and, three years later, here I was almost ready. I’d only had one more obstacle before tonight. I had to deal with her brother, but then I made a choice to step in front of a bullet and I’d fucked up what I’d been working toward for years.

Now I had two hurdles.

Life was full of bad decisions.

Tonight, mine was in the back of a rented SUV.

Hers was not locking her front door.

As if put out, she sighed. “What do you really want, Preston?”

The woman in front of me was different than the woman I’d first met seven years ago. That woman had humor and spark in her eyes but also sadness. A sadness I’d wanted to make right after kissing her just once. The woman in front of me now had tired, weary eyes. She lived hand to mouth, working hard to keep a roof over her son’s head and food in his stomach. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on, and I wanted her more now than I did seven years ago.

I fought not to touch her.

“I want many things.” None of which I would tell her right now. “Why are you tired?” Her light had gone off at ten fifty-eight last night. Her son didn’t wake up until seven a.m. She didn’t work today. She should’ve gotten enough sleep.

She looked at me with dark amber eyes and a mouth I wanted to possess. “Ty will be back any minute, and I know how much you two hate to cross paths where I’m concerned, so why are you still here?”

I didn’t touch her last comment, but I gave her the truth. “I need to see him.” Full lips, feminine scent, strands of her long hair escaping her clip, all of it tempted me.

“You’re going to be here when Ty comes back?” Three lines creased between her eyebrows. There used to be two. “Must be serious.”

It didn’t get more serious than death. “Yes.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “So you’re staying.”

“For a few minutes.” I had to deal with the body in the SUV.

“Why?” she demanded.

Why did anyone do anything? Your brain fired synapses, emotion fueled choices, survival initiated instinct, there were a multitude of reasons. Habit, hunger, need, thirst, greed, lust. But that wasn’t what she was asking. “You don’t want to know.”

True to form, she threw down a challenge. “Try me.”

Training my stare from her pulse point on her neck to her eyes, I obliged. “There’s a woman in my vehicle.”

Color, fast and furious, hit her cheeks. “You’re a fucking asshole. Get the hell out of here, Preston.” Shoving past me, she strode toward the hall.

Reaction is muscle memory.

Downrange, you hear a shot, you pull the trigger.

Someone swings at you, you swing back.

Kyrie Eleison Asher shoving me was muscle memory.

But my reaction was not.

Far from it.

Before the next inhale filled my lungs, her back was against the wall and my hand was on her throat. Control bled into desperation, and the one thing I’d been able to rely on for the past five years failed.

She didn’t give me attitude.

My hand clasped her throat, but her cheeks went from hot anger to flushed desire. Her body melted, and just like the one and only time I’d ever touched her, her lips parted.

My nostrils flared. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she dared. “Push you? Call you out? Walk away?” She leaned into my hand. “Do it,” she challenged. “Strangle me or kiss me.” Staring at me hard, she dropped her voice. “Pick one.”

“Mercy,” I warned.

“You know you want to,” she taunted.

My cock hard, it wasn’t a matter of want. “Ten seconds.” That’s how long I was giving myself to stand here.

“Nine,” she counted, mocking my control.

“Eight,” I countered, my grip tightening.

Her eyes fluttered, her voice quieted, and she exhaled slowly through her mouth. “Seven.”

Seven years my lips had not touched another. “Six.”

“Kiss me,” she begged.

“No.” This wasn’t her choosing me. “Five.” This was need, and I wanted more than physical want from her.

Her small hands wrapped around my wrist. “What are you going to do at one?” She urged my hand forward.

I hadn’t decided.

She’d taken me by surprise. Her words, her actions, I never knew what to expect from her. Tonight was no different.

“My grip is going to leave a mark if you press harder,” I warned. “Four.”

“Then don’t kiss me.” She dropped one hand to grab my cock. “Fuck me.”

Reactionary, I pulsed in her hand. “Your brother is coming back.” He had her son with him.

“So?”

“You don’t have time for my kind of fucking.” I leaned toward her. “And your walls are thin.”

“My son is deaf, and he’s not here right now.” She squeezed me harder. “Besides, if you’re this hard now, you’re not going to last long.”

“Taunting me isn’t going to change the facts.” If she thought the few minutes between now and when her brother walked through her front door where enough to fuck, she’d never been with a real man. “Three.”

Both her hands went to my pants. “Let go of my neck and I’ll drop to my knees.”

I used truth as a weapon. “If I let you put your mouth on me right now, it will destroy you.” With another woman’s blood under my fingernails, now wasn’t the time. She was a nurse. She’d dedicated her life to saving others. I’d let one die tonight. The timing wasn’t right, not now, but I still stole every second of her hungry gaze. “Two.”

“Liar.”

“I don’t lie.” Not to her.

“Prove it.”

I brought my lips to her ear. “There’s a body in my vehicle, yours is the last mouth I tasted, and if you ever put your lips around my cock, I will own you.”

Her pulse raced, her throat moved with a swallow and she licked her lips. Then she surprised me by not mentioning the body. “I’m not property.”

“You would be to me.” I wanted all of her. “You would be mine.” My mouth inches from hers, I whispered, “One.”

She waited.

I stared.

One tick of the kitchen clock’s second hand.

Two.

I fed off my hold on her flesh.

Eyes dilated, pulse thrumming, she fed off my control.

Feeling it, smelling it, seeing it, six seconds in, I broke.

Knowing it, her lips parted. “Pres—”

My mouth slammed over hers.