Dangerous Promise (The Protector) Read online

  “Sorry,” he said. “That looks bad. Does it hurt?”

  She visibly shivered, then gave him one of those wide grins he’d come to look forward to. “Umm, yes, Ewan, I got kicked by a couple dozen stunbullets right in that spot. It hurts.”

  Again, he drew his fingertips over the spot, barely touching, and again she shivered. A quip of how he could kiss it and make it better rose to his lips but he wisely shoved it back. He couldn’t stop his palm from cupping her shoulder, though, or letting his hand slide down her arm so his fingers could circle her wrist for a moment, tugging her a step closer.

  Nina tipped her face to stare up at him. “You’re a constant surprise, Ewan Donahue, you know that?”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “It’s a surprising thing,” Nina said in a low voice, which was not quite an answer to the question he’d asked but one he understood. Her whiskey-colored eyes had lit up, her mouth a quirking smile, and she hadn’t moved away from him even though their bodies were touching. She glanced between them, then up again into his eyes.

  “Sometimes I think you might actually like me,” he said.

  She tilted her head as her eyes traced his face in a way he could feel almost as though it were a physical touch. Her gaze lingered on his mouth. Her tongue peeked for a second between her lips before she shook her head.

  “This happens, sometimes. People get into a hard sitch, they get all riled up. . . .”

  He wanted to tell her that it was more than that, but she wasn’t wrong, either. “Does that happen to you?”

  “Yes.” She breathed. “After I fight, I usually really want to fuck.”

  Ewan groaned. “Oh.”

  He hadn’t been able to keep the memory of their kiss out of his head since it had happened. Looking at her now, Ewan moved without further thought. He pulled Nina into his arms to kiss her again, this time not coming out of a dream, but on purpose. Knowing it was her.

  Wanting it to be her.

  There was no way he could have taken her by surprise, yet, even so, her lips parted on a startled sigh. Then her tongue slid along his, and he moved a hand up her back to settle on the base of her neck below her still-damp braid. Briefly the kiss softened before he deepened it again, probing her mouth with his tongue until their teeth clashed.

  She set him on fire, and he did not want to be extinguished.

  Nina’s hands curled just above his hips, her fingertips digging into his skin so that her nails pinched. After a second, her fingers themselves nipped at the sensitive bare flesh and that tingling bit of pain went straight to his cock. The thin material of the cover-up didn’t hide much, nor did the fact he was naked beneath it. Under her gaze, his body reacted. Heat teased him, and he stifled another groan at the thickness between his legs.

  When she looked up at him, her pale amber eyes had gone heavy lidded. Her mouth, soft and full and wet from their kisses. She drew in a breath and shook her head, her gaze clearing. Her expression went from sensual to stern.

  He expected an arch smile. Raised eyebrows. Ewan figured Nina would tease him, but all she did was look up, straight into his eyes and hold his gaze for what felt like forever.

  “This is not the time or the place,” she told him finally. She still hadn’t moved away. “And I’m not convinced it’s what you really want.”

  “It should be obvious that I really want it,” he said, but the look on her face made him take a couple steps back. “But if you don’t . . .”

  Nina shook her head. “We need to be thinking about the job. Thinking with our heads. Not our other parts.”

  The ache in his head flared, a reminder of the situation they were in, and one he shouldn’t have needed. She was right, but it embarrassed him that he’d been acting like a riled-up adolescent who’d been able to put his hands on a girl for the first time. His arousal fled. He put distance between them.

  “We should go,” Ewan said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Nina had made her rounds of the cabin and the immediate surrounding property under the pretense of making sure it was safe and secure, and of course she did all that within the first half hour after they arrived. This glimpse into Ewan’s life before the money and the fame fascinated her.

  She’d given him the all-clear to stay in the kitchen while she looked over the cabin’s small upper level. The peaked roof meant she had to watch her head as she moved through the single bedroom to look out one of the windows tucked into a gable. To say the view was breathtaking felt like a cliché, but was the truth. A vista of forest and fog-shrouded mountains in the distance, a hint of water through the trees, clear blue skies. There couldn’t have been a prettier sight if Ewan had paid to have one installed.

  The room itself included a cozy double bed with a white iron headboard and covered with a blue and white quilt that looked handmade. A battered wooden dresser with a mirror. A rocking chair. A small set of nightstands sported mismatched lamps. A rag rug covered the otherwise bare wooden floor. Through a small door at the bedroom’s far end was a functional but far from luxurious bathroom. This cabin was nothing like Woodhaven, and she already adored it.

  “It will be easier to defend,” she told him in the kitchen, where she found him unpacking the saddlebags from the buzzbike. “Only two entrances. Limited windows.”

  “If that’s a polite way of saying it’s really small, I got it.” He gave her a glance over his shoulder as he pulled out a few bottles of wine from one of the bags.

  Nina chuckled and leaned against the counter to watch him curiously. The man she’d met a couple weeks ago had relied on a full staff to cater to his every need, and he’d never seemed hesitant to take full advantage of that. He’d told her he hadn’t grown up with money, but it had been obvious he’d taken to it like a natural. Since making their escape from his estate, though, Ewan had taken charge of nearly everything that didn’t have to do with security. She couldn’t say it was a different side of him—she’d seen him be in control with many aspects of his life, but something about all of this was definitely making him seem . . . humbler. More accessible.

  “It’s bigger than some of the places I’ve lived,” she told him. “Prettier than most of them, too.”

  He laughed and nodded as he emptied another cloth bag of some dry goods and set it aside with the others on the round, scarred kitchen table. He turned and put his hands on his hips, looking around the kitchen. “I always loved this place. Gray Tuesday made it easy to remove all the evidence that I was ever connected to it, but it was harder to erase in my mind than I’d thought it would be.”

  “Probably better that you did, or else we wouldn’t be able to be here now.” She moved next to him to look over the array of bottles and jars laid out on the countertop. “I can help you put this all away, if you tell me where it ought to go.”

  Ewan shook his head and moved a half a step away from her. He didn’t make a big deal out of it, but she noticed. He was making sure to keep his distance from her, a fact Nina couldn’t blame him for. That kiss in the tunnel had been electric. Her choice to kiss or touch him, she’d told him. Her choice to take him to bed or not. Why, then, didn’t she feel affronted that he’d kissed her despite her already telling him no? Why was she regretting that she’d pushed him away?

  “The kitchen’s not really big enough for two to be messing around in it. I got this. Everything under control everywhere else?” He’d turned again toward the food and started tucking it away into cupboards.

  He was dismissing her, and not subtly.

  “Yes,” Nina said. “You don’t have the perimeter security you had at Woodhaven, but you’ve got so much more land here, and if it’s really true that nobody knows you even own it . . .”

  “It’s true,” Ewan said sharply with a narrow-eyed glance. “I told you it was. All the records were scrubbed, and I made sure nothing was left to connect it to me.”

  Nina frowned. “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. I just mean