Chapter Fourteen

Allen

I wake sometime around sunrise, startled at first that I am not in my own bedroom. Then I feel Brielle sigh in my arms, and I look down.

At some point in the night, I rolled to my back, and she tucked into my side, one shapely leg and her left arm draped over me, her head on my chest. Her thin tank top leaves little to the imagination, and I picture myself stealthily scooting down the bed to capture one of her perfect nipples in my mouth. The result is an erection that I am positive she can feel pressing against her even as she sleeps.

I am torn between really needing to behave myself and wanting to shift her lithe little body on top of mine and wake her properly. When she sighs again, then begins to stretch and I feel her breasts rubbing against me, lust almost wins out.

Until her eyes snap open and Brielle recoils from me like I’ve shoved her.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she mumbles, her cheeks going red. “I, um, forgot you were here, and it startled me. I haven’t shared a bed with anyone in…”

“Years? Me either,” I confess.

The look of disbelief that flits across her face almost makes me smile.

Almost.

“You hungry? I can make breakfast,” I offer.

“What time is it?”

I glance over at the clock.

“Almost seven.”

“Ugh,” she laments, her face scrunching up to reflect her irritation, and now I do smile.

“Not a morning person, I take it?”

“Not without a shower and a gallon of coffee,” she responds. “Speaking of which…”

She hesitates at first, then rolls away from me to the other side of the bed, gets up, and walks the long way around to get to her bathroom.

“Give me fifteen or so to wake up,” she says as she stumbles along, her tiny shorts and top giving me even more naughty thoughts as I watch her breasts swaying with every step she takes.

“I’ll have coffee waiting on you when you get out,” I tell her, and am rewarded with a sleepy smile and a thumbs-up before she shuts the bathroom door.

And not only that, I tell myself as I get out of bed and turn off the security system, hopefully by then the raging hard-on I’ve got will be gone, too.

***

I will my body back to normal, but it only lasts until Brielle joins me in the kitchen twenty minutes later. The moment her scent reaches me, I am impossibly hard again. Fortunately, the jeans I chose for today’s activities hide it a little bit better than a suit might.

“Feeling better?” I ask as I pull the rest of the bacon out of the pan and set it on a paper towel to drain.

“I am,” she confirms as she takes her first sip of the coffee that I just poured out and handed to her. “But to be honest, I’d still be much happier if life could not start before ten a.m.”

I chuckle at that. “Points for honesty. How do you like your eggs?”

“Hard scrambled,” comes the answer as she takes a seat at the table.

“Want cheese on them?”

“Of course, I do,” she replies with a smile. “Makes ‘em even better.”

“Coming right up.”

Within a few minutes I am setting a plate down in front of her.

“Is that all right?”

“That looks fabulous. Thanks.”

“No problem,” I say, and carry my plate over to the table as well.

We eat in silence, but it is not a comfortable one, and I am dying to know what’s running through that intelligent mind of hers.

“Brielle, about last night,” I begin, and her shoulders hunch defensively.

“What about it?” Brielle asks, her even tone at odds with the tension emanating from her body.

“After the movie… you were going to ask me something, weren’t you?”

She sighs and sets her fork down.

“I really don’t think this is a good time to get into this,” she mutters, then takes another sip of coffee.

“What are you so afraid of?”

She looks directly into my eyes and catches me completely off guard with her answer. “You.”

“Me? You are afraid of me? Why?”

“Can we please talk about something else? Anything else?”

“No. I want to know what I’ve done that has you scared of me.”

She closes her eyes.

“Not scared of you,” she says in a small voice. “Scared by… you know what? I’m not doing this.”

I reach out and take her hand. “Talk to me.”

“Why, so you can confirm what I already know?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know what the hell happened between us last night,” she says scornfully, “if it was a pity kiss, or whatever, but- “

I cut her off mid-sentence.

“A ‘pity kiss’? You think I pinned you against the counter and kissed you because I feel sorry for you?”

“Well, yeah,” she counters, her cheeks tinging pink.

“That is so not what happened.”

“Isn’t it?” she challenges, eyes flashing with heat as she yanks her hand back from me. “First, we talk on the phone, and I think there’s a connection, then we meet in person and you are a complete asshole, like you don’t want to have anything to do with me. And then, you show up at my house two months later and hold and kiss me, and then you haul ass out of the room. So, you need to tell me what the hell’s going on here, because you are all over the place, Allen.”

She leans back, arms folded over her chest, eyes still flashing, and waits.

“Fine,” I growl. “You really want to know?”

“Yes,” she retorts, jutting out her chin.

“I want you so badly I can’t think straight, Brielle. I’ve wanted you since the first time I heard your voice.”

Brielle

My jaw drops wide open at his admission.

“What?”

“That’s right. From the very beginning. The moment I called your number and heard your voice, I wanted you.”

“Wait, I don’t understand… then why were you such a jerk that Saturday?”

I see his jaw clench. “Nothing to do with you. I was working through an issue. And in my defense, I did try to ask you out to dinner to make up for it, and you never returned my calls.”

My ears go back at that little tidbit.

“Why would I return a call to someone that treated me so horribly the one and only time we were around each other?”

Allen drops his gaze.

“That’s fair,” he admits. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to make contact after the way I behaved.”

“So, if you’ve been attracted to me all this time, what stopped you last night?”

“Like I said, you’re an active client of mine, Brielle, and that has to come first. I cannot keep you safe if I’m distracted, so until the danger is past, I have to stay focused on your protection, no matter what else I’m feeling.”

I hesitate, then dive into the deep end headfirst.

“And what else are you feeling, exactly?”

The next thing I know, Allen is pulling me to my feet and crushing me against his chest.

“I want to strip you down and take you right here on this table,” he growls in my ear and makes my center go instantly hot. “I want to explore every inch of you and feel your body shudder underneath me as I make you mine, for starters.”

Trembling with desire, I slowly lift my head to look into his eyes and see the inferno from last night resurrected in full force.

“Allen, I…” my voice trails off.

“But I can’t. Not yet. Not until whoever is threatening you is caught. Don’t you understand?”

He wraps his arms around me, touching his lips to my hair, and I can feel his body shaking with restrained need as I slowly snake my arms around his waist and step into him.

We stand there, as close together as we can be, his heart pounding as hard under my cheek as mine is in my chest.

“So first, we’ll deal with the threat. And after that, honey, prepare yourself, because you are all mine,” he murmurs, his deep baritone doing delicious things to my core. I flush crimson as my imagination breathes life into all the seductive things this sensual man has just said to me.

“Guess we’d better catch them soon then, huh,” I mumble against his chest, and feel the deep rumble of laughter vibrate throughout him before the sound leaves his throat.

“Count on it, baby. In the meantime,” Allen says, squeezing then releasing me, “being that close to you is severely impacting my ability to keep my focus where it should be. So, let’s sit down, finish our breakfast, and discuss meeting with your neighbors at nine.”

I nod and retake my seat as he brings the coffeepot to the table and pours us each a fresh cup.

“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you – what does Cosantóirí stand for?”

“It’s a nod to my ancestry,” he explains with a proud smile as he sits down again. “My great-great-grandmother was full blood Irish. Cosantóirí means ‘defenders’ in Gaelic.”

We finish breakfast, the mood lighter than before, and stand side-by-side at my double sinks to wash, dry, and put away our plates and silverware.

“We’ve got about an hour to kill,” I tell him when I glance at the oven’s built-in clock.

“I’m going to check in with Pete,” he answers. “I’ll be in the living room.”

“And I’ll be at my computer,” I say before I head down the hall to my home office.

I leave the door open this time and sit down at my desk, pressing the power button to restart my computer. Once it boots up, I click on my email icon to open it.

What greets me turns my blood to ice.

“Allen!” I shout.

He rushes into the room, phone still to his ear, and glances at my screen, then motions to me not to touch anything else.

I stand and back away from my desk as he says, “Pete, get here as soon as you can, please. He’s hacked her computer.”

Allen hangs up the call and looks at me as I stare, wide-eyed, at the huge countdown in blood-red font in the center of my screen.

Seven days eleven hours twenty minutes forty-eight seconds… forty-seven… forty-six…