Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (52 page)

She shook off his hands, refusing to be comforted, and walked away. “I want to go home. I don’t want to be a part of this anymore.”

But he wasn’t done tormenting her with possibilities yet. “Do you remember anything that was on the disk? The designs? The chemical formulas?”

“Sure.” She didn’t have a photographic memory, but a lot of it she remembered well enough to recreate on her own computer. But she understood why Jonas had asked. “I understand my dad and Dr. Rutherford’s notes well enough that I could sell the design to someone else. The competition.” Charming. “So, no matter how this conspiracy plays out, I’m dead if I do, and dead if I don’t.”

“You won’t die.” She could hear the rustle of denim as he sighed or shifted or steeled himself behind her. “I won’t let you die.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” She wasn’t sure if she sounded sarcastic or sad.

Jonas’s hand wrapped around her upper arm with the controlled force he’d used before making the effort to civilize himself for her sake. In one swift motion, he turned her, catching her chin between his finger and thumb and tilting it up. A glacial light blazed in the depths of his eyes. “I will die before Frye or Copperhead gets to you.”

His voice shook with the power of his vow.

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” The first glimmer of tears stung her eyes. She blinked and let them spill onto her cheeks as she raised her hand and traced her fingertips across the shocked expression on his sensual lips. “Haven’t I lost enough people I care about already?”

As the tears overtook her, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her back to her bed. He tucked her in beneath the covers, then crawled on top and lay down beside her. He gathered her into the heat of his arms and body, and pressed her face against the sizzle of skin at the center of his chest.

He consoled her the way the big brute did best. He held her close and let her cry herself to sleep.

And he never confirmed nor denied that it was okay for her to care.

Chapter Nine

Faith awoke in the wee hours of the morning, filled with an unusual, erotic heat.

Her bottom was on fire. As she squirmed away from the burning warmth, a deep-pitched moan hummed beside her ear. The sound snapped her into full consciousness, and she made a quick assessment of where she was. And who she was with.

That’s when she realized that Jonas’s hand was cupped very intimately, very possessively around the curve of her buttock. He was holding her close, even in his sleep, tangling his legs with hers and the blanket.

It was a heady experience to feel so treasured, so sheltered. She couldn’t read his expression in the shadows, but his deep, even breathing told her a lot. This was a good place for him, too.

But her sinuses were plugged from the emotional release of all those tears, and her bladder was annoyingly full. She didn’t want to leave. She was afraid she’d never find this particular contentment again. But when nature called…

She reached behind her and gently picked up his wrist. But his arms snapped back into place, almost lifting her from the bed. “Don’t go. I don’t want you to leave me. Not yet.”

“Jonas?” She shook him lightly at the shoulder.

All at once his arms unfolded and he rolled away from her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She frowned, missing his uncensored feelings as much as she missed his warmth. “You didn’t scare me.”

But he was already up and moving away. To the other bed.

Perplexed and concerned as to why he’d automatically assumed she wouldn’t want him there with her, she let him have his distance. She pulled her shirt down to a more modest level and got up to use the facility and splash cold water on her face.

When she returned, they were both wide-awake, both sitting in the darkness. “You didn’t scare me.” She repeated herself, knowing he wouldn’t listen this time, either. She leaned back against the headboard and pulled the pillow into her lap. “I’m sorry I made such a fuss earlier. I guess it all caught up to me. I didn’t realize how much I was up against.”

“We don’t know for a fact that Frye murdered your father.”

“But you think he did.”

“The pieces are all about to fall into place. I can feel it. And then all hell is gonna break loose.”

She kneaded the pillow in her grasp. She didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. She wanted to know why a man who could be so tender and passionate and protective in the dark of the night always woke up in such a mood. “Why did you think you’d scared me?”

“I scare everybody.”

“That’s not true.” She sat forward and looked at him across the gap between the beds, waiting patiently until he looked at her before going on. “People who shun you because of your face haven’t really looked into your eyes.”

The ice-blue windows shut and he turned away, refusing to accept kind words. “My stepmother called them devil eyes. They made her nervous.”

Devil eyes? Faith’s heart lurched in her chest. “She must have been very unhappy to say such a cruel thing to a child.”

“She and my dad kicked me out of the house when I was fourteen. But I looked like a man. They said I could take care of myself.” His matter-of-fact recitation of such a heartless act spoke volumes about how much he’d hardened himself to his feelings over the years. “My stepmom said I was a threat to her children.”

“You have brothers and sisters?” That surprised her. She’d never imagined him to have any family. He’d always seemed so completely alone.

He stood up, peeled off his shirt and tossed it at the foot of his bed. “Look. This is not something I talk about.”

He should. She had a feeling he needed to. Desperately.

He lay back down and rolled away from her, pretending he was going to sleep.

He’d been so understanding of her pain, of how lost she’d felt to learn her entire life she’d been the pawn of some larger conspiracy. “My past is an open book to you. I’m game to listen if you want to share some of yours.”

Faith leaned back in the bed, wishing they could go back to sleep together. Jonas holding her was when she felt the safest, the most secure. And, apparently, that was the only time he felt comfortable enough to drop his guard with her.

The clock on the bedside table flipped over to 3:00 a.m. before he spoke again. His voice was a toneless sound, as dark as the night itself. “They were hers from her first marriage. Two girls. Both younger than me. According to my stepmother, I gave them nightmares.”

He rolled over, facing her now. Faith rolled onto her side to watch and listen as well. In the dim light from the bathroom, she saw him point to the scar on his forehead. “That’s how I got this. Everyone thinks it’s a war wound. Something I got on a mission, or from a street fight.”

She’d assumed as much herself. But, then, she’d misjudged a lot of things about Jonas. “Tell me about your scar,” she urged softly.

“Her younger daughter was crying in her sleep one night, having a bad dream. I got left in charge when she went out with Dad. Cindy, my stepsister, was throwing a fit, so I went in to check on her. She was still screaming and crying when her mother came home.” He stopped to breathe in deeply; Faith simply held her breath. This couldn’t be good. “She accused me of attacking Cindy. Came after me with the fireplace poker.”

Faith’s breath rushed out in a painful sigh. “Oh, my God.”

“She knocked the cap off one of the bedposts, exposed a screw—”

“Jonas.” Faith shot up out of bed and crossed the gap between them. She sat on the edge of his bed, massaging his hand between both of hers, reliving the graphic story with him.

“My dad—” He almost laughed. But Faith was dangerously close to weeping again. “—he was almost as big as I am now. He took her side. They wouldn’t listen to Cindy or me. He only had to hit me once. I fell against the bedpost. Damn lucky I didn’t lose an eye.”

“Oh, Jonas.” She leaned over and hugged her arms around his shoulders. It was a battle scar of the worst kind, inflicted by people he thought he could love and trust. “How could they?”

“They never wanted me. Once I left, I never went back.”

A tight muscle worked along the line of his jaw as he fought to control something. And failed. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rolled onto his back, carrying her with him to rest on top. He squeezed her almost painfully tight as his wry laugh became a silent sob and then a furious revelation of anger. “You know what the irony was? My dad.
He
was abusing the girls. I ran into Cindy a few years later and she told me. It was the last time we talked.”

Faith had thought she was all cried out, but she was weeping now.

Jonas wiped away the tears with the pad his thumb, catching each one in a tender caress. “Don’t do that, honey. Not for me. I should have stayed and protected them.”

“You didn’t know.” She tried to comfort him physically by touching his face and chest. She traced the scar itself, from the bridge of his nose up into his hairline. “You were a child yourself. They hurt you.”

“I knew I had to make things right. I knew I had to—”

“What? Hide away from the world because of one woman’s hateful words? She didn’t know what she was talking about. She didn’t know you.” Her tears quickly played out as a defensive sort of anger took their place. “Do you think you have to protect everyone else now as some kind of atonement? Is that why you joined The Watchers?”

Jonas’s hands had started to move, too. They slipped beneath her shirt and drew long, taut circles across her back. “I took the jobs nobody else wanted. Some of the men had families. And I… It didn’t matter so much for me. I never had anyone.”

He’d never had anyone.

“It matters.” Faith scooted up along his chest, creating an instant friction that pebbled her nipples into rigid knots and elicited a sticky, drizzly heat deep inside her. “Even then, you were protecting the men you worked with.”

She rubbed her palms along the stubble at his jawline and slipped her fingers into the soft, clipped contours of his hair. She tilted his face and pressed a kiss to the bridge of his nose, the slash across his eyebrow, the heart of the jagged scar itself. “That’s who you are, Jonas. A protector. I’ll bet your stepsister knew that, too.”

She hesitated a moment, propping herself up on her elbows above him. “But you’re more than that.” She stroked her palms across the ridges of muscle at his shoulders. “You’re a smart, caring man, who deep, down inside—” she spread her fingers over the strong, firm beat of his heart “—knows he isn’t the monster he tries so hard to be.”

He lifted his hand to cover hers where it rested against his chest. “Don’t make me something I’m not, Faith. I appreciate your fierce brand of kindness, but—”

“Someday, you’ll have to start looking after yourself. You’ll have to start taking care of what you need. And stop blaming yourself for two little girls you couldn’t protect.”

His hand had slid all the way up to her neck, cradling her tenderly. “What are you doing to me, Faith?” He lifted his mouth and kissed the tip of her chin. “I can’t be like other men. I’ll never fit in. I’ll always be that monster with the devil eyes.”

“No.”

Then his fingers speared into the hair at her nape and tilted her head so he could taste her lips. After he’d nibbled enough to ignite an appetite that left her wanting more, he pulled back. His lips still clung to hers, as if he was as loath to break the connection as she was. His chest heaved in a great sigh beneath her. “You make me think about things—want things—I can’t have.”

Faith could feel the tension humming through every taut muscle of his body. She could feel it in the shaking grasp of his hands as he fought to hold himself in check. She could feel it in the answering need of her own body. “What
do
you want?” she asked, losing herself in the powerful desire blazing in the depth of his eyes. “What do
you
need?”

“Right now, I need…you.”

He palmed her head and brought her mouth down to his, taking it in a savage kiss. Faith opened her mouth and welcomed the claim of his tongue and lips.

His hands were all over her, spreading her legs to either side of his hips, squeezing her bottom, sliding up and taking the shirt with it. “Can you, honey?” he begged, rasping his tongue across the engorged tip of her breast and taking it into his mouth. “Will you?”

Faith clenched her teeth and moaned at the bowstring of pleasure that arced straight down to her core. “Jonas,” she breathed, feeling herself lifted to a plane of passion and desire she’d never experienced before. “Kiss me.” She strained to reconnect with his tantalizing mouth. “Kiss me again.”

“Dammit, Faith, if you don’t want this, say so right now and I will leave.” But he was kissing her. Touching her. Loving her. “I don’t want to frighten you. Ever. I’m too damn big and too damn old and too damn ug—”

She clamped a hand over his mouth to silence him. She rode the ragged rise and fall of his chest, gathering her own courage. Jonas Beck was a man supremely confident in every aspect of his professional life, but who still didn’t believe that he could be wanted—that
she
could want him.

He caught his breath and watched her as she sat up straight, still straddling his hips and the ridge of desire straining against his jeans. Faith felt giddy with a power that was every bit as potent as Jonas’s physical strength, every bit as true as the hunger shining from the light in his eyes.

She had a rapt audience as she reached down and unhooked the snap of his jeans. “Faith…” he cautioned her.

“Be patient, Mr. Beck.” She reached for his zipper.

“You’re too pretty. Too sweet.” He brushed a lock of hair off her brow, fingered her lips, swept over the tips of her bare breasts. She caught a hiss of breath at the stab of desire that shot to the aching juncture where her heat met his. “You can say no. At any time.”

And she trusted him without a doubt to stop if she did change her mind. She never needed to fear Jonas.

But she wanted him—needed him—as much as he needed her.

She smiled and tugged on the zipper. “Does that mean I can also say yes?”