The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (22 page)

I shivered a little and sighed.

“Is Mikagi Tasuki going to play in
the concert with you guys this afternoon?” asked my father mildly.
 
I could hear papers shuffling on his desk
and his laptop making the boot-up sound.
 
I knew he wanted to get on with his work, and I should really run
through today’s concert pieces one more time before I got ready.
 
My fingers were practically itching to pick
up the violin.
 

“No, she’s not playing,” I said,
pouring myself another glass of orange juice and setting the pitcher back in
the fridge.
 
“Mikagi’s supposed to fly
home tonight, but we thought she would come to the concert to watch.”

“That’s great, sweetheart,” said
Dad, his mind obviously millions of miles away.
 
“Hey, are you coming over for dinner tonight?”
 
We usually had Sunday dinner together, if we
could swing it.

“Well, yeah, but, more importantly,
what are we doing for your birthday on Wednesday?” I asked, my lips pursed as I
took a sip of juice.
 
“Celebrating on a
weekday is just always so disastrous.
 
Let’s be honest:
 
you’re always thinking
about fishing projections, I’m thinking about the new piece of music I’m
working on for the Friday concert.
 
We’re too distracted.
 
So, I was
thinking why don’t we celebrate your birthday next weekend instead?
 
Say…Saturday?”

“Sure!” said my dad in his far-off
voice that meant he was looking at reports and no longer listening to me.

“I’ll talk to Al about it,” I said
with a grin, invoking the name of his housekeeper who would absolutely make
certain he didn’t miss his own birthday celebration.
 
“I love you, Dad,” I told him.

“I love you, sweetheart,” he said,
and meant it.
 

I ended the call and set my phone
on the counter, next to my glass of juice, glancing over my shoulder at the
shut door to my guest bedroom, where Layne was evidently still sleeping.
 
She’d come home late last night and had
entered that room, and she hadn’t left it yet.
 
I wanted to talk to her about what had happened yesterday, but that was
going to be a long, involved conversation, because there were two things,
really, that we needed to discuss:

One:
 
How the hell had she known I was in danger?

And, two:
 
what the hell was happening between us?

I probably would discuss both of
those things without mentioning “hell,” however.
 
I smoothed the front of my skirt, took a deep breath and tried to
imagine the way the talk would go.
 
But
I couldn’t, really.
 
I’d been trying to
coach myself on how to open up each of those conversations all night—and trust
me when I say that I didn’t get much sleep.

As if she knew I was thinking about
her, Layne opened the door to her bedroom.

Instantly, the hair on my arms
stood to attention, I had to suppress a shudder, and my heart began to beat
like I’d just narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a semi.
 
She was wearing plaid pajama bottoms and a white
tank top, her hair sticking up in every direction like she’d slept on it and
hadn’t even run her fingers through it yet.
 
Her eyes were half-lidded and sleepy, but even sleepy, she exuded power.
 
She wasn’t, I hate to point out, wearing a
bra under that tank top.
 
And it was a
kind of an old, threadbare tank top, the kind that gets gauzy with excessive
wear and is the least, littlest bit see-through.
 
I stared at her and tried not to, feeling my cheeks flush bright
red.
 
I leaned back against the counter,
ducked my head down, stared at the tile floor of my kitchen.

Her feet shuffled into my view, and
I had to stifle a chuckle.

Layne O’Connell, the sexiest and
most captivating woman I’d ever met…was wearing white bunny slippers.

“Hey, don’t knock ‘em—they’re
really comfy,” said Layne with a companionable growl as she glanced from my
face, down to her slippers, and back again.
 
She stifled another yawn as she pulled open the fridge door and stared
at the shelves as if she was looking for the lost continent of Atlantis.
 
“Are we
really
out of milk?” she
finally groaned.

It was such an incredibly idyllic
scene, the kind of thing that would happen to an old married couple on Sunday
morning, or to two women who were dating and were ridiculously in love and had just
had a rather passionate morning and were now famished.
 
This sort of banter wasn’t what sprung to
mind when you thought of a single woman’s Sunday morning conversation with her
bodyguard.
 
I tried to quell the ache in
my heart but failed to, swallowing and shaking my head.

“We’ve been out since yesterday,
I’m sorry to say.”
 
I shrugged.
 
“I usually make my grocery store runs on
Sunday.”

“We should put milk down on the
list, then,” said Layne with a nod and another yawn.
 
She shut the fridge door and stretched overhead, rolling her back
and her shoulders in the most graceful undulation I’d ever seen.

My mouth went as dry as a desert,
and my heart began to experiment with its own rhythm section.

“I…I don’t shop off a list,” is the
first partially-articulate thing I could think to say.
 
“I just buy…whatever looks good at the
store…”
 
I trailed off because Layne was
staring at me, her mouth open a little, and her eyes as wide and
shocked-looking as if I’d told her the sky was green and the moon really
was
made of cheese.

“You don’t shop off of a grocery
list?
 
I mean, are you human?” she
asked, her mouth still open a little.
 
Paired with her hair sticking up in all directions, it looked unbearably…cute.
 
I never thought I would use that word to
describe Layne, but no other word would fit in that moment.
 
Layne shook her head, her jet-black spikes
of hair swaying as she walked over beside me, reaching past me to grasp a pad
of paper and pen that I kept in my wire bill rack, next to the toaster.
 
But Layne was awfully close to me in such a
big kitchen.
 
She stood right in front
of me, reaching past me to get the paper, but her hand came to a stand-still,
palm flat on the counter as she stared down into my face, searching my eyes
with her own brilliant flashing ones.
 
Today they were more blue-ish, like the bright blue sky outside my
kitchen window.

She was so close, and she was so
warm.
 
Even though our bodies weren’t
touching, the heat coming off her radiated across the little space between us,
making me shiver from the sudden change in temperature.
 

Layne placed her other hand on the
countertop to my right.

I was boxed in between the counter
and her, her arms around me but not touching me as she stared down at me, her
face unreadable.

My heart ached so much, I felt
crushed by it as I stared up at her perfectly impassive gaze as she searched my
eyes, her lips pursed, the corners of her mouth tugging down gently into a
beautiful frown.

“We can’t do this, Elizabeth,” she
finally growled.
 

But she didn’t move an inch.

I didn’t even think.
 
“What’s
this
?” I asked her, pain
sharpening my words.
 
“What are we
doing?
 
And why can’t—”

Her hands moved so quickly that if
you’d ask me, I would have told you that they had been gripping my waist all
along, her hot arms along my sides, wrapping around me like she’d conformed her
body to mine a million times.
 
But no,
this was only the second time she’d held me so tightly, like she was afraid I’d
disappear right in front of her, like I could dissolve at any moment into
nothingness.
 

She held me like she was doing
something wrong.
 
Like she was about to
get caught.
 

But that she had to do it anyway.

Her stomach against my stomach, her
hips against my hips, her breasts against my breasts, the heat and sensation
from it was dizzying, but not nearly as much as the closeness of her mouth to
mine, as much as the intensity in her gaze as she stared down at me before
kissing me so tightly, I forgot how to breathe.

You ever have one of those
kisses?
 
You’ve wanted it for so long,
and you’ve imagined it so many times, but imagination can only do so much.
 
And then the kiss happens, and it’s
true:
 
it’s so perfect, so savage and
powerful and beautiful, that you forget everything else, how to breathe, how to
stand, how to feel anything other than the connection that makes you not a
single person but this perfect tandem thing that proves that, in that moment,
you’re one body, not two.
 
You’re so
connected that you have no real knowledge of where you begin or where she
ends.
 
You’re just one together.

It was one of those kisses.

She held me so tightly against her
that I felt drowning people, dragged up from the sea, feel like this, feel so
saved and inherently safe.
 
She savored
me not in a soft, sweet kiss, but in a powerful devouring of me, her mouth hot
against mine.
 

But, let’s be honest:
 
I devoured right back.

For the first few seconds, I was in
pure, blissful shock.
 
But that didn’t
last long.
 
My body responded to her not
only with every bit of instinct I possessed, but with all the raw want and need
that I’d been torturing myself with since I first met her.
 
I was leaning against the counter,
and—frankly—I was leaning against her, so I didn’t even have to worry about
maintaining my balance with my bad leg.
 

All I was, in that moment, was that
kiss, was that connection to Layne O’Connell, the woman I had been drawn to,
driven to, from the first moment my eyes met hers.
 
We were meant to be drawn together, I knew.
 
There was something so ancient and
instinctual about how much I wanted and needed her.
 
I could never have predicted that want.
 
If you’d asked me even a week before that moment, I would have
told you I wasn’t even sure two people could be pulled to one another like
this.
 
This wasn’t purely physical
attraction.
 
This was the attraction of
one heart to another, two hearts beating together in the same perfect rhythm.

I would never have believed I’d be
saying it, but there it was, as plain as day, and I have to say it if I’m being
truthful:
 
this was a
soul
attraction.
 
And I wasn’t even sure I
believed in souls.

So all of this connection, all of
this feeling, it all happened in an instant.
 
Her body against mine, her mouth devouring mine…all in a single, perfect
moment.
 
And then Layne pressed her
palms flat against the countertop again, and she bent her neck, placing her
forehead against my shoulder as she breathed quickly, practically panting
against me.
 

“We…can’t…” she growled, her breath
hot against my skin, her body wherever it touched mine making every atom in me
spring to attention.
 
I was no longer
shivering.
 
I knew what I wanted.

And it was her.

“I don’t understand,” I managed to
tell her, burying my mouth in her hair, inhaling the scent of her deeply, that
beautiful, rich aroma of wild air and the remnants of cologne.
 
Even the scent of her drew me in.
 
“I don’t understand,” I repeated as she bent
away from me, and it was my turn, this time, to grasp her waist.
 
And I did.
 
I held tightly to her as she stared down at me with wide, upset eyes,
frowning so deeply now.
 
“But I don’t
care
,”
I told her, the words breaking as she took a step away from me.
 
“Layne, don’t…” I said, as she took another
step back, and I stood, leaning against the counter, and she stood, several
feet away from me, no longer touching me.

But though there was no physical
contact, I could feel something stretch between us.
 
Something that felt like a bright line between our hearts.

She had to feel it, too.
 
Didn’t she?

“I don’t understand,” I repeated
woodenly, but she shook her head, running her fingers through her hair then.

“There’s too much,” she said then,
which I
didn’t
understand, not even a little.
 
She searched for the words, rocking back on her heels as she
curved her shoulders forward, like she’d been punched.
 
“There’s too much keeping us apart,
Elizabeth,” she finally managed, her voice a low, aching growl.
 
She ran a hand through her hair again,
shaking her head, her eyes so pain-filled that everything in me called out to
comfort her.
 
But I stood where I
was.
 
She cleared her throat, brought her
gaze up to mine.
 
“There’s so much at
work here…it’s so much bigger than just the two of us.
 
There’s too much keeping us apart,” she
repeated.