Dangerous Promise (The Protector)

  Content.

  Satisfied.

  For the first time since waking up in that hospital room, Nina fit inside her own skin. Possibly for the first time in her life. Not entirely because of Ewan—she’d never made a man her reason for being and she never would. He was an enormous part of it though, this newfound sense of herself. The idea that she could be strong and protect him even as he, in his way, took care of her.

  Nina stepped out of the shower and dried herself quickly, squeezing the excess water from her hair but leaving it unbound to flow over her shoulders and down her back. If she braided it while it was wet, it would take forever to dry. Naked, she drew on a soft robe that she found in the armoire. She belted it loosely, studying her reflection as she turned from side to side. With the robe gapping in the front, Ewan would be able to clearly see the shadows of her breasts and lower to her belly.

  Nina grinned. Good. She wanted him to see it and be teased.

  She grabbed her harness, the weight of it seeming heavier in her hand than when she took the time to strap it all on. How easy it had been to get out of the habit of wearing it constantly, out here in this remote cabin that did not seem to have any danger. She wasn’t stupid enough to completely discount the idea that something might happen here, but so far not so much as a twinge or peep of anyone stepping foot anywhere near the cabin had occurred. Ewan’s safe house, it seemed, might be truly safe, at least for now.

  In the kitchen, they laughed over breakfast, pausing in between bites to share kisses. Then a quickie. Both naked, they moved to the living room to lounge on the sofa in front of the fire while Ewan teasingly wiggled each of her toes and tried to tickle her without success. She straddled him, pinning his hands against his sides with her knees and letting her hands hover over his ribs.

  “No,” Ewan warned when she curled her fingers to stroke along his skin, barely brushing. “Oh. No. Nina!”

  “Oooh, so you’re the ticklish one.” She watched, gleeful, as he writhed and tried to keep himself out of her touch. “Verrrrry interesting.”

  He gasped. He swore. He tried to buck her off but she rode him as she held her hands over his skin.

  “I’m not even touching you!” she cried around her laughter. “You’re doing this to yourself, Ewan.”

  His groan was nothing sensual and yet it sent a thrill up and down her spine. He writhed again and stopped. His jaw set. His gaze flared, digging deep into hers.

  She let only the tips of her fingers brush him. He didn’t flail or move this time, but the quick intake of his breath and the flutter of gooseflesh on his skin showed her how she’d affected him. She bent to kiss him softly. They shared breath for a moment or so; she felt him calm beneath her.

  “When I woke up in the hospital, I was hooked up to so many tubes and wires that I looked like a marionette. At first, I couldn’t bear anyone to touch me. I hadn’t learned how to use the enhancements, I couldn’t shut everything down. So it was all too bright. Too loud. Too much to handle. The sedatives, of course, didn’t work.” She sat up, letting her hands rest flat on his bare belly. This time, Ewan didn’t flinch.

  Without talking about it but moving in perfect sync just the same, they both shifted on the couch until Nina sat next to him. Ewan slid his arm along the back of the couch and let his fingers curl around the nape of her neck. She closed her eyes and leaned back against him, enjoying his touch.

  “It hurt,” she said.

  Ewan’s fingers stroked gently, sending a shiver through her. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” She looked at him, not expecting to see the frown and furrowed brow. She touched his face. “Hey. Shh. It’s fine. Nothing you can do about it now.”

  “You said it still hurts.” He touched the faint, nearly invisible scar at her temple.

  She nodded, watching his expression. Uncertain why he looked . . . more than sad or sympathetic. He looked angry.

  “It’s not supposed to.” He’d said that once before, back at Woodhaven.

  Nina knew that Ewan could be considered one of the leading authorities on the enhancement tech. After all, he’d been the one to shut it all down and work tirelessly to pass the laws that had made further research and development illegal. When he said, “It’s not supposed to,” she could assume he knew what he was talking about.

  She leaned against him, turning so her knees nudged his thigh. “But it does. Not the way it did when I first woke up. But bad enough, off and on. Imagine being tickled that way over and over, and you couldn’t do anything to stop it. Take away the pleasure element, and don’t tell me there isn’t one, because I know you hate to love it but you do. Imagine that feeling of something happening to your body, involuntary responses that you can’t control. That’s what it feels like.”

  “I’m so sorry, Nina.” Ewan’s face had drained of color, leaving only two hot red spots high on his cheeks. He clutched her to him suddenly and kissed the breath out of her. “I swear to you, if I could make it different . . .”

  She allowed him to hold her. She didn’t want to argue with him about this. A few weeks ago, she’d have launched into a firm but determined reminder that he didn’t need to be sorry, not when he could work as hard to overturn the laws as he had to put them into place. Right now, in front of a crackling fire with his fingertips still teasing sensation at the back of her neck, the promise of some incandescent sex and later, some decent food patched together from the storeroom supplies . . . Nina didn’t want to mess all of that up.

  She liked being here.

  She liked being with Ewan.

  If that meant keeping her mouth shut at the moment so they could savor what they both knew was going to be a temporary sitch, then she’d do it. Instead, she leaned into him and offered her mouth for a kiss. When it deepened under his control, she let it. When he pulled away, his gaze bright, lips gleaming, she stood and took him by the hand.

  “Upstairs,” Nina said, and she took him there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Through the living room windows, Ewan could see the trees changing leaves. If they didn’t leave soon, they’d be snowed in here. Not simply safe. Trapped. Surviving on the stores he’d laid away, never thinking he’d need to use them. Already he was growing tired of synthbeef and pasta, of the quiet, endless days with nothing to occupy him but the books on the shelves . . . and Nina. Everything was making him weary, but he didn’t think he’d ever get tired of her.

  She was the first woman he’d ever brought to this cabin. The first, too, that he’d spent this much time with. Other relationships had turned sour quickly, often after spending as little as a single weekend together. Yet here they were, weeks and weeks into this, and he looked forward to every minute with her as much as ever. Maybe even more, he thought with a glance toward her.

  Nina didn’t look up, but she did smile. “You and the staring thing.”

  “I’m bored,” Ewan said abruptly.

  At this, she put down her book and met his gaze. “Hmm?”

  “I’m tired of not working,” he told her. “This isn’t like a vacation. This is forced time off, and I’m getting bored.”

  “You agreed to it,” she said mildly.

  Ewan frowned. “Obviously, I agreed to it. But scratch it, I want to at least be able to check in. See what’s being reported about me. Make sure everything’s under control. At least I want to find out if it’s possible for me to go back.”

  “Ah.” Nina’s mouth pursed. “You want to go home.”

  He did, but not so they had to put aside this delicious interlude they’d been sharing. They hadn’t talked about what would happen when inevitably they did return to Woodhaven. If the threats against his life had eased, he’d no longer need Nina as his bodyguard. What that meant for them as a couple, Ewan hadn’t figured out.

  “We can’t stay here forever. At the very least we ought to figure out how to get some more supplies before winter comes,” he said.

  “Yeah?” She grinned
. “You don’t want to be forced to . . . eat me?”

  He rolled his eyes at the innuendo, though the truth was that the thought of feasting on her twitched his cock. “I’m looking out for you, baby. You’re the one who needs the calories.”

  “Truth. And baby,” she said in that silky, sultry voice he was helpless to resist, “as much as I do love taking everything you can give me, it’s definitely not enough to sustain me.”

  Ewan groaned with a tug at the crotch of his pants to ease the growing pressure there. “You make everything sound so . . .”

  “Dirty?”

  “Sexy,” he said. “Sexy, dirty.”

  Nina tucked a bookmark between the pages and set the book aside. She stood. “You said you could leave everything in the hands of someone you trust. So that you could go away, long enough to get your people working on who exactly has been coming after you. I’m not sure it’s been long enough. It’s only been a few weeks.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. I mean, look at me.” He ran his hands through his hair until it stood on end. His hair was getting too long. His face, stubbly.

  “It works for you. I like you scruffy.” She chucked him beneath the chin, then kept her grip on his jaw to tug him closer for a kiss. “But okay, I get it. You’re bored. After all, how much sex can two people possibly have without starting to rehash the same old material?”

  Ewan grabbed her hips to pull her against his erection. “That sounds like a challenge.”

  “Too bad you’re so boooorrrred.” Nina moved against him in slow circles. When he groaned again, louder this time, she laughed and pulled away. She looked into his eyes, suddenly serious. “Hmm. You’re serious, huh?”

  As much as he wanted to keep kissing her and see where it led, Ewan nodded. “Yeah. I’m going stir crazy.”

  “Unfortunately you didn’t think about that when you stocked this place,” she teased. “Could have included a couple of thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles or something.”

  “We could pick one up in town.”

  Nina shook her head. “Ewan.”

  “I need to get in touch with Rodriquez. Find out if everything’s okay. That’s all. We’ll get a change of scenery. Grab some supplies.”

  “You’re suggesting we go into town?” Nina frowned.

  Ewan didn’t like that look. They might have spent that last three weeks behaving like lovers, but in this moment it was clear she’d returned to her role of protector. “I can use one of the public comm links to send a message to Rodriquez. . . .”

  “Hold on. The whole point of us coming here was because it was someplace nobody knew about. You’re going to risk everything if you try to get in touch with Rodriquez now.” Nina shook her head. “I can’t allow it.”

  “I don’t need your permission, Nina.” The words bit out of him.

  Nina took a step back. “I see.”

  “Baby, I didn’t mean it to sound like that.” Too late, her expression told him that she wasn’t going to let this slide.

  “Don’t call me ‘baby’ again if you’re going to use it like an apology you don’t even mean.” She stood straighter, her hands on her hips. Chin tipped up. Lips firm.

  “Got it.” The sensual interplay between them had gone ice cold.

  “You wanted to come here because it was a safe house. I came with you to make sure you stayed safe. If you want to go into town and expose yourself to the possibility of being found and targeted, I can advise you against it, but I certainly can’t stop you. All I can do is accompany you and make sure that I keep doing my job.”

  Nina’s neutral expression was void of any hint that their relationship had ever drifted into something beyond purely professional, and it was killing him. He wanted to kiss her. Tease her into a smile, a laugh. Something softer than the soldier standing in front of him. He wanted to see her be a woman again.

  * * *

  As Ewan finished speaking, Nina took a few steps away from him. She no longer wanted to kiss him, and the biting she felt like doing was not the kind he was likely to enjoy. She put her hands on her hips.

  “Is that how you see me?” she asked, then waved a hand before he could answer. “Never mind. You don’t have to answer that. You see me as a soldier or a woman. Not both. I can’t be both to you?”

  Ewan frowned. “I don’t mean your gender. I mean—”

  “You mean that I can’t be strong and fierce and protect you, and also be your honey sugar cookie baby. Right? I can’t be both things. Even if you do get off on me being able to hurt you.” Nina took no pleasure in watching Ewan recoil. She’d stung him, that was clear.

  “For all your talk about how you’re so capable of mingling work and pleasure, you’re the one who seems to have a hard time distinguishing. I don’t doubt you can do your job,” he put in before she could argue. “I’ve seen you work. I still trust you implicitly with my life. But you don’t own me, not as my protector and not as my—” He chopped off his sentence, his mouth going thin and grim.

  Nina’s chin lifted. “Your what? Your baby? Your gal? Your woman? Your partner?”

  “You’re not my partner when you try to completely overrule me,” Ewan said. “That’s not how it works.”

  “Listen to you.” She sounded snide and knew it; hated it, but knew it. “All in there with the relationship advice. Remind me again how many relationships you’ve been able to make work?”

  Ewan’s lip curled. “I could say the same to you, Nina.”

  “Sounds like we both have no idea what we’re doing, then. You want to go into town? You think that’s a good idea? Fine.” She shrugged and gestured toward the cabin’s front door. “Let’s go.”

  “There’s nothing to tie me to Deer Park any more than there is to this cabin. Even if there was an international bulletin circulating to be on the lookout for me, the chances of it making it to that tiny little speck of a town are miniscule. Besides, if they truly think I’m dead, they won’t even be looking for me. And I need to find out what’s going on,” Ewan said. “So, you can come with me or you can stay here, but either way, I’m going into town.”

  Once they left this place, everything was going to change. Nina felt it in every synapse. Not a premonition—the tech in her brain had not made her psychic. Still, she knew it.

  This place had never been meant for permanence, and neither had they.

  It wasn’t over yet, though, and she didn’t want to spend the final moments with him arguing. She’d never been a woman to bite her tongue and cater to a man, but this wasn’t about that sort of pandering. It was about holding onto the last few minutes of sweetness before they had to let it go.

  “I could stand to sink my teeth into a juicy burger,” she said finally. “Something that doesn’t come from cans or foil packets.”

  Ewan smiled, and no matter how she wished it didn’t, the twist of his lips sent a rush of warmth all through her. “My treat.”

  “Oh, it’s your treat all right. You haven’t yet taken me on a date. I expect to be shown a really good time.”

  “Not sure how much of a good time Deer Park is going to be able to show us,” Ewan said with a bow, then offered her his arm. “But baby, I’ll do my best.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The trip into town had started off with an argument and an ultimatum, and he wasn’t proud of that. Ewan was far from knowing all of his flaws, but stubborn pride and insistence on having his own way was definitely one of them. He’d grown too used to getting his own way. Money had given Ewan a lot of things, but never a day as perfect as this one had been.

  Deer Park was indeed a town so small it could barely be called a village. Most of its residents owned property, like him, that included vast expanses of undeveloped land with hidden estates, so although it was small, the town had all the amenities you’d expect wealthy eccentrics to want. He and Nina had spent the day sampling local delicacies and looking in all the tiny shops. They’d also stuffed the buzzbike’s saddlebags with enough supplies to bring
something fresh to their current pantry.

  They’d walked holding hands. They’d kissed over their shared dessert in a cozy little bistro. They’d tossed a few virtual coins into the holofountain and laughed together at the graphics congratulating them on wishes coming true. When night started creeping into the sky, they’d decided to head back.

  “You all right? Not too cold?” he called over his shoulder as he revved the buzzbike a bit to get it moving up the hill.

  With her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, her cheek pressed to his back, Nina replied, “Nah. Open her up!”

  “You want me to go faster?” He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say it.

  Against his back, he felt the shake of her laughter. “Yes, yes! Faster!”

  Narrowing his eyes to scan the trail ahead for anything that had come down across it since that morning, Ewan twisted the throttle. The buzzbike leaped smoothly to his command. With a press of the button beneath his thumb, the buzzbike’s electric motor revved even higher, pushing them faster up the hill in a skid of dirt and gravel that spat out behind them.

  Ahead of them, the full moon filled the horizon. By the time they got back to the cabin, the entire sky was aglow with silver. Ewan eased the buzzbike into the garage and rigged it to the charging port while Nina shook her head to free her face from the fine, thin strands of hair that had escaped from her braid.

  Outside, she stopped to look up at the sky. “The man in the moon has a mustache.”

  “And a cigar.” Ewan pointed at the dark spots left behind from the never-completed construction on the space station project that had failed a little over thirty years before.

  “Think anyone will ever get back up there and finish it, even though it changed the tides and made the oceans rise?”

  Ewan looked at her to see if she was being serious. She looked solemn. “I don’t know. I hope not.”