He cupped the back of my head. He didn’t pull me into his kiss, just held on and stared into my eyes. “Then the man walked over to me and screamed something. Pointed his gun at my head. As it went off, the door to the hut blew off the hinges. Literally, the door was obliterated in a puff of smoke. Another gun fired as the man was looking at the door, and then I saw his entire body drop backwards, a bullet hole right between his eyes.”
I tightened my hold around his body, his tremors rippling through me as I listened to every last word.
“Gina had rolled over and used a dirty cloth that was lying between us and held it against the wound at my neck as a team of American soldiers secured the room. They called a bunch of commands into a walkie talkie or something. I don’t really know. The next thing I remember was being carried by one of them and rushed to a helicopter. I’ll never forget the noise. It was deafening. Explosions, gunfire, screaming, crying.” He shook his head and rubbed a hand over his face. “Mia, I write movies that have these types of special effects, and it’s nothing like the real thing.
“Nothing can compare to the all over fear that consumes every molecule of your being when you’re held captive like that. Even when I was picked up by the military, I still believed I would die. That no one could live after what happened. And Gina…Christ!” Tears filled his eyes and poured down his cheeks like a waterfall over a mountain’s edge. “Oh, God, baby, the shit they did to her,” he sobbed. “She’s going to be fucked up for life.”
Wes’s tears soaked my skin as I held him. He was sitting up by now and had positioned us so that I straddled his lap with my legs wrapped around his hips. He was wearing his very own Mia blanket. I kept my arms around him even when the tears trailed down my shoulder and along my spine. I told him over and over how brave he was, how he was okay now, how we’d get past this, but he continued to cry. He was steps away from being completely broken, but I was there, and I’d put him back together again, one piece at a time.
Wes fell into a restless sleep, holding me to him, his grip never loosening. I was his salvation, and at the end of the day, I was okay with that.
Chapter Four
“Cut it out!” I giggled into his neck while Wes groped my ass.
The deep rumble of his chuckle burrowed into my soul. He hummed, holding a handful of Mia bum. “I can’t.” He nuzzled against my neck and bit into the column playfully. “You look downright tasty in this skirt. Shit. I should have taken you to more business meetings during our month together. You have this naughty librarian look going for you.” He thrust his hardening length against my backside.
I’d chosen a simple black pencil skirt and blue silk blouse combo. Judi assured me it was professional and would go over well with the executives who ran the Dr. Hoffman cable network show at Century Productions. The only thing they warned me about was not to wear green. Apparently, a lot of the backdrops would be green screen, which meant if I wore green, I would disappear into the images they would insert around me.
Turns out that the show didn’t exactly pay my escorting fee the way I had imagined. A famous production company wouldn’t sign a check to a company called Exquisite Escorts. Millie had drawn up a separate official contract listing herself as my agent and charged the same hundred thousand dollar fee to ensure I’d have the money I needed to pay Blaine. Money I’d now be paying to my brother. Max had looked at me as though I had four eyes when I suggested monthly installments. Regardless of what he said or did, he was getting that money back. End of story.
For this yearlong job with Exquisite Escorts, I’d had to quit my other agent a little over nine months ago. It tickled me to no end that Millie had the business sense to manage this new side of our arrangement. My last agent hadn’t been getting me anything profitable or career-defining, so it really wasn’t much love lost for either of us when I bailed on him.
Covering Wes’s hands in mine, I allowed myself a few moments of pure bliss before I twirled around, laid a quick smack-a-roo on his lips, and backed up. His eyes were filled with mirth when he lunged at me, capturing me around the waist and locking me in his strong arms.
“Hey, not fair.” I smacked at his chest. “You’re much stronger than I am!” I pouted.
“You’d better believe it. Nothing will keep me from having you. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” He grinned and layered kisses from my clavicle up the side of my neck to my ear. “Mmm,” he murmured, and the sound sent a jolt of lust sizzling and flickering along my nerve endings.
“Wes…” I groaned tipping my head back, giving him better access. His mouth did things to me that made me straight stupid. I turned into a half-wit ninny every time he touched me. “Baby, I’ve got to get to my first day of work.”
He licked delicately around the shell of my ear, his fingers smoothing over my ass. “Okay, okay. I know you have to go.”