Singe (Guardian Protection #1)

I smiled and tucked my hair behind my ear. “Okay, but only if you promise to get here early. I told Devon I was a stripper. I need you to install a pole to make it legit.”

His eyes nearly bulged from his head. “There are a lot of things I’ll do for you, Rhion. Run into oncoming traffic. Break your brother in half. Call my estranged grandma for a goddamn chocolate chip cookie recipe. But, just so we’re clear, installing a stripper pole will never be one of those things.”

I burst into laughter and folded over on my bed.

He watched me for several seconds with a warm grin, and then, with a wink, he was gone.

Reaching for my laptop on the nightstand, I settled in for a long night of writing.

Only, hours later, as I pulled my front door open, I realized I was right about one thing: It would be a long night.

It just wouldn’t be spent writing.

“Jude?” I breathed.





“Oomph,” I grunted when he yanked me into his arms, my face smooshing against his hard chest as he held me so tight that I could barely breathe.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he slurred.

The smell of whiskey mingled with his cologne in an undeniably intoxicating combination. It only took a single breath for my entire body to melt against him.

“Christ, Butterfly,” he sighed, trailing the tip of his fingers over my bare shoulder.

My lungs seized and my heart stopped.

Butterfly.

The nickname I’d replayed so many times in my head over the years. The same one I’d covered most of my arms and my chest with various renderings of them.

Wrapping my arms around his hips, I held him, fearing that the moment was nothing more than another of my dreams. God knew I’d had enough of those over the last few years.

“I never should have taken the call that night. I’m so fucking sorry.”

At least that’s what I think he said. It was all so jumbled and twisted coming from his drunken tongue.

“I’m okay,” I assured, but it did nothing to slow him.

“No, you fucking aren’t.”

He quieted long enough to press his lips against the top of my head. It wasn’t sexual, but that didn’t make it any less brilliant. A shiver shook my shoulders before traveling down my body, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the cold air blowing in through the open door and everything to do with him.

I was freezing in a tank top and a pair of pajama shorts, but I refused to let go. I’d been waiting too long for that moment.

As I fisted my hands into the back of his shirt, he continued murmuring unintelligible words into the top of my hair.

Some were laced with apologies.

Some were disguised as explanation.

Most were what sounded like confessions.

And, judging by the way his arms tensed painfully around me with every breath, he meant all of them with his whole heart.

But I didn’t need any of them. I had nothing to forgive Jude for.

I didn’t stop him from talking though, because as I stood there, eyes closed, lost in his voice. Lost in his scent. Lost in his touch. Lost in him. It ignited a piece of myself that had long since smothered out.

Desire.

And I basked in it like I was experiencing my first ray of sunshine.

For over ten minutes, I allowed Jude to drain his conscience with broken thoughts and slurred sentences, and through it all, I clung to him as though I could alleviate his pain. And I hoped more than anything else that I actually could. After all, I owed him. More than I’d ever be able to repay.

When his lips finally slowed, I eased out of his arms and looked up into his unfocused eyes. “You feel better now?”

“Not the slightest.” He shook his head and stumbled to the side, his shoulder colliding with the wall.

“Easy there, tiger,” I said, hooking him around the hips to help keep him upright.

“Fuck. I should have gone home,” he grumbled.

“I’m glad you came back, actually.”

“Then why’d you run tonight?” he asked, leaning some of his weight onto my shoulders.

Embarrassment colored my cheeks. “That’s a good question,” I replied, doing my best to keep him balanced as I kicked the door shut and then walked us to the kitchen. “How much time ya got?”

I left him leaning against the counter and ran around the bar to retrieve a stool, stopping when he popped himself up to sit on top.

Well, okay, then.

I would have looked like a fool if I’d tried to do that sober, much less drunk. But, then again, I wasn’t nearly six and a half feet tall and covered in muscles.

“You…ah…want some coffee?” I asked.

He laughed. “Does it come with a lobotomy?”

“What? And ruin that pretty face?” I teased, pressing brew on the coffee maker.

Okay. Fine. I wasn’t teasing. I was flirting. Straight up. With an extremely inebriated man.

But, if I couldn’t flirt with the man of my dreams and the star of every fantasy I’d ever had since I’d first laid eyes on him, who could I flirt with?

“It’s not the face. It’s the hair. It covers the scars, but it makes me look like my name should be Percy or Sven or some shit.”

I laughed and retrieved two mugs from the cabinet. Sleep was officially out for me—might as well kick a new day off right.

“Well, I like it, Percy,” I joked, watching him out of the corner of my eye as I poured him the first drippings of coffee and passed it his way.

He smiled, and it almost hit his eyes as he took the mug from my hand.

“Cream or sug…” I trailed off as he tipped it to his lips for a long sip that had to have scorched his tongue. “Alrighty.”

He didn’t complain, and when he finished, he held his cup out for a refill, his gaze becoming increasingly perplexed as he watched me.

“Why are you being so nice?” he asked when I handed it back to him.

I shrugged. “Am I supposed to be mean?”

“It’s some ungodly hour. I’m smashed. And, after all the bullshit I unloaded on you, yeah, Rhion. You should probably be throwing the mug at me instead of pouring a second cup.”

I filled my own mug, leaned my hip on the counter next to him, and shyly whispered, “I don’t care about any of that, Jude. You know, you’re not the only one who’s been living with guilt from the fire.”

His gaze snapped to mine. “What the fuck could you possibly feel bad about?”

A million angry butterflies came to life in my stomach as I cut my gaze to the floor. “Nothing.”

“Look at me,” he urged.

I was helpless not to obey. His hand went up and the tips of his fingers brushed over the lines on my shoulders. Dense tattoos covered my arms and my chest, but those weren’t the lines he was tracing. The callused pads of his fingers ran back and forth across the puckered flesh of my burns.

“These are mine, Rhion,” he rasped. “You don’t get to own anything from that night.” His body swayed as his drunken eyes drooped even lower as though he were absorbing the pain from my old wounds.