Singe (Guardian Protection #1)

As though she could read my thoughts, she pushed up onto her toes and brushed her lips with mine, the contact doing wonders to alleviate the stress brewing within me.

“I’m sorry, Jude,” she whispered. “I hate more than anything else that you’ve lived with that alone for last four years. But you’re wrong. You have told someone else about that. You told me our first night together. And it changed exactly nothing. I’ve still been pursuing you for almost two months, knowing the truth. Because”—she paused, and a small smile hitched her lips—“it. Doesn’t. Fucking. Matter.”

My jaw slacked open as my eyebrows shot up. “No way I told you that.”

“Oh, but you did.” Her smile widened. “You told me every gory detail about that night. Meanwhile, I was damn near delirious with happiness just to be in your arms.”

“Oh God,” I groaned.

“And I’m going to tell you the same thing I said to you right before you passed out. Fate’s a tricky beast. You made mistake after mistake that night, but no matter which way you spin it, you’re the only reason I’m standing here today.”

The knife twisted in my gut, but her hands slipped under the back of my shirt, holding me tight.

“That’s not fucking fate, Rhion. That’s a God’s honest miracle.”

“Oh, even better. Divine intervention,” she smarted.

Unable to take her touch anymore, I tore her arms away and then turned, pinning her against the wall. “That’s not what I meant!”

Arching her back to keep our bodies connected, she kept talking. “You were the only man on the scene when that house came down. Drinking or not, if you hadn’t taken the call that night, I’d have still been on that ledge when it fell. You got us far enough away so all that happened was you ended up with a broken leg. If you weren’t there, that would have been my skull. There is no way I would have survived that without you.”

I leaned down until our faces were inches apart and snarled, “You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do. And, you know it too. You’re a good man, with a good heart and a wicked conscience. But you’re smart. So you know I’m right.”

I shook my head adamantly. “We live in two totally different worlds, Rhion.”

“Maybe. But, in yours, you’re living in the dungeons of what you could have done differently had you been sober or more courageous. In my world, you saved me, you’re falling in love with me, and I’m refusing to let go. There comes a point where you have to stop beating yourself up for the mistakes you made and step into the reality of what actually happened. You don’t want to be a hero? Fine. I’ll never utter the word again. The verbiage doesn’t change the outcome though.”

I wasn’t convinced, and the familiar pressure I’d been carrying for years inflated my chest all over again. “Those books…”

“Are. Not. Real,” she implored, tucking my hair behind my ears. “I stopped writing about the two of us a year ago. I’m currently writing a book about Maleficent and Prince Philip. She’s terrible, but I’m making the reader believe he’s good. And he’s amazing, but I’m making the reader believe he’s bad before the big ending where it all comes to light.” She pressed her lips to mine. “You are not in there.” Kiss. “I am not in there.” Kiss. “There is no fire.” Deep and lingering kiss. “It’s just words.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. At least there was that.

Closing my eyes, I confessed. “I want this with you, ya know. So fucking bad. Not because of the bullshit and guilt over the fire. But because you’re incredible—off-the-charts nutty, but that’s perfect because I can be really fucking dry sometimes.”

“Mercurial,” she corrected.

My lips twitched as I opened my eyes. “That too.” The pressure in my chest slowly ebbed away as she stared up at me. “After I read some of those books, it was the first time since we got together that I felt like maybe I wasn’t the right man for you.”

Her eyebrows painfully pinched together, but it was a joke that escaped her lips. “Don’t be silly. It’s all part of the prophecy.”

I laughed, moving my arms around her hips. Hugging her tight against my chest, I rested my chin on the top of her head. “I hate that we have this shit between us.”

“I don’t. No one in the entire world understands what it was like for me that night except you. I’ve never been ashamed of my scars, but our first night together, you traced over them and told me they were yours. You made me feel like they were something beautiful.”

I dropped my lips to her shoulder. “They’re part of you, Rhion. They’ll always be beautiful.”

Her smile spread wide across her face. “You want to go to bed and I’ll tell you everything we talked about that night?”

“Oh, now, you want to talk,” I said sarcastically.

“Sure, because now, I’m not mortified anymore. Though, if I ever uncover the recipe for that memory eraser, tonight will be the first thing that goes.”

I turned serious again. “Butterfly, you could have told me. And I know that’s hypocritical considering the shit I’ve been harboring. But, just so you know, there is nothing you can’t tell me. I’m in this with you. So fucking deep.”

She plastered her small frame against my front in unspoken understanding.

We stood there, silently holding each other, years of hurt and anguish melting away from the undeniable heat between us. I hated everything we’d had to endure both separately and together to get to that moment, but maybe Rhion was right.

It wasn’t the how that mattered.

We’d gotten there.

And, as I guided her back to the bed, listened to her talk for over an hour, and then fell asleep with her nestled against my chest, I had every intention of staying—forever.





Time sped up over the next three weeks as Rhion tunneled herself deeper under my skin until I wasn’t sure where I ended and she began. Yes, I worked for her. So most of our days were spent tooling around town, doing whatever errands she wanted or needed to do. But I could count on one hand how many nights I’d slept in my own bed, and slowly but surely, my belongings had begun reproducing at her apartment. My bag still sat in the corner of the room, not yet having graduated to the closet or the dresser, but just as many of my things as hers cluttered the bathroom counter. Rhion’s place had started to feel like home.