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  She gripped his knees, her fingers digging in hard through his jeans and he felt her nails, felt the tight squeeze of her pussy around him, felt her heat. And just before the pleasure annihilated him completely, he slid his fingers around her throat and pulled her back against him. Turned his face into her neck and roared out his climax against her skin, her pulse beating like a drum against his palm and her cunt clamping down on his cock like a fist.

  He couldn’t move afterward, the intensity of his release leaving him light-headed and shaken. All he was conscious of was her pulse, fast and frantic against his hand, and the shuddering of her body on top of him.

  It took him another minute to get himself together, gently easing her off him so he could get up and stumble toward the airplane’s little bathroom. Inside he dealt with the condom, not seeing the faint smear of red on it until he dropped it into the wastebasket.

  For a second it didn’t register. Then it hit him suddenly like a mortar shell.

  Blood. He’d made her bleed.

  Something inside him dropped away, the heat in his veins replaced by ice.

  Shit. What had he done? Had he hurt her? Had he been too rough? She hadn’t said anything, or at least, not that he’d been aware of.

  He leaned over the basin and ran the tap, splashing water over his face. His hands shook. She’d screamed and moaned and cried out, but it had all been due to pleasure, he was sure of it.

  Except . . . he hadn’t been entirely aware of much beyond his own desperation when he’d first thrust inside her. He’d been almost wild with lust, the combination of her struggling and the movement of her soft ass against his cock driving him fucking crazy.

  He’d simply ripped open the condom he’d shamelessly asked for from the flight attendant—only vaguely surprised when she produced one without comment—then bent Callie over before thrusting hard inside her. And she had . . .

  He blinked, the moment replaying over in his head, remembering her going absolutely rigid. And he hadn’t noticed, because it had been two years and she’d blinded him with her heat, with how tight she was and how wet . . .

  You know what that means, you fucking idiot.

  Ah, Jesus. She’d been a virgin, hadn’t she?

  Pushing himself away from the basin, he left the bathroom, stepping back out into the main part of the plane.

  Callie was sitting curled up in his seat, one arm thrown across her face. She’d put her T-shirt back on again, but nothing else, her bare legs drawn up, her hair a golden storm over the dark leather.

  She looked small and fragile, making his chest tighten and a deep kind of possessiveness slide though him. Which was wrong, because she wasn’t his and he didn’t want her to be. But that didn’t stop the feeling from sinking its claws in. And the knowledge that she’d been a virgin only made those claws sharper.

  He liked the fact that he was her first, that she hadn’t given herself to anyone else. And he liked that she’d chosen him.

  You sick bastard. You know where that kind of thinking leads.

  Oh yeah, he did. To a small white coffin that weighed nothing at all.

  He gritted his teeth, forcing away the memory. What he should do now was go and sit in another part of the plane, put some distance between them.

  Yet he found himself moving toward her all the same, that possessiveness drawing him as surely as if he were a fish on her line and she were reeling him in.

  Pausing beside one of the storage lockers set into the wall near the bathroom, he pulled it open and got out a soft blanket. Then he came over to the seat where Callie sat all curled up and calmly eased her aside so he could sit down. Then he pulled her into his lap, arranging her so she was lying across him, her head against his chest, and wrapped the blanket around her so she was covered up and warm.

  She gave a little sigh and relaxed completely against him, the warmth of her, the soft weight of her lovely body, and the delicious sweet, sugar scent of her working their magic, making his cock stir.

  But he ignored it. Instead he put his arms around her, holding her against him.

  He shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be holding her like she was his, but leaving her alone after what he’d done to her, after he’d used her the way he had, seemed like an asshole thing to do. And sure, he was an asshole and had never pretended otherwise, but he didn’t want to be an asshole to her.

  “You were a virgin, weren’t you?” He kept the question quiet, yet made sure she heard the firm note that let her know he wanted a goddamn answer.

  “Of course I was.” Her voice was husky and sleepy, and she kept her eyes closed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Anger kicked at him that he hadn’t noticed and then kicked again, harder, at the underlying satisfaction her confession had given him.

  This time her lashes fluttered open and her gaze met his, the blue of her irises almost darkening into midnight. “Why should I?”

  “Why? Shit, because I was rough. If I’d known you were a virgin I would have gone slower. I would have prepared you more—”

  “I didn’t want you to,” she cut him off firmly. “You told me what to expect and I was more than okay with it. Besides . . .” Her lashes lowered, a hot gleam in her eyes. “Would you still have screwed me if you had known I’d never done it before?”

  Well . . . actually, he probably wouldn’t have. His protective instincts wouldn’t have let him.

  “No,” Callie murmured, before he could speak. “You wouldn’t. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to be quiet.” She made a snuggling movement. “All that de-virginizing has made me tired and I’d really like to get some sleep.”

  He stared down at her, half of him taken aback by her matter-of-factness, and half of him vaguely amused by it despite himself. “You’re not sore? You don’t want help to clean up?”

  She pulled a face, her lashes already falling closed. “God, no. I don’t want to even freaking move right now.” A sigh escaped her. “Wow. Who knew muscle could be so comfortable?”

  Jesus Christ. She was going to sleep on him? After that?

  What the hell did you expect?

  Actually, he didn’t know. Maybe talking, because wasn’t that what women liked after sex? Especially virgins?

  Apparently, not this virgin.

  He frowned down at her, not knowing quite what to do. He hadn’t planned on her going to sleep in his arms. He hadn’t expected she’d even want to stay there.

  Yet her breathing was slowing, her body getting lax, falling asleep as he watched.

  You like this. You like her surrender.

  Because it was a surrender, wasn’t it? She’d already surrendered her body to him, and now, whether she’d thought about this or not, she was surrendering something else. Falling asleep on him was a deep form of trust and she’d done it without even a protest.

  The possessive feeling shifted like a massive beast inside him, growling its satisfaction, and he found his arms tightening around her before he was even aware of it.

  She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know that with each choice she made, she fed that beast and one day he wouldn’t be able to leash it. One day it would escape and it would eat her alive.

  She’s strong though. She took everything you gave her and then some.

  Sure, she had. But that had only been sex. The need he had inside him went far deeper and was far more intense than that.

  Jack shifted his gaze to the window, watching the darkness of the night sky beyond the glass.

  He would have to let her go and he would as soon as they touched down in San Diego. But right now she was warm and soft in his arms, and he couldn’t bring himself to release her.

  It wouldn’t hurt to keep on holding her.

  Just for a little while.

  * * *

  San Diego was bright. Way too damn bright.

  She adored it.

  Callie squinted out the front windshield, trying to stop grinning inanely at the sun pouring t
hrough the glass and directly into her eyes.

  She’d slept the whole way from Boston, only waking up when Jack eased her from his arms and into her own seat, wrapping the blanket securely around her and doing up her seat belt.

  She’d protested a little at that, because she’d been supremely comfortable in his arms, feeling safe for the first time in years, and her sleep had been deep.

  Though, stumbling from the plane into sunlight and nearly T-shirt weather had woken her up fairly abruptly.

  Jack hadn’t said a word as they went from the jet straight to his car—a plain black Toyota, nothing fancy—and she supposed she should ask where they were going and what the story was, but part of her simply wasn’t interested.

  Part of her was still up in the sky, getting screwed senseless and loving every second of it.

  Part of her wanted to do it again. Preferably right now.

  You kind of have more important things to be worrying about.

  Callie grimaced at the thought. Of course, what she really wanted to be doing was finding a private place, with a bed, and getting naked again with Jack. But she supposed that was going to have to wait now that they were back on the ground and back to reality.

  “So,” she said into the silence, glancing at him. “What happens now?”

  He stared straight ahead of him, navigating the freeway traffic. His eyes were shielded by dark aviator shades, his expression set in its usual hard lines, and she wondered idly what it would take to get a smile out of him.

  Up in the plane, he’d laughed in her ear, dark and dirty and hot, but she hadn’t seen his face when he’d done it. Now the memory made her shiver. Made her wish she’d turned around to watch him.

  Ahem. Your father?

  Oh yeah. Dammit. It was just difficult thinking about that when she was across the other side of the country, out of his reach for the first time, safe from him. Safe with Jack.

  An odd feeling moved in her chest, a tightness. It made her want to reach out and put her hand on his powerful thigh, feel the heat of him against her palm, feel his reassuring strength. Remember it.

  “What happens now is that we’ll go back to my place,” Jack said expressionlessly. “Then I need to get in touch with my team and figure out how we’re going to handle your father.”

  There was something in that rough voice of his, a flat note, that kept her hand where it was, curled in her lap. That made the tight feeling in her chest get even tighter, though she couldn’t work out why.

  “Okay,” she said. “I guess I need to start figuring out what I should do.”

  “You don’t need to do anything but stay where I put you. I don’t want you going anywhere I can’t protect you, which means you’ll need to lie low at my place for a while.”

  That was fine with her. She didn’t mind lying low, especially if he was with her. “Fine. Not a problem.”

  He flicked a glance in the rearview mirror, then changed lanes, accelerating. “That means no going out anywhere.”

  “Sure.”

  “For as long as it takes to sort this situation out.”

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  “Basically house arrest. Like you were in Boston.”

  This time Callie frowned at him. “You’re being weirdly persistent about this.”

  “Just making sure you know what to expect. This isn’t going to mean instant freedom, okay?”

  “I know that.” She narrowed her gaze at him. “What? Are you expecting me to argue?”

  His attention was firmly on the traffic. “Nothing’s changed, Princess. You didn’t like it in Boston. You’re not going to like it here.”

  Well, no, she hadn’t liked it in Boston. But things felt different now. She felt different now. And she couldn’t quite explain why, but it had something to do with what had happened with him in that plane. How she’d fought and how she’d discovered a strength in herself she’d never known she’d possessed. A power she never suspected she had.

  But she did. And that made things different.

  He made things different.

  “No,” she said quietly. “Everything’s changed.”

  This time he did look at her, though she couldn’t tell what his expression was since it was hidden behind the darkness of his shades.

  She opened her mouth to explain herself, but before she could get a word out, he said, “Those death threats haven’t gone away either.” He glanced back to the traffic. “We’ll need to sort that situation out too. I’ll know more once I’ve had a chance to talk to my team.”

  Okay, so he didn’t want to talk about what had happened up there in the sky?

  Can you really blame him? With all the rest of this crap going on?

  No, she really couldn’t. And besides, what did she expect him to say anyway? Things might be different for her, but maybe they weren’t for him.

  Something lurched inside her of her at that thought, but she pushed the feeling firmly away. That was her inexperience talking. The world hadn’t changed simply because she had and even though she might have affected him up in the air, maybe that didn’t last now that they were on solid ground.

  And that was okay. She didn’t want to be a silly cliché and fall for the first man she’d slept with. After all, they did have more important things to be concerned about.

  She tore her gaze away from him, trying to concentrate on the view out of the car window instead of him. She’d never been out of state before and considering she was going to be holing up yet again in some house, it was probably all the view she was going to get for a while.

  Jack’s phone buzzed all of a sudden and he picked it up, answering with a curt, “King.”

  Callie stared out the window, trying not to be so acutely aware of Jack’s rough voice and the way it made goose bumps rise on her skin, concentrating on the view and not on whatever kind of conversation he was having. Which was obviously not a pleasant one judging from his harsh tone and one-word answers.

  Eventually he fell silent and she glanced at him yet again. “Problem?”

  “No.” There was a current of what sounded like anger running through his voice. “Just a change of plan.”

  A thread of unease twisted in her gut. “Oh? Why?”

  “Your father has contacted my team. He’s demanding an explanation for why I apparently ‘kidnapped you’ and has threatened to ‘deal with the situation himself.’ The team now wants a debrief on the situation and they want it now.”

  The unease deepened into fear. God, her father was on their tail already and now the people Jack worked for wanted to know what was happening. What if they hadn’t agreed with Jack’s course of action in taking her away? Her father was the one who’d contacted them in the first place and presumably he was paying them, and now Jack had taken her away....

  She gritted her teeth, forcing away the clutch of fear. “Will they tell him where we are?”

  Jack said nothing, but a muscle jumped in his jaw.

  Shit. That wasn’t good.

  Callie clenched her fingers together. “Jack, please.” Dammit, she didn’t want to sound so breathy and scared, but she couldn’t help it. “If they tell Dad where we—”

  “Which is why we’re not going to that debrief.” His tone was clipped. “We’ll go to my place first, get some gear, and then we’ll find another place where you’ll be safe, until I can sort this situation out.”

  The icy grip of fear eased. “Your team is—”

  “My team isn’t really my team. At least not yet. To be part of it, I had to complete a job first and that job is—”

  “Me,” she finished for him.

  He gave her another brief glance, but again he didn’t say anything. Not that he needed to. She knew.

  She took a breath, trying to sort through the implications. “So you have to complete the job to be part of this team?”

  “Yeah. And complete it to a satisfactory level.” He paused and she noticed that his hands on the wheel were white-knuckl
ed. “They got us out of Boston, no questions asked. But now the senator has been in contact with them . . . Shit, he apparently turned over the whole fucking city trying to find you.”

  Ice began to form in her veins. “He won’t find me,” she said aloud, both to him and to herself, a vow. “And even if he does, I’m not going back. I won’t.”

  “Don’t worry. I have no intention of him finding you or of my team interfering. I don’t know enough about them to trust them, which means we’re going to be hiding out from everyone until I can deal with the situation.”

  It should have relieved her, and it did make the grip of fear ease a little. But it didn’t relieve it entirely. “You can’t do this for me,” she said shakily, a new kind of anxiety filling her. An anxiety for him. “Dad is really powerful and he can make life very difficult for you and whoever you work with. Protecting me now is only going to make things worse.”

  He lifted a shoulder like it was no big deal. “It’s too late for that, Princess. It was too late the moment we boarded that fucking jet.”

  “But what about you? What about your job?”

  “What about it?” Sunlight flashed off his shades as he turned his head toward her. “You think that matters more than your life?”

  She blinked. There was another note in his voice now and it wasn’t simply anger. There was something else there, something far more complicated.

  “You care about this, don’t you?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  “I care about your life, yes.”

  “No, this isn’t just about that and it isn’t just about doing a good job. You hardly know me, Jack. Why do you care so much? Is it because of what happened in the plane?”

  Unexpectedly, he turned away, as if her questions had made him uncomfortable somehow. His grip on the steering wheel became even fiercer, his skin drawn tight over his knuckles. “We’ll be at my place soon. I’ll take half an hour to get some gear together and then we’ll leave. You’ll have time to have a shower, but that’s all.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t going to talk to her. That was fine, he didn’t have to. He didn’t owe her any explanations. Because really, it wasn’t as if they had any sort of relationship. He was her bodyguard and they’d had sex once. That was it.