Page 17 of Reluctantly His

He placed his hand on my waist as he pressed into me from behind. His breath ruffled my hair as he said, “If you don’t let go of this handle, I’ll bend you forward, flip your skirt back up, and finish what I started.”

With a shocked gasp, I released the cello case handle as if it had burned my palm.

Stiffening my spine as I pushed my chin high, I deliberately flipped my hair over my shoulder, catching him in the face. “Fine.”

I became annoyed when my impertinent gesture only elicited a chuckle from him. With that, I continued toward the classroom door, unlocked it, and moved to swing it open.

“Open that door and it won’t be my hand on your ass, but my belt.”

My hands on my hips, I swung around to face him. “So now I’m not allowed to open my own doors?”

He raised an eyebrow as he stepped close. “Are we inside your home?”

I crossed my arms and huffed.

“Answer me.”

His barked command made me jump. “No.”

He reached around me, brushing my arm and sending a frisson of awareness over my skin. “Then you have your answer.”

After checking the empty corridor, he motioned for me to follow him.

“You don’t think all this is a tiny bit over-the-top?” I grumbled as I reluctantly appreciated the view of his tight ass in his jeans as I trudged behind him.

What was that saying about bouncing a quarter?

He opened the outer door, swiveled his head from left to right, checking the side street, before allowing me to follow him through. “Depends. Do you think being chained in a basement over several months while your kidnappers send pieces of you back to your father a tiny bit over-the-top?”

The image horrified me.

While my father might not have been anyone’s idea of father-of-the-year, I knew he loved me, and the very idea of torturing him, and the rest of my family, like that churned my stomach.

He directed me to a massive, shiny black Ford F-150 truck. It was like strolling up to Optimus Prime.

“You drive this thing?”

He opened the back passenger door and placed my cello upright in the footwell behind the driver. “Yup.”

“In the city?”

After moving to the other side and opening the door, he tilted his head toward the interior. “Yup. Get in.”

Like most New Yorkers, I didn’t even have a driver’s license. I was used to seeing our city streets crammed with yellow cabs, black sedans, and smaller domestic cars… not insanely large pick-up trucks more suited to rolling over small mountains.

There was absolutely no way of entering this thing without literally hauling myself upward in a very unladylike way.

As I surveyed the situation, Reid shifted behind me.

His warm hands spanned my waist.

“Hey!”

“Hush, little girl.”

He easily lifted me into the back passenger seat of the truck. Before I could adjust it myself, he yanked on the seatbelt and pulled it across my chest and lap, buckling it.

I bit my lip to keep from letting out a silly, girlish sigh at the protective gesture. After all, I was supposed to be hating having a bodyguard watching over me. Right?

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