Page 7 of The Coffee Shop

“Here, I can carry her,” Sebastian growls, stepping towards me.

“No. Fuck off.” I scoff back at him.

Greedy bastard.

The man has never even looked twice at a woman unless we were currently fucking her, but there is something about Leena. Since the day we were assigned as her bodyguards, neither of us have been able to get her out of our heads. Even though my friend here would never admit it.

I can’t help but glance down at her again as I follow Sebastian into the house. She seems so small inmy arms, so fragile. Andfuck, she smells amazing, like coffee and flowers. I want to bury my face into her neck and just breathe her in, but I remind myself that she is unconscious and that would be incredibly creepy.

No matter how well Sebastian and I know her, hell, we have a whole goddamn file on her, Leena doesn’t know us at all. All she knows is that we’ve been coming in for coffee once a week for the past year. That’s it.

It makes me a little sad realizing that she doesn’t know us the way we’ve gotten to know her, but I can’t help the thrill that runs through me, knowing that she’s stuck with us for the foreseeable future.

I laugh at that thought because, well, she’s going to be fucking pissed.

“Are you coming?” Sebastian says impatiently from the doorway with our bags.

“Yeah, I’m coming. And can you lose the attitude, man? You know she’s going to fucking hate this.”

“Yeah, I know,” he mumbles. We both know Leena well enough by now to be acutely aware of how much she doesnotlike being told what to do, especially where her father is concerned.

I think that’s part of why we’re so caught up with this woman. Her stubbornness, her resilience, her refusal to be anything other than herself even when the whole world is against her. Let’s just say that whatever I feel for her, whatever Sebastian feels for her, it’s far from professional.

It has been for a long time now.

I make my way down the hall and stare into the living room of the small house. It’scozy. If I were eighty years old, I might even call it “nice,” but since I’m not, the old-as-shit furniture, shag carpet and pinkfloral wallpaper just make me chuckle. When I look over, Sebastian has dropped the bags in the hall and is holding some sort of animal figurine. It’s one of many that decorate every available surface. I watch as he stares at it, furrowing his brows as if it personally offends him.

I bring Leena into the living room and gently lay her down on the overstuffed couch. A hideous piece of furniture that might not be so bad if it weren’t one of several floral patterns that appear to have exploded in here. Sebastian grunts a little, eyeing the room with clear disdain. I couldn’t agree more.

Then we both fall silent as we stare at the unconscious woman in front of us.

“So, what do we do now?” Sebastian asks.

I scrub a hand through my hair as I consider his question. The new bandage needs changing, her clothes are stained with blood. She’s a mess, and my need to care for her is too hard to ignore.

“You have any clothes for her?” Sebastian asks, tipping his chin towards the bags.

“I have our spare clothes from the trunk, but I wasn’t exactly planning on getting shot at today. And Idefinitelywasn’t planning on running away with someone who wears a size zero.”

“Two.” He says mindlessly, still focused on Leena.

I stare at her too. I’ve never gotten to observe her for this long uninterrupted before. At the coffee shop, we were only allowed glances from across the room and the camera’s we tapped into are in desperate need of an upgrade.

“Wait, what?” I ask, blinking.

“She wears a size two pants and a small T-shirt.”

“You refuse to even read the files I put together.How the fuck do you know her sizes?”

I stare at him. He stares at me. We study each other for a long moment, then it clicks.

“Goddammit, Seb. This is a fuckingworkassignment, don’t tell me you were vetting her as a sub? We’re done with that shit.”

“Oh come on, don’t tell me you never thought of it,” he smiles.

“Of course I fucking thought of it, but she’s probably not into that.”

“Who knows. She might be,” he raises his brow at me and I roll my eyes.

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