Page 45 of Teach Me
His breath hitched as she played with the firm nubs. Conlan seemed to struggle to gather words together. “I’ll take you.” He cleared his throat with a growl. “I can’t concentrate when you do that.” His hands gripped hers, drawing them away from his body. She didn’t protest—too much.
“I have to hit the office for a couple of meetings I can’t miss, but even during the day, I’m not taking chances. How long will you be?”
She thought about what she needed to take care of. “A couple of hours, maybe.”
“Okay. I want you at JCL when you’re done. I’ll send someone for you.”
“Conlan—”
“Uh-uh,” he warned before she could get any further. “It’s an escort or nothing, baby. Even if I wasn’t sleeping with you, I’d be making sure you were safe. But I am sleeping with you—and hope to do it again and again—so you might as well get used to this. I’m not taking chances until we know this bastard is gone.”
She stared into his eyes, and the certainty she saw there, the firm emphasis he put onagain and again, made the decision for her. It was still difficult to believe that this beautiful man cared about her, wanted her, that he didn’t see her as just a client or an inconvenience. She needed to work on that, the part of her that didn’t believe she was worthy, of him or anyone else. In the meantime she rewarded him with another long kiss. “Okay.”
“Good.” This time Conlan kissed her. His lips were hungry, hard. One rough hand slid under the edge of her T-shirt, calluses scraping along her skin until it reached the silk of her bra, and Jess forgot she needed to go anywhere except back to bed.
It was another hour before they made it out the door.
His “you stay safe” rang in her ears—along with a few other things, like “broken condom”—as she went through the motions at work, settling things, gathering materials, explaining to Saul what her psycho ex-boyfriend had done this time. His sickened expression and the desperation with which he hugged her was a balm to her somewhat tattered psyche. She hugged him back, and when he insisted she return to working from home, she didn’t argue. She had too many good things in her life to risk Brit’s craziness, against her or them; the idea that he might come to her work and manage to make it inside, just like he had at her apartment, scared the crap out of her.
Freedom was overrated when it put the people you loved in danger, and Brit was a danger to them all; she no longer had any doubt about that.
Nicolas, Conlan’s employee, was a brawny man with coffee-colored skin and eyes to match. Those eyes reassured her; they never stopped moving, watching, searching. Even Saul came under intense scrutiny when he stopped by her office to say good-bye. Jess gave her boss another long, careful hug, and allowed Nicolas to escort her out. The intense Georgia sun blinded her as they made their way to the company Jeep Nicolas had driven over, but his solid hand guided her as they crossed the few feet of hot asphalt to the waiting vehicle. A smile pulled at her lips as she stepped up onto the running board of the Jeep and into the dark interior, not quite able to get past the feeling that she was a valuable package being delivered to an exacting owner. Nicolas might not use kid gloves, but he was very careful. The man obviously understood the threat they were facing—and the boss demanding her safety.
The cool dimness was a welcome relief as they slid into the confines of the parking garage at JCL. Nicolas didn’t bother pulling into a space; he parked in the aisle, a few feet from the elevator. “Wait for me,” he warned as he opened his door, but Jess already had her fingers on the handle, instinctively tightening. He exited the driver’s side as her door popped open. With a grimace Jess waited for him to round the vehicle, feeling a bit ridiculous to have him escort her but unwilling to defy the man whose job it was to keep her safe.
Through the gap between the door and Jeep, she heard a distinctcrack, the sound echoing against the concrete walls of the garage. Instinctively Jess stuck her head out—and watched Nicolas hit the pavement, one side of his head busted open and bloody. The red liquid spread across his buzz-cut hair and down over his closed eyes as Jess sat, frozen, half in and half out of the Jeep.
She didn’t see Brit coming until it was too late. A bestial growl warned her mere seconds before the door was yanked out of her hand, a hard grip jerking her from the seat. She stumbled, numb, her gaze glued to Nicolas. Only when a wrench of her arm pulled her off balance, her feet unable to keep up as her body flew forward, did she turn her head and meet the hate-filled eyes of her ex-boyfriend.
Jess screamed.
Her knees hit the pavement, the impact shooting agony through the bones and muscles. She crumpled, needing to curl into a ball, to grab her pain-filled legs and ease the throbbing hurt steeling her breath, but Brit refused to let go. He dragged her forward, the movement increasing the torment racking her body, his sharp “Shut the hell up, bitch!” ringing in her ears.
No way in hell.
She screamed again, and despite the protests of every body part, curled herself around and lashed out at Brit’s legs. She missed the first one, sailed right past, and scored a glancing blow to his standing leg. It buckled, but Brit managed to catch himself. He turned, his fist bouncing off her skull. Stars filled her vision. The shock of pain, of Brit’s attack tried to pull her into protective blackness, but she fought it as hard as she fought him. Kicking, flailing, rolling. She didn’t care if he dislocated her shoulder, gave her a concussion—whatever it took, she wasn’t letting this man have her without the biggest fight of her life.
“Jess!”
The voice rang out over the sounds of her battle with Brit, but whomever it was, Brit heard it, and the distraction was just enough for her to wrench her hand free of his grip. She fell with no warning, hitting the ground so hard her teeth clacked together, catching her tongue between them. The pain was enough to keep her on the ground, but it was the sudden burst of shattering impact against her head that forced her beyond caring and into blessed unconsciousness.
Chapter Seventeen
The buzz of fluorescent lights scraped Con’s already raw nerves like sandpaper, and the scathing looks he was getting from Cris, so different from her friendly glances at the coffee shop, compounded his irritation until he wanted to rage at everyone in the room except Jess. Jess, who lay unconscious in a stark white hospital bed because Con hadn’t gotten to her quick enough.
The truth was, Cris couldn’t condemn him any more than he condemned himself.
He hid it like the good soldier he was. No emotion, no looking back, just keep moving forward until the enemy is obliterated, no matter the odds. But when those odds lay pale and battered under the harsh light overhead, he couldn’t stop the truth from burning in his chest, where no one could see. He hadn’t protected this woman, and she had come very close to dying because of it. A millimeter off and Holbrooke’s heavy boot could’ve caught her temple, her eye, could’ve stamped out the sweet light and heat that was Jess, mere hours after he’d allowed himself to admit that he could have her, could maybe even keep her if he didn’t fuck up the future with his overblown fears. Turns out it wasn’t his fears that had fucked things up; it was his complacence.
Jack’s grip settled heavily on his shoulder, squeezing down, dragging him out of the cycle of self-pity circling his personal mental drain. Jack could read what Con didn’t want to reveal, damn it. And even though his first instinct was to shrug out of his friend’s grip, he didn’t. It wouldn’t do any good, and honestly, without Jack standing at his back, he just might hit his knees if Jess didn’t wake soon.
“Why the hell weren’t you there to meet her?”
He met Cris’s gaze across the hospital bed but didn’t answer. Didn’t argue the obvious. None of it mattered anyway. Jess was unconscious, and Holbrooke had escaped. Those were the only two relevant facts at the moment.
Jack wasn’t so easygoing. “If he hadn’t been on his way to meet her, she’d be gone. Or dead.”
The brutal truth hit Cris like a blow. Con, knowing her condition from talks with Jess, raised his hand to Jack. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Jess and Nicolas are all right.”
