Page 20 of Dragon Bodyguard
The adrenaline was leaving her at a more rapid pace than she would’ve thought possible, and she was beginning to feel exhausted.
“Hey,” he said. “You all right?”
“No,” she murmured, sight blurring. “No, I don’t think I’m ‘all right’.”
“We made it,” he said, and his hands were on her, steadying her again. She grasped at his upper arms, the shakiness returning. “You made it. You’re safe.”
“They tried to take me,” she said slowly.
“I wasn’t going to let them.”
His voice was far away, but when he pulled her to him his nearness began to outweigh every other impression. He wrapped her in a gentle embrace that had her place her cheek against his chest. His scent was the same. Deep, male, inviting. That scent had always centered her whenever she got to breathe him in. Whenever she’d fallen asleep in his arms and woken up in them, too. She closed her eyes, remembering the small cabin they’d stayed in for a few nights and the conversations they’d had in it. Conversations about what they wanted out of the future, what they hoped for. Hadn’t there been a mutual understanding that they were discussing those things trying to figure out what a future together might look like? Where had they gone so wrong?
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, arms around his waist, hugging him close.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, hands slowly stroking her back.
“I shouldn’t have let go so easily,” she said, tilting her head back to look up at him through her blurry vision, realizing it was blurry because she was crying.
Was this numbness ever going to evaporate?
And yet there was contentment, too.
Like she could stay in his arms for a lifetime.
Things weren’t quite lining up. Thoughts and feelings seemed out of whack with one another. She stared up at him, at his well-known face, and thought she saw him as he had been rather than how he’d seemed when she arrived. When he was standing straight-backed on those steps. Looking every bit the man he’d always striven to become. The man he had left her to grow into on his own.
“I missed you,” she said, but slowly the numbness dissipated, and awareness seeped in of where they were, of where she was.
The cabin was a distant memory. He wasn’t who he had been, but rather who he was now. And who he was now had just saved her from losing her freedom and possibly her life along with it. She couldn’t harp on the old when the truth was that he was happy in his position, and he was good at what he did. Her acting like a wounded teenager unable to make up her mind might jeopardize everything he’d worked so hard for.
What was she doing?
The shock was draining out of her with every passing second.
She let go of him, stepping out of his arms, drying her tears with the palms of her hands as she shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Don’t you?” he asked, bringing her eyes to his.
Was he teasing her or mocking her? She couldn’t tell. Why did he have to be like this? Why did he have to be a mix of the old with the new? Why couldn’t he have erased the man she fell in love with and grown into someone completely different?
She straightened her back.
“I suppose whoever showed up by magic will get us a ride back to the house?” she asked.
“Should be a car on the way,” he affirmed.
“Great. Shall we go wait by the side of the road?”
“Sure. We should probably give a statement as well. To the police.”
“Is that…? Can we do that?” she asked.
“What do you mean ‘can we do that’?”
This time she ignored the repetition and stomped away from him, back through the underbrush and low bushes and bramble. She had another type of interrogation in mind. She wasn’t some wilting flower who couldn’t think or act for herself. And she wanted the name of whatever moron ordered her to be kidnapped.
