Defying Asher (Knight Security 1) (13 page)

Her frown was pained. “You sound…angry?”

“Probably because I am.” A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. “I’m not some stray like your fucking cat, so don’t ever try to
domesticate
me!”

“I would never… I wasn’t…” Her eyes widened. “Asher, are you deliberately trying to fight with me?”

“Why would I do that?”

“I have no idea.” She slowly shook her head.

Ash stared at her wordlessly for several seconds before breathing heavily. “I have to go. Gabriel was right when he said I’m the last person who should be protecting you.”

She breathed in sharply. “You talked to your brother about me? I… Does he know what happened between us a year ago? Did you and Gabriel talk about me like some dirty little joke?”

Ash stared at her.
What the fuck…?

“Is that what you really think of me?” Ash scowled. “That I’m some pathetic man who has to boast about his sexual conquests with his brothers and drinking buddies?”

Lissa didn’t know what to think anymore.

Except to know Asher had just described her as being a sexual conquest.

“You’re right, you should leave now.” Her hand trembled as she belatedly reached for a towel and wrapped it around her before securing it over her breasts. Breasts that were sore and aching from Asher’s lovemaking— No, that hadn’t been lovemaking, it had been sex, pure and simple. Well…maybe not so pure, but it was obvious she meant no more than that sexual conquest to Asher. That she never would.

Asher had been so wrong earlier. The excitement was
never
missing when Lissa was with him. It was always there, a constant thrum of awareness beneath her flesh. Because she found everything about him exciting. Everything. Her skin became sensitized, all her senses coming alive just being near him.

She was the one who was
pathetic
.

“You should go,” she repeated shakily.

He nodded abruptly. “Do not leave here without a bodyguard—I mean it, Lissa. For once in your life, do as you’re fucking told,” he bit out harshly.

Lissa couldn’t even look at him as he snatched his clothes up off the floor and left the bathroom. She hadn’t moved from that spot when she heard the apartment door slam shut minutes later, telling her Asher had gone.

Then, and only then, did she allow the tears to fall.

Chapter 9

“What are you doing here this morning?” Gloria reproved affectionately at nine o’clock the following morning as Lissa turned from hanging up her jacket, ready for starting work. “I told you on the phone last night there was no need.” She gave Lissa a hug.

Lissa returned the hug. “No reason to stay away when my mother is spending the day at the hospital with Jack.” Gloria was well aware of the strained relationship between Lissa and her mother. The two women had worked together at the travel agency since it first opened.

Lissa had no intention of spending any more time in her mother’s company than she needed to. If she had stayed home today, she would only have spent the time brooding about her argument with Asher last night.

If it could be called an argument.

It had been more a case of accusations being hurled by both of them.

A sleepless night later and Lissa still had no idea what had happened to make Asher behave that way.

“Who are the two gorgeous hunks standing outside?” Gloria stood by the window looking out. “Well, one of them is more like a hulk,” she added wistfully. “I could really go for all that toned muscle and messy blond hair. Not that I’d complain at having either of them in my bed.” She gave a suggestive waggle of her eyebrows.

Lissa knew exactly which “gorgeous hunks” Gloria was referring to. Just as she was aware one of them had already been in
her
bed.

They weren’t the same two bodyguards who had driven her into work this morning. That had been Ethan and a man he introduced as Ian Knight, cousin to the four Knight brothers. Apparently, there was an upside to having her own security detail: instead of getting the tube to work, as usual, the two men had driven her to work in yet another black SUV.

Asher and the man, Zander, who had followed her and Asher back to her apartment yesterday, had been waiting to take over when they reached the travel agency.

Zander had given her an acknowledging nod. Asher, on the other hand had barely even glanced at her, his expression hard and uncompromising as he kept a watchful eye on their surroundings.

That hurt.

Lissa had half expected, after his comment last night, that Asher would take himself off her security detail. It might have been better for both of them if he had. It was agony to know he was on the other side of that door, silent, dark, and brooding, and treating her as nothing more than another client he was being paid to protect.

Because that was all she was to Asher.

Not his lover.

Not his anything.

The two of them had only met again because of circumstances.

He had made that perfectly clear last night before he walked out on her.

Which was exactly what I did to him a year ago,
she reminded herself.

Yes, but she’d been left with no choice once she knew Asher was involved with someone else. No matter how much she liked Asher, how amazing their night together had been, she could never be responsible for humiliating another woman the way Adam had humiliated her.

“They’re my security detail,” she informed Gloria, having told her on the phone last night exactly what was happening in her life right now. As Gloria worked with her, the other woman needed to be on her guard too.

“Whoa.” Gloria raised teasing brows. “Do they protect you night as well as day?”

She smiled ruefully. “Yes. But outside my apartment, not inside.”

“Pity,” Gloria murmured, her expression sobering as she moved away from the window to sit behind her desk. “Are they any nearer to finding out who could be targeting your mother?”

“Not as far as I’m aware. They really don’t tell me very much.”

Claudia had turned up at the hospital to see Jack last night while Lissa was there, the doggedly faithful Malcolm at her heels. Her mother had been as cool and controlled as usual, offering no explanation or apology for the chaos she had brought into Jack’s and Lissa’s lives. Not that Lissa had expected any; she had always known Claudia was utterly self-centered.

“Time to start work,” Gloria said softly as their two junior coworkers arrived. “Let’s hope the hotties outside don’t scare away too many customers today.”

Apparently, they didn’t, because the morning was a busy one. Lissa was glad of it, needing the distraction of work to stop her from thinking too much about the man standing outside.

“Shall I bring you a sandwich back, or will you be going out yourself?” She looked enquiringly at Gloria as she shrugged into the jacket of the black business suit she wore over a cream blouse.

“I’ll go out.” The other woman gave a glance out the window at the two men. “Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to strike up a conversation with the hulk on my way out.”

Lissa laughed at Gloria’s hopeful expression. “Good luck with that!”

Ethan had told her on the drive here this morning that Zander was one of Gabriel’s old army buddies, and not to be put off by his taciturn nature. Zander was apparently known for his protection skills rather than his conversational ones. Lissa hadn’t liked to ask what those protection skills were. Tall and heavily muscled, Zander looked as if he could crush any other man with his bare hands.

“I’m going out the back way,” she told Gloria, unable to bear the thought of being shunned by Asher twice in one morning. Besides which, the sandwich bar was only half a dozen doors down from her travel agency. She would be back before Asher even knew she had gone out.

“And if the hulk sees you’re gone?”

“His name is Zander. And if he does come in, it will give you the opportunity to bat your eyelashes at him and maybe ask him out to dinner.”

Gloria’s expression brightened as she turned her gaze speculatively out the front window. “Don’t rush back.”

Lissa had no intention of hurrying back. Her life and her apartment hadn’t been her own for several days now, and she was badly in need of some time to herself. Maybe she would walk to the park at the end of the street after buying her sandwich. She could sit on one of the benches and people-watch for a while. Try to “get her shit together,” as Gabriel had so succinctly told Asher to do yesterday.

Because this aching yearning inside her for Asher couldn’t continue.

When Ash caught up with Lissa, he was going to spank her ass within an inch of her fucking life!

He wasn’t accepting any excuses this time. No pleas for mercy, no tears, he was just going to paddle her ass until she begged him to stop. He might not stop even then.

What the hell had she been thinking, going out the back door of the travel agency—a door Ash had checked earlier to make sure it was locked—without telling them she was leaving?

Locked or not, either Zander or I should have been guarding that back door.

Ash’s shoulders slumped slightly as he realized Gabriel’s concern was proving to be the right one: Ash was failing in the job of protecting Lissa.

Because he was too close.

To the situation.

To Lissa.

When I catch up with her, I’m going to be more than fucking close!

If, not when, Ash reminded himself as he strode down the street, his eyes narrowed as he searched for a glimpse of that familiar auburn hair. He had instructed Zander to stay at the travel agency, just in case Lissa returned while Ash was gone.

Lissa’s assistant had assured them her boss had only slipped out for a few minutes to get her lunch from the sandwich bar a couple of doors down. A sandwich bar from which Lissa had been conspicuously absent when Asher got there.

He had been searching for another ten minutes now, and so far, Lissa wasn’t
anywhere
. Shit, she had probably been kidnapped. Might already be dead.

Another couple of minutes and he would have no choice but to phone Gabriel so they could set up an official search party—

There.

Ash had cast only a cursory glance in the direction of the small park at the end of the street, but his gaze narrowed as he saw a familiar head of auburn hair. The woman was sitting on a bench, with her back toward him, but he would recognize the rich color of Lissa’s hair anywhere.

“What did you not understand about the instruction you were not to go anywhere—and I do mean fucking anywhere!—without a bodyguard?”

Lissa tensed at the first sound of Asher’s voice behind her, outwardly calm but inwardly cringing as she turned and saw the absolute fury on his glowering face.

It had been so peaceful sitting in the park too. Soothing to her frayed nerves caused by both that disagreement with Asher last night and the lack of sleep that followed.

The dark and angry glitter of Asher’s eyes brought that tension back with a vengeance. “As far as I’m concerned, it was advice, not an instruction,” she came back challengingly. “It’s my lunch break, and I stepped out for a sandwich. For the record, I don’t take
instructions
from either you or your brother.”

“No?”

Her chin rose. “No.”

“Do you take your lunch break at the same time every day?”

“Yes.” Lissa’s tone was wary as she wondered where he was going with this conversation.

“Always buy a sandwich from the same sandwich bar?”

“Yes…”

“So anyone watching you would know it’s your usual routine to leave the office at one o’clock to go to that sandwich bar and purchase your lunch?”

Ah. “Yes…” She winced.

A nerve pulsed in his cheek. “Are you deliberately trying to get yourself killed?”

“Of course not.” Lissa used the excuse of throwing her empty sandwich packet in the bin and stand up. She felt at far too much of a disadvantage with Asher looming over her.

“You could have fooled me,” he snarled.

She breathed out deeply through her nose. “You seem to be under the misapprehension your opinion matters to me.”

His eyes narrowed. “Your dead body would matter to me!”

“Your drama queen act is becoming tedious—” She didn’t finish her sentence because Asher’s hand snaked out, his fingers curling like steel bands about her wrist as he dragged her up close against the tense heat of his body. “Asher…?” She moistened the dryness of her lips with the tip of her tongue as she gazed up at him.

His mouth twisted into a humorless smile. “Not so brave or mouthy now, are you? If I can overpower you so easily, then so can Stein’s murderer. And trust me, you’ll have even less to say with a bullet in your brain.”

The nervous fluttering in Lissa’s stomach wasn’t caused by arousal or desire this time. Asher was too controlled. His eyes cold. His expression merciless. His fingers gripping her wrist just short of pain.

She clenched her jaw. “Paranoid, much?”

“I didn’t imagine Stein’s death or your father being shot.”