Vulnerable: (McIntyre Security Bodyguard Series - Book 1) (13 page)

Beth grabbed her phone from the top of the nightstand and called Shane’s number, uncaring that it was now one-thirty in the morning. She needed an explanation. 

Shane answered on the second ring. “Beth? Is everything all right?”

“How did you know where I live?” Her voice was little more than a choked whisper. “You drove me home tonight, but I never told you where I live, and you never asked.” There was silence on the other end. “How did you know, Shane?”

She heard a muffled curse, then his voice, low and calm.

“Beth, I can explain.”

“How!” she cried. Her adrenaline levels were through the roof. “How did you know?”

And then, to her utter mortification, her emotions crashed from exhaustion and adrenal overload, and she started crying. Abruptly, she ended the call.

Her phone rang half a minute later. “What?” she said.

“I’m coming back,” he said, sounding a little winded, as if he were running. “Meet me at the front door.”

She jumped out of bed and raced down the stairs. It wasn’t until she got downstairs that she wondered how he could get back to her house so soon. He’d left at least a half-hour ago. He had to be almost back to his apartment by now.

Beth ran to the front parlor window and peered outside. There he was on the sidewalk in front of her house. He jogged up her front walk, and she met him at the door.

“How did you get here so fast?” she asked as he stepped inside.

He closed the front door and locked it. What to tell her? He sure as hell couldn’t tell her he’d been parked outside, on duty. “I was parked down the street,” he said, sticking to the truth as much as he could.

“What? Why? You should have been home by now.”

“I pulled over about a block from here to check my phone messages and answer some e-mails.”

“At one-thirty in the morning?” She couldn’t help the incredulity in her voice. She was seeing red flags everywhere now.

“Yes, Beth,” he said, with a calculated hint of exasperation in his voice. He had to deflect her attention from him and back on her. Guilt for deceiving her was riding him hard, but he had to maintain his cover. “I have a business to run. My employees work shifts around the clock in this city. I was just trying to catch up on work.”

“And just what are they doing at one-thirty in the morning?”

“The same thing they do all hours of the day or night. Surveillance and personal protection. That’s what we do, and we do it around the clock. I don’t keep nine-to-five hours, Beth. I’m always working. I took time off this evening to be with you, and now I have to make up for it.”

“Oh.” And just like that, she lost a good deal of her steam.

“Now can we get to the reason why you called me?”

She frowned at his reminder. “How did you know where I live?” She thought back to the evening they’d shared, replaying everything they’d done, how he’d kissed her, how intimately he’d touched her. Now she simply felt violated, and the thought made her sick.

“Beth, honey, your address is public information.” At least that much was true. Shane tried to pull her into his arms, but she stepped back as his words sank in.

Public information.
She felt like an idiot. Of course her address was public information. Fifteen seconds on the Internet would pull up her address and probably her phone number and a lot more information than she would care to share with the entire world. Privacy was a thing of the past now, courtesy of the Internet, whether she liked it or not. She was a very private person, and she never posted personal information on the Internet. But public information was easy to obtain.

That quickly, her adrenaline levels crashed and exhaustion overcame her. Shane caught her as she swayed, then picked her up and carried her to the sofa in the front parlor. He eased down beside her on the sofa and reached for her hand.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” he said.

When she tried to pull her hand away, he held on to it.

“Beth, I’m in the security business. Finding information is a big part of what we do. Getting your address was nothing – a moment’s work. I didn’t even think about it. I’m sorry I didn’t think to mention that to you tonight, but honestly it never even crossed my mind. I never meant to scare you.”

Shane held her hands, warming them and trying to still their trembling. She watched him with wary eyes.

“Please say something, sweetheart,” he said.

His explanation seemed perfectly reasonable, and she had no reason to doubt him. But it wasn’t easy for her to trust someone.

“I have trust issues.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “The panic kicked in, and I reacted. I didn’t stop to think.” Even now, her heart was racing.

He nodded. “Why do you have trust issues? Who abused your trust?”

When she didn’t answer, he scowled. And then he asked her point blank. “Beth, did someone hurt you?”

She nodded. But she was so not going there tonight. She’d had enough trauma for one night.

“Physically or emotionally?” he said.

“Both.”

“Jesus.” It was hard to hear her say it. He released her hands and ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. “Will you tell me about it?”

Beth shook her head. “I’m tired, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

Shane nodded. “Fair enough.” He stood and lifted her into his arms. “I’ll carry you up to your bed.”

“I can walk,” she protested.

He set her on her feet, and she stumbled. She would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her.

Shane swept her back up into his arms. “I’m carrying you. No argument.”

“But I’m too heavy.”

He chuckled. “Sweetheart, I bench press more than twice your weight every day. I won’t even break a sweat.”

No one had carried her to bed since she was a small child, and the experience now was a little unnerving. True to his word, though, he didn’t break a sweat as he carried her up the stairs. But the flash of a memory burned into her mind surfaced, and she remembered the night Tyler carried her out of that cellar. She shoved the memory away.

“Which bedroom is yours?” he asked.

She pointed down the hall. “The last one.”

Shane carried her into her room and gently set her on her feet beside the bed. She climbed into bed, and he covered her with the sheet and quilt.

“Can I stay tonight?” he said, brushing her hair back from her face. He couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her right now; if she panicked again, he wanted to be here. “I won’t touch you. I just don’t want to leave you alone right now.”

Her first instinct was to say no. He’d seen too much of her already, and she was feeling very emotionally exposed at the moment. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The truth was she wanted him to stay. It gave her a thrill to have him here in her bedroom. “Okay.”

Shane closed the bedroom door, and Beth watched him with wide eyes as he quickly stripped down to his boxers and walked around to the other side of the bed.

He slid in beside her and pulled her close. “You’re exhausted, sweetheart. Try to sleep.”

She closed her eyes and tried to calm her racing mind, but the proximity of his warm body made it hard to relax. The heat radiating from his body and his masculine scent stirred her sense, tantalizing her. Somehow her hand ended up on his chest, measuring the rise and fall of breaths. She could feel his strong, steady heart beat beneath her fingers. Shane laid his big hand over hers.

Hypnotized by his fingers stroking the back of her hand, she begin to relax. She crashed hard and fast, sleep pulling her under.

The last thing she remembered was feeling his lips in her hair as he murmured something unintelligible.

Chapter 12

Shane woke in the wee hours of the morning to the sound of screaming. He sat up and took immediate stock of his surroundings.

Beth’s bedroom.

He looked at her in the dim light, barely able to make out her restless form.
She’s having
a nightmare.

Her frightened whimpers broke his heart.

“Jesus, Beth!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Wake up, sweetheart!”

Startled, she opened her eyes and looked around frantically, as if trying to orient herself. She blinked up at him in the darkness. “Tyler?” She was still half asleep, her voice hoarse and her chest heaving as she reached for him.

“No, honey,” he said. “Not Tyler. Shane.” He brushed the hair back from her hot face.

Her wits must have returned in a rush, because she sat up, gasping. “Shane!”

He steadied her. “You’re okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

She rubbed frantically at her chest.

“It’s okay,” he said, his hand on her back. “You had a nightmare.”

“Can’t… breathe!” she gasped, reaching for the top drawer of the nightstand. She fumbled blindly inside the drawer, until Shane leaned across her and located her inhaler.

“Here, Beth,” he said, handing it to her.

She shook it briskly, then let out a deep breath and pushed the inhaler into her mouth. After she administered the medicine, drawing it deeply into her starved lungs, she lay back down and closed her eyes. In seconds, she started to relax and began breathing easily again.

He studied her. “Are you all right?”

She nodded shakily. “Yes.”

But she didn’t look all right to him.

Beth looked at the digital clock on the nightstand, which read 4:30. They’d had only three hours of sleep. She groaned. “I’m sorry I woke you,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said, just as her bedroom door burst open and Gabrielle rushed in.

Gabrielle stopped abruptly at the sight of Shane sitting shirtless beside Beth in the bed. A bright light from the hallway spilled into the room, blinding them.

“She’s okay,” Shane hastened to say. “It was just a bad dream.”

“I know what it is,” Gabrielle said, breathless and still half asleep herself. She gave Shane a sharp look. “What the hell are you doing here? You left!”

“I came back,” he said.

“Obviously,” Gabrielle said, glaring at him.

If looks could kill, Shane figured he’d be a dead man right now. Gabrielle Hunter looked like she wanted to carve him up with one of her filleting knives.

“I was upset last night, and I called him,” Beth said, as if she needed to defuse Gabrielle’s anger at Shane. “He came back.”

Gabrielle transferred her glare to Beth. “If you were upset, you could have come to me.”

Shane knew Gabrielle wasn’t angry as much as she was hurt. “It was me she was upset with, Gabrielle,” Shane said.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Gabrielle threw her hands up in disgust and glared at them both. “Whatever! I’m going back to bed.”

“Sorry for waking you, Gabrielle!” Beth called as Gabrielle stalked out of the room, slamming the door shut on her way out. The hallway light switched off, and a moment later Gabrielle’s bedroom door slam shut.

Beth flinched.

“She’ll be all right,” Shane said. “Don’t worry.”

Shane lay back in bed and pulled Beth close, tucking her into his side. She was trembling now in the aftermath of her nightmare. He wrapped his arms around her in an effort to comfort her.

Beth turned toward him, laying her head on his shoulder and stretching her arm across his chest. He waited a few minutes until the shaking stopped and she began to relax. It was time to get her to start opening up to him, and her nightmare was the perfect opening. They had a lot of ground to cover between the two of them before he could tell her everything.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, stroking her arm as it lay across his chest.

Her finger began drawing patterns in the hair on his chest, and she sighed. “No.”

His cock stirred instantly at her light touch, and it was a struggle to keep his mind on his train of thought. But he didn’t want to be distracted at the moment. Getting her to talk to him was too important.

“Are you sure? I’m a good listener,” he said. “I’ve been known to vanquish a few nightmares in my day. It’s what I do for a living.”

“It’s not that easy,” Beth said.

“I didn’t say it would be easy, honey.” His hand found hers, and he laced their fingers together, mostly to still her nimble fingers, which were driving him crazy. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it, amazed at how silky soft her skin was. “Were you dreaming about the person who hurt you?”

“Yes,” she said, reluctantly.

Beth pulled her hand from his and ran the tip of her index finger over his nipple, causing it to pucker instantly. His dick started twitching in his boxers as he lengthened.

He made a rough sound in his throat and recaptured her hand, stilling it. “Beth.”

She tugged on her hand, and he released it. Then she resumed her slow exploration of his chest, her fingertips stroking the contours of his torso, outlining his muscles and following the shapes of his bones. She traced his collarbone down to his breastbone, her fingernails gently scraping his chest hair. She followed the trail of hair downward toward his belly, and his dick rose up beneath the covers.

“Sweetheart, now’s not the right time,” he said, trying to do the right thing, though it was getting harder and harder.

Beth’s face burned. Why was this was so hard! She’d read enough romances to know perfectly well how to seduce a man, but she wasn’t sure she could pull it off. She lacked the confidence to think she could honestly entice him.

She was desperate for something to take her mind off her nightmare, to dispel the lingering traces of
that monster
from the edges of her memories, so she took a huge leap of faith. She slipped her fingers beneath the bedding and quickly found what she was looking for. His erection was pushing hard against his silk boxers, and she took hold of him. He was as hard as a steel rod in her hand, and she was shocked by the girth of him. She tried to imagine him fitting inside her.
Good God
.

Shane groaned, his entire body responding to her touch. “Baby – ”

Beth tightened her grip on his erection, giving him a tentative squeeze, and his body bowed off the bed.