Shiloh Walker - The Protected

But before he could dial the number, there was a knock at his door and a low, throaty voice called out his name.

“Come in,” he called out. He could make the call while she was in here, he supposed. It wouldn’t hurt.

The blonde came inside, a smile on her mouth, her lips slicked with red, her curves barely covered by a scrap of a bikini the same shade as her eyes. She came around the desk and leaned against it, reached out to trail a finger down his arm. “You’ve been working all day,” she murmured.

Inexplicably, he found himself unable to look away from her mouth. His limbs felt heavy and his blood pumped hotter, slower. Yes . . . he had been working all day, hadn’t he?

VAUGHNNE sighed and glanced out over the yard. She’d knocked almost two minutes ago. If she hadn’t heard Gus’s voice, she would have worried a little. But she heard movement inside, and none of those movements were the sorts that set her instincts on edge, either.

As the footsteps drew nearer to the door, she ignored the butterflies jumping in her belly and braced herself. She hadn’t brought her weapon. She still didn’t trust how things would go if Gus saw it, but she suspected things would go . . . badly . And he’d peg it from a mile away, the same way she’d known he was carrying.

When he opened the door, she was doubly glad she hadn’t brought her Glock. The look on his face wasn’t quite the one she’d been hoping for, although it didn’t really surprise her.

Each step was going to be a struggle, there was no denying that.

His eyes, that sultry gray, rested on her face, and although that inviting, sexy warmth was there, she sensed a distance. I’m sorry, but you’re not welcome here . That was the message he was sending out, loud and clear. It was like his eyes said, I’ll take you to bed in a second . . . but . . . and the but spoke louder than everything else.

Well. It was a good thing Vaughnne had always ignored those messages she didn’t want to acknowledge.

“Hey.” Smiling at him, she pulled the foil back off the plate of cookies and held it up. “I wanted to say thanks for the help. I made you and Alex some cookies.”

He glanced down and something flickered in his eyes. It might have been surprise. Might have been caution. She didn’t know. But he wasn’t going to take the cookies, not just like that. Tugging the foil off, she took one at random and nipped a bite off. “Come on, you have to take them,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I already ate three or four of them, and if you don’t take them for you and your boy, I’ll eat them and then I’ll have to run double what I usually run. Then I’ll be cranky and it will be all your fault.”

“My fault.”

She licked a crumb off her lips and nodded. “Yes. I made you cookies and you won’t eat them . . . I can’t let them go to waste, right? But if I eat them, I have to work them off. And running seven or eight miles instead of three or four will make me a bitch . . .” She grimaced and peered around him. “Sorry. Um. It won’t make me very nice. See how this is your fault if you don’t take them?”

She took another bite from the cookie and then held it up to him. “Try a bite,” she offered. “I make damn good cookies, if I do say so myself.”

He caught her wrist in one hand and plucked the cookie out, eyeing it narrowly before taking a quick bite. “You could have finished it,” he pointed out.

His eyes dropped to the plate. Then something shifted in his gaze. And he reached out. She didn’t look down. She’d been tested enough in her life to know when it was happening again. “Here, since you enjoy them so much that you ate three or four . . .”

She wondered if he had some inkling in his head to make her taste-test every one before he let the kid have a damn cookie. And abruptly, her heart hurt. It just hurt , standing there staring at him as he pushed a cookie at her and watched her with that sleepy, sexy look in his eyes and his hand now hanging loose at his side.

And maybe she didn’t have any ability to read minds, but Vaughnne knew one thing damn well. If she balked about taking that cookie, they would have a problem.

Not only did he not trust people, he expected every damn soul around him to try and hurt him.

Why ?

She polished off the cookie in two bites, and even though it was like sawdust on her tongue, she leaned forward and studied the plate, poking through them until she found one of the white chocolate macadamia cookies. “I’ve got to be balanced,” she said. “You made me eat a chocolate chip, now I have to have the white chocolate.”

She nibbled on it as she eyed him. “You going to share any of those with Alex, or am I going to stand here and be a glutton and eat all the cookies?”

She felt a ripple roll across her skin just then, but it wasn’t from Gus. He didn’t have a lick of talent in him, unless it was the way he could look at her and make her want .

A minute later, he glanced back behind him. “There he is. He probably smelled the chocolate.”

“Chocolate.” Alex wedged himself in the door, and for a second, the look on his face was that of just any ordinary kid. “Where is there . . .”

Then the words trailed off as he saw the plate. “Cookies.” He swallowed and then looked up at Gus. “She made cookies.”

“She did.” He nodded to Vaughnne. “You should thank her.”

Vaughnne was already a little tired of this, and if she didn’t already have an inkling about the kind of life these two had been living, she could probably find herself rather pissed off with Gus. But as the kid hurriedly stuck out his hand, she went to shake his, letting some of her puzzled smile show on her face.

Then she stopped and frowned, swiping her hand down the side of her shorts. “I’ve got cookie crumbs on me,” she mumbled. After she’d dusted them off, she shook the kid’s hand and felt his mental fingers rooting through her mind yet again. He wasn’t as neat that time, and pain ripped through her mind.

She barely managed to keep a grimace from showing as he broke the connection with absolutely no finesse and no care. The pain increased, and she could feel it rippling through her, growing, and growing . . .

Dayyum , he was strong.

Distantly, she made a mental note. This kid needed training and he needed it fast.

Even though she’d been braced for him to do something, his blunt probe through her mind left her off balance. She felt like he’d jammed his hands inside her skull, scraped them through her gray matter like it was muck, and then just shoved her to the side. Stumbling, she tried to catch her balance on the doorjamb.

A hand caught her arm.

Gus—

Trying to breathe through the pain, trying to keep her own mental shields in place, she sucked in a desperate breath before she swung her head around to look at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice low and tense.

“Headache,” she said absently, forcing herself to smile. She needed to leave. Get back to the house and sit down. Maybe lie down. Right inside the door would be fine. Shit. The pounding in her head increased, and she thought she just might puke.

But he was eyeing her oddly, and her instincts were screaming. Cover , she reminded herself. Don’t break your cover . “Probably from all the sugar I’ve been sucking in today.”

Then, because she figured they both needed to be aware of the kid’s lack of finesse, she reached up and pressed the heel of her hand to her head. It wasn’t like she was acting, either. It felt like a freight train was trying to rip through her skull, and the nausea churned through her harder and harder with every passing second. She was going to hurl cookies in a second if she wasn’t careful. “Damn, it hit me hard, like somebody just punched me.”