Chapter 15

Fifteen

Roc

The plastic bag filled with the Styrofoam carryout containers hung in the crook of my finger as I strode down the walkway fronting the motel. The waitress had added two cans of soda to the bag and had given me a final wink after I’d handed her more than enough cash to cover the bill and a generous tip.

“Come back anytime, sugar.”

Her meaning had been clear, even to someone who hadn’t been around women for a long time and who had convinced himself that humans found him frightening. No one in the diner had been frightened. No one had shrunk from the sight of me. No one had made me feel unwelcome.

The truth was that my human friends had never treated me as anything but one of them. Even most of my clients had been decent, so why had I let a few bad encounters color my view so negatively? Why was it always the few horrible people who lingered in my mind longer than the kind ones? Why did an insult cling to me while I shrugged off compliments?

“It doesn’t matter,” I muttered to myself. I couldn’t change the past. I could only move forward into a future that wasn’t so isolated.

As soon as I thought about the future, my mind went to Harlowe. Although it had been years since I’d seen her and I’d only been with her for a day, I felt a deeper connection to her than I had to anyone in a long time—or ever. It made no sense that she seemed as familiar to me as an old friend and as comfortable as my own company, despite making my body jangle with a baffling torrent of emotions. She was both like slipping on a cozy sweater and being hit with a jolt of electricity.

It made no sense. In my world, she made no sense. The idea of the two of us together made no sense. So why was she all I could think about?

I forced myself to push aside thoughts of Harlowe as I gave the parking area a quick scan. There were no additional cars, no people loitering outside the dingy strip building, no hints of paparazzi. One advantage to being in the middle of nowhere was that none of the reporters and photographers that usually dogged her steps had any idea where she was because no one knew where she was.

I’d been careful not to return her agent’s requests for her location. After hearing her side of the phone conversation with the guy, I didn’t trust him. He was too invested in Harlowe being in the spotlight to prioritize her protection. That wasn’t his job. But it was mine.

But now it was more than a job to me. Protecting Harlowe was personal. She was personal. Deep in my gut, I knew that she was mine to protect, and I would kill anyone who tried to hurt her. My possessive orc tendencies had been ignited, a trait that made me a formidable bodyguard—and a dangerous one.

My fingers tingled as I remembered curling my body over hers as the plane had dropped. Despite knowing that I might die shielding her body with my own, I hadn’t hesitated, and I hadn’t been afraid. I’d breathed in the coconut scent of her hair and absorbed the trembles of her body, savoring the feel of her small frame being cocooned beneath my larger body. I’d protected many clients, but Harlowe was the first one I thought of as mine to protect.

But she isn’t yours.

I paused in front of the door to the honeymoon suite, eyeing the tarnished, brass numbers attached to the faded, green surface. We might be sharing a single room intended for couples—lovers—but that didn’t change the fact that I was working for her, and clients were untouchable.

As I shifted the plastic bag from one hand to the other and reached into my pants pocket for the room key, I detected a strange sound. I froze as I homed in on the high-pitched noise. It was coming from inside the room, and unless I was mistaken, it was coming from Harlowe.

I fumbled with the key, finally jamming it in the lock. From what I could hear through the admittedly thin wooden door, Harlowe sounded like she was in pain. Had she slipped and fallen?

Then my heart seized in my chest. Had someone found us? Was some crazed fan hurting her? All the possible reasons for her anguished sounds raced through my brain, as I dropped the bag of food outside the room and pushed the door open. Without waiting to take in the entire scene, I bolted to the source of the cries, instinct driving me to find her and stop her pain.

Fragrant steam filled the bathroom and glass shower stall, the tile amplifying the sobbing, which caused sharp talons of pain to pierce my heart. In a haze of panic, I tore open the shower door, and it came off its hinges in my hand.

Harlowe dropped her hands from her face, her wracking sobs stopping in an instant as she stood naked under the water staring at me. Her mouth dangled as her gaze went from the door in my hand to my face. Then her pained expression morphed to shocked anger. “What the hell, Roc?”

It took me a few seconds to compute what I was seeing. Harlowe wasn’t hurt, she wasn’t in danger, she wasn’t being threatened. But she was wet and naked, and now she was mad as hell.

I opened and closed my mouth, fighting to keep my gaze on her face and not drift down to her glistening bare skin. “I heard…I thought you were…”

She flipped off the water and stomped from the shower, pushing past me to snatch a towel from the nearest rack. “I was crying, okay? It’s been a long day, and we almost died.” She wrapped the forest green towel around her chest as water puddled around her feet. “What the hell did you think?”

Now that she explained it, my paranoid thoughts of her being attacked seemed absurd. How could I explain that hearing her in pain had fired some deep, primal urge inside me? That wouldn’t exactly make her trust me more. It would probably make her run away screaming or at the very least request another bodyguard.

She didn’t wait for me to explain myself as she strode from the bathroom and left me standing with the shower door dangling from one hand and my mouth still agape. I’d never meant to invade her privacy like that or expose her, but I also knew that I would never be able to purge the sight of her perfect, high breasts tipped with pebbled, beige nipples and dripping with water from my mind.

One thought pulsed through my mind as desire pounded through my body. She was mine. But another voice whispered in the back of my brain what I also knew to be true.

Harlowe could not be mine because she was untouchable.