To Love & Protect Her. Margaret Watson
you feel anything?” His voice sounded a little breathless.
Yes, she wanted to tell him. You’re making me feel things I’ve never felt before. But instead she said, “No, I can’t feel a thing.”
“How about over here?” His hands drifted below her right ear, and she closed her eyes and let herself float on the sensations.
Suddenly her eyes flew open. “Ouch. That hurts.” She reached up and found a tiny bump on her head.
Griff rose from between her legs and sat down on the couch next to her. Gently, he pushed the hair away from the spot. “It’s a very small bump, and the skin isn’t broken. They must have hit you just hard enough to make you fall down, then rolled you up in the rug. You were wriggling when they walked out the door of the apartment with you. That’s when I saw one of the kidnappers hit you again.”
His fingers brushed through her hair again, and it almost felt as if he were caressing her. He leaned closer, and she thought she felt his lips brush over the spot on her head. “It’s going to be fine.”
“I didn’t even know it was there until you touched it.” Her breathing was ragged.
Griff drew away, but he didn’t move off the couch. He took her hands and slowly turned her to face him. “Do you hurt anywhere else?”
She ached all over, but that had nothing to do with her attackers. “No, I’m fine.”
“Then I’d say you’re going to survive.”
His melodic voice dropped almost to a whisper, and Willa couldn’t tear her gaze away from his face. His eyes blazed with a heat she’d never seen in them before. He reached out and framed her face with his hands, then leaned toward her.
“Tell me to stop, Blue.” His voice was a low, smoky growl that thrummed deep inside her. “Tell me to get lost.”
Slowly she shook her head. “I don’t want you to stop,” she whispered.
His eyes darkened and his hands slid down her neck, his thumbs tracing a line on her throat in a slow caress that made her tighten with need. Then he grasped her shoulders with shaking hands. The air between them trembled.
His kiss wasn’t tender or tentative. He crushed her mouth beneath his, drinking her in like a man who’d been dying of thirst. He claimed her mouth with an untamed desperation that stirred an answering wildness in her.
Wrapping her arms around him, she pulled him closer. With a groan deep in his throat, Griff slid his hands around her face, holding her while his mouth roamed over her cheeks, her eyes, her neck.
Finally he returned to her mouth, where his lips gentled. He nibbled, he tasted, he nipped, until dark waves of heat swept over her, leaving her needy. She opened her mouth to moan his name, and he swept inside to taste her more intimately.
His hands slid down her back, caressing her spine, smoothing over every muscle along the way. Desire coiled inside her, until she throbbed in rhythm with every touch of his hands, every movement of his lips.
She tried to move closer to him. She needed to feel the hard planes of his body against hers, needed to feel his weight and heat pressing into her. His hands tightened on her for a moment, then he pressed her down onto the couch.
His leg curled around hers, and he leaned over her. His eyes were nearly black with passion, and the planes of his face were hard. “For God’s sake, Willa. Tell me to stop.”
She looked up at him, knowing her eyes were dazed, knowing that he could see the desire and passion in her face. “I don’t want you to stop, Griff. Kiss me again.”
He closed his eyes as a shudder passed through him, then he bent and took her mouth again. He smoothed her hair away from her face, and his hand trailed down her neck. He stroked the skin of her throat at the opening of her blouse, then pressed his mouth to the spot.
“You’re so soft,” he whispered. “So smooth. Are you this soft everywhere?”
He hesitated for a moment, then he slowly pulled her blouse out of the waistband of her slacks. He kissed her again as he slid his hand onto her abdomen.
Her skin jumped and heated at his touch, and she shifted against him. His leg slid between hers, and she pressed herself closer to him. She clung to him, lost in the sensations crashing over her. She still couldn’t believe that Griff apparently wanted her as much as she wanted him.
“Griff,” she said fiercely, turning so that her body fitted more closely against his.
He wove his hands into her hair, pulling her closer. His mouth took hers in a storm of heat and desire, and she answered him back, kiss for kiss, touch for touch.
But when he shifted his hand he pressed against her cut, and she couldn’t stop herself from crying out. He stilled immediately, then began easing himself away from her.
“I’m sorry, Willa,” he said.
“Don’t be.” Her voice was fierce. “You didn’t mean to touch my bruise.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry I touched you in the first place, sorry it got out of hand.”
Slowly she drew away from him, feeling a ball of hurt swelling in her throat. “You’ll notice I wasn’t objecting too much.”
“You should have been. My God, Willa, I gave Ryan my word that I would take care of you. I promised him that I would protect you. I’m sure that what we were just doing wasn’t what he had in mind.”
She couldn’t believe how much his words stung. “Does Ryan decide who you get involved with?” She tried to make her voice cool to hide her pain. “He doesn’t run my life. What does he have to do with what goes on between us?”
“I don’t answer to any man, including Ryan Fortune.” He scowled at her and stood. “But I honor my word. And when I said I would protect you, I meant just that.”
“I don’t notice any kidnappers pounding at the door. So what are you worried about?”
Griff sighed and ran his hand through his short brown hair. “If I’m thinking about you, about how much I want to kiss you, I’m not thinking about how to protect you. My mind can’t be in two places at once. And when I was kissing you, that’s definitely all I was thinking about.”
She angled her chin at him, unwilling to concede the point. “You said no one followed us. No one knows where we are. So what are you worried about?”
“I’m worried about what I can’t predict. I’m worried about where the next threat is coming from. I had no idea that you were going to be kidnapped when I showed up at your apartment. It just happened. And I have no way of knowing what’s going to happen next.”
She looked out the window at the trees surrounding the cabin and the mountain rising behind it, then looked back at Griff. His face was closed off and remote. “What kind of man are you, Griff, that you worry about things like that?” she asked softly.
“I’m the kind of man you don’t need in your life,” he said harshly. “I’m the kind of man your mother should have warned you about.”
“My mother left us when I was a baby,” she said coolly. “So her opinion wouldn’t count. And my father taught me to pay attention to my instincts. But apparently my instincts were wrong.”
“Damn right your instincts were wrong.” He scowled again. “I’m going out to get some firewood. It’s going to get cold in here.”
Griff slammed out the door, and Willa sank back onto the couch. In spite of Griff’s words, he couldn’t deny what she’d seen in his face. Or felt in his touch. He had wanted her, as much as she’d wanted him.
She closed her eyes to savor the knowledge, to wrap herself in the warmth of Griff’s desire for a moment longer. These last few months, when she’d been dreaming of Griff, imagining his kiss,