Page 4 of Blade’s Protection

The five-minute drive stretched endlessly. Every car became a threat, every shadow a potential attacker. But Blade stayed right ahead, steady and solid.

At my building, he reached my door before I'd killed the engine. "Stay close."

Inside, he swept the apartment systematically while I stood frozen, seeing my space through his eyes. Secondhand furniture that had seemed cozy now looked shabby. Nursing textbooks scattered on surfaces like I was still a student, not a professional. The small touches trying to make it home—throw pillows from Target, struggling plants I forgot to water, graduation photos where I looked so young and naive.

"Bedroom?" His voice made me jump.

"End of the hall."

Watching him enter my most private space, seeing him assess where I slept, where I dressed—my whole body flushed hot. Those big hands touching my doorframe, checking window locks, moving through my space with protective intent.

"Pack for a week," he ordered, finishing his inspection. "Clothes, work stuff, toiletries. Rest comes later."

I packed mechanically—scrubs that suddenly seemed to show too much when I imagined his eyes on me at work tomorrow, regular clothes that revealed how much online shopping I'd done to fill lonely evenings, basics that felt too intimate for a stranger to see. My favorite sleep shorts, worn soft from too many washes. The oversized t-shirt I slept in, imagining his reaction to seeing me in it.

The graduation photo went in last, reminder of life before threats and dangerous bikers who made my body betray logic. Before I'd known what it felt like to want someone this immediately, this intensely.

"Ready?"

He filled my bedroom doorway, and the sight of all that controlled power in my intimate space made my thighs clench. Tomorrow I'd wake up in his home. Sleep in his space. Exist in his orbit.

"Ready as I can be for moving in with someone I just met."

That almost-smile appeared. "Not strangers anymore, princess. I'm your protection. Get used to having me around."

Following him out with my hasty bag, that unwelcome attraction burned hotter. Blade Beckett was dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with the threats against me.

The danger he posed was to my self-control, my independence, my carefully constructed walls.

And my traitorous body had already surrendered.

CHAPTER 2

BLADE

Seven AM came too fucking early after a night on my own couch listening to Tiffany breathe in my bed.

She'd emerged from my bedroom looking like sin wrapped in sunshine—wearing fresh scrubs from the bag we'd grabbed from her place, hair twisted up in some messy knot that exposed her neck. The neck I'd spent half the night imagining putting my mouth on.

"Morning." Her voice carried that rough, just-woke-up quality that went straight to my cock.

I grunted acknowledgment from where I stood at the counter, drowning myself in black coffee and trying not to notice how her scrub top pulled across her chest when she reached for a mug. Twenty-four years old. Sixteen years younger than me. Math I'd done approximately fifty times between midnight and dawn.

"Did you sleep at all?" She moved beside me, close enough that her warmth invaded my space. "The couch looked uncomfortable."

"I've slept in worse." Afghanistan. Iraq. Detroit. Places that didn't matter anymore because none of them had featured a curvy brunette in my bed, wearing my t-shirt, legs bare and perfect in the moonlight when she'd padded to the bathroom at two AM.

"I could have taken the couch⁠—"

"No." The word came out harsher than intended. "You're under my protection. You get the bed."

She studied me over her coffee mug, and I forced myself to look away. In daylight, without fear clouding her features, she was even more dangerous. Fresh-faced, hopeful, the kind of woman who still believed in good outcomes and happy endings. Everything I'd stopped believing in a decade ago when I'd held Torres while he bled out in Kandahar.

"We should go," I said. "Your shift starts at eight."

The drive to the clinic tested my focus. She sat behind me on the bike, those soft curves pressed against my back, arms wrapped around my waist like she belonged there. Every red light became torture, feeling her shift, feeling her breathe. Her thighs bracketed mine, and I spent the entire ride fighting images of those same thighs wrapped around me in different circumstances.

At the clinic, Dr. Tad raised an eyebrow when we walked in together. "Everything alright?"