Page 36 of Lennox Lane

That was the truth. He was finding the soft place beneath all the jokes.

“I’m not helpless,” she said.

“I know.”

“I don’t need a guard dog.”

“I know, but you have me anyway.” Lennox was laying it all on the line.

“I can take care of myself.”

“I know, Lane.”

“Then why do you keep acting like I can’t?” she questioned.

He stepped closer, lowering his voice so only she could hear it over the music. “Because taking care of yourself shouldn't mean always being by yourself.”

She blinked, and for one second, Lennox saw the seventeen-year-old girl beneath the woman. Not weak but tired. Being tired had become proof of surviving, and Lane needed a safe place to rest.

“Damn you,” she muttered.

He smiled faintly. “For which part?”

“The part where you occasionally say something emotionally competent and ruin my ability to hate you full-time.”

“I can be that man full-time,” he almost begged.

She shook her head, but she didn’t step away. The DJ dropped another classic, and the crowd roared. Lennox invited her to dance again, and Lane agreed but not before calling him greedy.

He could tell Lane wanted to walk away. He saw the internal argument flash across her face. Saw every reason she had to put distance between them. With her past, his hacking and jealousy likely scared her. He could admit the way he left before painted a picture of immaturity. The way he had embarrassed her tonight probably felt like he didn't respect her. The way he treated his wants as if they were guaranteed was probably a turnoff.

But the music was good. The rum punch was warm in her blood. Plus, Lane looked like she wanted to let triumph win over her trauma. She slid her hand into his.

“One more song,” she said.

Lennox smiled, pulling her back into the music, and she turned again, fitting herself against him with a roll of her hips. The feel of her nearly made him pray out loud. Lennox lowered his head beside hers and let himself have the moment. He held her like a man who had already decided the night was not ending with goodbye.

Even if all he did was hold her. Even if she slept behind a locked door and threatened him through it, even if she spent the whole ride to his place reminding him he was a pain in her ass, he could live with that.

What he couldn’t do was drop her off alone and go back to his house with the memory of her body against his and Jeanette’s threats crawling through the wires. Lane Sanders was spending the night within reach. Not because he owned her or had the right. He needed her near because he was going to ask, negotiate, and annoy her until she admitted she wanted the same damn thing. Plus, judging by the way she leaned back into him when the beat dropped, smiling like the night had finally gotten good. Lennox liked his odds.

CHAPTER SIX

FEAST OVER FAMINE

Lane’s eyes fluttered open as warmth engulfed her. Not sunlight, though a thin ribbon of morning slipped through the gap in Lennox’s curtains and stretched across the floor like it had business there. Not the heavy comforter pulled over her hips. Not even the slow heat trapped beneath the sheets.

Lennox.

He was wrapped around her like he had gone to sleep making a point. That she belonged in his arms. One arm banded around her waist, heavy and possessive even in sleep. His chest pressed against her back, steady and warm. One of his legs had worked between hers sometime during the night, and his face was tucked close enough to the nape of her neck that every slow exhale brushed her skin.

Lane should have moved. She should have peeled his arm off her, slid out of bed, found her clothes, and reminded herself that Lennox Jackson was still the same man who had hacked her personal life, ruined her date with adult diapers, and dragged her to reggae night like emotional chaos had valet parking.

She should have left, but she opted to lie perfectly still in his warm embrace. His breathing was even, lulling her into serenity. She was safe in his arms, though she hated to admit it. No one had held her like this without asking for anything in return in so long she didn’t know what to do with the ache it opened inside her. Lane stared at the wall across from his bed, at the framed black-and-white photograph of a city skyline she couldn’t recognize, and let herself remember the night before.

After dancing the night away to Reggae and enjoying more rum punch, her body had betrayed her by fitting too well against his. Lennox had driven them to his place. Lane had spent the entire ride pretending she was only going because her car was being dropped off there. She also wanted answers about Jeanette, because she did not feel like fighting him in public while dressed like a tangerine goddess with a felony in her spirit.

None of that was a lie, but it also wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth was that she had been tired.