Page 80 of Under Arthur’s Protection

Emotional connections are dangerous.

She’s your client.

Her fingers found the hair at the back of my neck, and all the little voices went quiet. I drew her in, and there was nothing else in my world. Everything was her mouth and her body against mine and the realization that I’d been denying her, not just myself.

Stop.

I didn’t want to stop.

But she hesitated.

Not much. But it was unquestionably there. A stillness. A half-breath where her mouth paused against mine, and her fingers stopped moving.

She doesn’t want this, Penn.

I was suddenly at my parents’ house in Greenwich, the night of my mother’s fiftieth birthday party. I was home for the weekend—a visit my father had arranged, even though my SEAL team was preparing for a deployment. Through the study wall, I heard my mother’s voice rise, followed by my father’s flat and final tone. The seating chart. Someone he shouldn’t have invited. Then the doorbell.

And they walked out of the study together, with his hand on her lower back, and her smile as bright and automatic as it always was. Guests meant performance.

Because emotional connections are dangerous.

That was what hesitation meant. A woman kissing you because you’d protected her and fed her. A woman kissing you because she thought she owed you something she couldn’t pay for.

I was my goddamn father, exchanging one favor for another.

Fuck.

That.

I let my hand drop from her hair and stepped back.

Her eyes were still on me, but I couldn’t look directly at them.

“I need to—” To what? The car. That was it. “I should try to swap the car. Those men saw the plates.”

She blinked, her fists curling in toward her chest. “Nothing’s going to be open at this hour.”

“Shirts.” I walked past her, to the table where she’d been working, and grabbed my jacket from where I’d tossed it. “I’m covered in blood and got some on you, and we can’t—there might be an all-night pharmacy or a gas station.”

“In the middle of nowhere? At this hour?”

“I’ll find somewhere.”

“Arthur⁠—”

“I’ll grab whatever I can find and come right back.” My voice sounded normal. Not really. But almost.

Get out.

Before I opened the door, I said, “The sauce is ready. Pasta needs another minute.”

“Okay.” No argument. No attempt to stop me.

Because she’s grateful you stopped.

Fuck.

I left without looking back.