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By the time he pulls back, my heart hammers against my ribcage. I’m his. And he’s not going to let anything bad happen to me.
He runs the back of his hand across my cheek, gathering the leftover tears still there. “Don’t ever make me chase you again, Mandy.”
I lay onto the pillows, still feeling his seed spill from my body, drying on my legs.
He gets a blanket from the hope chest at the foot of the bed and covers me. Always putting me to bed, this man, and when I get more energy, I’ll argue with him.
For now, I’m just going to rest a moment.
Maxim
A small pieceof cabbage clings to Mandy’s lower lip as she chews her egg roll. She takes another bite, still not realizing it’s on her mouth.
I lean over the kitchen table and pluck it free. She checks what I took from her lip then grabs her napkin, wiping her mouth in case I’ve left anything behind.
“Sorry,” she mutters then takes another bite. The way she’s devouring the Chinese takeout I ordered while she napped in my bed makes me think she hasn’t eaten all day.
An urge I’ve never felt before eats at me. I’ve craved women before, but not like this. I’ve never taken much interest in what they did when they weren’t naked beneath me. It’s not like that with Mandy. With her, I want to know where she is, what’s she doing, and who she’s with. I want to shield her from all the pain this world has to offer, and it angers me that I can’t wipe away the pain she’s already had to bear.
“Did you skip lunch?” I end the silence between us with my question. She’s been reserved since I went to check on her and get her for dinner.
“I did.” She lifts her eyes to mine, almost daring me to make a big deal of it. And I want to. I want to tell her she needs to eat, that she needs to keep herself healthy, but I know she knows all of this already. She doesn’t need me to chase her around with such demands.
“Do I need to meet you for lunch every day to be sure you’re eating?” I know she doesn’t, but there’s something about this woman that makes me loosen my grip on my control. And she’s sexy as hell when she’s irritated.
“No.” She frowns. “You’d scare the patients.”
I laugh. “No one complained when I sat outside your office protecting Anya,” I remind her. Anya is as stubborn as my Mandy. It was my job to be sure she was safe while she was at work during the first weeks of her marriage to Arman.
“They did,” she shoots back with a serious tone. “At least once a day, some old woman would quietly warn me about the big man with the neck tattoos hiding behind the plant near the elevator.”
“Are you lying to me?”
A long moment passes between us before her mouth spreads into a grin. “Maybe not every day. But at least twice.”
I grunt.
“Would you do that, though?” she asks quietly while pushing the noodles around her plate with her fork.
“Do what?”
“Come have lunch with me every day?” She moves her attention to her food.
I reach across the small table and touch her hand until she looks back up at me. “I would. And if you start skipping meals because of stress, you can bet your ass I’ll be there.”
She smiles again, but this time she lowers her chin trying to hide it from me. It reminds me of what she said to me the first night I tucked her drunk self into bed. She admitted she didn’t hate me being bossy.
“Now that you’ve been fed.” I let go of her hand and sit up straight in my chair. “Tell me what you found out at the halfway house this afternoon.”
Mandy blows out a small breath, then looks up at me. “Nothing that will help. I talked with a guy who roomed with my brother. He said that Gunner got a job and moved out.”
“A job doing what?”
“Washing dishes at a restaurant.”
“Dishes?” I can’t help but show my disbelief. “A dishwashing job wasn’t enough for him to get an apartment. Why wouldn’t he stay at the halfway house until he got something better?”
“I thought about that, too,” she admits, laying her fork across her empty plate. “From what I understand about the Freedom House program, he could have stayed even with a job.”
