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The long look Jennings sent her felt like a tender caress. “You already have saved your brother.” He pushed his chair away from the table with a low scuffing noise of the legs on the tile floor. “Now let’s get you some sleep.”
In a few steps, he reached her and helped her to her feet. She felt as if she was swaying but knew from years of studying the human body that she was simply suffering from sleep deprivation.
Without another word, he led her out of the kitchen. When he opened a door and she saw the bed, she nearly collapsed with relief.
In a burst of energy, she made it to the bed and crawled in. She curled up on her side, head cradled by a pillow as soft as a cloud. Her eyes slipped shut immediately but she opened them again when Jennings pulled the covers over her.
She breathed a sigh of contentment.
“Get some sleep, honey.” Bracing a hand on the bed beside her, he leaned in, hovering close enough that the clean scent of man and leather permeated her sleepy haze.
He leaned in closer. And closer.
Her heart thundered. Was he going to—
When he dipped his head and pressed his lips to her forehead, emotion broke over her. The tender brush of his mouth was gone as quick as it came. Her eyes slammed shut as exhaustion took hold. But something else had a grip on her—the man who’d saved her from Viper’s abuse.
Jennings had killed for her. And the best way to repay him was to do as Lexis said and protect his true identity from the Disciples.
Chapter Four
Jennings ran a knuckle over his jaw, creating a rasping noise against the growth of beard. How did everything get so screwed up?
He dropped forward in the kitchen chair, elbows planted on his knees, and lowered his head into his hands.
Damn. Things had gone sideways in the blink of an eye. Just hours ago he was about to bring down a multimillion-dollar drug empire and the organized crime ring behind it. He’d been invested in this op for a year. He ate, slept and breathed the Disciples. He gave up his own personal life to sink so deep undercover that some days he didn’t know who the hell he was anymore.
Now he stood to lose it all. From a single mistake.
He raked his fingers over his scalp. He couldn’t believe he’d fucked up this bad. Killing a man in self-defense was one thing. But he couldn’t give that as his only excuse.
He was protecting Wren.
When that motherfucker grabbed her by the hair and started dragging her out of the room, the look of pain tearing across her beautiful features enraged Jennings. Every fiber of muscle in his body had locked, at the ready to defend the woman he didn’t even know.
After a long conversation with his team, Jennings had a new plan in place. The wild card? It heavily involved Wren.
Earlier at the kitchen table, Lexis had let bits and pieces slip to Wren, but the sleeping woman didn’t know the half of it. When she woke up, Jennings would have that talk.
He pushed off his knees and glanced at the time on his phone. She’d only been sleeping for an hour, but he couldn’t wait any longer. The Disciples would still be in party mode, most of them far gone from alcohol. It was the perfect time to show up at the club with Wren and flaunt her, to show everyone that she was with him.
The silence in the Sentry headquarters was a constant scream in his ears. His teammates had gone home for the night, and unlike the house they used as the former HQ, this rented space didn’t have all the comforting creaks of old walls and floorboards.
As he moved through the empty spaces to the room where his new fake girlfriend slumbered, he couldn’t help but dread the task of waking her.
The woman was exhausted. She clearly wasn’t eating well either. Stress kept her going, but it was killing her too.
He quietly twisted the doorknob and pushed the door inward. The room was dark, but he made out the small form of Wren asleep on the bed. One arm was flung to the side, and her nut-brown hair tumbled over her cheek.
Jennings stopped. What had made him kiss her?
The feel of her skin beneath his lips haunted him. Never in his life had he felt an urge like that—or as strong either. Yet when he tucked her into bed and pulled the covers over her, the need to soothe her overwhelmed him and he kissed her forehead.
The most chaste of kisses. So why did it make his gut grip so damn hard?
He stepped into the room. In sleep, she made no sound, but he detected the slow rise and fall of her chest.
Waking her felt like a crime. Earlier in the kitchen, she clearly hadn’t understood everything that was said. Lexis telling her that she had to play a role to keep the op on track and Jennings from being outed never registered in her brain, going by the confusion in her pretty blue eyes.
