he drove himself into her, precariously hanging on the edge of the orgasm of his life.
Tessa leaned back in his arms, watching him curiously, her expression serene, happy and satisfied, but somehow distant.
“My father is not going to be very happy about this,” she said, sliding her hands up over her ripe breasts, smiling at him. The room around her became hazy and unreal in a way that made him squint.
Then she became transparent, too, the tight heat of her body fading.
“No, wait, please,” he cried out, reaching for her.
The golden light around her was fading. The acute emptiness, the ache of satisfaction denied made him gasp in agony, chilled now, shivering.
He was alone. Only darkness remained.
JONAS SHUDDERED WITH cold as his eyes opened, unseeing, but awake nonetheless. He was sweating and the AC was blasting directly on him. As he rolled to the side, he swore as his foot tangled in a sheet and nearly sent him sprawling on the floor.
He was still hard from the dream, and even the cold blast from the AC didn’t seem to diminish the ache between his legs. His body jerked as he remembered Tessa’s imaginary touch. The emptiness that always followed the dream was an ache in his chest.
Providing his own release wasn’t an attractive option. It wasn’t an orgasm he craved; it was Tessa.
He had to get her out of his mind or he was going to go crazy. He supposed it was his punishment, a special little kind of hell, for letting himself get distracted from his job. He’d been assigned to protect her, not have sex with her.
He should have turned around and walked out the first time he entered the shop. When he saw her, it was like being set on fire. Jonas had had plenty of women in his life, but none that made him want at first sight. Not like Tessa.
Senator Rose was responsible for sending Berringer Security several contracts, particularly after Jonas’s younger brother had successfully prevented a kidnapping attempt on the senator a few years earlier.
James Rose had even become a friend of sorts. When he’d asked them to guard his daughter after receiving threats concerning a bill he was authoring, they couldn’t refuse. The senator had trusted Jonas to keep his daughter safe, and he’d done a rotten job of it. Not one of Jonas’s better moments.
Jonas did the usual background checks, and he knew about Tessa’s reputation going in. The senator’s “wild child,” Tessa was a free spirit, nonconformist. She was also heart-stoppingly beautiful and completely off-limits.
Father and daughter had a tumultuous relationship, to say the least. From what Jonas had seen at a distance, Tessa looked like one more spoiled rich girl who liked to rub her father’s nose in her exploits. He’d known plenty of that particular type over the years.
Tessa had made several questionable choices in relationships, among other things, that seemed more about thwarting her father’s control than anything else.
However, Jonas discovered that the view up close was somewhat different. For one thing, Tessa wasn’t a girl anymore, but a mature woman who ran a successful business. As he got to know her, he couldn’t help but see her in a different light, though he knew her relationship with her father was still troubled.
Getting in between the senator and his daughter was dangerous. Jonas had to pick one side or the other, and he chose the side that paid the bills. Besides, he knew too well how that kind of slip could come back and bite you in the ass.
Guarding Tessa had been a little more intense than his usual assignments. They’d been around each other 24/7 for several weeks, almost constantly together. He didn’t let her out of his sight, day or night, as per the senator’s orders. It made it harder to control the heat that had flared between them.
Tessa wasn’t big on control, and she tempted his from every angle she could. One night, when they’d returned from a party, he’d given in, right in the parking lot behind the store.
He’d watched her all evening, dancing with friends in a dress that had been molded to her, what there was of it, anyway. A few of the friends she’d danced with had been male, and it made Jonas want to claim her as his in a very basic way.
Ridiculous, but true.
Her sharing even an innocent dance with another man had driven him crazy, and by the time they’d returned home, he couldn’t hold back any longer.
He was so distracted that he hadn’t noticed someone watching them from a dark corner of the lot.
The guy had approached from behind while he had her in his arms. A hard slam to the head had knocked him out. Tessa had fought back and, admirably, had taken out the intruder with a bat she kept in the back seat of her car.
Jonas had awakened at the hospital later, completely blind.
The senator’s aide, Howie, was the first voice he heard after the doctors told him about his condition; apparently Rose wasn’t available.
From what Howie said, it was clear Tessa had told them that Jonas had screwed up big time. He was off the job. Worse, she’d made it sound as if he had been pursuing her, and that he had seduced her that evening, instead of keeping his eye on the target.
She’d clearly used him to piss her father off for sending a bodyguard in the first place. He’d known she wasn’t happy about the idea—the senator had warned him—and she hung him out to dry. He should have seen it coming. That he’d fallen for her added insult to injury.
Jonas had never liked Howie Stanton, but Howie was a Washington insider and had been with the senator for years. Jonas had noticed on more than one occasion when the senator had come to Tessa’s shop how Howie’s eyes followed Tessa. His expensive suit and high-profile position didn’t make him any less of a lowlife.
But Howie had made the senator’s wishes clear to Jonas: stay away from Tessa, or there would be consequences. Jonas could hear in his tone that the aide relished delivering the news.
Jonas did as the senator requested.
He hadn’t seen or talked to Tessa for a month since the attack, and he didn’t plan to. He’d played the fool once, and it wasn’t worth the risk to Berringer Security’s reputation. The senator could do them a lot of damage if he wanted to.
Feeling for the edge of his bed stand, from which he knew it was about seven steps to the window, Jonas found the AC unit. After a brief struggle with the curtain and the controls, he managed to turn it down to low.
After getting a cup of cold water from the kitchen, he found his way back to the bed. Traffic was busy down on the street, people going about their normal lives. The apartments on his floor were quiet, everyone gone to work.
He picked up the basic clock that one of his brothers had bought him and removed the glass cover so that he could feel the hand positions.
One o’clock in the afternoon. He’d always been an early riser, but now he slept whenever he could and woke at odd hours.
His brothers, Garrett, Ely and Chance, were running the business without him until his sight came back. Doctors said his sight would return, but it hadn’t.
What
