creep at the bus station must have seen her as an easy mark, sensed her fear, and grabbed her the same way, pulling her into the alley.
She hated feeling like a victim!
Anger had erupted as horrible memories had collided with Joe’s grip on her wrist. She’d never be a victim again, damn it. Never. Suddenly fighting for her life all over again, she’d switched to kill mode and had practically pushed his larynx out the back of his neck. Darn it! She hadn’t meant to hurt him, not the man who’d saved her and taken her in, but she clearly had.
Now, being skin to skin with her incredibly fit and appealing roommate had changed the topic foremost in her mind. Being in Joe’s arms wiped out her fear and she shifted from fighting for her life to being completely turned on. What was it about Joe?
So confusing. It wasn’t right.
Obviously her concussion was still messing with her judgment.
In a moment of clarity she broke away and strode to the kitchen to get him a glass of water, trying to recover before she brought it to him.
“What about pepper spray?” She schooled her voice to sound casual, completely avoiding his eyes, as if she hadn’t just survived a flashback and had flung herself into Joe’s arms. There was nothing wrong with a decoy topic to throw him off the scent, right? The man had turned her on simply by touching her. Pitiful. Blame it on the head injury.
“First you have to get it out of your purse, right?”
She nodded, quickly realizing the fault in her premise. He stood shirtless, damp from his workout, skin shiny and all his muscles on display. Cut and ripped. A work of art. She handed him the glass. Thought about handing him his T-shirt so he’d cover up and make her life a little safer for the moment, or less tempting anyway. At least it seemed easier for him to swallow now and that made her grateful she hadn’t caused any permanent damage. Could she have? If so, he’d just given her a huge gift of self-protection. No way would she let herself be a victim. By God, she’d never let anyone hurt her again.
“Plus, I’ve heard about guys who’ve been sprayed and didn’t even react,” he continued. “Also, when you’re scared or nervous, you might spray all over the place and not hit the eyes.”
She kept nodding, watching him, completely distracted by his physique, unable to really listen, wishing she’d brought herself a cool drink too. Surely her head injury had left her brain unbalanced, taking her back to the worst moments in her life one second and then the next rushing into the realm of all things sensual.
“Your hands and your knees are your best defense. Want to practice again?”
She sucked in a breath and shook her head quickly. This was all too confusing. “I think that’s enough for tonight.”
He put down his glass on the nearby table, folded an arm across his middle, rested the other elbow on it and held his chin with his thumb and bent fingers, biting his lower lip and nailing her with a sexy, playful gaze. “Chicken, eh?”
Joe had saved her life. He’d also just given her a great gift of learning self-defense. And there was that sexy sparkle in his eyes right now...
“Are you challenging me?” Suddenly awash with tiny prickles of excitement again, she moved toward him and grabbed his wrist with all her might. “Let’s see you fight your way out of this one, buddy.” She knew she didn’t have a chance in hell of keeping hold but enjoyed the moment, and especially grappling with the hunk. When was the last time she’d had fun horsing around with a man and not felt the least bit afraid or vulnerable?
She trusted Joe not to hurt her.
He swung his free arm around behind her and pulled her close, pretending to get her in a head lock but quickly moving into a backward hug. “I don’t suggest you ever let your attacker get you in this position,” he said playfully over the shell of her ear.
“There won’t be any more attackers,” she said through gritted teeth. “Because I’ll kick their asses first.”
He tightened his hold, but in a good way, a sexy way. She went limp in his arms, feeling his closeness in every cell and nerve ending, confused by the total attraction she had for him. This was the worst time in the world to fall for someone. She was pregnant with another man’s baby, for crying out loud. He must have felt the shift of her mood from fight to flight, or in this case to catatonic, and he quickly backed off. They’d gotten too close. Too soon. That sexy, challenging gaze in his eyes from a second before disappeared and he reached for his water to take another drink as a distraction.
“So,” he started again, sounding nonchalant, “another good idea, if a bad guy only wants your wallet, is to reach into your purse, grab your wallet and throw it as far away as you can. He probably wants your money, not you, and will go after it. Then scream like hell and run for your life. Of course, if he has a gun you may want to reconsider that move.”
She gave the required light laugh over his obvious smart-aleck attempt to change the focus of what had just gone down. But their eyes met again, his honey brown and inviting as all hell, and it seemed they both knew some line had just been crossed. Though she couldn’t tell from Joe’s steely stare how he felt, and wasn’t about to guess because the thought made her get all jittery inside, she hoped he couldn’t tell how shaken she was.
She watched him with a mixture of shame and longing, but mostly confusion. Damn that concussion. “Thanks for the lesson,” she whispered. “I’d better get some rest now.”
They’d gotten too close, that was a fact.
She turned to head for her room, but a sense of duty stopped her. The man had saved her life then offered to share his home with her. Where did a guy like that come from? The least she could do was tell him what she’d been through, why she’d run away from home. He deserved to know how she’d ended up smack in the middle of his life. And if she shared, maybe she’d find out something about him, too.
“Joe?” She circled back to face him.
“Yeah?” He’d gone back to throwing punches at his punchbag and stopped.
“I ran away from a man who wanted to possess me. Completely. Little by little he clipped away at my life. Half the time I didn’t even notice, until one day I realized he’d isolated me from everything I liked and loved other than him.” She picked at a broken fingernail. “He wanted to control my life, and when I got pregnant he acted like that would ruin everything and got abusive with me.” Carey stared at her feet rather than risk seeing any judgment on Joe’s face. “I ran away the night he handed me a wad of money and told me to take care of ‘it’, as if my baby was a problem that needed fixing. He didn’t want to share me with anyone, not even our kid.”
She finally glanced up to find nothing but empathy in Joe’s eyes. “I fought him and he roughed me up. So when he gave me the money I grabbed whatever I could without being obvious, acted like I was going to do what he wanted, then ran for my life.”
Joe stepped toward her but she backed up, needing the distance and to tell him her entire story.
“I came to California because it was the next bus out of Montclare, and I didn’t have time to pick or choose. I must have looked like a sitting duck because I stepped off the bus and immediately got dragged into that alley.” Frightened to relive that night, and frustrated by the emotion rolling through her, she dug her fingers into her hair. “At first I thought
