Page 10 of Going Down Hard
Chapter Three
Stone sat on the end of the bed and watched Sophie pace. She’d been doing it for ten minutes now and while he didn’t mind staring at her ass every time she headed away from him, the frown on her pretty face and the muttering under her breath on the return trip was getting to him.
“Okay. Enough.” He patted the bed next to him. “Sit down and talk to me.”
“This isn’t going to work. We can’t stay in this room together.” She stopped moving, hands on hips. “There’s only one bed.”
“It’s a big bed…”
Keeping her distance, she glared at him. “I’m not sleeping with you.”
He laughed. Sleeping was the last thing he wanted to do with her in that bed. “Your virtue is safe. I’m not going to jump you, Soph.”
Shaking her head, she muttered, “It’s notyouI’m worried about.”
He wasn’t touching that comment with a ten-foot bargepole. He wasn’t oblivious to the attraction arcing between them but he had no intention of acknowledging it. He had a job to do. One that required no distractions.
“I said I’d keep you safe, and I will.”
Stone didn’t take his vow to protect her lightly. He’d promised no one would get to her—and they wouldn’t. His dedication to the job was one thing, but from the second he’d wrapped his arms around her, he’d developed a bone-deep need to see that nothing and no one hurt Sophie Collins.
The sentiment sat outside the parameters of his job. It was a sensation he wasn’t familiar with.
“I know.” She sighed. “But please tell me I’m not the only one feeling this.”
Stone’s insides churned. He could lie—to her and himself—or he could own up to there being something other than his commitment to do the job he was hired to do. “I’m here to do a job…”
“And that’s it?” she demanded, her gaze drilling him, daring him to lie.
He wasn’t used to such candidness from a woman. Most of the females he’d encountered didn’t deal in honesty, and they weren’t direct like Sophie either. There always seemed to be some game they were playing, some sort of subterfuge going on. It was refreshing to have things out in the open, and if he joined her in being honest, he had to admit her straightforward approach turned him on. “No.”
“What do we do about it?”
“Nothing.”
She stared at him, her mouth open. “You can ignore it?”
God, he hoped so. If not, he could be putting her at risk. “I have to. Your safety comes before anything else.”
“Right.” She rolled her eyes. “So we just hang out in this room for hours and hours and sleep in the same bed and pretend we don’t want to do anything remotely sexual to each other.”
“Yep.” His hands fisted. He could—would—keep his desires in check. Her life could depend on his ability to do his job, and the last thing he needed was a distraction. Even if it was the sexiest one he’d ever encountered.
“And how does that work when we leave the room and have to act as though we’re a couple?”
Good question. Stone had no idea how they’d work that. “We’ll hold hands?”
Sophie laughed. “I’m pretty sure someone asemotionalas me would require more intimate PDA than that.”
She was right. He wasn’t even sure he could stop at holding her hand. If they hadn’t been interrupted earlier, he’d have done more than hold her while she cried. Which made him a selfish prick.
She’d been frightened and upset and all he could think about was how amazing she felt in his arms. They needed to get off this subject before he said “fuck it” and pulled her into his arms again—and this time gave in to his desire to know how she tasted.
“When was the last time you slept?” he asked.
“What?” She frowned at him.
“Sleep. When did you last get some solid hours of sleep?” He needed to avoid the thing between them for now or he’d be finding out how she tasted in places other than her mouth. “You look worn out.”
