Page 5 of Protected By the BRATVA Grump

"Jasper?" Delilah sounds cautious.

"Evening."

"Who was that?" she asks, her cheeks are flushed pink from her run. "What are you doing in the park?"

"That man was following you," I say, instead of telling her why I’m here.

Her eyes narrow as she looks at the path behind me. "Following me…" she mimics.

"That's right."

"Are you sure?" she asks, pushes her hair back off her face.

"Yes." I bend to pick up the crap he left behind when he grabbed his bag. The little bottle is a well known date rape drug,already half gone. I pocket it along with the empty syringes and the loaded one. "I’m going to walk you home."

Her eyebrows go up. "Why?"

"I’d feel better knowing you got there safely."

She stands there with her hands on her hips and her breath fogging, looking at me.

"Okay," she finally says, her shoulders sagging an inch.

I let her set the pace and drop in easily beside her as she stretches each arm across her chest, pausing every few steps to stretch her legs.

She fills the walk with chatter about the cats, the café, the gallery across the road. She skirts around the edges of what happened fifteen months ago outside the café, likely wanting to know if I know anything about it, but I stay quiet. The way she talks is fast and thorough and for some reason, over the last year or so, I’ve come to crave her conversation. Even the ones she has with herself.

Before I’ve fully registered it, we’re at the door of her apartment, and she pulls a single key out of the hidden waistband pocket of her leggings.

"Come up. I owe you a coffee."

"You don't owe me anything," I counter, because it’s true.

She lowers her chin and raises her eyebrows. "Ten minutes. You look like you've had a day." She is already running up the stairs.

Her apartment is small and warm and smells like sugar. A bowl of something sits under a dish towel on the radiator, a stack of paperbacks holds up one end of a shelf, and there's a photograph on the fridge of Sammie holding Lilah with one of the cats entering the frame from below. She fills the kettle, then gives up on it, and switches to the little stovetop pot instead. Themugs she pulls down from a cupboard don’t match each other, or the decor of the small, clean kitchen, and yet they’re exactly right.

"Delilah."

"Hm?"

I cross the kitchen. She turns around with the coffee pot still in her hand and finds me a lot closer than I was.

Her lips part with a little puff of surprise.

It’s been too long, I realize.

Too long standing at the end of that counter holding a mug of coffee to stop me from reaching out and touching her. From pulling her into me. Too long watching her set a plate of something burnt in front of me, with her whole face glowing with hope that I’ll like it. The entire time I've been telling myself she deserves a man whose evenings belong to him.

That reason held up beautifully right up until now. Now it's just a thing I used to say.

I lift my hand and push the loose hair back off her cheek, and my thumb stays on her jaw.

She turns her face into it.

That's it. That's the whole of my restraint, gone in the time it takes her to move a fraction of an inch.

I kiss her, and she makes a small sound against my mouth like something coming loose. Then her hands are fisted in the front of my jacket, pulling. I have her back against the counter with the coffee forgotten behind us, and neither of us slows down.