For His Protection Read Online Free PDF Page A

toyed with me or the part where you screwed with my mind?”
    Her arms slid from her chest and fuck him if her eyes didn’t
soften with something like remorse.
    “I never meant to toy with you. I was trying to save your
life. I needed your attention to keep you awake. I thought if you fell asleep,
you’d die—the paramedics said keeping you awake until they got there saved
you.”
    Silence stretched. His stomach seemed to open and devour the
contents of his chest. Could he be so naive, could he have let himself believe
in a fantasy for all these years? Telling himself there was something else,
some mysterious “thing” keeping her away. He closed his eyes and her words slid
through his mind, the things he’d focused on least, the things she’d said about
herself, about being afraid, about needing him to help her. The look on her
face, the tears in her eyes, the sob on her words. No. That emotion was real.
Those moments were pure. Perhaps she’d started with only the intention to save
him but it became so much more.
    “You forget, I remember every word. The things you said,
people don’t just say. I’m not buying it.”
    Her chin took a small jump toward the sky. “I got carried
away.”
    “Bullshit, you felt something.” He stepped forward quickly,
too quickly. His calf seized and his leg buckled. He caught himself swiftly but
not before the stumble. Tension contracted his muscles one by one until it
reached his neck then his jaw.
    Fuck .
    No one—no one—saw him limp anymore. Not even himself. He
sucked that weakness up. Not impossible, just a matter of compartmentalizing
pain. You can lock that shit up tight, make your body do what you tell it to,
not what it wants. Exhausting but doable. He raised his gaze slowly like the
ticking hand of a clock.
    A frown pushed her brows together then her gaze drifted to
his leg. Even in the muted light he saw the pink slip from her cheeks.
    She remembered the leg—of course she remembered the god-damned
leg. His chest became an arctic cave, everything inside hardening to icy shrapnel.
He’d feared this, deep down. Not that he did self-conscious bullshit. But he
remembered from his few lucid moments after the accident, the whispers—he’d
lose his leg. She’d heard them, no doubt. He couldn’t pretend that wasn’t a
factor in her reaction.
    He rotated his shoulders and forced his muscles to loosen.
“So that’s it, sweetheart? Repulsed by the legless cripple?”
    Her gaze flew to his and her mouth opened but no words
escaped.
    Ty bent, not taking his attention off her and lifted the hem
of his pant leg, exposing a patch of undamaged, hair-dusted skin on his ankle.
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
    Her features smoothed and her chest expanded then deflated.
Not the reaction he expected—he’d expected to see guilt . He’d expected
her expression to prove his assumption right. Sheer relief didn’t do that.
    “I’m really glad you pulled through so well. I was worried.”
    “Were you?” he said, his voice grittier than intended.
    “I was.”
    He rose and watched her. She released his gaze, shifting it
over his shoulder but not lowering it. No, she’d never do that—lower it. Still,
fidgeting on sexy high heels, she looked like just a girl. A stunning girl he
could reach out and touch, reach out and drag to his bed, show her what five
years of longing fucks like. But there was a layer of something brittle under
her skin that stopped him, as if one wrong touch could cause a crack.
    “Look, I’m really sorry I hurt your feelings by not
contacting you, by not responding to your letter. I did the wrong thing saying
everything I did. The truth is—I’m more screwed up than I care to explain.” She
brushed the hair back from her shoulder and looked at him again. The light
seemed to have turned off in her eyes. “But you need to understand right now, I
will not have my life messed with—and I sure as shit won’t have anyone interfere
with my job.”
    She was