To Love and Protect (Must Love Diamonds 4)

“Don’t. This isn’t from you,” she assured him as she tossed her hair back and blinked the moisture away. “I’m just feeling helpless and caged in, and I am really tired, but…I don’t want to be alone.” The moment the words were out, she cringed at what he might think she was asking and quickly added, “Can I just stay out here with you?”

“Both of us on the couch with a perfectly good bed in my room?”

Cheeks burning, she gave him a wry grin. “Given the past, I wasn’t about to ask you to sleep in there with me.”

His lips quirked in not quite a smile. “No. I suppose not.” He looked left, hesitated, then reached out to grab the pillow and rest it against his thigh on her side. “Here. Lay down.”

With her head practically in his lap? Nope. She leaned back into her corner. “I’m good here.”

“I don’t bite.”

“No, duh, Dev. I just don’t want to take the whole couch from you, too.”

He slouched down into the cushions and leaned his head back with yet another all-suffering sigh. “I’ve slept in places that make this couch seem like a luxury feather bed. As long as you don’t take another half-hour to argue a moot point with me, I’ll be just fine.”

His tone had her clenching her jaw. After one last moment of hesitation, she maneuvered to lie down. “It’s really annoying when you do that,” she muttered as she wiggled into a comfortable position.

He reached over her to pull the blanket up to her shoulders. “Do what?”

“Make it sound like I’m being unreasonable when I’m only trying to be considerate.”

“Is that what I sound lik

e?”

“You talk to me like I’m still a kid.”

“It’s more that I’m not used to anyone questioning everything I say.”

She frowned, her gaze fixed on the dark fireplace across from the couch. “I don’t.”

He gave a short laugh. “You do.”

“Well, sorry if I’m not used to having everything in my life controlled,” she retorted.

But that wasn’t completely true. Her parents—mainly her dad—had been overprotective enough to drive her crazy growing up. Being busy with vet school, she’d gone with the flow until after graduation. It wasn’t until they’d pushed back on her location choice in a less affluent neighborhood for her vet clinic last summer that she’d finally found her voice.

Now there was no going back, no matter who was ordering her around.

“It’s not about control,” he explained. “On a mission, it’s about keeping the guys on my team alive. Not following orders gets people hurt. Or killed.”

Her impulse to point out she wasn’t one of his military missions was quelled by the gruff emotion in his voice. She swallowed past a sudden tightness in her throat. “Is that how you were injured?”

Tension filled the ensuing silence, and she waited for him to snap it was none of her business.

“That’s a story for another time,” he finally said. “Go to sleep, Shelby. Please.”

Surprised he hadn’t completely slammed that door in her face, she squirmed a bit to get more comfortable. Sliding her hand under the pillow, her fingers brushed up against his thigh. He shifted his leg away, and even though she’d jerked back as well, her chest constricted. It was as if after that comforting hug at her apartment, he couldn’t stand to touch her again.

She squeezed her eyes tight against the hurt, then lay there wide awake, wondering how in the world she was supposed to sleep when she was all too aware of every breath he took?

Chapter 11

Dev blinked awake with the dim light of impending sunrise, his body stock-still as he catalogued his surroundings. All was quiet in the house, and Shelby slept soundly on the couch beside him. Or half on him. She’d stretched out, pushing the pillow, her head, and shoulders up onto his lap sometime during the past four hours.

He took in her wild cloud of dark hair, stark against the white pillow. His view of her profile was blocked by a thick curl left over from the wedding, with just the curve of her cheekbone and tip of her nose visible. His hand was about two inches from brushing it back before he caught the movement and withdrew.

Fuck. After having held her against him three times in the past twelve hours, reaching to touch her was becoming a nearly impossible instinct to fight. Seeing his T-shirt and briefs skimming her curves hadn’t helped one damn bit.