Guarding Her Body

“Tell us that we at least caught this psycho?” she asks Benson.

“I wish.” I lift my head. He gives me a sympathetic smile. “The man that they have in custody here is only the hired help. Someone paid him to kidnap you. Whoever is behind this has money.”

“Sadie!” My name is roared.

“Locke!” I shout back.

“Open it,” Benson barks at the nurse in charge of opening the doors. She hits the button, letting me through. I follow the sounds of crashes and people calling Locke’s name.

“Sadie!” Locke roars my name again. I come around a corner and see him in a hospital room standing next to a bed. His left hand has some kind of brace on it.

A doctor is standing in front of him trying to talk him down. Another nurse is trying to close in on him from the side with a syringe in her hand. I know they mean well, but I’m not letting him get blindsided again because he’s distracted. Especially when it’s me that seems to be distracting him.

“Don’t.” A nurse tries to grab my arm to stop me from going into the room. “He might not be in a stable mindset because of the drugs he was given.”

“Locke,” I call to him as I jerk my arm from her hold. His head snaps up to look my way. His eyes are wild. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the nurse take another step toward him. “Don’t you dare,” I hiss at her as I enter the room, going straight for Locke.

I don’t stop until I’m pressed against him, resting my head on his chest. He wraps his arms around me, leaning down to bury his face in my hair. I can hear his heart start to slow. “You saved me.”

“Everyone out,” I hear Detective Benson say from behind me. The doctor tries to protest, but Benson shuts it down. A moment later, I hear the door close, leaving Locke and me all alone.

“I’m sorry I distracted you,” I mumble against his chest, trying not to cry. The whole reason he had been distracted was because I’d been upset. I’m finding my giant beastly new boyfriend is a softie when it comes to me. I also think I might be totally in love with him. There’s nothing like thinking you’re losing someone to shift everything into perspective.

“I’m sorry.”

He drops down onto the bed, making us eye level. He snags my wrist, pulling me between his legs. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I let my guard down. The fuck is wrong with me?”

“No! Nothing is wrong with you,” I rush to say. “You’re the one who stopped him.” I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him in for a kiss.

I close my eyes and get lost in Locke. He’s okay. I know now more than ever that I want out of this life. I could spend the rest of my life just kissing this man and be happy. I don’t know how I’ve fallen so quickly for him, but here I am and there is no going back. Locke is my silver lining in this whole mess.

A knock sounds at the door as I’m about to crawl into Locke’s lap. I stop myself. He doesn't care for that, however. With his good hand he wraps his arm around me and pulls me up into his lap as Detective Benson steps into the room with Sparks beside him. I try to stop him, but it’s pointless. Not that I try real hard.

“What do you have for me?” Locke asks, getting right to the point.

I listen as Benson tells him everything. Sparks adds in a few bits of information here and there. Locke goes back and forth, telling them everything from his perspective. I’m surprised at how many things he noticed that I hadn’t.

“Another thing you might want to know—” Sparks says, and I know this is going to be bad. I close my eyes as she fills us in on the fact that an audio of Locke and me has been released to the press.

“The flowers,” Locke growls.

I rub his chest with my hand, trying to calm him down as I think about all that had been said. I’d talked about Charlie and me only being friends. Locke had made me come. I also admitted to being a virgin. “I’m going to kill this fucker.”

“It doesn't matter. I don’t care about the audio.” If anything, it only makes me mad that it’s getting Locke worked up.

I didn’t say anything bad about Charlie, and so what if people heard Locke get me off? It’s the last thing on my list to care about. People heard audio of me getting off before on television. I might have had body doubles for some of the sex scenes, but those sounds came from me.