Assess the situation.

Protect the client.

Eliminate the threat.

A female bodyguard with enhanced abilities. A trillionaire playboy committed to destroying people like her. A romance they didn't expect....

Nina Bronson used to be all human - until the experimental surgeries and internal technology that saved her life and enhanced her as a soldier also forced her to leave the army for private service. Now she and her peers are facing slow, painful deaths unless their technology is upgraded, and the one keeping those upgrades illegal and unavailable is an obnoxious man too gorgeous for his own good.

A man she's supposed to guard with her life.

Ewan Donahue is the public voice speaking out against the enhancement procedures of injured soldiers. But when his lobbying leads to death threats, he needs someone to protect him around the clock. He doesn't want to rely on an enhanced soldier - Nina's tech goes against everything he stands for. But he really doesn't want her to be beautiful like she is. Doesn't want her to suffer like she will. Doesn't want to succumb to the searing desire he feels for her.

As a series of attacks on his life send them to a remote cabin, their close proximity brings them together in ways they never imagined. They know they must prevent the need simmering between them, resist each other at all costs. But when tensions are high and danger is close, passion burns hottest of all....

𓆩♡𓆪

Chapter One

Ewan Donahue looked like the worst kind of trouble.

Broad shoulders, a sleekly perfect slope of his jaw as he turned to glare at her, and a habit of tossing his slightly overlong dark hair out of his flashing hazel eyes — Definitely not the sort of trouble Nina Bronson was going to let herself get into.

Not because he was her boss, since technically he was just the guy paying for her services and not the person in charge of her, even if he was trying to tell her how to do her job right now. Not because she never mixed business and pleasure, either, because sometimes she did, and liked it. Not even because he was one of the world’s wealthiest citizens, and she thought anyone with that kind of wealth had definitely crossed some moral lines she probably wouldn’t agree with.

Nina wasn’t going to let his pretty face and lean frame turn her head, because Donahue himself had already made it clear precisely what he thought about her. He’d given her the nominal courtesy of looking her dead in the eyes while he gripped her hand a few seconds too briefly to keep their greeting polite. Then he’d dropped that touch and rubbed his fingertips together like he was trying to wipe them clean. As though her skin had burned him.

Like there was something distasteful about touching her.

But how could she be surprised? The entire world knew how Donahue felt about the enhanced. He’d been interviewed about it hundreds of times. Made speeches in front of the World Congress about the horrors of what had been done to Nina and the other soldiers. He wasn’t the only person who’d ever reacted to her that way. Dealing with prejudice was part of this new life she’d been given, not condemned to. Still, his obvious disgust stung. Nina made the effort now to keep her hands from becoming fists, her tone neutral but firm. He didn’t have to like what she was telling him to do…but he would have to comply.

“I won’t agree.” His lips didn’t sneer, but his voice sure did.

“You were given all the specs and requirements before I arrived,” she told him patiently.

Her voice didn’t rise. She kept her expression bland and deliberately non-confrontational. Even if she were capable of full rage, she would have kept her temper in check. Donahue was a client, and clients, while not always right, were usually allowed to think they were.

Not this time, though. Not for this job, even if he hadn’t been so cold to her already. Her tone was chilly but polite, and she didn’t tack a “sir” onto the end of her sentence, although everyone else who spoke to him did. Nina had arrived at Woodhaven, Donahue’s vast and exceedingly private estate, twenty minutes ago. In that time, Donahue had interacted with exactly a dozen different staff members who’d practically groveled during the conversations with him. He’d barely seemed to notice the obsequiousness. Or the employees themselves, as a matter of fact, something Nina observed with no small measure of her own disdain. He might think she was subhuman because of the tech in her head, but his indifference to his staff made her think he was a rude piece of trash. Credits couldn’t buy class, she thought, watching him fume harder at her utter lack of reaction.

She’d arrived here directly from her last gig without even taking time to head home first, because Donahue had paid double the usual acquisition fees in order to get her there. She wasn’t tired—Nina no longer got tired, really, unless she’d been running on empty for days on end. She was, however, cranky.

“You hired me,” she continued, “for a purpose.”

“Exactly. I hired you.” He jabbed a finger in her direction.

“As I understand it, you did so because of a recent threat to your life that happened last night,” she said, gesturing at the faint scratches on Donahue’s left cheek. “Broken glass from the shattered restaurant window. You’re lucky. It doesn’t look like it’s going to scar.”

Donahue paused and put his hands on his hips. He wore only a pair of loose synthcotton trousers. Bare feet and chest. That head of thick dark hair was rumpled from what Nina assumed must have been a fairly sleepless night. For a man balking so fiercely at compromising his modesty, he sure didn’t seem to be worried about being almost naked in front of her.

“Lucky, too, that nobody else was hurt,” she added.

That seemed to rustle him. “Why do you think you’re here, now? To stop something like that from happening again.”

“I can’t stop anyone from attacking you, Mr. Donahue. I can only make sure that if or when that happens, you’ll be protected.”

In her two-year stint working with ProtectCorps, Nina Bronson had been in charge of more than a dozen senators, CEOs, philanthropic recluses, and once, an actual princess. The princess had been the easiest to deal with. She was used to being protected, while the men under Nina’s care had been accustomed to being obeyed. It made a big difference in how they reacted.

Nina had learned the ways of the wealthy and powerful early on in this gig—you let them do what they thought they wanted to do and guided them toward the safest way to do it. If that failed, you took a bullet for them if you had to. If you were too slow to get them out of the way first, that was. She’d never been too slow, not yet, but then she hadn’t ever taken on a man as bullheadedly stubborn as the one in front of her.

Donahue scowled. “Yeah, well, I’m a hundred percent certain that doesn’t mean you have to follow me into the toilet.”

Nina had been told once by an ex-lover that the specific smile she now gave Donahue could freeze a volcano. Connor had meant it as a compliment, probably because they’d never been more than casual bed partners. Now she warmed the grimace only slightly. “If you’re not going to let me do my job properly, then I’m going to have to subdue you.”

She could put him on his back in seconds, if she had to. Straddle him, maybe, her thighs hugging the jut of his hips as he struggled beneath her. The thought sent a shiver tickling up and down her spine, an unwelcome and unexpected frisson of tension. Her chin lifted as she studied him. She was on the job, not on the prowl, and this man was never, ever going to be an option.

The threat, and it was a threat, not a suggestion, finally got him to listen. Donahue did a double take. Dark arched eyebrows rose. “You’re kidding. Right?”

Nina’s smile did not change.

Donahue scowled. “Subdue me? What the fuck does that mean?”

“Do you really want to find out?”

He tried to stare her down, but she didn’t budge. When he tried to step around her, she stepped, too, so quickly it was as though he were the one getting in her path, not the other way around. He tried again in the opposite direction, but she was faster. She’d always be faster, Nina thought with a certain grim satisfaction but no joy.

Her lip curled a bit. “I thought you’d been briefed on how this works. You are not to go anywhere without me. Not to your office, not to the kitchen for a snack. Not to answer the door for pizza delivery—”

“Someone else answers the door,” Donahue said.

Of course they did.

She wanted to laugh, both at his disgruntled look and his sly retort. She might have thought it was his attempt at humor, if he hadn’t been so clearly angry. Nina remained calm. Unruffled. She hadn’t even been here for an hour, and he’d already obstructed every single one of her instructions.

“I am to be with you at all times,” Nina said. “I made that clear when I arrived. Nothing about that has changed. Nothing about that will change as long as I am employed as your protector. I signed a contract. You signed a contract. There really shouldn’t be anything to argue about.”

Donahue had balked at her moving a cot into his bedroom. She’d explained that her role as protector meant she needed to be there even when he slept, perhaps especially at night when he was likely to be more vulnerable to attacks. Yes, even in his own home where he had installed hundreds of thousands of credits’ worth of security systems, of which she was one of the most expensive…and deadly. He’d finally allowed the cot, begrudgingly, but now he was hollering about her following him into the bathroom.

Donahue spoke with his hands. Big hands. Strong. Expressive. The habit would’ve been charming on a man she wasn’t already inclined to dislike.

“This is ridiculous!” His hands painted the picture of his dismay in the air. When he turned to face her, he caught her staring at his fingers. He curled them into fists at his sides.

Tension sprouted between them that had nothing to do with his lean frame or that handsome face. His aggression was a trigger, putting her body and senses on alert. Ready to fight, defend. Protect. Of course, she was supposed to be protecting him, not fighting him. Fortunately for Ewan Donahue, Nina had not only learned to control her reactions, but there were some triggers she was simply incapable of responding to. He could try to push her into anger to get a rise out of her, if that was his thing, but it wasn’t going to work. She could be cranky, yes. Perhaps even irritated. But fury? Didn’t happen. Not anymore.

It hadn’t always been that way. In the first days of her recovery, she’d broken her knuckles throwing punches. Broken other people worse than that. If Donahue knew Nina’s full capacity for brutality, he might not be moving so menacingly close to her, she thought, her expression indifferently bland. Her body was ready but controlled. You never knew with men like him. He might get off on the idea of pushing her to the limit.

“I understand, Mr. Donahue. You want your privacy. You’re used to autonomy.”

And telling other people what to do, not being told yourself.

Nina continued, “What you need to understand is that you’ve had a total of fifty-seven confirmed, serious death threats made in the past three and a half weeks. Previously, you’ve had three actual attempts on your life. Two of your former bodyguards were killed protecting you—”

“Enough.” Donahue flinched, his cheeks flushing the faintest hint of red. A brush of heat came off him, subtle but definite. “Yes. I know. I feel like shit about it, thanks so much for reminding me I’m the reason two good men are dead.”

She bit her tongue for a moment before answering, more gently this time. Leona Smart, the owner of ProtectCorps and Nina’s direct supervisor, insisted all of her employees take courses in sensitivity training. Nina had never been very good at it, although she tried. “I understand how hard that must have been, Mr. Donahue. Believe me, I do.”

“How could you possibly?” He stalked from one end of the room to the other, pivoting on a bare heel to stare at her.

She’d read his files and knew he had no martial arts or military training or anything like that. Even so, the man moved like a predator, some kind of big cat, all sleek muscles and rolling gait. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see him snarl. Her heart tried to thump a little faster at the thought of what it would be like if he did, indeed, come at her physically. He couldn’t beat her, but he might be an interesting challenge.

“I was a soldier,” Nina replied simply. “I saw lots of good people die, and sometimes, it was my fault.”

Donahue went quiet at that. Contemplative. His lightweight pajama bottoms hung low on his hips, and his sculpted abs flexed when he paced. Donahue had the body of a man who spent a lot of time making sure he looked good. With a small, internal sneer, Nina imagined her own scars on flesh covering muscles, sinews, nerves, and bones she’d worked hard to make strong even before her enhancements. She didn’t have to be pretty. She had to be fierce.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, surprising her. “I know you were. And I respect the work you did—”

“Good. Many don’t.”

She’d been spit on more than a few times. Catcalled. The Second Cold War had been a lot hotter than the first one, and it had not seen a lot of civilian support. In school she’d learned about the Vietnam War, how the returning soldiers had been castigated and reviled. History did have its way of repeating.

She could not actually remember most of her time in the army, but she didn’t intend to point that out to him. Donahue was already a vocal and public opponent to the enhancement tech, but it had saved her life and made her the woman she was today. The same woman who could, and would, subdue him in order to save his stubborn, arrogant life a dozen times over, if she had to.

She folded her arms across her chest and widened her stance. If he tried to push past her again, she would not hesitate to put him down, panther muscles or not. At this point, putting Ewan Donahue in his place would be a pleasure that had nothing to do with how good he looked without his shirt.

He crossed his arms over his naked chest, drawing her attention to the bulging, shifting, and straining muscles of his pecs and biceps. Was he . . . flexing?

Nina was neither impressed nor intimidated by this show, although she had no trouble admiring it. “I thought you had to use the facilities.”

“Look,” he said, his tone conciliatory now. A negotiator. Lobbyist, convincer. “There’s such a thing as personal privacy.”

Nina wasn’t swayed. “I’m fully aware of that, and of course I’m entirely capable of selective sight, which allows me to pixelate whatever it is I’m not supposed see. It’s pretty convenient.”

“Oh. Right. Selective sight.” Donahue’s lip curled.

“And hearing,” she added with a small smile, even though watching his disgusted reaction stung her in a place she could never seem to shield, no matter how often she was wounded there. It should only matter that he believed she could do the job he’d hired her for, not whatever else he thought about her as a person, but that subtle, invasive sense that Donahue didn’t think of her as a full, real person dug deep.

“In case there’s stuff I’m not supposed to hear. I mean, it’s all recorded in case someone later needs to access it. But I won’t have access to it.” She added that last bit as a dig of her own, to remind him of not only who, exactly, she was, but also what. She wanted to rub it in his face. Her enhancements, what she could do in the pursuit of his safety. She wanted him to hear it and know and . . . well, to see it. To see her.

“Yeah, well, I’m not capable of either of those things,” Donahue said. “If you don’t leave my side even for a second, what about when you have to use the facilities?”

Her smile didn’t falter. “I’m sure you’ve read all the materials about the enhancement procedures, Mr. Donahue. So then you know that I’m also capable of maintaining amazing control of all my bodily functions.”

The man actually blushed this time. A rising flush crept up his chest and throat to tinge his cheeks, and she was able to register the slight rise in his body heat. It was surprising, that reaction, but it made him seem no less a predator than he’d appeared before. “I’m aware of the procedures and results, yeah.”

“Then you know I can hold it for a long time,” Nina said smoothly. “But seriously, I’m sure you’re about to burst. So if you’d rather continue to argue with me until you lose control . . .”

“I don’t,” Donahue snapped, “ever. Lose. Control.”

Another of her serene smiles pushed more crimson heat into his cheeks. Nina stepped aside from the bathroom door with a flourish and a small, deliberately obnoxious bow. “Good. Neither do I.”

𓆩♡𓆪

Chapter Two

He should fire her and demand his payment back—it had been an obscene number of credits, even for Ewan, who hadn’t bothered to ask the price of an item or service in at least a decade. The cost of keeping himself alive hadn’t mattered to him, but he hadn’t realized that hiring a protector would come along with such a load of bullshit.

Selective sight and hearing, she’d said, as though this was news to him. What Nina didn’t know was that Ewan had funded the research that allowed for those enhancements in the first place, along with most of the others she could brag about. More than funded; he’d invented and programmed the original tech and enhancement software that had transformed her from a normal, human woman into some kind of super soldier.

Not a cyborg, he reminded himself as he washed his hands after using the toilet. She wasn’t a robot, either. She hadn’t been fitted with metal limbs or artificial organs. A series of nanochips connected to her brain and nervous system, and the tech ran specialized software giving her greater than natural control over her bodily functions. Endurance, strength, focus. The tech had been meant to enhance, not hinder.

It had never been meant to fuck with erasing memories.

Yet with nothing more than a preprogrammed series of codes, anything top secret or confidential could be stripped right out of her mind. She’d be reset. She’d never even know what she was missing. It was inhumane and went against everything he’d intended when he’d first invented the tech.

He looked at her reflection in the mirror, but she was looking carefully uninterested, her gaze settled somewhere to his left. “I need to take a shower. Sure you don’t want to climb in there with me?”

She turned. Her pale amber eyes fringed with curling dark lashes sparkled with barely restrained humor that also quirked her lush, full mouth. She had no visible cosmetic tech, and her smooth bronze skin bore no traces of makeup. And her hair . . . universe help him, even pulled back into the tight, utilitarian braid at the base of her neck, it was thick and silky, as dark as his deepest fantasies.

Because that what she was, right? A fantasy, something he’d dreamed up a long time ago, when he’d believed the tech would make life better for those who were enhanced. Before he realized how messed up that was, playing at being the onegod in a world where religion had become regarded as no more real than fairy tales.

Nina Bronson was a fantasy, all right, but one Ewan could no longer allow himself to imagine.

He’d been aiming for sarcasm, but the second the words came out of his mouth, he realized they sounded less like a threat and more like a sexual come-on. The way her sleek black eyebrows rose made it obvious that she’d thought so, too, but scratchit, that was the last thing in the world he’d meant. Maybe not the last thing, he admitted as Nina gave him another of those frustratingly chilly smiles. At about five-four, she stood close to a foot shorter than him. Her body beneath the simple black uniform of leggings and a long-sleeved top was fit and firm and curvy in all the places a man needed a woman to curve. She studied him like she could ferret out every scrap of every secret he’d ever tried to keep.

“I could, but in the event of a rising threat”—her gaze dropped for the barest second to the front of his pajamas, he was sure of it, though it happened so fast he couldn’t have proven it— “I’ll need to be able to take care of it with my clothes on.”

“Don’t like to fight naked, huh?”

She smiled. “I like to do a lot of things naked, Mr. Donahue, but fighting isn’t one of them.”

He’s always been a sucker for a woman with a sense of humor and a sharp wit. This particular woman, though, represented everything he was working so hard against. He’d hired her for the job in spite of his personal beliefs, not to support them. And not for any other reasons, either, her ripe mouth and quick comebacks notwithstanding.

Besides, Ewan told himself with scorn, he preferred blondes.

He reached into the glass shower enclosure to start the water running. “How can I be sure you’re using that selective sight like you say you are?”

Her smile vanished immediately. Her back straightened, shoulders squared. Her voice, which previously had been slightly husky and tinged with amusement, went subzero.

“Because to ogle you inappropriately in the shower or in any other way would be a direct violation of my standards, both those set by the company I work for, and also my own personal set of morals and ethics. Because I do what I say I’m going to do, Mr. Donahue, and for you to assume or believe anything less is a direct affront on my character.”

Before he could say anything else, glass shattered. The bathroom window above the deep soaking tub burst inward. A long metal tube hurtled through the open space and hit the tile floor, bouncing hard enough to chip the porcelain before rolling to a stop near his feet. The slow hissing of gas came first, followed next by the eye-watering sting.

“Get in the shower!” Nina shoved him, hard, into the glass enclosure, and shut the door behind him. “Turn the water on high!”

Another metal tube hurtled through the window, but this one didn’t have time to hit the floor. She grabbed it in midair, crossing the distance between where she’d been and leaping into the standalone soaking tub in a mere two or three strides. She knocked over a display of decorative soaps and stupid seashells one of his exes had put there, but Nina didn’t pay a second’s attention to the crash. Nor to the glass still sticking out in shards in the window frame.

One, two, three, she kicked out the glass and leaned out the empty window space. She threw the metal tube outside. All of this happened so fast Ewan barely had time to register the scalding water on his bare chest. He stepped out of the spray with a hiss as Nina drew her stun weapon from the holster at her waist.

She aimed.

She fired.

From outside came a faint scream. A moment later, alarms began to bleat. Not the ones that announced a breach of the house itself; those should’ve gone off the second the window broke. Instead, the perimeter alarms went off. Whoever had managed to get past them the first time without setting them off wasn’t so lucky this time.

Steam had barely had time to fill the shower and spill over the top of the glass enclosure into the rest of the bathroom when Nina turned and stepped out of the bathtub. The tube on the ground was still hissing gas with an acrid stink. Inside the shower enclosure, the smog was dissipating enough to make him cough but not knock him down.

Grabbing up the tube, Nina took another of those amazing three-four step leaps and tossed that tube out the window as well. She snagged one of the tidily rolled towels from the basket between the tub and sink. Yanking open the shower enclosure, she stepped inside just enough to thrust the plush cloth beneath the water.

Then she threw it over his head and face.

The next thing Ewan knew, he was on the floor of his bedroom, sopping wet, with a puddle ruining his fourteen-hundred-credit rug. Nina lay on her back beside him, her eyes closed. Chest rising and falling rapidly. When he sat up, she turned her head to look at him.

The whites of her eyes had gone threaded with crimson, but she was grinning. “Well. How’s that for a good start?”

𓆩♡𓆪

Chapter Three

Donahue had ordered a special tech crew to come in and clean his bathroom of any residual gas as well as test to see what kind it had been, and he hadn’t resisted at all when Nina had given each of the crew members a complete pat down, one at a time, before she’d let any of them over the front door threshold. They’d done their job and been gone in an hour or so, promising results as soon as possible. Donahue had been very quiet for the rest of the morning, at least with her.

The medicinal gel on Nina’s eyes was gooey and disgusting, but it had thoroughly rinsed them free of whatever gas had been coming out of that tube. She’d be coughing a bit for the next few days as her lungs recovered, but she’d refused the inhaler Donahue’s personal doc had offered. Irritated lungs weren’t going to slow her down.

If anything, Nina was glad that the first attack had happened so fast and had been so easy to neutralize. She was no stranger to hand-to-hand combat or weaponry engagement. She could hold her own in both. But it had been so much more impressive of her to handle this situation the way she had.

She held back a small chuckle as she remembered the look on Donahue’s face when she’d pulled the towel off it, then forced herself to sober. The threat itself had obviously been meant only as a warning, but that didn’t mean she could take this any less seriously than if it had almost killed her client. After all, the fact that the intruder had been able to breach Donahue’s perimeter security in the first place was reason enough for her to be even more on guard.

Leona had told Nina this job was probably going to be an easy one, but it seemed like that was wrong. Donahue’s estate was supposed to be one of the best-protected in the world, yet someone had been able to get close enough to lob those tubes through the bathroom windows. Someone had been smart or lucky enough to get away before the rest of the security team could find out who’d done it. Most likely, the intruder had been assisted by someone on-site, and that was an entirely new can of worms, all of them wiggling free.

“Your eyes are looking better,” Donahue said. “Are you sure you don’t want the inhaler?”

She shook her head. “Nah. I’ll be fine. How are you feeling?”

“Excremental,” Donahue said flatly.

He’d showered in a guest bathroom and dressed in a suit. Solid navy fabric, tailored to fit his lean, muscular body. A paler blue shirt picked up the azure hints in those hazel eyes. What kind of bro wore a suit to hang around at home? The sort who worked hard to make himself look good, she reminded herself. A man concerned with appearances. Shallow and self-serving.

Nina herself had also showered quickly, right behind him, while he brushed his teeth and shaved, but she’d dressed in an outfit identical to the one she’d been wearing originally. Smooth black leggings tucked into serviceable boots and a matching, slim-fitting shirt with long sleeves. All her gear fit into a series of holsters on a harness she wore crisscrossed over her chest, back, and thighs. Come to think of it, she thought, it was her version of a business suit. Combat gear. What she wore when she was feeling vulnerable.

She thought she understood him a bit better all of a sudden.

“Can’t say I blame you. If you can’t feel safe in your own home, you can’t feel safe anywhere, I guess.” Nina watched his expression shift at her words, which had been honest but also meant to poke him a little. Draw him out. She needed to learn him, his reactions and emotions and responses, and not only from files or reports.

“Isn’t that what I’m paying you for? To feel safe? Yet the irony here is that hiring you probably opened me up to even more scrutiny and threats than if I’d gone with someone else. Smart offered me a different protector. You know that, right? I picked you because—”

“I’m the best,” Nina replied calmly.

Only fifteen NorthAm soldiers had been enhanced before the program had been shut down. All of them were forbidden by international treaties to serve their country in any of the armed forces, because it had been deemed their enhancements gave them an unfair advantage. Nobody had seemed to care about unfairness when she and her fellow soldiers had been suffering in the line of duty. Nobody cared that she’d faced death and come back from it ready and willing to go back to fighting for and protecting her country but instead had been relegated to private service.

Only three of the others, plus her, had ended up working for ProtectCorps. The rest had retired or gone into private hire. Donahue was one of only a few who could afford to pay for the level of protection Nina could provide. You’d think he’d have appreciated it more, if for no other reason than she was costing him a lot of credits.

“You’re controversial,” Donahue said. “One of Smart’s other protectors wouldn’t have been.”

Nina nodded. “True, but you’re paying ProtectCorps the beaucoup credits for the best, and discretion is part of that. You think that something got leaked about you hiring me?”

“It must have. I can name at least three groups right off the top of my head who’d want me dead just for letting you inside my home, much less using your services, and all of them are ones that have stood behind me in the past. Hiring you, best or not, was risky. I knew it when I did it,” Donahue added.

“Maybe you should associate yourself with a better class of people.” Nina shrugged.

Donahue frowned. “Chemical attacks like that usually have a DNA-like string of components that make it possible to identify where they were made. If you find out where it was manufactured, you can usually figure out who was behind it. I can already tell you who did it, though. The team can analyze it, but I already know.”

Nina had been spreading a slice of whole wheat toast with strawberry jam so decadently delicious it was almost depraved. The man lived like a king. Better than a king, as a matter of fact, since the only kings still on thrones all ruled countries that had fallen into poverty, and none of them could afford real strawberry jam. She bit into her toast and chewed slowly, savoring every bite.

“Same group that’s been behind the rest of the most recent threats, I’d bet,” she said.

“Yeah. The League of Humanity.”

“Sounds like something out of a comic viddy. Wow, this is so good. You sure you don’t want some?” She could go days without eating if she had to, suppressing her hunger and running on energy reserves. She didn’t have to now, and she intended to take every advantage of it.

“That’s . . .” Donahue paused, his gaze flicking to her mouth as his own lips thinned.

She took another swipe of sweetness off her lips, wondering if she had jam stuck in the corners of her mouth. Maybe he was stingy with his jam. She wouldn’t blame him. This stuff was worth more than gold right now. Literally. “Hmm?”

“Yeah. It does. The name, I mean. Sounds like something from an old superhero book.” Donahue shifted in his seat. With a shake of his head, he reached for the pot of jam. Nina pushed the special spoon across the table to him.

“Here’s your fancy jam spoon,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to forget that.”

“What, you think a guy like me uses some plain old regular spoon?” Donahue’s voice had dipped a little lower than usual, something her enhancements allowed her to notice more than someone else might’ve.

Donahue wasn’t smiling, but still, the corners of his eyes creased to show that he did, at least, occasionally allow himself a grin or two. Those creases and crinkles were less a sign of age and more like proof the man sitting across from her might actually get his laugh on once in a while. She might no longer be capable, herself, of the same raucous laughter and giddy joy she sometimes flashed back to remembering, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate someone else’s good humor. Maybe there was hope that this assignment wasn’t going to be one long and consistent pain in the ass.

She sat back in her chair to eye him up and down. “Heavens, no. A guy like you was probably born with one of those in his mouth. Made of silver, of course.”

“Of course.” Donahue’s self-mocking tone softened as he spread a piece of bread with the jam and took a bite. He studied her. “You don’t know much about me, do you?”

Mindful of how he kept eyeing her lips, Nina wiped the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin. It was hard enough to get him to take her seriously; she didn’t need to make a mess of her face, too. “I know what I need to know.”

“Sure. You know my height, weight, my eating and sleeping habits. You probably know the depth of my bank account, or at least some idea about it. You know the groups that have declared they’re out to get me. What else did you have to study up on before taking this assignment?”

“That’s about it. Nothing much else was important. I don’t need to know your personal history in order to protect you.” The truth was, she knew a little more about him than she was letting on. You couldn’t get past a gossip site on the net without spotting a picture of Ewan Donahue with a blonde on his arm. Nina didn’t spend much time on sites like that, and even so, she could recall half a dozen different stories about his social life. She poured them both coffee from the self-heating pot on the table. Donahue had the best of everything. Appliances. Technology. Women. She glanced at him. “Cream?”

“Black. I guess how I take my coffee wasn’t one of the things.” He took the mug she pushed toward him.

Sipping, Nina sat back in her chair again. She might look relaxed, but even with the mug in her hands she was alert to everything in their surroundings. Besides, a mug of scalding coffee could become a weapon in so many useful ways.

“Nope,” she said. “Preparing your coffee isn’t part of my job description. I’m your protector, not your future ex–Mrs. Donahue.”

“There’s never been a Mrs.”

She smiled a little. “Yeah. I did know that. An ex-wife, kids, that sort of thing would be a vulnerability.”

“And you would need to know about that,” Donahue said.

“Yes. It’s useful.”

His eyes narrowed. “But I don’t have any.”

“No exes of significance,” Nina said. “Not no vulnerabilities.”

Donahue didn’t seem to like that at all. Nina couldn’t blame him. She didn’t much like having any, herself.

“I’ve done everything I can not to be vulnerable,” Donahue said.

“The highest security. The best tech. Sure. But . . .” Nina paused, looking him over.

“But what?” Donahue demanded, his frown deepening. “If there’s something I need to be doing to better protect myself, I need to know it.”

Nina shrugged, uncertain how to put it into words. “Cameras and fences, even an enhanced protector, well . . . all that stuff can keep you safe, but it won’t ever keep you from really being vulnerable. Nothing can totally protect you from that, because everyone has something that someone else can use to get to them with.”

“Not me.”

She laughed at that, low and under her breath, and shook her head. “Right.”

“You’re talking about personal things. Ways someone could get to me. Personal vulnerability. Emotional.”

“And you don’t have any?” She scoffed. “Everyone has something they—”

She broke off, her own declaration a lie for herself.

“Something what?” Donahue challenged in a low voice, his gaze intense. “What? Love? You want to know what I love?”

𓆩♡𓆪

Dangerous Promise (Book 1 in The Protector Series)