Mine Until Morning Page 2

  He was so distracted that he hadn’t noticed someone watching them from a dark corner of the lot.

  The guy had approached from behind while he had her in his arms. A hard slam to the head had knocked him out. Tessa had fought back and, admirably, had taken out the intruder with a bat she kept in the back seat of her car.

  Jonas had awakened at the hospital later, completely blind.

  The senator’s aide, Howie, was the first voice he heard after the doctors told him about his condition; apparently Rose wasn’t available.

  From what Howie said, it was clear Tessa had told them that Jonas had screwed up big time. He was off the job. Worse, she’d made it sound as if he had been pursuing her, and that he had seduced her that evening, instead of keeping his eye on the target.

  She’d clearly used him to piss her father off for sending a bodyguard in the first place. He’d known she wasn’t happy about the idea—the senator had warned him—and she hung him out to dry. He should have seen it coming. That he’d fallen for her added insult to injury.

  Jonas had never liked Howie Stanton, but Howie was a Washington insider and had been with the senator for years. Jonas had noticed on more than one occasion when the senator had come to Tessa’s shop how Howie’s eyes followed Tessa. His expensive suit and high-profile position didn’t make him any less of a lowlife.

  But Howie had made the senator’s wishes clear to Jonas: stay away from Tessa, or there would be consequences. Jonas could hear in his tone that the aide relished delivering the news.

  Jonas did as the senator requested.

  He hadn’t seen or talked to Tessa for a month since the attack, and he didn’t plan to. He’d played the fool once, and it wasn’t worth the risk to Berringer Security’s reputation. The senator could do them a lot of damage if he wanted to.

  Feeling for the edge of his bed stand, from which he knew it was about seven steps to the window, Jonas found the AC unit. After a brief struggle with the curtain and the controls, he managed to turn it down to low.

  After getting a cup of cold water from the kitchen, he found his way back to the bed. Traffic was busy down on the street, people going about their normal lives. The apartments on his floor were quiet, everyone gone to work.

  He picked up the basic clock that one of his brothers had bought him and removed the glass cover so that he could feel the hand positions.

  One o’clock in the afternoon. He’d always been an early riser, but now he slept whenever he could and woke at odd hours.

  His brothers, Garrett, Ely and Chance, were running the business without him until his sight came back. Doctors said his sight would return, but it hadn’t.

  What if it didn’t? What if they were wrong? The chill that ran over him had nothing to do with the AC.

  The hard hit to the back of his head had left him with a concussion and severe bruising to his optic nerve, causing temporary but complete blindness. The duration of “temporary” was unknown. Doctors had no idea when his vision would return. He’d seen four specialists, all offering the same fuzzy explanations of the mysteries of the brain.

  Be patient, they’d said.

  He shook his head, running a hand through hair that he’d let grow too long. It bugged him, especially in the heat, but he didn’t feel like hearing the questions and sympathetic comments from his barber or anyone else. So he’d holed up here, mostly, waiting for life to return to normal.

  Jonas reached to the left, groping to find his cell phone, and he held it in his hand. Thankfully, his was an older model with a hard keyboard that he could still use, though he sometimes hit the wrong button.

  He still had the number for Tessa’s shop on speed dial, number two, second only to the office, and he ran his thumb over the button, as if tempting himself. He should erase it, but couldn’t quite do it.

  Cursing, he put the phone down and found his way to the shower. As much as he wanted Tessa, he’d get over it eventually. His blindness made things worse, blowing his attraction to her all out of proportion. He was frustrated and bored. When he had his sight back, he’d be able to move on, get his own life back.

  Maybe the hit on the head had kept him from making an even bigger mistake. At least the attack had happened before they were both naked, out in the open for anyone to see.

  No sooner had he turned on the water when he heard a knock on the front door—soft, but he could still hear it. He’d always had sharp senses, even before he was blind. You didn’t survive in his line of work without them.

  Still, there was a noticeable uptick in his perception that would have been kind of cool if it weren’t at the expense of his vision.

  “Keep your pants on, I’m getting there,” he said as the knock sounded again, harder this time. He wrapped a towel around his waist and shut the water off. It had to be one of his brothers, come by to pull him out of bed, no doubt. He had another doctor’s appointment that afternoon. It galled him not being able to go anywhere on his own and that he required help for everything.

  It had to be Garrett, who had been fussing around him like a mother hen since the attack. Jonas made his way to the door, opening it and turning to walk back into the room.

  “I know, I slept late, but the appointment isn’t for another hour. Give me a chance to clean up, then we can go,” he said.

  “Jonas?”

  He stopped in his tracks, frozen. He wasn’t dreaming now. He didn’t think so, at least.

  “Tessa?” he said, his voice choked and not sounding like his at all. He turned toward her voice, knowing this was real as the familiar scents of honey and almond filled the room. His heart slammed in his chest.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “WELL, THAT KIND OF greeting sure makes a girl feel welcome,” Tessa Rose countered with no small bit of sarcasm, hoping to cover her nerves.

  She took a deep breath, in part for courage, and in part because seeing Jonas for the first time since the night of the attack had knocked the breath right out of her.

  He’d lost some weight, his dark hair grown out from military short to longish, brushing the tops of his shoulders. He was clad only in a very small white towel, slung low on his hips and slipping lower. She found herself licking her lips, and tried to push back the lust that always erupted when she looked into those dark eyes.

  Something was off, though.

  He’d looked right at her when he’d opened the door and then turned away, talking to her as if he had expected someone else. That told her the worst of it.

  “You’re blind,” she whispered, her voice stolen by her surprise.

  “Yeah.”

  She saw the change in his body language, the way he tensed as he turned his face away from her, his jaw tight. He was wounded and embarrassed about it. Ashamed to be caught this way, exposed and vulnerable.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Your dad didn’t tell you? Oh, right, I guess you pissed him off royally, so he’s probably not confiding in you these days.”

  She drew back at the bitterness in his tone.

  Tessa had resisted the notion of having a bodyguard at first. It was reflex for her to resist her father. He was a great politician, she knew, but a total control freak, and he liked to control her life more than he should. It was an understatement to say they hadn’t gotten along, and they still had their problems, though things had changed a bit since her mother had passed away two years before.

  The senator manipulated everything to the benefit of his image, a necessity of his political career, he always claimed. Tessa had grown up resisting his control, and she’d be the first to admit that she hadn’t always done that in positive or productive ways. But then again, her father hadn’t always played fair, either.

  As she got older, they had hammered out a truce of sorts, but mostly because she lived in Philadelphia where she ran her business—and her life—the way she wanted to, and he stayed in D.C. They got together on holidays, and it was enough.

  When he sa
id he was sending a bodyguard to her shop, they’d argued, but she’d relented when she sensed he was really concerned. He seemed to think this particular threat was very serious—and it had ended up that way.

  She’d expected some stiff in a suit, but then Jonas had walked in the store, over six feet of muscle, brooding eyes and sensuality all wrapped in well-worn jeans and a bomber jacket.

  Every bad-girl instinct she had surged to the fore.

  The feeling she had when she was with him was like that zing of perfect chemistry that she always experienced when she made a new scent.

  Scent was the most primal of the senses. Complementary scents attracted or enhanced a relationship, and the wrong scent repelled. It was the most basic principle of natural chemistry, the basis of most elements of survival. She and Jonas were a perfect combination, she could tell from the moment they locked eyes on each other.

  Jonas obviously hadn’t agreed. He kept his distance, his treatment of her businesslike to the nth degree, but she saw the desire in his eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  That only upped the challenge. Tessa didn’t give up when she saw something she wanted. To that extent, she was very much like the senator. She wanted to make her bodyguard lose that rigid control. It proved to be more of a challenge than she thought, until that night in the parking lot.

  She’d met her friends for a birthday celebration—not hers—and she’d worn the sexiest dress she owned. Jonas didn’t think she should go, but she told him that she was going, and if he wanted, he could tag along. In truth, she’d dressed for him. Danced for him. Tempted him in every way she knew how. And she’d almost given up—the man seemed to be oblivious—until they arrived home. He didn’t say a word the entire drive back, but then hauled her against him as she’d stepped out of the car and kissed her until she couldn’t breathe.

  When she’d felt the hardness of his chest pressed against hers, she didn’t back away. He didn’t, either.

  His wonderful hands had been sliding up underneath the sheer fabric of her gown, holding her backside against his hardness, his masculine scent surrounding and seducing her like a drug, when it had all gone wrong.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he’d whispered against her neck as she’d let her hands explore him the way she’d been dying to for weeks. He was a big man, in more ways than one, and her body craved him.

  “Maybe that’s why it feels so good,” she’d replied, and she would remember the lust that had burned in his eyes until her dying day.

  They were completely wrapped up in each other when the attacker hit Jonas from behind. He’d dropped from her arms to the pavement, leaving her to face her attacker, a political extremist who clearly was willing to cross the line to protest her father’s work. Tessa still could feel the icy fear of that moment, thinking Jonas had been killed and that she was next.

  She’d gotten very, very lucky, remembering the bat she had in the back of her car from summer softball games with her friends. Adrenaline served her well in fighting the man off.

  She figured at first, when there was no word from or about Jonas, that he was just laying low. Staying out of the limelight, since the story had been all over the news, at least insofar as her and her father were mentioned. The Berringers might not have existed, which is what she supposed made them effective.

  From her experience, some protective details, she knew, were all about the flash. They wore Armani and soaked up the media attention that guarding famous or powerful people granted them.

  Berringer wasn’t like that. They were serious security who put the client first. When she tried to find out about Jonas on the web, she’d found next to nothing; there were a few news articles from when he was on the police force, and the agency web page, which offered a minimum of information.

  The Berringer brothers in the background, keeping their clients quietly safe.

  It soon became clear that Jonas wasn’t just laying low. He didn’t want anything to do with her.

  Her father was caught up in business on the Hill when the attack happened, and Tessa kept her distance from Howie, who was holding court in her father’s absence. Tessa didn’t ask Howie anything about Jonas, since she didn’t want to encourage her father’s aide. Howie had come on to her a few times, and she’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested, but the guy didn’t seem to understand the word no.

  Jonas’s brothers wouldn’t tell her anything, either. She assumed that they all blamed her for distracting him and almost getting him killed. Rightfully so. She’d tracked him down now, intent on apologizing, but she hadn’t expected this.

  “I’m so sorry, Jonas,” she said on a raw whisper as she dragged her attention back to the present.

  He looked fierce as he closed the space between them. He might be blind, but Jonas honed in on her with no hesitation, his hands clamping hard over her shoulders.

  “Stop it, Tessa. Sympathy is the last thing I want from you, or anyone.”

  “What do you want, then?” she asked, her mind trying to grasp the new discovery.

  “What I’d really like is for you to go, and don’t come back,” he said harshly.

  She lifted hands to frame his face, and he flinched, but she didn’t draw back. No way was she leaving.

  “What happened between us that night, Jonas, it—”

  “Meant nothing,” he interrupted. “Why are you here? Haven’t you done enough?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, shocked by his tone. “I came here to apologize—”

  “Come on, Tessa. Your father made it clear that you didn’t want a bodyguard in the first place. He said you could be…difficult. So, what? Was getting me into bed the easiest way to piss the senator off and get me pulled off the job? Or was it just for fun? Were you bored?”

  “None of that is true,” she said, appalled.

  “What happened that night shouldn’t have. I take full responsibility for that, but I won’t make the same mistake twice. You should go.”

  His obviously low opinion of her hurt more than she imagined it would have. Did he hate himself that much for giving in to her? For wanting her?

  “The way I remember it, you wanted me as much as I did you, Jonas.”

  He paused a second too long before nodding shortly. “It was a momentary lapse. It happens sometimes when mostly naked women throw themselves at you,” he said unkindly.

  “I see,” she said, stepping in and tracing her finger down his chest, feeling his heart slam under the hard wall of muscle, and her own heart thudding even harder. She was angry, hurt and intent on not being so easily dismissed.

  He was perfect. His skin was deep brown from the summer sun, taut and warm with a sprinkling of dark hair that provided softness over the hard cords of muscle that flexed under her touch. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. Her fingers played over the sculpted muscles she had only fantasized about.

  His hands grabbed at the air, seeking and then finding her wrists, holding her away. A pulse throbbed in the base of his throat. He wasn’t unaffected by her at all.

  “Stop, Tessa. No more games.”

  “No, Jonas,” she said softly, not fighting his hold, but leaning in as she lifted her mouth to take his unsuspecting lips in a warm kiss. “No more games.”

  He resisted, standing rigid, his mouth firm and unmoving, until she sighed against him and licked at his lower lip. She inhaled deeply, loving the manly scent of sandalwood, soap and sweat. “You make me crazy. You know it’s true.”

  He cursed against her lips. His hands tightened on her wrists, but then let go and his arms banded around her and pulled her in, his mouth opening to hers, taking control, plundering and ravishing her in a hard, punishing kiss.

  Tessa gave herself up to him, let him take his fill as she took hers. They parted a few moments later, both breathless.

  “Is this what you want, Tessa?” he asked when he pulled back, and she paused before responding.

  He was hard, his arousal clear u
nder the towel he wore. Not immune to her, not completely.

  Or was it how he said, that any man would respond this way?

  “Not like this,” she said, seeing none of the warmth or desire in his face that had been there before.

  He shook his head in disgust. “You know the thing that really ticks me off? That you would come here, intent on getting whatever it is you want, with no regard for the consequences to others. You don’t care who gets hurt, do you, as long as you can stick it to your old man.”

  “I never did that. My father respects you, or he wouldn’t have sent you to guard me. And he and I don’t have that kind of relationship anymore.”

  “Right. As if you couldn’t wait to rub what happened that night in his face. I’m the hired muscle, after all, not the guy he’d want you to end up with. That he sent me must have been icing on the cake.”

  “He has no say in the matter, but I didn’t—”

  “If you came here for more, forget it. I’d rather you don’t use me as a way to make that point to him.”

  “What’s between us has nothing to do with my father,” she said, frustrated.

  “There is no us.”

  “There could be.”

  “Not gonna happen,” he insisted stubbornly.

  Tessa stepped back, stinging at his rejection, but refusing to accept that there wasn’t anything between them.

  “Well, in case you decide to change your mind, you know where I am. But I wouldn’t wait forever, Jonas.”

  She walked out, and he didn’t say another word.

  2

  3:00 p.m.

  THE NURSE IN his ophthalmologist’s office had bumped against Jonas four times while showing him down the hall to the office, and then again in the office itself. She sounded cute and smelled nice, like jasmine and vanilla. She was also stacked, from what he could tell when she leaned past him as she’d opened the door.

  As the door opened and the doctor came in, she leaned close and pushed a piece of paper into his hand, whispering, “Call me. Let’s have a drink sometime. I can show you some tips for getting around without your sight.”