Page 7 of Too Guarded to Love (Project VIPER #3)

Why? So she could examine him like a specimen in a lab?

Drive him to madness? He bit his lip and allowed himself to embrace the wild situation as she traced the second spot on his body where man seamlessly melded into machine.

The same tattoo that camouflaged the scarring on his arm flowed underneath his boxers and ended inches from his stiff, eager cock.

“Olivia. Get up.”

She ignored his order and yanked his pants down farther. The urgency fueling her blatant insubordination nearly brought him to his knees.

With quick strokes, as if she didn’t have time to take in the entirety of the medical marvel at her mercy but didn’t want to miss a thing, she glided her fingers downward. He involuntarily flexed his knee. She let out a satisfied mewl, as if she’d pressed a button and brought a machine to life.

And she had.

After a week of feeling nothing but sorrow and anger, she’d awakened the potent, hot-blooded desire that made him one-hundred-percent male.

“Permission to speak .” He couldn’t wait another second to ask what part of him excited her the most.

She dragged her hand—and her attention—up his leg. A smile as sinful as his thoughts quirked her lips as her gaze landed on his erection.

Sweat and anticipation slid down his neck. He shifted away from the fire. The movement sprang the tip of his cock from his boxers. The liberation shook him harder than the blast that had taken his arm and leg.

She licked her lips. “Permission to speak denied if you’re going to tell me to stop.”

He should tell her to stop. Better yet, he should get the hell out and run until the adrenaline she’d aroused dispersed into the salt air. If she wanted company while she waited for the tow truck, she could sit with Mrs. Alvarez. She had a spare rocker.

He didn’t have a spare anything. The universe granting him another chance at a career, at a family, at being alive was about as likely as Olivia being a mermaid.

He should walk away and let the tow truck deliver her to whatever problems awaited her at home.

He wouldn’t let a woman with trouble on her tail bring it to a head at his expense.

Instead of listening to logic, he tilted his hips toward her mouth. The tip of his cock nudged her lips. She darted out her tongue and licked. Fire shot through his body as she tasted him like an ice cream cone from the boardwalk.

“ Dios mio .” He repeated his plea to God as he gripped her wet hair with his steel and nudged her closer.

The screen door rattled in the wind. She didn’t flinch at the sound as she opened her pretty lips and stared up at him as if waiting for permission to proceed.

“I was right. You are a sirena. ”

Of the most alluring kind.

And the safest because in a short while, she’d be a memory, and he wouldn’t be responsible for her safety.

He fisted his cock. She might be safe, but her sudden subservience made the alpha side he tried to control around women roar louder than tectonic plates crashing under the ocean. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

The cold, cruel sea raged beyond the windows flanking the screen door in a vast void.

Her smile promised heat and pleasure and a connection he didn’t want to crave.

As she gripped him harder and drew him to her mouth, he threw his head back and closed his eyes.

Sparks burst behind his lids as her warm breath coasted over the crown of his cock.

He yanked his gaze down, desperate to feel her lips…

A steady red dot that had nothing to do with the fireworks in his vision materialized on the screen door. He blinked. The tiny circle he’d been trained to recognize as an imminent threat didn’t disappear.

“Sniper. Duck.” The command ripped from his throat as he dropped to his knees and tackled Olivia.

A gunshot rang from the beach. Her scream reverberated through his body as he twisted them to the ground.

Pain seared the seam of his shoulder where flesh met steel as he cradled her head in his hand and rolled her underneath him.

Ignoring the burn, he activated his mind comms.

Ryan Bradley, VIPER’s chief information security officer, barked, “Status?”

“Gunshot. Sniper from the east.” Nic stayed low as he crouched in front of Olivia, too shocked to keep the conversation in his mind like he would have in the field. “Activate me.”

“Bypassing pre-activation and bringing you fully online .”

“Roger that.” He spotted a dark figure on the sidewalk across the street, scurrying to take cover behind Olivia’s car. The sting of activation zipped down his spine as he raised his arm and zeroed in on his target.

“Fire .”

The invisible laser streamed from his middle knuckle. The sniper dropped his rifle and clasped his upper arm. “Direct hit.”

“ We’ve got eyes on him. He’s retreating. No other threats detected. We’ll alert local authorities to pick him up.”

Nic fought the urge to run after the fucker. The intensity of the V-Strike had been intended to incapacitate, not kill. Nic could catch the stunned sniper before he made it to the next block, but Olivia was top priority.

He pressed his steel over the hand she clasped to her shoulder. Blood seeped through her fingers. Fuck, he’d been right earlier. There had been trouble brewing.

“ Your biofeedback is showing elevated pulse and heart rate levels. Are you hit?”

Of course, headquarters detected a spike in his vitals. He’d been about to get a blow job. “ Affirmative. I’m with a woman. Bullet went through her shoulder and hit my steel. Nicked my skin, but I’m fine.”

With one eye on the door to the beach beyond where the sniper—a fucking sniper—had disappeared, he tapped Olivia’s cheek. “Can you hear me?” He barely heard her ragged whimper over the blood rushing between his ears. “I’ve got you.”

“We’ve dispatched an ambulance.” Ryan shouted another order to one of his analysts to make it quick. “Are you secure?”

“Yes.” For now.

“Help is five minutes out.”

“Roger that.” He turned Olivia onto her side, his hand still firmly pressed into her shoulder. Grabbing the sweatshirt on the back of the chair, he packed it against the exit wound on her back.

Soft moans and warm breaths tickled his neck.

Blood from his shoulder dripped onto his steel hand, between his fingers, and into her wound.

Christ, he hadn’t known her an hour and they were already mixing blood.

If they were vampires, they’d be mated or something.

But then again, she’d been about to give him a blow job.

That had to count for some sort of bond in some world.

God, he had to stop reading those romantasy books Valentina had introduced him to.

The Mexican drug cartel princess who’d surrendered herself and secrets to VIPER in exchange for immunity might look like an exotic pixie, but her mind was dirtier than her fighting.

He wouldn’t want to be the hero who tried to tame her.

He didn’t want to be any woman’s anything beyond a good time. Somehow he’d let Olivia lead him into a sex scene that ended with a bullet. Had the shot been meant for her? No, he had to have been the target. There was no other explanation.

Unless…

Memories of another bleeding woman ripped through his psyche.

His steel arm and leg erupted in agony as if they were the flesh-and-blood ones that had been crushed in the Middle East. Cringing, he held Olivia closer to his sweaty body like she could shield him from the phantom pain and flying sand the impending flashback conjured.

He breathed in for three counts.

Held it.

Exhaled for five.

Did it again.

Nightmares were one fucking thing, but battling flashbacks during a crisis were unacceptable.

Focus.

He scooted his fingers to Olivia’s neck and checked her pulse. It raced under his steel fingertips as she murmured something he couldn’t understand.

“Help is two minutes out,” Ryan said. “Who are you with?”

“Olivia. Her rental got a flat. I got her out of the rain. Clothes came off. Things started. Bullet ended it.” And now she was bleeding out on the floor, and he might damn well be the reason why.

“What was the rental’s plate number?”

Nic rattled it off. The tow truck that should be taking Olivia out of his life, and out of his realm of responsibility, pulled to the curb. Yet, the protective beast inside him raced at the thought of interrogating the monster who shot her.

It also scared the shit out of him.

Ryan whistled. “Oh damn. A bullet wound is the least of your problems.”