number? “Oh, my God, I can’t remember his number! My brain is broken!”
“Or, like most humans, you’ve become overly dependent on your contacts list,” he said dryly, coming around so that he was behind her. He reached out and cupped her flailing hands and fingers in his, holding them firmly for an instant, willing her to calm down. It worked for some reason, the strength and warmth of him surrounding her like the powerful heat of a fire that fought back a freezing chill. And just like that, the contrast in temperatures, the clash in counterproductive forces, caused a deep-rooted shiver to rattle through her, and goose bumps rippled up her arms and across her breasts.
God, he is so freaking warm!
It was like lying out in the sun as a child without a stitch of shade around … and not a single instant of worry in your mind about the harm it could be causing you. An abandoned and beautiful warmth, one that made prickles dance on yourskin if, say, a stray hair was lying the wrong way or a dust mote skipped over it. Only then, in the quiet of that baking warmth, were you still enough to notice those things.
He also smelled incredibly … well, the only word she could think of right then was
yummy
. It wasn’t some gagging, cloying cologne manufactured by man in an attempt to lure a woman with falseness and trickery … a trickery that often failed because the man himself failed to consider the whole “less is more” approach to these things. It was clean, pure … with a dusting of something … not smoky, but …
crap,
she couldn’t figure it out. And somewhere along the line she had turned her head so her nose was almost touching the long, strong column of his throat. It was also intriguing to see he had a hard, strong pulse dancing through his carotid artery. Of course, they
all
had pulses in their carotid arteries, but …
anyway,
despite all this weird possession mumbo jumbo she was being subjected to, it was nice to know they weren’t the walking dead or anything.
She snapped her attention back to the phone.
Phone.
Brother. Jackson. Must call Jackson.
Wait a minute …
“Just like that?” she asked as her already overloaded mind jumped focus once again. “You’re just going to let me call my police officer brother?”
“Are you trying to talk me out of it?” he asked, sounding amused as he dialed Jackson’s cellphone number.
Okay, well, should this worry me?
she wondered. How the hell did he know her brother’s cellphone number better than she did? “Just tell him you are safe with friends, not to worry about you, only that you needed a change of pace.”
“Lie to him,” she said with a frown. “Okay, I don’t think you understand the whole dynamic between me and Jackson. First off, I suck at lying. I mean supersuckat it. And second, Jackson knows who all my friends are and he’s going to have already tried to call all of them, I’m sure.”
“So, you
are
trying to talk me out of it?”
“No. I just—”
“Listen. I want you to try something. Just … be still a moment. Try going quiet in your head … as if you were trying to go to sleep.”
“Right now? Like this
?” With big, hunkalicious male arms around me?
Yeah. Not so much conducive to calm, if her jittery heart were anything to go by.
“Try it. Do that for sixty seconds and then hit send. What’s the worst that can happen? He realizes you’ve been kidnapped and he tries to hunt you down. Which is exactly what he’s doing right now, I assure you. Either way, he’ll hear your voice, know you’re still alive, and find a small piece of comfort in the knowledge.”
Docia looked at him curiously. There was such a strange thread of thoughtfulness in his dissection of the situation. She had been picking up on that repeatedly since they’d come into contact. She looked back at the phone, at his hands surrounding hers, and invariably at the wicked red line down the back of his hand that indicated where, less than a couple
“Or, like most humans, you’ve become overly dependent on your contacts list,” he said dryly, coming around so that he was behind her. He reached out and cupped her flailing hands and fingers in his, holding them firmly for an instant, willing her to calm down. It worked for some reason, the strength and warmth of him surrounding her like the powerful heat of a fire that fought back a freezing chill. And just like that, the contrast in temperatures, the clash in counterproductive forces, caused a deep-rooted shiver to rattle through her, and goose bumps rippled up her arms and across her breasts.
God, he is so freaking warm!
It was like lying out in the sun as a child without a stitch of shade around … and not a single instant of worry in your mind about the harm it could be causing you. An abandoned and beautiful warmth, one that made prickles dance on yourskin if, say, a stray hair was lying the wrong way or a dust mote skipped over it. Only then, in the quiet of that baking warmth, were you still enough to notice those things.
He also smelled incredibly … well, the only word she could think of right then was
yummy
. It wasn’t some gagging, cloying cologne manufactured by man in an attempt to lure a woman with falseness and trickery … a trickery that often failed because the man himself failed to consider the whole “less is more” approach to these things. It was clean, pure … with a dusting of something … not smoky, but …
crap,
she couldn’t figure it out. And somewhere along the line she had turned her head so her nose was almost touching the long, strong column of his throat. It was also intriguing to see he had a hard, strong pulse dancing through his carotid artery. Of course, they
all
had pulses in their carotid arteries, but …
anyway,
despite all this weird possession mumbo jumbo she was being subjected to, it was nice to know they weren’t the walking dead or anything.
She snapped her attention back to the phone.
Phone.
Brother. Jackson. Must call Jackson.
Wait a minute …
“Just like that?” she asked as her already overloaded mind jumped focus once again. “You’re just going to let me call my police officer brother?”
“Are you trying to talk me out of it?” he asked, sounding amused as he dialed Jackson’s cellphone number.
Okay, well, should this worry me?
she wondered. How the hell did he know her brother’s cellphone number better than she did? “Just tell him you are safe with friends, not to worry about you, only that you needed a change of pace.”
“Lie to him,” she said with a frown. “Okay, I don’t think you understand the whole dynamic between me and Jackson. First off, I suck at lying. I mean supersuckat it. And second, Jackson knows who all my friends are and he’s going to have already tried to call all of them, I’m sure.”
“So, you
are
trying to talk me out of it?”
“No. I just—”
“Listen. I want you to try something. Just … be still a moment. Try going quiet in your head … as if you were trying to go to sleep.”
“Right now? Like this
?” With big, hunkalicious male arms around me?
Yeah. Not so much conducive to calm, if her jittery heart were anything to go by.
“Try it. Do that for sixty seconds and then hit send. What’s the worst that can happen? He realizes you’ve been kidnapped and he tries to hunt you down. Which is exactly what he’s doing right now, I assure you. Either way, he’ll hear your voice, know you’re still alive, and find a small piece of comfort in the knowledge.”
Docia looked at him curiously. There was such a strange thread of thoughtfulness in his dissection of the situation. She had been picking up on that repeatedly since they’d come into contact. She looked back at the phone, at his hands surrounding hers, and invariably at the wicked red line down the back of his hand that indicated where, less than a couple
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