Suspicious Activities by Tyler Anne Snell

rough and gentle and strong all at the same time. A maddening combination that had both frozen Nikki in place and set her body ablaze. The heat was fast and nearly all-consuming. It thawed her lips but seconds too late to reciprocate.
    Jackson pulled away, lips red and eyes hooded.
    “Sorry,” he breathed, voice husky. His hands dropped to her sides, his body still close enough for her to feel her own heat bouncing off. “No one’s ever defended me before.”
    It was such a simple, innocent statement that Nikki felt her heart squeeze. Her lips pulled up to one side.
    “I guess I should punch cops more often,” she joked, breath also coming out lower than normal. The heat that had shot through her body found its way to her cheeks. Still, she didn’t look away. In fact, she stood right where she was as Jackson angled his head down again. One of his hands dropped to her hip. The other pushed back into her hair.
    Nikki closed her eyes, ready this time for the bodyguard, when the other bodyguards of her life interrupted. Her phone blared to life. The moment between her and the man with a storm raging in his eyes dissolved. Jackson smiled, almost apologetic, and broke contact with her. He bent to grab the bag he’d put on the table and walked ahead into the living room.
    Nikki looked at the caller ID and sighed. It was Mark. She knew it was only a matter of seconds before Jonathan’s and Oliver’s calls would come in.
    She watched Jackson’s retreating form with such a strong flood of disappointment that it surprised her. There had never really been room in her life for anything other than Orion and work. She hadn’t minded at first. Finding a way to deal with Morgan’s death and her hand in it had taken up what she thought was already-owed time. Then Oliver’s, Mark’s and Jonathan’s respective happiness had made her rethink the idea that she had to be alone. So she’d started to try. Friends set her up and she’d gone to karaoke and even the disastrous speed-dating event with Andrew Miller’s surprise appearance.
    Yet...
    It wasn’t until she watched Jackson walk away, her lips still warm, that she felt the full force of her loneliness.
    Clearing her throat, she answered the phone.
    * * *
    J ACKSON EXCUSED HIMSELF to the shower while Nikki answered several incoming calls. Partly because he had been wearing the same clothes since the fight at her apartment and partly because he needed to cool down.
    Where did that kiss come from? he wondered.
    The water, cold for good measure, ran across his body. It was true that even before his father had snapped, Jackson’s life had already been fractured. His mother, the only other family he’d had, had passed away when he was just old enough to remember loving her. After her death, his father hadn’t tried to fill the role of the caring parent. Jackson could never fault him, though. He’d worked long hours to provide for them. So what if when he’d come home he’d yell and drink and remind Jackson of all his faults? He’d provided. But then Christian Fields took his guns into the local police station and killed eleven men and women before he was killed himself.
    Jackson turned the water off.
    A guilt he tried to convince himself wasn’t there swam around him like the water circling the drain. He flashed back to Nikki’s claw-foot tub, the tile floor covered in red wine and Ronald Dabney holding the naked woman up by her hair. His hand curled into a fist.
    Sure, he’d kissed Nikki out of an overwhelming sense of gratitude, but now he realized that wasn’t the only thing that made him want to protect her. He wanted to—no, needed to—keep her safe because he cared about her. He didn’t need weeks or months or years to see she was special. She was smart, beautiful, kind to those she felt deserved it and undoubtedly loyal to those same people. Despite everything that had happened in his past and hers, she’d for some reason put him in that category with her