What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) by Hannah Ford Page B

and
grabbing it for me.   “Sometimes it
catches.”   His chest was so broad,
his hands so big, his body so strong, that it made me
feel tiny in comparison.   I closed
my eyes as he did the zipper, letting the side of his hand slide over my breast
as he did it.   I knew he was
trouble, I knew I barely knew him, but for some reason, in that moment, all I
wanted to do was turn around and bury myself in his arms.  
    He’d told me that he could make me forget, and
I believed him.   Cutting had been my
escape until now, a way to take the edge of and keep me from feeling things I
didn’t want to feel.   I’d avoided
alcohol and drugs because I’d seen what they could do to people, so cutting had been my way of dealing.
    In theory, I wasn’t opposed to losing myself in
another person, through sex, lust, love, obsession, whatever.   But if I was going to do it, it was
going to be Declan.   It had to
be.   He was the man I was going to
give myself to.
    And I’ve never been tempted by anyone else.
    Until now.
    I shrugged away from Colt, pulling the
sweatshirt tighter around me.  
    “You shouldn’t have given me a sweatshirt with
a messed up zipper,” I said.
    “Sorry, Princess.   I didn’t know you were so picky.”
    “Is that a dig at the fact that I’m staying at
a shelter?   Because you’re not any
better than me.”   His sweatshirt was
huge on me, and I pushed up the sleeves and pulled it tighter around me.
    “Who said I was better than you?”
    “Oh, please.”   I folded my arms over my chest.   Even with the extra security and padding
of the sweatshirt, I felt a little too exposed, a little too vulnerable to his
wandering eyes.   “You’re rich.”
    “Is that what you think?   That I think I’m better than you because
I have money?”
    “Of course!   Isn’t that why you brought me
here?”   Thinking about it now,
saying the words out loud, I was starting to get angry.   “Because you felt sorry for me?   You saw I was wearing cheap clothes and
that I was looking for a job as a stripper, so you just assumed I was
poor.   And then you somehow poked
around in my personal, private business, which you were probably able to do
because of your money, and you realized I was staying at a shelter.   And that really probably made you feel
bad for me.”   I was getting going
now.   I wanted to put him in his
place, to make him see that I wasn’t just some girl he could come along and
save with his good looks and his money.   I didn’t need saving.   I was fine.
    His cell phone rang before he could reply.
    He reached into his pocket and pulled it out,
answering it with a brisk, “Colt Cannon.”
    Which just proved my point.   If he didn’t think he was better than
me, then why the hell did he answer a phone call in the middle of our
conversation?
    I needed to get out of here.   Even the shelter was better than
this.   The shelter made you feel bad
about yourself, but at least everyone there was in the same boat.   You didn’t have to worry about some rich
asshole making you feel inferior.
    “Have Jessa take care of it,” Colt was saying
into the phone.   “She’s good with
that kind of shit.”
    I looked around the room for my clothes, the
ones I wore here, the skirt and button-up shirt.   I needed to change and get the hell out
of here.
    “Where are my clothes?” I demanded.
    Colt held his finger up, the universal sign for
“one minute.”   But I wasn’t going to
wait one minute.   I wasn’t going to
wait one second.
    I crossed the room to the closet in the corner
and flung open the doors.   But there
was nothing in there except for a bunch of fluffy robes hanging on
hangers.   I flung the drawers
underneath it open, but they were empty.
    Where the hell could my clothes have gone?   I remembered folding them neatly and
putting them on the chair in the corner, but now the chair was empty.  
    “Where are my clothes?” I yelled again.   I was acting like a