Under Threat by B.J. Daniels (reading the story of the .TXT) 📕

it didn’t mean anything. She was a lunatic reading into things. Per usual. Wasn’t that her pattern?

“I guess not the same approach exactly,” he said at last, some odd softness to his voice.

Her breath caught at the admission, and his arm around her loosened, just the tiniest bit. If she hadn’t been looking for it, she might’ve missed it. But he had definitely given her more space.

“Vaughn...” What exactly was she going to say? Look at me sexually! Please! She was really losing it.

“If someone is holding you like this,” he began, sounding uneven and uncertain. Who knew she could make Vaughn Cooper uncertain? It might be the highlight of her year.

“Let me restate the fact that a bad guy grabbing me by surprise would not be holding me like this.”

“Would you like me to hold you rougher? Because I can certainly oblige.” There was an edge to his voice, a warning, or maybe it was a promise. She couldn’t decide.

Nor could she stop the little shiver that went through her. Because even though he probably didn’t mean that sexually, it sure sounded sexual. She shouldn’t poke at that. She shouldn’t poke at him. But somehow her brain and her mouth couldn’t get on the same page.

“I think you have to start over because I lost track of what you were talking about.”

This time his grasp tightened instead of loosened, but she didn’t think it was because he was trying to be a bad guy. In fact, she hoped for a completely different reason. No matter how much she shouldn’t.

Chapter 10

Vaughn was getting in over his head. He had lost track of what the hell he was doing in the first place. But he really lost track of what the hell Natalie was doing, because this was all starting to sound way more flirtatious than it should.

He tried to focus on the task at hand. With his arms around her. Why was he standing here? Because the minute he lost track of the reason, was the minute he started making mistakes. And he couldn’t afford mistakes. No matter how good they smelled. No matter how they shivered in his arms when he said something far, far, far too suggestive.

“One of the important things to remember is that you want to stay as still as possible if someone grabs you.” He forced himself to focus. To concentrate. To lecture.

She was quiet for a long humming second. “So, some strange man grabs me from behind, and I’m supposed to be calm?”

“You’re supposed to try. The more you practice this, the better off you’ll be. It becomes habit. When something becomes a habit, then you can deal with things instinctually.”

“So we’re going to stand here with you holding me all day?”

“Well, if you’d stop talking and questioning everything I do, maybe we could get somewhere, Ms. Torres.”

She chuckled at that, and he found that he wanted to laugh too. God knew why.

“You always revert to Ms. Torres when you’re irritated with me.”

“I’m irritated with you a lot.”

“I know.” But she said it cheerfully, as though it didn’t bother her at all.

He sighed. Not sure why the back-and-forth banter gave him that stupidly light feeling again. The feeling he hadn’t had in too many years. It revealed too much about how he’d lost himself, a fact he’d been ignoring for a while. And, more, he hated what it told him about Natalie, the effect she had on him, that it might not be some easily controllable thing.

Ha! He could control whatever he chose to. “So rule number one, what was it?”

She sighed. “Rule number one is try to stay still even though that is the opposite of any normal reaction to someone grabbing me from behind.”

“Wonderful. Love the attitude,” he muttered, trying to shift behind her without...rubbing. “Rule number two is, you want to analyze the situation as best as your mind allows. You want to try to figure out where the weakness is. You want to know what parts of your body have the freedom to move and inflict the most amount of damage. Obviously, if they’ve grabbed you from behind, you can’t utilize your sight. So, unless they’re armed, you want to lean back against them and try to discern the areas that are going to be vulnerable.”

“So... You want me to lean back into you?”

Oh, hell. No. “Well, we don’t necessarily have to practice that part.”

“Shouldn’t we practice the whole thing? You know the whole the more you practice, the more instinctual it becomes?”

She sounded far too pleased with herself, and he was quickly realizing how badly he’d lost control of this entire situation. It wasn’t the fact that he’d initiated this stupid idea, the fact that however many minutes later he still had his arms around Natalie, it was the fact that she was goading him. She was... Hell, she was instigating.

Do not be charmed by that. Do not give into that.

But he must be going a little cabin crazy, because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could listen to the sane, rational voice in his head. At some point, he was going to lose this battle. He was almost sure of it.

“Fine. Lean back into me.” Yes, he was definitely losing this battle.

She did as he told her, and he tried to keep himself from softening too much into it. Because he wasn’t a soft guy, and he prided himself on his ability to keep things professional.

So, he held himself tense and hard against the soft enticing curves of her body now leaning into him.

“How do I know if something is vulnerable?”

Her voice was a little ragged and a little whispery, and he smiled at that. Because, thank God, she wasn’t messing with him without having any sort of reaction of her own.

“What’s your first instinct?” he asked, his nose all too close to being buried in her thick curls.

She laughed. “I’m a woman who lives in a not totally nice area, Vaughn. Trust me, my first