Claiming Felicity (Ace Security #4)(11)

Felicity felt herself giving in. She wanted to stay in Castle Rock. But she wanted to protect her friends more. Her leaving wouldn’t guarantee their safety, a fact that she admitted to herself for the first time. He could go after them as a way to get to her after she left. Could she trust Ryder? She didn’t know, but she was just selfish enough to give him a chance.

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He applied pressure to her neck, and she willingly let him pull her forward. Right there, in the middle of the store, filled with yuppies and parents on the hunt for food they deemed “safe” for their children, Ryder wrapped his arms around her and held on tight.

Felicity ducked her head and laid it on his broad shoulder. She wrapped her arms around his waist and let him hold her. For the first time since she was twenty years old, she leaned on someone else. It felt good. Too good. But she couldn’t manage to tear herself away.

“I told you once, and I’ll tell you again. I’m gonna fix this for you, love,” Ryder said quietly.

“I don’t think you can,” she mumbled.

“I can. And I will.”

He said it with such conviction, she almost believed him.





Chapter Four

Ryder stood behind Felicity as she nervously fumbled with the lock at her apartment door and frowned. There were so many things that were security issues, his fingers twitched with the need to fix them. Her door wasn’t terribly sturdy, as it was simply another door in the interior of the gym. There was a stairwell in the back hall of the gym that led to a skinny hallway on the second floor of the building that needed more lighting. Felicity explained that the other rooms were used for storage, for the most part, which someone could easily hide in. She’d explained that a small apartment was built into the space when the blueprints were drawn up.

It was obvious Felicity wasn’t comfortable having Ryder in her apartment, but she’d just have to get over it. She didn’t know it, but letting him into her private space was akin to agreeing to be his. She wasn’t a woman who trusted easily, and being invited into her apartment seemed intimate. It shouldn’t have felt so right to step inside her place, but it did.

He could smell her scent stronger here. She always smelled good, especially when he’d held her in his arms in the middle of the grocery store, but here it was ten times stronger. Lilacs. It was just one more thing about her that didn’t “fit” her outward appearance.

As he’d pointed out to Logan, she wasn’t tough at all. She was broken. And Ryder knew it because he’d been just like her at one point. The first time he’d killed a man, he fell into a pit of despair so deep he didn’t think he’d ever be able to pull himself out. And to compensate, he’d put on a mask and created a new persona, just as Felicity had.

But he’d only worn his tough-guy image for a year before he’d shed it around his teammates and friends. Friends who truly understood what he was feeling. Felicity had been wearing her take-no-shit exterior so long, there were only glimpses of the tender woman underneath. But Ryder had seen them. Loud and clear. And it was that woman he wanted to know. Wanted to be his. He just needed to chip away at her tough outer shell one bad memory at a time.

They brought the grocery bags into the kitchen, and he handed her items as she put them away. They worked together in a companionable silence. After everything was stowed in its proper spot, she turned and waved her arm around the small apartment, which could be seen from the galley kitchen. “It’s not much.”

And it wasn’t.

It was clinical.

Depressing.

There wasn’t one personal touch in the small space.

The walls were a boring white. There were no pictures. No splashes of color. No girlie pillows on the black sofa in the middle of the living area. There might’ve been DVDs inside the cabinet next to the television, but Ryder doubted it. No books. No piles of mail sitting around. He might as well have been in his hotel room for all the personality the place had. It was hard to believe she’d been living there for as long as she had.

He shrugged. “It’s fine.”

Felicity rolled her eyes. “Do you want something to drink?”

“What do you have?”

She went to the fridge and opened it, as if she had no idea and had to look to see. “Water, beer, and V8 juice.”

Ryder raised his eyebrows at the industrial-size water dispenser in the corner of the kitchen.

She shrugged. “I drink a lot, and Cole told me I should just order one of the dispensers we have sitting around the gym for myself up here. So I did. When I run out, I just grab one of the water jugs from downstairs. It’s easier, and cheaper, than constantly buying smaller bottles.”

“Water’s fine,” Ryder told her when she finished her explanation.

She nodded and grabbed a glass, filled it up from the dispenser, and handed it to him. She poured one for herself as well and leaned back against the counter. “So . . . you wanted to talk?”

Ryder took a sip of the water, then nodded. He held out his hand without a word.

Felicity looked at his hand, then up at his face, then back to his hand.

He stood stock-still, waiting for her.

Just when he thought she was going to brush by him and ignore his gesture, at the last second she lifted her hand and placed it in his.

Ryder felt his dick twitch in his pants, but ignored it. Her small show of trust went straight to his heart. She didn’t trust easily, if at all. Her taking his hand wasn’t exactly spilling her guts, but it was a start. He could work with it.