The Protector 2

Chapter One-5

The past three days were spent peacefully. The men, following some kind of a routine, take turns seeing to the checkpoints around the house, and regularly test the security system to make sure everything functions perfectly. Rita takes inventory of our food supplies, does yoga exercises or works on her tattoo plans. Gunner checks the munition, cleans the guns, and sharpens the knives. With his arsenal placed meticulously around him, he looks like he’s playing the tattooed bad boy in some gangster movie. Mac, having completed his ultra hot daily push-up and pull-up routine, keeps himself busy on the laptops, with who knows what. By now I have also relaxed into the situation and made friends with the others. Instead of spending time in my living room, I bring my book downstairs, and usually read, settled next to Mac. I don’t make much use of my phone, as the signal is in crap inside the house. I’ve tried messaging Johnny a few times, in vain.

I do my best to be friendly and kind with everyone, except Rafe. I ignore him consistently when we talk or eat. If I absolutely must talk to him, then I’m cold as ice, and formal. Rafe takes it badly, it’s not hard to notice that. He usually sits to the side, sulking, and tries to spend as little time as possible in my presence. Rita watches us with caution whenever she can smell gunpowder in the air between us, but she has never interfered. I think the tension between Rafe and I is obvious to everybody, and it’s just a matter of time when the s**t hits the fan.

Rafe

I suffer like a dog. No work has felt so difficult to me before. Every hour I spend near her, when I can see her, hear her laughter, but can’t touch her, is torture. Noone has ever made my blood boil so much as this mafia princess, and there has been no other woman over whom I fell apart like this. Raven Bertone is not just anyone. The moment she walked into Mr. Bertone’s office making a stormy appearance into my life, I knew this case would be a toughie. But since I’ve been locked together with her in this faraway house, I suffer the agony of agonies. For a brief moment the possibility crossed my mind to call off the job, but I discarded the idea at once. I know I’m not doing much good to myself if I get involved, yet, I can’t get myself to turn my back and pretend nothing has happened; as if Raven hasn’t turned my world upside down together with my goddamn peace of mind. And, since I’ve known that her life is in danger, I’d be physically unable to let her go and entrust someone else with her. What sucks the most is it feels like eight years hasn’t even passed, and she can affect me exactly like back then. She attracts me like some damned mega-magnet. A f*****g hot mega-magnet who takes my mind off work. My concentration is in the shithole, even though our life could very well depend on my reactions. It takes me supernatural powers not to sneak into Raven’s bedroom, to show her what real s*x is like with a man. How it feels when I don’t simply want to punish her like back then, at university, but with passion, making her my own with all the power I’ve got, in a way that gives us both pleasure.

I lie awake at nights, punching my pillow with frustration, because by now I’ve realized that I’m the biggest loser of the universe. Since I saw Raven with her cousins, I’m almost sure that I misjudged her and the whole situation back then, at the campus. Jealousy took away my common sense, and I saw what I wanted to see. I acted like an asshole, pushing away from me the best thing I’ve ever known. It’s because of her that I know what love is, but she’s also the f*****g reason why I’ve never really loved a woman since then. After the things that happened in the rugby house, she had no other choice but to leave me. I can’t even be angry with her for abandoning me and still hating me like s**t.

The more I try to act like a professional, the less I manage to control my behaviour and my emotions. I feel like things are slipping out of my hands. And it doesn’t make the issue much easier that Raven is too friendly with Mac. She keeps seeking his company, and they always laugh together at all kinds of crap. Yesterday she even admired his tattoos, one by one. I had to puke. And Mac, of course, gets into the game and basks in the role of hero. He’s a good chap, I like him and all, but yesterday I wasn’t far from giving him a right hook. I swear, I almost did it, and that sucks. It really sucks, because we are one team, and we didn’t come here to be on holiday, but on a mission. I’d like to just throw Raven over my shoulder, take her into my bedroom, and press her into the matress, teaching her that a decent young woman can’t behave like that.

This also shows how ruined I am. If I want to be honest with myself, I would need to admit that Raven has never crossed any lines with Mac, but my senses are so tensed, that the slightest provocation can make me explode. I’m horny, I want her, and at the same time, I hate that I want her.

It looks like wherever I go, whatever I do, I bump into her. The more I avoid her, the more I think about her and my imagination works all the more vividly. Of course, I’m not completely innocent either, last night I felt like torturing her a bit, when I made food in the kitchen. Cooking half naked wasn’t absolutely necessary, but it did the trick. She thought I didn’t see her staring, but I know exactly how she was drooling over me.

It’s dinner time, and once again, I will have to sit a few inches from her. Its heaven and hell at the same time.

As I quickly run up the stairs before the meal to bring down a map from my bedroom, I notice that the door of Raven’s room is open by a few inches. Gulping, I walk past the door, step into my room, quickly take what I’ve come up for, and am on my way out. When I walk past her open door again, my self-control fails me, and I take a short glance into the gap. Raven is standing in front of the wardrobe, wrapped into a towel, and her hair is twisted into a smaller cloth, in the shape of a turban. I freeze, unable to move on. My brain beeps, telling me that I should get the hell out of here, but my feet won’t obey, and my d**k has been living a life of its own for a while anyway, totally dispatched from my brain. Transfixed, I stare at her as she dries her hair with slow massaging motions, then removing the towel, she throws her waves of hair back in a sexy way. I’m done. I should flee down the stairs, but I’m unable to move. With heavy breaths I stare at her as she runs her hand down her breasts, waist, down to her hips. My eyes gets foggy as I admire her naked shoulders, and imagine my tongue gliding over her skin. I lick my dried lips, and recall the taste of her kiss. I used to love kissing her even at university. I remember how hard it was for us to part whenever I walked her home in the evenings. I can still feel Raven’s lips on mine, bloated from all the kissing, and the memory makes me groan with pain. Then, as she gracefully places a foot on the edge of the bed and begins to undo the knot on the towel, I swear my knees want to collapse, and I need to hold on to the doorframe. If my crotch wasn’t pulsing so wildly, and a tiny bit more blood would get into my brain than into my d**k, I would have realized it sooner that she is winding me up on purpose. What an i***t I am!

She has spotted me long ago peeking in on her, and she’s putting on this provocative, sexy show for me personally. She would never make such slow, lush moves, wouldn’t be touching herself with such pleasure if she didn’t know that she’s got an audience. Damn! This is her revenge for my former teasing in the kitchen, and f**k me, does it not work just fine. As she finally lets the beach towel drop from herself, I groan painfully, and curse out loud from behind the door. I turn away, and storm down the stairs, bursting with frustration, straight into the ground floor bathroom. Raven can be pleased with herself. If her goal was to finish me off, her mission is accomplished.

Five minutes later, I join the others in the living room, wearing a grumpy face. Raven’s already here, all dressed, blinking at me with an innocent expression as I sit down opposite her. I could just strangle her.

“Is everything okay, dude?” Gunner slaps me on the shoulder.

“Everything’s f*****g perfect,” I mumble in response.

At night there was a little distraction around the house. Nothing serious, just an animal killed one of our cameras, so, even though it wasn’t part of the original plan, Mac has to go to the nearest town to replace the faulty cable. Raven starts begging me at once to let her go with him. She drives me nuts. She must know that she’s asking for some illogical, but she does all she can to make me mad, and her little plan is working out quite well. I don’t want to hear about any little outings. It’s not safe for Raven to leave the nest until the coast is clear outside, besides, the idea of her staying alone with Mac drives me insane. Those two in one car. On their own. Without my supervision. Out of the. f*****g. Question.

Raven presses on, saying she can’t take being locked in the house anymore, and she must get out or else she will go crazy, and so on… I’m fuming, and run her off into her room as if she is some disobedient kid. And she slams the door on herself exactly like some naughty, disobedient child, instead of a twenty-six-year-old adult.

We both make a complete i***t of ourselves. Rita watches our fight rolling her eyes, and as Raven disappears upstairs, she begins to talk to me.

“I’ve never seen two people in my life who were in such an urgent need of a thorough shagging.”

Gunner’s agreement comes in the form of shrill laughter, Mac quickly leaves the line of fire, and I try to execute the woman with my eyes, but I don’t manage to. Plus, she’s totally right, which pisses me off even more.

There is tension in the house all morning. I don’t even eat with the others; instead, I walk away sulkingly, and visit the garage to check on the vehicles. Raven’s mere sight drives me crazy. I had another lousy night, and at dawn, I woke up with the snippets of some erotic dream still in my head, a hard d**k, and the knowledge that I’m the most miserable prick in the whole world. I didn’t want to stir up our old issue now of all times, when it’s so crucial that I keep my head on, but we still need to clarify our situation. The tension between us is so strong that it’s bound to cause an electric shock. Her life is in my hands, and I have only one instinct that is stronger than the urge to take her to my bed, and that is to protect her from her attacker at all costs. In order to avoid a conflict, I retreat into the garage, and work on the motorbikes.