Shit.
He worked out in his room with the free weights he had stored in there and the chin-up bar in the doorway to his bathroom. It wasn’t a full workout, but it would do for now and ease some pent-up frustration.
Frustration he’d love nothing more than to bury deep inside Brynn.
A five-minute cold shower as a finale cooled off his libido enough that when Brynn tiptoed into the kitchen, wearing a long T-shirt and no bra while he was waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, he didn’t pin her to the stainless-steel fridge and make her his.
Not yet anyway.
The tips of her pert breasts dragged ever so slightly across the thin blue fabric. They were just big enough to move with every thrust, but still small enough to be delicate.
Perfect for his mouth.
She met his eyes, and then found something of supreme interest on his hardwood floor. She might have dropped “avoidance” there.
The thought made him smile. “Brynn,” he said.
“Maddox,” she said, lifting her gaze to the wall over his shoulder.
“Hungry?” he asked.
She tucked her hair behind her ear, and crossed her arms as if she were cold. He reached over her head where she stood in the entryway of the kitchen and upped the heat.
“Um, I can wait for Skyler,” she said and bit her lip.
“And if he sleeps until noon?”
She looked around the room. “What time is it now?”
“Seven.”
She glanced down the hall and frowned. “Okay, I guess I could eat. I’m just going to go find something to wear.”
Hearing the coffee pot gurgle the last of the brew through the filter he took down two mugs and worked on filling them. “There’s plenty of clothing in the closet. Help yourself to whatever you need. New underwear packages are in the dresser in a variety of sizes.” He turned to her when she didn’t say anything and didn’t move.
She blinked once, twice, three times. “That might be the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”
He shrugged a shoulder and grabbed cream out of the fridge. “Weird, but the people who are whisked here at all hours of the day, sometimes without even one set of clothes on their back, appreciate it. Especially if we don’t have to find a 24-hour Walmart in the middle of the night.”
“You’ve had people arrive naked?”
“Yes.” He put the creamer, sugar, a spoon, and coffee on the island and nodded his head toward it.
“Women?”
“Yes.”
“Children?”
He swallowed. It was the children especially who always got to him. There was no way for him to explain why the world sometimes was such a shit place. Kids always found a way to blame themselves for circumstances beyond their control. “Yes.”
She added cream and skipped the sugar. “How do you do it?”
He took a long sip of his coffee, just the daily ritual of it calming him. “How could I not? Who I am is built on the foundation of protecting those who can’t protect themselves,” he said quietly.
He’d been the vulnerable one before. He’d do everything in his power to not only protect those in his care, but give them something they could use going forward to protect themselves. Maybe advice, words of wisdom, and sometimes physical training. They went out into the often-cruel world with a bit more of an advantage than they’d had before.
She studied him intently, and he fought the urge to squirm. Tilting her head, she narrowed her eyes, set down her mug, and then advanced on him in measured steps, the rhythm matching the thud of his heart. In an instant she went from shy to vixen.
