Free Protecting Fate by Katee Robert

his baggage, but hell if he’d expected this . She’d taken everything he’d given her and come back begging for more. He searched her face, looking for signs of regret or, worse, fear—the two major things he’d missed in Jennifer—but there was nothing except a strange mix of contentment and worry that was mirrored in the emotions twining through him in that moment. “Yeah.”
    “Maybe it would be better if we did this separately.”
    She was probably right, but he wasn’t ready to let her walk out yet, so Z held open the shower door and motioned her to precede him. With a sigh, she obeyed the silent command.
    The shower was big enough for four people, and the dual showerheads gave them plenty of room to maneuver. As much as he wanted to keep touching her, he stayed on his side, scrubbing himself down and watching her do the same.
    “You’re staring.” She turned and tipped her face up to the spray, letting the soap wash off her body in paths his hands itched to follow.
    He didn’t bother to deny it. Instead, he let the hot water beat into his skin in a vain effort to release the tension there. Opposing urges rose inside him, the need to haul her ass to his room to sleep in his bed, to touch her and fuck her and make her his in the only way he could.
    And to walk out of this bathroom and do something—anything—to get his head back on straight.
    Neither option was the right one. He’d tried avoiding her, and that had worked for a less than twenty-four hours. Z called things like they were, and he didn’t like his chances of keeping his hands off her for the remainder of their time here. It was a losing battle, and a waste of effort. He wanted her. She wanted him. There was no point in spending precious energy fighting the inevitable.
    Hell, he didn’t want to fight it.
    So he chose neither and settled for a middle of the road option. “Have dinner with me.”
    Sara raised her eyebrows. “Dinner.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Did you forget that we’re on house arrest in the middle of nowhere?”
    “No.” He shut off his water, and reached around to shut off hers as well. “But I happen to know someone cooked a whole hell of a lot of food earlier. I can work a microwave as well as the next man.” He leaned forward, tracking the drop of water trailing down her collarbone and over her breast. “I’ll even get out a candle and make it truly fancy.”
    “Be still my heart.” A tentative smile pulled at the edges of her lips. “I guess I did work up something of an appetite.”
    “Thought so.” He grabbed two towels and handed her one. As tempting as it was to dry her off himself, to spend all the time he wanted exploring every inch of her body, it wouldn’t do a damn thing for his control. So he kept his distance, drying off efficiently and walking back into the bedroom to pull on his pants. He turned in time to see her shrug into the tiny robe she’d been wearing earlier, the bottom of it barely hitting the tops of her thighs. It was all too easy to imagine going to his knees in front of her, drawing back the silky fabric and…
    Z looked away. Keep it together, Loreto .
    He followed her out of the bedroom and down the stairs, struggling to keep his thoughts away from all the available surfaces to press Sara against and fuck her until he forgot all the reasons this was a terrible idea. To distract himself, he started talking, “How long have you worked for your uncle?”
    “I would think that’d be in the file you’re sure to have on me.”
    “I don’t have a file on you.” When she shot him a look over her shoulder, he amended, “I don’t have an exhaustive file on you.” There hadn’t been much time to get this place put together, let alone to gather all the information he usually would on a body he or his men were guarding. Add in the fact that this was Garrett’s sister, and he’d been reluctant to dig too deeply on her. The man was entitled to his secrets and, as his family, so was