Free Above Protection (Imperfect Heroes Book 1) by C. J. Pinard

Jack-N-Jill:
    Still alive, big
guy?
    I quickly typed back my
reply: Yes. Thanks for waiting 2 days to
check on us, asshole.
    I shouldn’t be so disrespectful, but
fuck… I couldn’t believe they’d waited this long to make
contact.
    Another text quickly shot
back: We tried several times to reach you
on the landline at the cabin and received no response.
    What? What landline? We’d
been here the whole fucking time. Well, shit, except for our little
shopping trip. So I replied: What
time?
    The response was
immediate: About noon
yesterday.
    Oops. We’d been out. So I
apologized. Sorry, we were out getting
essentials. Won’t happen again.
    Another speedy response
read: Copy.
    And that was it. I lay back down and
drifted back into nothingness.
     
    As my phone’s alarm screamed at me to
get up, I slammed my eyes open. As my senses hit me, the one coming
after sight was smell.
    Is that bacon?
    Bacon can always make me get out of
bed. Of course, I can eat bacon after I hit the bathroom and get
rid of this boner. Was there anything worse than morning wood when
you wake up in an empty bed? No, no there wasn’t.
    Leaning over and trying to pee with a
hard-on was always a challenge, but of course I had mastered it.
Spend a year eating sand and MREs, surrounded by dudes and very few
attractive women (trust me, there were a couple, but I didn’t meet
their standards, apparently), and you could master the art of
pissing with rock-hard wood.
    Pulling my shorts up and wandering
into the kitchen, I saw Rayanne shoveling eggs and something else
onto plates and putting them onto the old wood dining room table.
She had on that same white dress thing, which was probably a
nightgown, and nothing else.
    Just when I had gotten rid of the
hard-on…
    “Good morning, Duke,” she said with a
smirk, her eyes traveling the length of my body before settling
back on her chore.
    She set the second plate onto the
table, and with a smart look on her pretty face, she gestured
toward the food. “Please eat.”
    With a nod and the niggling urge to
get some nicotine in my system, I sat in the same chair as last
night and looked down at the plate. Bacon, eggs with cheese, and a
waffle that had been cooked in the toaster. I picked up my fork and
ate without a word.
    Rayanne sat across from me, her fork
poking at the food on her identical clear plate. Even though the
table was oak, I could see from the corner of my eye, that her slim
and pale legs were crossed under the table as she ate the breakfast
she’d prepared for both of us.
    I could also tell she wasn’t wearing a
bra, but there was no way I was going to let my eyes wander there
again. They’d gone there when I’d entered the kitchen a few minutes
ago, but being the gentleman I am, I had kept my gaze fixed on hers
without wandering down to her chest.
    “Did you like breakfast?” she finally
asked, her light brown eyes boring into mine.
    I nodded. “Yes, thanks. I would have
gotten this but obviously you got up first.”
    Setting her fork down with a clink,
she replied, “I don’t mind doing the cooking. In fact, just let me
do it. I’m bored and need to keep busy.”
    I nodded in understanding. That’s why
I had made breakfast yesterday. I had been used to keeping busy. I
wasn’t the best cook around, but I knew how to make bacon and eggs
and a few other things.
    But hell, if she wanted to do the
cooking, I most certainly wasn’t going to object. I wanted to keep
her mind preoccupied and off the fact that someone was trying to
kill her.
    As I stared at her from across the
table, I took in her soft features. The way her eyelashes cast a
shadow on her cheekbones as she looked down at her meal. The way
her mouth opened to invite the food inside. Her jawline so sharp
and smooth as it opened all the way up. But most of all, the soft
curve of her neck as she leaned forward to eat. I shook my head at
my own idiocy. Never in my life had I analyzed a woman eating
before. I’d had plenty of