The Broken Protector Read Online Nicole Snow

Categories Genre: Alpha Male Tags Authors: Nicole Snow Advertisement1

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If I’d admit that all the things I’ve always wanted are right here in front of me.

It feels like he could give them all to me, if I’d shut my fears up and trust him.

If I could let him inside more than my body.

If I could invite him into those deep, hollow places of my heart he already touches in some intangible way, even as he fills me.

He gathers me against him possessively, enveloping me against his chest, holding me close as he takes me so high and never, ever lets me come down.

Foly huck.

I’m gone.

Captured.

Addicted.

I’m so dizzy I can’t breathe.

I’m—

Goddammit, yes.

I’m in love.

And I’m so wrapped up in watching his body shudder and the pure, raw erotic pleasure on his face that I almost miss it when it hits me.

That sudden surge, that jolt, my body tumbling down faster than my brain as he makes me feel things I never thought possible.

He pulls me up against him, my thighs straddling his lap, my body moving over his.

His hand claps my ass, adding just the right sting to our pleasure.

I gasp again as he hits some new place inside me, striking deep, marking me from the inside out.

He consumes my senses, crashing over me like the wave he is as our pleasure rips me apart.

I come harder than ever, crying his name.

Like if I say it enough times, everything will be all right.

Like I’m chanting his name and hoping it has some power to bind him to my heart.

I’m not surprised that I sleep hard in Lucas’ arms.

There’s something about riding this emotional insanity that’s so thrilling it drains you. So I curl up against him happily and pass out, snuggled into the sweat-slicked warmth of his bulk.

He’s a human shield.

I sleep like the dead, dreamless and content.

Until I blink awake in the middle of the night with my mouth dry and cottony.

Squinting at my phone on the nightstand, I see it’s just past two o’clock.

Lucas is a snoring, motionless lump against my back.

I twist around to face him, just watching him illuminated in the moonlight. The way he turns his face into the pillow until there’s just a twitch of dark brows, the dip of his upper lip visible on one side.

My heart strums sharply.

Part of me doesn’t want to trust this.

How many times have people who told me they cared ever really meant it?

Basically just once with Mom.

But there’s a lonely, aching piece of me that wants to believe Lucas is genuine. The real deal behind his cocky smirk.

I want to think that big brutish body might be powered by an equally mammoth heart.

That he actually cares and he is what he says.

I turn over restlessly.

I shouldn’t dwell on this right now, anyway. Especially when I’m about to wake him up by choking on my own parched throat.

Gingerly, I pry myself out of his arms and slip out of bed.

The shirt he was wearing earlier is draped across the back of a chair in the corner, and I steal it for a nightshirt, shrugging it on over my naked body and shaking my hair loose from the collar before padding downstairs to the kitchen.

I fill a glass of water in the sink and drink, easing the itch in my throat.

Then I wander out into the moonlit living room, pacing around. It gives me something to do until I can head back upstairs and snuggle up with my human furnace again.

But as I pass the coffee table, something catches the corner of my eye.

Red.

The same blood-red dress I saw my first day here, spilled across my floor.

Emma.

The crime scene photos, taken the day I found her body.

I nearly spray water, choking, and start to cough, gasping as I rub my throat.

Jesus.

What the hell?

I glance over my shoulder at the stairs, but there’s no sign of Lucas.

Biting my lips, I look back at the coffee table. The photos are on top of a stack of papers in a rumpled file folder. The case file, I’m guessing.

I know, I know.

It’s official police business and all.

I really shouldn’t.

But how can I help it when I’m drawn to this mystery—drawn to her—and I need to flipping know.

I just want to know what happened, if a beautiful girl with so much to live for truly died of an overdose and nothing else.

I find a coaster—I’m not a heathen, okay?—and set my glass down before settling on the edge of the sofa to thumb through the photos.

Okay.

Deep breath.

Obviously, I’m not a forensics expert, but the closer I look, Emma looks like she was flung there. Something about the way she’s tilted just isn’t right, and it’s easier to notice in a photo rather than panicking over finding her very real body.

It just doesn’t look like she passed out on her own and dropped dead.

She’s too—I don’t know—neat?


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