Guarding Temptation - Talia Hibbert Page 0,4

the station.”

“Not right now,” she said.

He stared. “I… really think we should deal with this as quickly as possible.”

Her tongue snaked out to wet her lips. She turned her head to stare at the CCTV screen. He followed her gaze and found nothing unusual. So, she wasn’t distracted; she was deflecting. Which, combined with her uncharacteristic meekness, added up to one thing: Nina was nervous.

“Alright,” he said. “Not yet. Tomorrow. We’ll spend today focusing on… other things.” Things that would make her feel better, safer, more like herself. “Starting with taking down the website.”

She jerked back to face him. “Get fucked.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. They want me to shut the site down, James. That’s why they’re doing this, and it would be an easy out, but I can’t. I can’t give them that kind of power and I can’t forfeit my principles. I won’t be silenced.”

The speech pissed him off, but at least she was starting to sound like her usual self: loud, uncontainable, generally annoyed at the world. He liked her passion. He loved her passion. But he’d wished, more than once, that she’d put herself before the good of ‘society’.

“Nina, I know your work is important—”

“Do you?” she demanded, lifting her chin.

“Yes,” he insisted. “I do. But it’s not more important than your safety. If whoever’s threatening you wants you to take the site down—”

“I comply?” she interrupted softly. “You know how I feel about compliance, James.”

He did. In fact, he usually agreed with her. He was struggling now, caught between his own beliefs, the promise he’d made to her brother, and the way he felt about her.

On the one hand, he knew that the world would be a shitstorm if people like them sat back and did as they were told. On the other hand, his best friend had asked James to watch over Nina while he was off engineering Her Majesty’s sodding death-planes with the RAF. And since she’d been nineteen at the time, James had agreed. But Nina wasn’t a kid anymore, and somehow, he’d started to see her differently. Very differently.

Which brought him to the metaphorical third hand: he would rather gnaw off his own arm than ever see Nina hurt—or even unhappy. If he had a choice between saving the planet from alien invasion and saving her… Well, he should choose saving the planet. He knew that. But he also knew that he would definitely, 100%, without remorse, choose her.

Which probably wasn’t healthy, and definitely wasn’t an attitude conducive to his Stop-being-in-love-with-Nina plan.

So he forced himself to say, “Fine. You’re right. The site stays—for now.”

She arched her brows slightly, a sharp almost-smile curving her lips. It didn’t mean she was happy. It meant she was basking in her own dominance, or some such Nina-like bullshit. But the sight of any expression on her face made his heart swell with hope, because blankness was her defence mechanism. If she wasn’t blank, she was letting him in. Whether she realised it or not.

Fighting a smile of his own, James started to pace. “Next up: living arrangements. You can’t go home.”

“Believe me,” she said dryly, “I have no desire to.”

If things were the way they used to be, he’d touch her right now. He’d take her hand for a moment, ease her clenched fist open to reveal her ink-stained palm. He’d trace her life line up to her wrist, then run a finger over her racing pulse until it calmed. Once it did, he’d pull her into a hug, and she’d let herself be afraid. She’d whisper her feelings into his ear like they were dirty secrets, and he’d protect them for her like precious stones.

But things weren’t the way they used to be, and he was beginning to think that the line they’d crossed six weeks ago was something they could never undo. Things had changed, and he needed to figure out what that meant—but one thing was for certain. Whether she liked him or not, whether she wanted to hug him or kick him in the nuts, Nina was his to protect. So, despite the confused mess of his thoughts, he spoke without hesitation. “You’ll stay with me.”

“Like fuck,” she snorted.

James sighed. He wasn’t in the habit of telling Nina what to do, but he could, and he would. “I know you like to argue—”

“Now you’re just trying to piss me off.”

“—but this really isn’t up for debate.”

She twirled a stray curl around her finger and batted her eyelashes. “Is this the part where