Ranger (Reynolds Protective, #4)

by Rebecca Sharp

“Don’t apologize, Sydney,” he ordered. “You’re my priority.”

“If you don’t want to go to the book club, we can do something else, but I’m taking you out.” My eyes snapped to his. Only then did he realize what he had said. “I mean, you need to get out of the apartment. Just for a little.” He cleared his throat and returned to the bag of produce he’d been unloading.

“I already read it.” “What?” My jaw dropped. “When?” “After you fell asleep last night.” Ten minutes. Right. “I didn’t even realize you had the book.” “It came last week.” He nodded. “I brought several of them over with my laptop the other day, so I’ve been reading them when I can’t”—he paused, shifted his weight, and then finished—“once you’re asleep.”

There was a fire crackling in the hearth, but the only heat I felt was from the man next to me. He was quiet here. Observing. Perceptive.

And the embodiment of Teddy Roosevelt’s saying, “Walk softly but carry a big stick.” In more ways than one…

HELP

“How about you, Ranger? I didn’t know you were a fan of Sydney’s,” Cindy exclaimed, eager to draw in the only one in the group who’d stayed silent. Ranger blushed. “I just started reading her books recently.” “Ahh, a newbie! Well, go on and tell us what your favorite part was,” Trish urged. His brow creased. “I think it would be the hotel shower scene.”

I hadn’t needed a reminder that there were still readers who loved my books… I needed the reminder that, at my core, I was a romantic. A romance reader. And romance readers didn’t give up on their happy ending.

After a minute, we stopped, our hands resting together between us. My fingers found his. Without gloves, I should’ve felt the cold of the snow, but there was only heat—only an ache I couldn’t extinguish.

I tipped my head up, my breath fogging the frozen air. “Sorry.” “Are you okay?” He made no move to release me.

“Ranger…” I murmured huskily, my gaze centering on his lips. “You picked a sex scene, and I want to kiss you.”

I wanted him. I wanted Ranger Reynolds, no matter the consequences. “Sydney…” His head drifted down. “Kiss me, Ranger.” I curled my hands into his jacket and tipped my head to meet his descending mouth.

He kissed me like I was this giant unknown, and he wasn’t going to stop until he’d uncovered every fact and facet of my desire.

It was well before I kissed her, I knew that much. The kiss was simply the product of a reaction I hadn’t realized was occurring. Desire had been a smokeless, odorless chemical in the air, like methane as it displaced oxygen and logic from my brain until attraction asphyxiated my restraint. I kissed her like she was oxygen, and I should’ve known better because when methane is drowned in oxygen, it combusts. And I would have, too, if it hadn’t been for that car.

“Sydney…” I croaked, willing myself to say good night and leave, but nothing came out. “Most people wouldn’t admit to a sex scene as being their favorite.” She reached back and gripped the edge of the table, leaning against it. This would be easier if we didn’t talk about the sex scene. Or sex in general. Especially when she dragged her tongue over her swollen lips. “I’m not most people.”

She made me speechless. Thoughtless. Powerless.

“You know everything, Ranger. Tonight, I want to know you.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Ranger.” Her eyes glittered. “I want to know what’s going on in that big brain of yours.”

“Will you hold me?” I exhaled slowly, feeling a pressure in my chest that I couldn’t ease. “Of course.”

Time slowed for one delicious second, allowing me to absorb every inch of my intellectual Adonis. His tousled brown hair and bare chest. The way his gold-green gaze snagged on my mouth, he shifted his weight to try and hide his body’s reaction, but I saw that, too. Everything from his dimples down to his d—

“We’ll figure this out.” He squeezed my fingers. So warm. So sure. “How do you know?” I reached out with my other hand and pushed back some wayward curls from his face. God. Had he gotten even more… beautiful… since last night? His tongue slid between his lips, and then he said, “I have three PhDs. If I can’t figure this out, no one can.” “Fair.”

“You know why, Syd. You write romance, for Pete’s sake. People don’t want reality. They want fantasy. They want broody Jason Momoa with an eight-inch pierced dick, intimacy issues, and a heart of gold.” “Not all of them,” I grumbled, more images from last night flashing through my mind.

But I’d never seen someone so buttoned up… someone whose mind was so strong succumbing to something so mindless before.

Are you trying to gain sympathy with readers—" “Enough,”

he views a husband as a threat, it could deter him.” He paused, and I knew there was more. “And if he views me as an obstacle, I’ll be his target instead of you.” “No, Ranger…”

“Sydney.” Ranger stopped me and framed my face, holding my focus on him. “They can’t accuse you of faking a marriage if there’s proof that it’s real.” My movements stilled and my gaze lifted to Ranger’s. His eyes were so clear—just like everything else about him. Nothing false. Nothing murky. Nothing uncertain. But he couldn’t be saying what I thought he was. “Ranger…” My brows pulled together, watching as he reached for my hand. He gently massaged my swollen finger, heat coiling tight in my stomach as he eased the ring back into its resting spot. His gaze rose to mine, his solution written clear as day in his eyes. “We’re going to get married.”

“If we get married, then the records will be there,” he went on as though he were explaining simple arithmetic. Me plus him equaled married. I couldn’t marry Ranger… could I?

My wife. Sydney was my wife.

“How are you so calm? There are people camped outside your house. You’re stranded in a garage apartment with a stranger you married—” “You’re not a stranger. You’re my wife.”

I should release her. Step away. Preserve space where there was already so little. But I couldn’t, no matter how many times my brain told me it was the smart thing to do. Apparently, when it came to my wife, I didn’t want to be smart; I just wanted to be around her.

“There are no experts on loving, Ranger. Just people brave enough to try.”

I wanted the answers, and they all seemed to lie on her lips—buried in the sweet heat of her mouth. Written on the warm strokes of her tongue. I needed answers. “Ranger…” she said my name with the promise that she had them.

The smartest thing I could do for our marriage was to keep my hands—and mouth—off my wife. But for the first time in thirty-two years, the smartest choice and the easiest choice weren’t the same.

“It just happened… since I’ve been staying here. We bonded over baked goods and books,” Sydney began hesitantly. “And then one night, I asked him to help me work through the first kiss scene in the book I’m writing and… that was it.” “One kiss and you knew,” Trish said, and I blinked twice, imagining—hallucinating—for a moment as I saw her face turn into that heart-eyed emoji. “Yes.” I nodded to confirm.

“This is one heck of a rebound after your breakup! Hot movie star to small-town nerd. What do you think your fans will say?” I wasn’t fazed by their words, but Sydney flinched, and that made me angry. I hadn’t even realized the growl-like sound had come from me until Jerry put his hand on my chest. “Take her and go. We’ve got this,”

But Sydney… Sydney was like my own personal Rosetta Stone. She was both a question and the answer. The unknown and the tree of knowledge. A relative stranger… and my wife.

“Ranger… about what they said…” “It doesn’t bother me,” I told her as we turned onto Main Street. “I should’ve told them that a nerd is always preferable to a lying cheat.” “Did you know the term nerd was coined by Dr. Seuss in his book If I Ran the Zoo?” I changed the subject. Again, that drew her smile, and I felt heat rush through me. With Sydney, my facts never seemed wasted or out of place.

I had other things to think about… I had Sydney.

I swayed and his arms came around me. “I’m okay.” I tried to step out of his hold, but he wouldn’t let go. My head tipped up, and I felt my brow crease. “Ranger?” “You’re not okay.” His clear green eyes searched mine. “Let me help you.” For him to know that… to say that… But I couldn’t. I couldn’t let myself keep relying on him. Ranger might be my husband, but he wasn’t permanent, and I needed to do a better job remembering that. “No, you can’t. I just… need to be alone,”

“What if you’re in more danger because of me?” he insisted, with the same intensity and surety as gravity. Unalterable. Unstoppable. Unshakable. And it knocked the breath right out of me. “I’m not, Ranger, and I don’t want you to go,” I whispered, my heart pounding with dread. It was more than that. I wanted him here. I wanted his midnight baking sessions and the encyclopedic entertainment of his conversations. And I wanted him. His kisses. His touch. And the thought of being without that after all these weeks… “I want you here, Ranger.” I slid my tongue along my bottom lip. “I want my husband.”

“I’m not doing a good enough job. I’m too… distracted.” The word came out like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “By what?” “By you.”

“You’re in danger, and all I can think about—” he broke off and seamed his lips shut. “I’m sorry.” He started to step to the side and without thinking, I reached out and splayed my hand over his chest to stop him. “Tell me.” His heart thumped wildly under my palm as his gaze snapped back to mine. “Sydney, someone tried to hurt me—you—us today.” He tensed violently and then continued. “And all I can think about is kissing you.”

“This is the only thing that makes sense.” “Sydney…” I reached up and cupped my hand to his cheek. “Unless you don’t want to be here anymore.” That was the most painful thought of all. “Unless you really don’t want me—” I didn’t know Ranger was capable of a growl until I heard it. Until his hands latched on the sides of my face and pulled me to him.

I LITERALLY FELL DOWN A FLIGHT IF STAIRS I FELL KN MY FUCKING FACE READING THIS

He didn’t kiss me like I was his last meal—like I was something to draw out and savor; he kissed me like I was his first meal. Like I was his first taste of something so delicious, he couldn’t stop himself from gorging.

“Sydney,” Ranger croaked, his nostrils flaring. His gaze raked over my naked body with open hunger—unfiltered lust, from the aching tips of my breasts down to where his knee pressed between my thighs. It was a feat to feel worshipped with just a single look, but that was how I felt—worshipped by the heat and hunger of his stare.

“You’re…” His throat bobbed. “Perfect.” Perfect could have so many definitions for this man, yet I was it.

Whenever that mouth worked, it was in perfect sync with his genius, and right now, I wanted that genius devouring me.

I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE LICK ME BITCH

God, he was so gorgeous.

“Honey,” he murmured, taking another lick along my seam and groaning as he swallowed. “You always say honey in your books.”

gobsmacked rn GOB. FUCKING. SMACKED.

This man had read almost all of my romance novels, cataloged them in his mind like an erotic encyclopedia, and now unleashed all that knowledge on me—on my body with fervent hunger.

“Am I wrong?” He moaned. “Not honey. Forbidden fruit.”