Page 18 of The Ruthless Guardian

He’s bitter about it. He whines about it all the time like a child. He wants to know what happened and I don't want to talk about it. We're at an impasse on the topic.

"If I'm safe here, why should I dig up the past?" This argument frustrates him more than any of my others, but it makes sense to me. If I’m supposed to be safe here, why do I need to be ready to fight off an attacker or tell Josiah about what’s dangerous to me outside the gate? What’s he going to do about it if I do tell him? He doesn’t leave this place. He’s not going to do anything about it.

He lets out a growl low in his chest and points ahead of us. "Run."

"No."

"Phoebe, just run."

"No."

"Why do you fight me on this? You're going to run eventually." He is a master of making me run when I don’t want to, by aggravating me with questions until I’d rather run just to get away from him than listen to it.

"I'm tired and I'm done running. I've run enough today, don't you think?" I feel like we’ve been going for hours already.

"If someone was pursuing you, do you think they'd stop if you complain enough?” he asks in a harsh voice that makes me duck my head. “Do you think they'll check in with you and ask if you'd like to stop or continue running?"

I inhale through my nose and wish I could spit fire through my eyes at him. "You are such an ass!" I shout, unable to bite the words back anymore. "You're pushing me too hard!" I don’t want to think about the possibility of being chased by someone. I know he’s right- they wouldn’t ask if I was tired, but the idea of it happening at all is so terrifying that I can’t stand to think about it.

"Not hard enough, actually."

"N. O. I'm not running anymore." I rush towards the door, but he catches me around my waist and starts to haul me back. But fuck him. I said I was done, and I'm done. I force my body to go limp, immediately becoming dead weight so he has to put both arms around me and adjust his hold to keep us from toppling over.

“Goddammit, Phoebe! What are you doing?”

“I’m tired! Don’t you get that?”

He sighs and lowers my feet to the ground just outside the door. “Okay. So what would you rather do?”

“I want to have fun.Realfun, not just having you chase me around outside. Can’t you make one of those monitors play a movie or something?”

Josiah stares at me for a moment before his face splits in a grin. “You want to watch a movie?”

“Yes,please. Something to break up the monotony of doing the same thing every. single. day.”

“Kitten, why didn’t you say that before? I can turn all of those monitors into one big TV screen.”

“I’m not a fucking kitten,” I mutter as I yank the door open and walk inside. My legs are tired and I lean against the wall while we wait for the inner door to open and let us inside. “I wish we could order pizza.”

Josiah pushes the door open when the light turns green and motions for me to go through first. “We might be able to persuade someone to bring us a pizza if that’s what you want.”

Josiah shifted the couch and coffee table so we can sit comfortably while the movie plays on the monitors. It was weird at first to try to merge everything together in my mind since it’s split between six screens, but now it’s barely noticeable unless I think about it.

There’s something else that’s more noticeable than the movie itself- Josiah. He’s sitting next to me and his big body is so close to mine that I can feel the heat of him. It’s not the first time I’ve become aware of him like this, but it’s so heady this time that I can’t think of anything else. I can’t even remember what’s happening in the movie. I just keep hoping he’ll notice me back and reach out to touch me.

His big hand would feel so warm against my leg, should he decide to put it there. I’ve never felt his lips before, but I bet they’d feel good against mine. I want to curl up in his lap and swap breaths with him, running my fingers through his hair and kissing him like it’s my first time ever kissing a boy.

His hands are in his lap, and he hasn’t seemed to recognize that my attention has strayed from the movie. He’s just sitting there watching, occasionally letting out little chuckles or wincing backwards when something moves quickly on screen.

It’s still light outside, but while we waited for one of the members of his club to bring the pizza we requested, Josiah hammered nails and hung sheets and blankets over the windows to give us a movie theater experience. The pizza is gone now and everything else has been forgotten, but all I can fucking think about is stealing his focus and having it all for myself.

But then there’s a voice in my head that whispershe doesn’t want you, and it’s hard to ignore that. Whywouldhe want me? I’m just a broken girl in need of protection. He’s had to save me from my own thoughts so many times and he runs me like a prize horse and he keeps talking about when I get back to my life ‘on the outside.’ He clearly intends to be rid of me at some point, so there’s no use getting involved in something temporary right now.

I know enough about myself to know that trying to fill the wounds in my soul with dick isn’t a good solution. I’ve tried that and when it came time for me to move on and leave, it just added new, different heartaches. Temporary fucks are fun in the moment, but not in the long run. Not for me.

I turn back to the movie, but I’ve long since lost track of the plot and now it’s just confusing. I can’t figure out what the characters are doing, and my eyes keep drifting back to Josiah. Not getting his attention is frustrating, like I’m being starved. I feel like I could wave my hands and say, “Don’t you know I’m staring at you?” I know if I had the weight of that gaze on me I wouldn’t even know what to do with it, so maybe it’s better if he keeps to himself.

Chapter Fifteen

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