The Protector by Gennita Low Page B

don’t intend to,” he said, turning his face from her shoulder.
    “I love your taking me so roughly. It’s very liberating.”
    “Those are two contradictory sentences.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t care. I like it.”
    “Obviously,” he said, a dry note creeping into his voice. “You also make sure your girls know that.”
    Her laughter echoed in the dark room. “Oh yes, of course. I make sure they’re in the next room listening to the best lover a girl could have. They must have me for inspiration.”
    “If I didn’t know you, Lis, I would call you cruel.” He turned sideways, resting his head on a crooked elbow.
    She turned, licked his chest and bit it. “And you are soooo sweet.” She languidly rose to a sitting position, playing with her hair. She turned and studied his naked form. “Don’t you know I see you giving some of my girls cash for nothing?”
    “Don’t forget where the money comes from,” he reminded her. “Even a sweet man has to have a means to make money.”
    “Oh yes. We’re two of a kind then, aren’t we?” she said as she stood up. “Come on, lover, give me the information you have and I’ll see what I can do.”
    As she reached for a robe hanging by the bed, he pulled on one of her hands and she flew into his arms again. His hand went between her legs.
    “Ooooh,” she moaned, then kissed him hungrily. “If you’re ever in trouble, you have to come to me, cherie . I’ll take you underground with my brothers. Then I can have you for a long, long time.”
    “You sure they will let me in at your word?” he mocked, as his hand continued its leisurely exploration.
    She arched to meet each caress, her eyes half closed. “Honey doll, I’m the favorite sister to the second brother. Do you think he would deny me a favor?” She mewed as his rhythm slowed, controlling her release. “Oh, please, please.”
    “Don’t you mean, ‘No, no, stop’?” he mimicked her earlier cries. He slid a long finger in her and felt her tensing, anticipating what he could give her. “So, whatever big sis says, little brother will do, huh?”
    She didn’t have a chance to answer. Her moans filled the room again.
    Finally, after several minutes, she opened her eyes. Her voice was hoarse from the pleasure he had given her. “Honey doll, as long as you keep doing that, you’ll always be under my protection. And, don’t forget, you’re smart and can make us money.”
    He bent down to kiss her bow-shaped lips. “And don’t forget,” he added, “I can make you come some more.”
    He was running late, and there was business to be done, but he had found that one couldn’t hurry business in this part of the world. One must make a lot of deals. Without warning he turned and locked the woman’s hands above her head. Her eyes widened, and a sultry gleam crept in them when he slowly nudged her thighs apart.
    “Some more?” she asked.
    “It’s part of the deal,” he said, and bit her shoulder to mark her.

CHAPTER 4
    Jazz was a Cajun boy, brought up in the bayou swamps outside Slidell, Louisiana. His grandfather was an alligator catcher the locals called The Raging Cajun, and as a kid, Jazz lived his summers in the deep swamp camps where the very poor eked out a living off the land, supplemented by selling alligator teeth and chicken claw mojos in the local markets.
    Since joining the SEALs, he had seen other kinds of slums. The garbage mountain city in Manila where the children dug through trash for food. The slums in Hong Kong where people lived like sardines, arranging bed shifts according to their work schedules. The arid lives of people who owned nothing but a piece of Persian carpet spread in a hand-hewn mountain side cave outside Kabul. He had seen them and had compared the lives of the people with his own childhood. He had grown up in a large, loving family, with a mother who had fiercely protected her brood, and a rascally grandfather who told tall tales and refused to live a