Frog and Quinn: Chapter Fourteen (Patreon)

Previously on Frog and Quinn...

Luna Hale decided to take a spontaneous summer trip to Panama City Beach, Florida before her first college semester at Manhattan Valley University begins. Naturally, her bodyguards followed her to the Sunshine State. At the cute boutique hotel, Frog and Quinn are sharing a room but…oops there’s only one bed! They fought over who would sleep where and, in their exchange, had a heart-to-heart about why Frog needed Scooter’s friendship. Could it be because SFO don’t talk about the trauma of the job? Including Quinn. Signs point to yes.

Quinn and Frog agree maybe they should try talking—actually talking—about deeper feelings. Later that night, Quinn coaxed Frog to sleep with a bedtime story only to (accidentally) fall asleep on the floor with her. Against her. Frog drooled on Quinn! Oh no!! And in the middle of the night, Frog was woken up by a suspicious noise at the door.

“I think someone is trying to break into the room.” Frog’s words are an adrenaline surge. I don’t have time to think about our bodies tangled together on the floor.

No time to process her bedhead hair sticking up in fifteen directions.

Not when she’s on her feet in seconds before I can barely blink the sleep away from eyes. 

She’s nearing the door when I hear what she does—noises and soft clanking from just outside. It could be anything, since the door opens to an exterior corridor. A cleaning lady pushing a cart. A racoon—in Florida?

I grab my gun from the bedside drawer just as the doorknob jiggles.

Fuck.

Frog opens the door before the intruder does, and the abruptness disarms him—then he bolts. She disappears after him down the balcony-like walkway, and my heart pumps faster.

Fuckfuckfuck.

I’m quick, but she already vanishes around a corner. I hear a loud thud followed by a gruff curse. Seconds later, I round the walkway and she comes into view. Both of them are on the ground—but only one of them is in clear fucking distress. Her left leg locks down across his neck, the other puts pressure against his chest. Her knees are clamped together, and she wraps her arms around his wrist and pulls up, using her hips as leverage in one of the most gruesome looking arm bar submissions I’ve seen in a while. His veins bulge in his elbow.

He’s unable to wiggle out from beneath her. By the looks of it, he seems to be around her age. Nineteen, maybe. Early twenties?

“Get off me,” he growls at her. She pulls tighter, and he lets out a pained groan. “You’re going to break my arm.” He has the common sense to at least keep his voice down. His eyes flit to me. “Get this bitch off me.”

“How about you shut the fuck up,” I tell him and bend to his waist. He sees the gun in my hand and goes pale.

“Duuude. I didn’t know—I thought that was my room. This is all a misunderstanding.”

“He dropped a bump key,” Frog tells me.

He was breaking into our room. I shove my hand in his cargo pants’ pocket and pull out his wallet. “Give us one good reason we don’t call the police, Caleb.” I read the name on his ID before thumbing through his credit cards, health insurance, a parking ticket stub.

He breathes heavier. “Look. This is really a fucking misunderstanding, man. I was told your room was someone else’s—”

“You just said you thought it was your room.” Frog hyperextends his elbow, and he lets out a breathy whine. 

“You did say that,” I tell him.

Sweat beads up on his forehead. Pieces of his sandy brown hair stick to his skin and he’s staring at his arm like he’s worried it might snap in half. It’s definitely not bending in the normal direction thanks to my girl Kannika.

“If you’d just get this bitch off me, I can explain—”

I glower and toss his wallet, sans ID, on the ground beside him. “Call her a bitch again, and it’s my knee digging in your kidney next.”

Caleb sputters. “Sorrysorry. I mean, she seems like a really nice girl. But fuck…can she loosen her hold? My arm is going to break.”

Frog stays surprisingly quiet, and I wonder if she’s concentrating. Her muscles look more defined as she squeezes her limbs.

“You’re fine,” I assure with an edged tone. “What room did you think you were breaking into?”

“Luna Hale’s. I have a friend at the front desk. She tipped me off that she’s staying here. She obviously gave me the wrong room though.” Great. Fucking fantastic.

“Hate to break it to you, Caleb, but you have a shitty friend. They didn’t think to mention that Luna’s security is staying right next door to her.”

His face drops, slowly realizing who he’s talking to. “So you’re like her bodyguards?” His eyes flit to the gun in my hand again. “Shit.” 

“Yeah, shit,” I say coldly. “What was your plan? Scare her?”

“No. No.” He groans. “Jesus fuck. I’m not a psychopath. Hilary told me she saw Luna Hale and her boyfriend down in the hot tub. Their room was supposed to be empty.”

Frog’s eyes flash to mine. Yeah, Luna didn’t tell us they were doing a late-night dip in the hot tub. Not a total surprise since Luna feels comfortable being alone with Donnelly. He is on security. He’s just not her bodyguard. It just makes our jobs a little more difficult but not impossible.

Caleb continues, “I was just going to steal something. Like a pair of socks. Maybe one of her stories…like fan fiction or whatever. I could make thousands, man. You can’t blame me.” He sucks in a tighter breath. “I’m being so honest with you. Like we really don’t need to involve the police.” His face cinches in pain as Frog pulls tighter. “Holy fuck. Holy fuck. I’m tapping out. I tap out!”

I’m trying so hard not to fucking smile—and as much as I’d love for her to continue this for another ten minutes, I do worry his elbow might snap. It’d be a mountain of paperwork. Frog might even get put on suspension. We’re not supposed to do physical damage unless we’re directly protecting a client’s safety. Since Luna isn’t even around right now, it’s not a good look. 

“Let him up,” I tell Frog.

She glares. “We sure? I think I could break his arm.” She cinches her grip on him and lifts her hips higher so that his elbow extends even more. 

He cries out.

I rub my lips, hiding a smile. “Let’s practice mercy tonight.”

“My least favorite kind of practice.” Frog releases Caleb, and she quickly gets to her feet, sidling next to me. I give her a quick sweep with my eyes, making sure she’s okay. Her kneecaps are raw and red, and I wonder how hard she slammed him into the ground.

Caleb massages his elbow, still slumped on the concrete.

“Here’s how this is going to go,” I tell him. “I’ve got your ID. We know your name. We know where you live. Since you chose the wrong hotel room, you can thank your idiocy for that one or else the police would be called. But I am sure you will be hearing from Hilary, since we’ll be in touch with the owners of the hotel in the morning to let them know who gave out our private information.”

His chest caves, but he nods. “Sounds fair.”

“No, it sounds like you got a lucky break,” I refute. “But if we see your face or hear your name again, it won’t be so lucky.”

He rises to his feet, his eyes shifting nervously to Frog like he’s worried she might try the submission move again. “C-can I go?”

She crosses her arms over chest. “Unless you want to eat pavement again.”

He shuffles back, then turns around and sprints down the walkway away from us. Frog blows out an aggravated breath and her arms drop to her sides. “We should have called the police just so I could see the look on his face.”

“Almost breaking his arm wasn’t enough?” I pull Caleb’s ID back out and snap a photo of it. “Killer arm bar submission, by the way.”

“Thanks. I’ve been practicing.” Before I can ask with who, she says, “And watching him run off without even a stain on his record feels unjust somehow.”

We start heading back to our room. “We have to file an incident report,” I remind her.

“Yeah, with Triple Shield and Kitsuwon Securities. Not with anyone who will make sure he doesn’t do something like this again.”

Our hotel room door remains open since we both ran out of it. I hold the frame. “So you don’t think you scared the shit out of him tonight?”

“No.” She frowns. “You do?”

I smile. “Frog. He was seconds from pissing his pants. I don’t think anyone has laid him out flat like that. Plus…he saw my gun. I’m sure he’s thinking about worst-case scenarios.”

“Good,” she nods. “Because that’s all I do.” She slips into the room, and I follow quickly, locking the door behind us. Her words are a sledgehammer to my skull.

My concern shifts to her as she grabs her laptop out of her backpack. “You’re cycling through worst-case scenarios right now?” I ask.

She nods stiffly. “Like—what if he had chosen the right door. What if Luna and Donnelly were in the room?” She sinks down on the bed, propping her laptop on her legs. She flips the screen up. “Then what?”

“Then Donnelly would have done what we just did.”

“And Luna would be traumatized, and we would be fired—”

“No one’s firing us for that.”

“He’s a threat we could have missed!”

“We’re not superhuman, Kannika.”

“Maybe we need to be.” Her fingers turn pink from gripping the laptop so tightly. Her chest rises and falls so heavily like she’s on the edge of a cliff. Her silk pajamas are wrinkled from the tussle. Her pupils are dilated. Her dark hair sticks to her temples like she’s sweating. She looks like she just went through the classic “flight or fight” response and chose “fight” without hesitation. I’ve been there. Every guy on the team has been there.

They’d chalk her distress up to the adrenaline of the night. Leftover nerves strung so tight everything feels combustible. But there’s something nagging the back of my head. Telling me this is different. I think her panic goes deeper than just tonight—and I slowly move toward her. Sinking down ever so gently on the mattress beside her.

I put a hand on the top of her computer. “We don’t have to write the report right now,” I say, my voice as gentle as it can be. “We can do it in the morning.”

She lets me close the laptop, but she still death-grips the sides. “I don’t want to be the cleanup crew, Quinn,” she whispers. “Not ever again.”

The cleanup crew.

My chest tightens trying to visualize the worst night of her life through her eyes. What she saw. Luna’s mom on the ground, beaten up. Blood, I’m sure, was everywhere.

I rub a hand through my hair before I do what my body really wants. I wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her into my chest. Into a hug.

She inhales deeply as she slides against me. Her grip loosens on her laptop, and she slips her arms around my waist, returning the embrace. I don’t let go as I tell her, “You and me. We’re not the cleanup crew. I promise you that, Kannika.”

She rests her cheek against my chest. I’m not wearing a shirt. Her soft breath is warm against my skin. I can’t tell if holding her like this stays within our friendship parameters or not—but I’m not eager to rip away from her.

“I want to believe that,” she says softly. “Maybe…maybe we should take night shifts watching their door. What if Hilary told more than just Caleb about Luna’s room?”

It’s a good idea. Even if I hate when Frog offers in the next breath to take first shift.

“I’m going first,” I combat. She opens her mouth to argue, and I add quickly, “It’s not about sleep. You need to ice and bandage your knees. They look like hell.”

She glances down at the reddened, raw skin. “This is nothing. You should see the other guy.” Her lips lift in a soft smile.

I find myself sharing it. “All right. How about I go get ice? You radio Donnelly. And then we decide if they even want to spend the night at this hotel before we go through the ordeal of fighting over shifts.”

“Deal.” She rises off the couch to go to the nightstand where her radio sits.

It takes all my effort to leave her in the room alone. She’s fine, I tell myself. Frog can hold her own, clearly. It’s just…it’s not about how she’s doing physically.

This job will break just about anyone.

I worry it might’ve already broken her.

Thank you so much for reading Frog and Quinn's story! We hope you enjoyed this installment on their journey. We love getting to write the fun, sexy, and emotional moments with these two. Plus, being back on the security team has its own vibes that we constantly crave. And Frog and Quinn really satiate that for us. This is it for the written content this month, but we'll be back next month with more! Stay tuned!!

xoxo Krista & Becca

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