Breaking the kiss, forming it again, over and over, I led him to the bed. I had been too passive last night, I decided. He deserved the full-body treatment he’d given me so expertly. Spinning, I pushed him down on the bed, and he barked a laugh of surprise.
“Woman on a mission,” he said with a grin.
“You know it, baby,” I grinned back as I unfastened his pants.
He reached for my shirt, but I batted him away.
“Lie still. It’s my turn to love on you.”
A small, unmistakably carnal sound bubbled from his throat as I stripped his clothes away. Straddling him, pressing his hard heat into the soft crease in my panties, I raked my nails over him from ears to navel, finding the spots that made him twitch and moan. Lips followed fingers, raising goosebumps of pleasure over his skin. His tattoos called to me, those beautiful colors and patterns that had caught my eye from the first moment I met him.
One by one, I kissed them all. The dragon. The flower made of skulls. The crystal drops of blood, and the severed head that birthed them. So macabre. So lively. So many stories, and I wanted them all. For now, I would satisfy myself with their colors and forms. His wrists were sensitive, I found as I scraped my teeth over them. He pulsed beneath me, sighing heavily as his eyes fluttered closed.
Fingers were next. I sucked one into my mouth, swirling my tongue around the tip, mimicking what I would do to him once I made it down there. He moaned and arched against me, nearly piercing my cotton barrier with his erect cock.
Moaning, I ground against him, teasing him and myself all at once. My need moistened my panties, slicking the barrier, letting me slide over him with ease. His breath caught in his throat and his head fell back as he clamped his hands onto my hips, moving me over him in earnest.
“Slow down,” I chuckled lightly, dropping my head to his chest to run my lips over every bulge and crease of muscle. “I’m not there yet.”
“Now who’s being cruel?” he groaned.
I laughed in delight, feeling the littlest bit accomplished. If I could get him aching for it the way he had me, I would feel like I had won.
I flicked my tongue over his abdomen, reveling in the way his heavy breaths pressed his skin against my mouth. The raw scent of testosterone spiked the air, driving me lower, down that deep V-shape between his hips. A glittering drop bejeweled the throbbing head, enticing and beautiful.
My tongue tingling in anticipation, I tasted him. Pure masculinity, pure Tyler. He groaned, thrust his hips up, and I pulled away. He made a sound that was almost a whimper, and I chuckled.
“Just lie back and enjoy it,” I whispered.
Nails trailing up his thighs, I kissed the length of him softly, making him jump and twitch with every touch. His smooth balls felt like velvet in my mouth, and I juggled them on my tongue as I stroked him lightly with my hand.
His low, growling noises seared a line of need from my lips to my groin, pooling liquid between my hips. I wanted him desperately, but I was determined to take my time. As I pulled him into my mouth, he gasped audibly, grabbing a fistful of my hair.
I groaned with pleasure, loving the feeling of being under his control. He moved my head as he thrust into my mouth, cursing breathlessly, growling wordlessly. I fondled him lazily as I let him slide over my tongue, filling my mouth with his taste.
Scraping my nails over his ass, I drew him in as deep as he would go, using my tongue on his shaft until his growls became melodic shouts, until his pulses pressed against my cheeks, until the heat of his ecstasy ignited my throat.
He tightened in my hand, his thighs quivered, and he shouted a curse at the sky. The force of his orgasm nearly choked me as he swelled in my mouth, emptying his seed down my throat. I swallowed as if I was dying of thirst, high on his musk, aching for his touch. I let him slip from between my lips with a sigh, and gazed up at him.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, shoving his hands through his hair. “How did you get so good at that?”
“Natural talent,” I said wryly.
He laughed breathlessly, then reached down to pull me up beside him. “I’ll accept that,” he murmured, nuzzling my neck.
His hands wandered over my back, settling on my ass. He cupped it, fondling it as he kissed my throat, scraping his teeth across my skin just enough to make me shudder. One hand wandered under my shirt as the other slipped into my panties, gently fingering my folds, sending tingles flying all over my body.
As I gasped and moved against him, he took my mouth, and I wondered only momentarily if he could taste himself on my tongue. The mingling sensations made me dizzy, and I clung to him, falling back on the bed as he rolled on top of me.
He ripped my shirt off and threw it, covering the laptop. His eyes drank me in, darkening as they drifted over my breasts, glittering as they traced my belly, heating as they landed on my panties. Almost fascinated, he outlined the wet spot with his fingers, rubbing the fabric against my swollen sex. A moan broke from me as he tantalized me with his gentle touch, slowly drawing me nearer to nirvana.
Cupping me in his hand, he lay beside me, kissing my mouth, my neck, my breasts. Licks of pleasure danced across my body like flames, and he pressed the heel of his hand against my aching clit, settling his fingers in my crease.
I rocked against him, each breath becoming a sob as ecstasy ripped through me, lightning through the clouds of my being. The storm built between my hips, lighting a fire under his hand. The howling wind was my own voice, and as the clouds burst, I thought I would fly to pieces from the force of it.
I melted into a puddle with a sigh, pulling him to me to drink from his mouth. He gave tenderly, stroking every sensitive place with his tongue as he hooked his finger over my waistband, freeing me from the last of my clothes.
“You’re intoxicating,” he murmured in my ear as he settled between my hips.
I shuddered with pleasure, glowing with the words I so needed to hear, and slid my hips against him, drawing him inside of me. He groaned, hiding his face in the curve of my neck, curling his body around me as he filled me.
The pain which had laced the pleasure the night before was gone, my body adjusting to his length, his girth, his power. Arching my back, pressing my heels into the bed, I met each of his thrusts with one of my own until we were moving in perfect unison, our slick bodies entwined on the sun-kissed bed.
The storm moved into his eyes. I held his head in my hands, losing myself in the depths of it, feeling my own pleasure build as the intensity grew in those sparkling green eyes.
He gasped, my breath quickened, and the lighting skittered between us, linking our bodies. He dropped his forehead against mine, plunging into an animal rhythm, forcing tiny screams from my throat, swallowing them with his kiss.
Thunder rolled from the base of my skull, down my spine, reflected in the tension of his body. In a delirious, earth-moving crescendo, his pleasure crashed into mine, exploding in a torrent of ecstasy.
As he collapsed against me, a stray thought flitted through my head. I might be closer to that nice, normal boyfriend than I thought.
Chapter 16
Tyler
I held her on my chest as our heartbeats slowly returned to normal. Her skin glistened with the dew of exertion. Her eyes were warm and misty in the afterglow. She had never looked so beautiful to me.
“I’m so glad you broke into my house,” she sighed.
I laughed, surprised. “That’s a strange moment to focus on right now.”
“I mean it,” she said with a lazy little smile. “Doing what I do…it’s lonely. I feel so isolated sometimes. All the time, really. Like I don’t fit with people in the business, but I don’t fit with people outside of it either. Everybody has an agenda. It’s so hard to find people who like me anymore. Just for me, you know? I think…no, I know…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“What do you know?” I asked gently, tipping her chin up so her eyes met mine.
“This is the first time I fe
lt like the affection was real since my first album broke,” she said, sadness tinting her sated voice. “Other guys…they just want to exploit me. My money, my fame…” She dropped her head against my chest with a happy sigh. “You don’t seem interested in any of that.”
Guilt twisted my gut. I took a few deep breaths, and she glanced up at me with amusement twinkling in her eyes.
“Falling asleep on me?” she asked.
“Nope, you’re falling asleep on me,” I teased, pulling her back down.
My eyes wandered to the crumpled shirt which hid the evidence of my sins. I couldn’t do it. Maybe I could have gone through with it if she was a Betty, but she wasn’t. Paisley was something else, something special and unique.
I’ll delete it all, I told myself. I can send Jeanne money from my paycheck. It’s not like I’m using it. Hang Dan, and hang his contact.
Relief from the weight of my guilt left me invigorated, and I pulled her up to kiss her scarlet lips.
My hands slid over her breasts of their own accord, and she moaned into my mouth. I was ready for her again, and she seemed to be insatiable. I made it a personal goal to give to her until she simply couldn’t take any more. As she straddled my lap and slid down onto me, I met her indigo eyes.
“You’re a pretty cool chick, Paisley.”
She laughed and tossed her head back like a mane, then rode me like a cowgirl.
Chapter 17
Tyler
“What’s your favorite restaurant in Memphis?” Paisley asked me one afternoon as I was watching her coax the keys into a tune.
“Hm, tough call,” I said, buying time. Especially since I’d mostly eaten out of their dumpsters.
That memory bled into another. A rainy night, when my skinny self had been hunkered under the awning of a little mom-and-pop cafe on the outskirts of downtown. One of the waitresses—the owner’s daughter, if I remembered correctly—brought me in and dried me out in front of the oven and fed me a pot pie. Maybe it was because I hadn’t eaten in three days, but it was the best pot pie I’d ever eaten.
“Wild Rose Cafe,” I said, smiling as the name revealed itself to me. “Best pot pies in Memphis.”
“Let’s go there tonight,” she said with a smile. “I want to experience the things you like.”
“I like the way you put that. All right, missy, what’s your favorite eatery around here?”
“Rêve de Jardin,” she said with a wistful sigh. “It’s absolutely decadent.”
“Will I be able to pronounce anything on the menu?” I asked wryly.
She laughed at me, the sound echoing off of the amphitheater curves of the piano room. “If you can’t, I can translate,” she told me.
“You speak French?”
“I speak French menu,” she giggled.
I relaxed, kicking my feet up on the ottoman. I was already mildly intimidated by her success; if she spoke multiple languages on top of it, I would have to start gaining some serious skills to keep up.
I might anyway, I decided. At some point, she was bound to realize that I wasn’t exactly pop-star boyfriend material. Not that I was counting on being her boyfriend or anything, but… I shook the dead-end thoughts away.
I hadn’t anticipated catching feelings for Paisley, and it was becoming more difficult to navigate them in the wake of my lies. For the moment, I was biding my time. If it wasn’t going anywhere, then hey, we had a good fling. No harm, no foul. Otherwise, I’d cross that bridge when I got to it. Being her bodyguard-with-benefits was good enough for me for now.
She always seemed to know how to dress for the occasion. Simple but nice for the night out at Wild Rose, she looked every bit the wholesome country girl. I searched the faces for the kind waitress from my adolescence, but I couldn’t find her. Years had a way of changing people’s faces, not to mention their jobs.
I was as relieved as I was disappointed. I had wanted to leave her an excessive tip to thank her for a past kindness she had probably forgotten; but on the chance that she hadn’t forgotten, and on the even slimmer chance that she recognized me, I wasn’t ready to explain that period of my life to Paisley. Not yet, anyway.
“I like the atmosphere here,” Paisley sighed, gazing around at the raw pink brick dotted with dried flowers pressed into glass frames. “It feels like somebody’s kitchen, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it does. It’s warm.”
She smiled at me over the table and studied the menu. After we’d ordered and been served, she took a bite.
“Oh, wow,” she said, her eyes widening. “This is the best pot pie I’ve ever had!”
Relieved, I shoveled a forkful of my own. It was as good as I’d remembered, maybe better. Guess it wasn’t starvation talking after all.
“How did you find this place?” she asked eagerly.
“Ah… Just wandering around one night, kind of fell into it,” I said dismissively.
“I see,” she said, giving me a knowing look. “One of those drunken finds, right? That’s how I found this donut place in LA. They have the craziest toppings—corn chips and avocado and bacon… It’s insane, but I swear they are the best flippin’ donuts I’ve ever had in my life.”
I smiled at her, deciding not to correct her. Better she think I was drunk some random night than the reality, right?
“How long did you live in LA?” I asked her.
“Oh, gosh… I guess from nineteen to last month. About five years.” She wrinkled her nose slightly.
“So, I’m guessing you absolutely loved every second of it?” I teased.
“Good lord, no!” She laughed. “I hated it. The people, the crazy streets, all of that desperate energy… Let me tell you, in LA, you’re either somebody or you’re nobody, and if you’re somebody then you’re always hustling to stay somebody, and if you’re nobody you’re desperately trying to be somebody, and if any of that desperation ever flags even a little bit, you’re nobody on the street. I saw some people…” She shook her head, closing her eyes as if to block out the memory.
“I saw some people who I recognized from movies and music when I was a kid. B-listers, you know. Some A-listers, mostly grown-up child stars. But they looked like hell. I ran into one guy… I don’t want to tell you who, it would make you sad…but I took a wrong turn one night, and ran into this guy drinking with a bunch of homeless guys around an oil drum fire under a bridge. This guy, he’s a star. A classic. And he’s hanging out with torn-up clothes drinking cheap booze around an oil drum.”
She shuddered, and I touched her hand. “Maybe it’s a good thing you got out of there when you did,” I suggested.
“I’m not out,” she laughed. “It’s harder on actors, I think. Music… You can keep making music, even if you age out of a particular demographic or put on a bunch of weight or get into a terrible disfiguring accident. I mean, actors can too. Some re-typecast as character actors, some go to voice acting, but some… Some just never make it again, and when that happens, the town chews them up and spits them out.”
There was a deep sadness in her eyes that I desperately wanted to push away. There was nothing I could say that would help, though, not if I was going to shield her from my past. I couldn’t assure her that people could crawl up out of the gutter if they were equal parts tenacious and lucky, because my only proof was me. I couldn’t tell her that those oil drums were actually pretty warm, especially if you built a blanket fort around them.
At first, I didn’t want to tell her because my story didn’t cleave perfectly to the whole bodyguard thing. But now, looking at the deep well of compassion in her eyes, I didn’t want to tell her because I just didn’t want to break her heart. How anyone could care so much about someone they never really met was a stretch for my imagination. She was good at expanding my imagination.
“So, tell me about your work,” she said, changing the subject. “Were you ever a bodyguard for a celebrity before me?”
“No,” I said, my comfort around her loosening my tongue b
efore I could stop it. “I mean, I did plenty of work for a lot of people, you’re just the first household name I ever worked for.”
“Ooh, I feel special,” she said, flirting with her eyes. “Did you ever get into a fight with anybody before the creepy guy the other night?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said with more enthusiasm than I should have. “I mean, you try to avoid it, but in certain situations,” like the ring, “you just can’t get around it.
“There was this one… Okay, this guy was twice my size, right, a pro fighter. He’s lookin’ at me like I’m an easy target, right, and he just comes in like a freight train, trying to run me down. So I dodge, and jab, and I catch him in the gut, but he’s solid—he’s like cement, right—and he spins and I can see his fist coming at my face.”
Her eyes lit up, and she leaned across the table to listen. Her silent encouragement egged me on.
“Now I know, if I let that hammer come down on me, it’s over. Done. I ain’t getting up from that. So I barely duck in time, but he’s got a lot of speed behind that hunk of meat, so I just kept it going. I pulled on his wrist, spun around behind him, and kicked him in the ribs. He goes down like a freaking giant, just smashing the hell out of the can…er, the trash cans that were right there. Once he’s down, I just jump on him and start pummeling him, as fast as I could, like I showed you, just beating the hell out of his ribs.”
She gasped, covering her mouth, her eyes wide with delighted shock. I was eating up the attention, and it was making me sloppy.
“So I’ve got him down and the crowd’s going wild…”
“Hold on, crowd?”
“Oh, right, um… He attacked the guy I was watching outside a movie theater—bunch of people there, all ready for entertainment. So anyway, I’m whaling on him, then he stands up. Just freaking stands up.”
Protect Me - A Steamy Bodyguard Romance (You Can't Resist a Bad Boy Book 5) Page 9
