Bodyguard

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Oh, Harry,” she gasped. “Oh, please …”

  She reached between them, unfastening the top button of his jeans, unzipping him before he could stop her.

  Dear Christ, they were in the parking lot!

  But then she touched him. Polite, refined, cool-as-ice Alessandra Lamont had her hand down his pants, fingers wrapped around him in the parking lot of a cheap bar. Someone wake him—he had to be dreaming.

  But then as she stroked him, caressed him, he knew this was no dream.

  It was, perhaps, the best reality he’d ever experienced.

  She was unabashedly direct about just what she wanted, completely oblivious to the rest of the world.

  When she released him, it was only to unfasten her own pants, and Harry pulled back slightly, catching her wrists in his hands. He was breathing hard, and he rested his forehead against hers. Jesus. Jesus.

  “Harry,” Alessandra whispered. “Can we go to our room? Because I’m dying to …” She pressed herself more tightly to him. “You know …”

  Harry laughed. And swung her up into his arms.

  Fourteen

  ALESSANDRA CLOSED THE door by leaning on it, already tugging at Harry’s shirt, well aware he was working hard to rid her of her own, which was nearly impossible to do while they kissed.

  But she couldn’t stop kissing him. She didn’t want to stop kissing him.

  He wanted her. Now.

  She felt like laughing and crying, but she settled for kissing him.

  Beer had never tasted so good as it did on Harry’s lips.

  He found the front clasp of her bra, unfastening it and groaning softly as he covered her with his hands. He touched her with just the right combination of gentle roughness, breaking free from their kiss to lean down and draw her hungrily into his mouth.

  Her jeans were so loose they fell right off, but Harry’s stuck to his thighs. It didn’t matter. She pushed down the silk of his shorts even as she slipped off her own panties. And then she was touching him again.

  The sensation of his lips and tongue drawing hard on her breast was exquisite, but it wasn’t enough.

  His hands skimmed her body, slightly rough against her skin, touching her everywhere except where she wanted to be touched, driving her completely insane.

  She moved his hand directly between her thighs, and he lifted his head to look up at her.

  She’d spent quite a bit of time looking into Harry’s eyes over the past few days. Despite their rocky start, she knew him well, perhaps better than anyone else on earth. But she’d never seen anything remotely like the heat she now saw in his eyes. The intensity made him look a little scary, made him seem a little like a stranger. And for the first time since she’d started kissing him in the parking lot, Alessandra felt a flash of trepidation.

  But then he smiled, and he was Harry again. He touched her, softly at first, then harder, deeper, stroking her with the very tip of his finger, his smile fading as he watched her eyes, as he looked down at her, naked, in his arms.

  Again, his touch felt deliriously good, but it still wasn’t what she wanted. She shifted her hips, driving him more completely inside of her as she tugged again at his pants.

  “Please, Harry. Can we …?”

  “Oh, yeah. I have condoms in my backpack.” He released her, struggling for a moment with his jeans around his ankles, hopping toward the bed and falling back onto it in an attempt to kick his legs free.

  But Alessandra was done waiting. As Harry sat up to push his boxers and jeans off his feet, she straddled him, kissing him hard on the mouth. She couldn’t get enough of his kisses. But she didn’t want to think what that might mean.

  He put his arms around her—it didn’t seem possible that arms that big, with muscles that were so clearly defined, could hold her without hurting her. But hurting her was so not what he was doing.

  She could feel him hard between them as she kissed him. His mouth was so soft as he kissed her lips, her neck, her breasts.

  It only took the smallest adjustment of her body, and she pushed herself down to surround him completely, to fill herself with him. This was what she’d wanted.

  “Whoa,” Harry said. “Whoa, Allie, condom!”

  Now that she was here, she wasn’t going to stop. “We don’t need a condom. I can’t get pregnant, remember?” She began to move on top of him, pushing him deeply inside of her.

  “Oh, God,” he said, running his hands down her back, moving with her. “Safe sex. This is about safe sex. I need to get a condom.”

  “I was married for seven years.” If he was trying at all to stop her, it wasn’t going to be by moving that way. It felt so good, so right. “And you haven’t had sex since 1996.”

  “Yeah, but between 1995 and 1996, I have absolutely no idea who my wife was sleeping with.” He filled his hands with her breasts. “I mean, aside from me. And there was something of a list.”

  Oh, Lord. “She must have been a complete fool.”

  “I could say that about Griffin. I think I probably have said that about Griffin. Except I think I used the word asshole.” He smiled crookedly. “Sonya and Griffin. What a pair of losers. What are we doing talking about them, anyway? You know, I think we owe it to them both to have truly incomparable sex tonight, just to prove what losers they were.”

  Alessandra pressed his shoulders down so he was lying back on the bed, pushing him impossibly, amazingly deeper inside her. She heard herself moan.

  “Oh, yeah,” he murmured. “Oh, God, do that again.”

  She did. “That?”

  “Oh, yeah. That definitely falls under the heading of incomparable. Although you better do it another twenty or say, fifty times, just to make sure.”

  Alessandra laughed. “Do you always talk the entire time you make love?”

  “I promise you, if you let me get that condom, I’ll use my mouth for far better things.”

  She lifted herself completely off him. “Go, but hurry.”

  Harry nearly vaulted across the room, fumbling and spilling everything out of his backpack in his haste.

  As he tore open the foil packet and covered himself, Alessandra froze, catching sight of herself in the mirror.

  Her hair. She’d forgotten about her awful hair. It hung limply around her unadorned face, making her look about as appealing as a wet cocker spaniel. And, Lord, she should have at least gone into the bathroom and put on a little makeup. She looked terrible.

  She stood up, uncertain what to do. There was nothing wrong with her making herself look nice in the privacy of their room, was there? But the idea of spending fifteen minutes or more—she looked again at her hair, definitely more—in the bathroom right now was not a particularly good one. Still, she wasn’t the one who had to look at her. Harry was.

  But he was already coming back to her, grinning in that way that only Harry could grin. He grabbed her around the waist, throwing them both down on the bed. “My turn to be on top.”

  “Get the light,” Alessandra said.

  He was kissing her breasts, touching her with his tongue in a way that took her breath away. “What?”

  She wiggled free. “I’ll get it.” The switch was by the door. She flipped it, and the room became pitch-black. The curtains completely blocked out any light from the parking lot.

  “Isn’t it a little late to suddenly be shy?” Harry’s voice surrounded her in the darkness.

  She stood by the door. “I’m just … I just …”

  He let out a very loud, very disparaging breath of air. “Yeah, I know what ‘you just.’ ” He turned on the light by the bed. “What is it with you? You look at yourself in the mirror, and I don’t have a clue who you see looking back at you. It sure as hell isn’t the woman I see.”

  “I look in the mirror, and the person I see is so …” She shook her head. “The way I look, I can’t believe anyone would want me. Not the way you seem to want me.”

  “Seem to?” Harry looked down at himself. “This is o
nly a seem to? You better come over here and check this out, because when it comes to wanting you, this rates a definitely.”

  Alessandra laughed softly in disbelief. “See, I just … I know you’re nice, so—”

  “Yeah, I’m always getting erections just to be nice. Come over here, and I’ll be even nicer.” Harry held out his hand. “Come on.”

  She went to him. “May we turn off the light?”

  “No! Are you nuts?” It wasn’t the answer she’d been expecting. Harry held tightly to her hand so she wouldn’t pull away. “I want to look at you,” he explained. “I love looking at you anyway, and I’ve just discovered that looking at you while you’re naked is a special treat.”

  He drew her hand to his mouth and kissed it, turned it over and kissed her palm, her wrist, her arm. “A couple things to get straight here,” he continued, between kissing the inside of her elbow, her arm, her shoulder. “I love your haircut because it’s helping to hide you from Trotta. And whether you think so or not, I think you’re even more beautiful without your makeup on. So, no, we may not turn off the light. I want to be able to watch your face while I make you come.”

  He’d reached her neck, and as she lifted her chin to give him better access, he knew he’d won. But sweet Jesus, if this woman thought she shouldn’t make love in the light because she didn’t look good, she was nuts.

  He kissed her lips as sweetly and gently as he possibly could, slowly pulling her back with him onto the bed.

  He ached to be inside of her again, but he did no more than kiss her and run his hands lightly across her beautiful body. The fact that she’d wanted him so badly before, and had been so bold about it, had been the most incredible turn-on. He wanted to get back to that place.

  It didn’t take long for her to completely reignite. She deepened their kiss. She pulled him close, cradling him between her legs. She drew his head to her breast, arching her body up to him in a silent plea for more when he touched her lightly with his tongue.

  She reached between them then, taking him in her hand, guiding him to her.

  “Allie, look at me,” he whispered, and she opened her eyes.

  He slowly buried himself in her, slowly pushed himself home as he looked down into her eyes.

  The soft noise she made was sexy as hell, her voice thick with pleasure as she sighed his name.

  Harry couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so alive.

  Her smile was tremulous, but it was a smile. As she reached up to touch his face, her eyes shone with tears. Of course, she fought them, blinking them back. By now, he would’ve expected no less than a good fight from Allie.

  She was so amazing. Such a fascinating blend of hard and soft, of strength and sweetness. And insecurity. She wasn’t perfect—it was ironic, really. Her relentless belief that she was imperfect was her biggest imperfection.

  As he gazed down at her, his chest felt uncomfortably tight, but it was from more than the dull ache of his broken rib.

  He would do anything for her, anything to keep her safe.

  Even die.

  Still watching her eyes, he began to move, slowly at first, then faster, taking his cues from what she wanted.

  She liked sex hard and fast.

  That was good, because he liked it like that, too.

  It was bad, because it didn’t take him long before he was clinging rather desperately by his fingernails to the edge of the orgasm cliff.

  She kissed him hard, pulling his mouth down to hers, attempting to enter him as completely as he entered her. It was a kiss of complete abandon, of complete surrender, of total passion. As she kissed him, he tried to fight his need for release, tried to cling tenaciously to that edge, to give her everything she wanted and more. He wanted to give Allie the most incredible sexual experience of her life, to watch her shatter beneath him, but when she kissed him like that, with her heart in her eyes, with complete passion in her soul, he was toast.

  His release crashed on top of him like a tidal wave, lifting him up and knocking the breath clear out of his lungs with its force.

  He felt her follow almost immediately, felt her grip him more tightly, heard her cry out his name.

  He was too blown away to feel any kind of relief over the fact that he hadn’t completely left her in the dust. He couldn’t speak or even think coherently.

  But slowly the roar around him subsided, and slowly he became aware that he was completely crushing Alessandra.

  She didn’t seem to mind.

  As he lifted his head, she smiled at him.

  The muscles in his face were among the few Harry still had control over, and he smiled, too. He would have rolled off her, but she held on to him, lifting her head to kiss him lightly on the lips.

  And he knew. Right at that moment. Right when her lips brushed his, he realized he was in serious, serious trouble. Whatever had just happened here had been way, way more meaningful than the casual, everyday scenario in which the vacationing FBI agent did the nasty thing with the former chief eyewitness, simply to relieve boredom.

  “Congratulations,” Allie said, kissing him again.

  “What? Why?”

  She smiled up at him again, touching the side of his face. “I don’t know—it just seemed like the right thing to say after three years of celibacy. Too bad we don’t have a bottle of champagne to open.” Her smile turned warmer. “I would make a toast. Something like ‘Here’s to it not taking another three years before you get some again.’ ”

  Harry laughed as he rolled off her and pulled her into his arms.

  “Just in case it’s not blatantly obvious,” Alessandra said as she snuggled against him, sighing as he ran his fingers up and down the smoothness of her bare back, “I’m in favor of you not waiting another three years.”

  Back away. Back away. Distant alarm bells started sounding in Harry’s head. She was getting too close. She was assuming this was the beginning of an ongoing relationship. And God knows that would only be trouble.

  She lifted her head and gave him another of her killer smiles. “In fact, I’m in favor of not even waiting three hours.”

  Harry kissed her. What was he supposed to do? After she said something like that, something that made his hair stand on end with anticipation? Was he really supposed to not kiss her?

  “You know what’s funny?” she asked, propping her head up on one elbow to look at him.

  He shook his head, losing himself in the calm blue ocean of her eyes.

  “Since this mess started, I’ve resigned myself to never having as good a life as I had before—you know, huge house, three cars, lots of money. I thought I was going to have to work hard to keep myself from making comparisons and always having things come up short.” She touched the side of his face. “But all of a sudden, I’m in the best place I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

  Her words should have made him leap up and out of that bed and start running for the mountains. Those bells in his head should have been shaking his brains loose with the noise of their alarm. Instead they were nearly drowned out by the sound of his heartbeat, by the roar of the blood rushing through his body. And instead of wanting to run away, he wanted to kiss her again.

  So he did.

  He was assuredly in big trouble, but trouble had never tasted quite so sweet.

  “He doesn’t know where his partner is.” Kim closed her eyes, trying to keep her voice even, almost matter-of-fact as she stood in the cool night air at the pay phone four blocks from George’s apartment. “If you want, I’ll stay close to him, but I think—”

  “I’m not paying you to think.” Michael Trotta’s normally smooth voice was tight. “Just stick like glue to Faulkner. Become permanently joined at the hips. Use that vacuum cleaner you’ve got for a mouth on him, day and night, if you have to. Sooner or later, he’s going to find out where O’Dell has Alessandra hidden, and I want you to be on top of him when he does.”

  With a click, Michael hung up the phone.

 
; Kim was sweating. She’d soaked the underarms of her favorite silk blouse just from talking on the phone with him. She stood for a long moment, the phone still tucked against her ear, regaining her equilibrium.

  Who was this woman that Michael was looking for? And why on earth was he so bound and determined to find her?

  Kim had seen her photo in a file on George’s desk. Alessandra Lamont was one of those beautiful, icy, frigid blondes. She was the type of woman Michael would really enjoy being seen with, never mind that she was someone else’s wife. Never mind that she probably gave head with all the enthusiasm of a dead hamster.

  Her husband had swiped a million dollars out from under Trotta’s nose. Had he done that because he knew his wife was doing the mob boss? Was that what this was about? Jealousy and revenge?

  Michael had had the husband killed, Kim had no doubt about that. Had that hit really been about the money, or had Michael simply grabbed an opportunity to have the blonde all for himself?

  But now this Alessandra had run off with George’s partner, perhaps triggering yet another round of jealousy and revenge.

  Kim knew Michael well enough to know that running away was never an option. No one could ever run far enough. No one could hide forever.

  Kim finally hung up the phone, fixing her hair as she headed back toward George’s apartment. She had to remember to stop at the market and pick up some Häagen-Dazs ice cream. That was the excuse she’d given George for going out in the first place in the middle of the night. It would look very strange if she returned without it.

  Her life was a mess, no question about it. She often wished she could be someone else, just magically take on their existence, their life. But today she was very glad she was Kim Monahan and not Alessandra Lamont.

  Whoever she had been to Michael, wherever she was hiding, whatever the reason he wanted to find her, Alessandra Lamont was as good as dead.