For a moment, Aslin didn’t move, studying her from his crouch between her thighs with an unwavering inspection. To Rowan, it felt like he was seeking something deep within her soul. And then, before she could confess everything—how angry she was at feeling so weak, how confused she was by Tilly’s words—he dipped his head and brushed his lips over hers in a kiss so light she barely experienced its physical touch.
But her heart, already beating too fast, leapt into a rapid pace and her breath caught in her throat.
She watched him rise to his feet and hold out his hand to her. Just one. “C’mon,” he murmured. “Let’s go pretend we’re normal people for a while.”
“As opposed to what?”
He grinned. “As opposed to the number-two trending topic on Perez Hilton’s blog. Have you seen the images of us making out on my bike posted there?”
She laughed and allowed him to help her to her feet. She even let him see the slight wince that escaped her when her ribs protested at her shift in position. With another kiss even more tender than the first, he crossed to the door, his fingers threaded through hers.
He stopped when she stiffened the second his hand closed over the doorknob.
Not again. Not again.
Aslin turned to her, slowly, his fingers never releasing hers. “What’s wrong?”
She drew a deep breath, fighting to keep her heart under control. “I…” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say she was apprehensive.
Scared.
Studying her for a silent minute, his body as still as hers, he finally released his grip on the doorknob and turned to face her fully. “Perhaps room service is a better idea.”
Prickling anger sliced through her. Anger at her woeful state. Anger at the unknown person who’d made her this way. Anger at her inability to deal with it. She drove her nails into her palms and ground her teeth. “You think I’m scared? That I can’t walk through the door?”
Aslin shook his head, closing the small distance between them with a single step before framing her jaw with his hands. “I think you’ve forgotten what I once was. A soldier. I’ve been in more than one explosion, Hemsworth. I was in a Pinzgauer in Afghanistan that hit a mine and flipped three times, almost killing us all in the process. I know about PTS. It took me for sodding ever to climb back into a truck after that without breaking out in a sweat and having heart palpitations. But I did. And I know you will open a door. You’re too strong, too stubborn not to.” He stroked his thumb over her bottom lip, his gaze holding hers. “But until you’re ready, I’m not remotely interested in what’s on the other side of that door.”
A choking lump filled Rowan’s throat and she sucked in a soft breath, her chest aching. “I feel so…so…”
“Shhh,” he whispered, a gentle smile playing with the corner of his mouth. “It’s not important right now.”
Rowan frowned, wishing to fuck she could stop shaking. Oh God, where did this wonderful man come from? And how was she so lucky he fell in love with her? “What is important?”
His smile grew into a slow grin and he lowered his head closer to hers. “Making love to you. Stripping you out of these sexy-arse shorts and boots and making love to you. Not doors and whether they are opened or not. Doors and what’s on the other side have no bearing on what really matters—us. Understand?”
He kissed her before she could respond. A little harder this time, but not much.
Not enough for Rowan. She slid her palms up his chest, tangled her fingers in his hair and parted her lips to his mouth, deepening the kiss.
A low growl rumbled in Aslin’s chest. He stole his hands around her waist, bunching the material of her shirt at the small of her back. He swiped his tongue over hers, once, twice, and then he pulled away and stared down into her upturned face, his breath shaky. “Gentle, love. You’ll hurt your—”
“Fuck gentle.” She fisted her hands tighter in his hair and pressed her hips to his. “I’m done with gentle. I want you inside me. And I don’t want you to hold back. Understand, soldier boy?”
Aslin claimed her lips again, and this time there was nothing tender about the kiss. He feasted on her mouth, his tongue wild as it mated with hers. She groaned, the pleasure of his touch already a salve to the minute pain in her lip. She dragged her hands down over his shoulders, across the broad expanse of his chest. His pec muscles coiled beneath her palms, a reflex action that flooded her pussy with eager moisture. She dragged her thumbs over his nipples, loving the way he groaned in response. He swirled his tongue over hers, smoothed his hands down to her butt. With steady pressure, he began walking, guiding her backward as he continued to worship her lips with his kiss.
Four steps later, Rowan’s calves bumped the edge of bed.
She knew what Aslin was going to do without needing to ask. His lips moved from hers, trailing a path of wicked kisses down her throat as he slowly lowered her back to the mattress. A small part of her wanted to demand he throw her on the bed, the way he would if she wasn’t still recovering, another more rational part loved that he didn’t. He was giving her what she wanted and still caring for her. There was nothing better, more perfect than that.
As soon as her back rested on the bed, he captured her breasts with his mouth and hands. He suckled on one erect nipple through the cotton of her shirt as his fingers pinched and rolled the other. She moaned, her eyes fluttering closed at the pleasure radiating through her.
Overwhelming her.
“More, Aslin,” she murmured. “I need more.”
He complied. Before the plea finished falling from her lips, he’d nudged the hemline of her shirt high with a firm hand, his kiss exploring the flat plane of her belly he’d revealed. She hitched in a breath and pushed her hips upward.
A slight tug on her fly told her he’d done what she ached for him to do. As did the cool air flowing over her newly exposed pussy mound. He covered the curve of her mons with a rain of tiny kisses, working her hotpants over her hips with his hands.
“M-my boots,” she whispered, shifting enough on the mattress to aid his removal of her shorts and thong.
“Can stay on,” he rumbled back, flicking his tongue over the sensitive area of flesh where her thigh became her groin. “They’re too fucking sexy to take off.”
She laughed at his growled statement. And then whimpered when his tongue dipped into her folds to lap at her clit.
He made love to her sex with his mouth, licking and nipping at her clit, delving into her slit over and over again. Three times, the surging heat of an orgasm approached her. Every time, Aslin pulled away, returning to her swollen breasts and straining nipples until she was begging him to make her come.
Three times.
Three times, he explored her sex with such fierce, thorough purpose until she was on the brink of a detonation and yet each time he denied her that release.
When he rose to his feet, she glared up at him, her heart an insane hammer in her chest, her pussy a constricting world of need. “What are you—”
Her protest died as he stripped his clothes from his body without a word.
Oh boy.
She’d never seen him so erect, so engorged. His cock jutted upright from his dark pubic hair, its thick venous length a sublime arc crowned with a bulbous head of the deepest blood-red purple. Tiny beads of moisture anointed the tip. Rowan’s mouth grew wet with saliva at the sight even as her pussy flooded with liquid warmth.
“I know you don’t want me to be careful, love.” Aslin’s husky rumble drew her gaze to his face and she swallowed at the raw desire in his eyes. “And I know you’re tough, the toughest person I’ve ever known, but I won’t be able to live with myself if I hurt you.” He snared his jeans from the ground, removed his wallet from a pocket and withdrew a condom. “So I’m going to do this my way.”
“Aslin…” she began, her pulse pounding.
“My way,” he repeated, sliding the latex sheath over his erection before slipping a hand beneath her right le
g as he stepped back between her thighs.
He bent over her, drawing her right leg up to hook her knee over the crook of his elbow, his forearm protecting her ribs from her thigh. He placed his other elbow on the bed beside her, the action allowing his cock to nudge her parted folds. She drew in a swift breath, the pressure on her clit almost too much to survive. Her body was on fire. So attuned to his. So aware of the moment about to—
With one slow, fluid thrust, Aslin sank into her.
She cried out, arching into his deep penetration, scraping her nails at the muscled perfection of his shoulders.
“Fuck, I can’t…” His breath was ragged. “You feel so fucking good, love. So fucking…”
He slowly withdrew, to the distended rim of his cock’s head, and then filled her once more, stretching her pussy lips to their limit, protecting her rib with his position and strength.
She cried out again. Louder this time, the orgasm he’d denied her three times rushing at her. Mounting pressure sent shards of exquisite tension up her spine, into the pit of her belly. Building heat that squeezed her anus tight and filled her aching breasts with swollen want.
And all the time, Aslin took her body. Thrust in and out, his pace slowly increasing, his strokes sinking deeper and deeper, his stare melding with hers.
She felt no pain in her wounded body. Only pleasure. Absolute pleasure.
Elemental and consuming and unspoiled by pain.
She raked her nails over his flesh and whispered his name and gazed into his eyes, reveling in the fire in their dark depths. Fire for her. Love for her.
Fathomless desire and need and love.
He was hers and she was his, and nothing in the world would change that.
When her orgasm finally smashed into her, when her body was undone by sheer paroxysms of pleasure, Aslin came as well. Silent. Powerful.
His seed erupted from his cock in wild spasms, filling the condom. She could feel it surging through his length as it left him. The sensation was sublime, amazing, and she came again. And again. Three times.
Three times.
And then there was a fourth, so powerful that swirls of coloured lights filled her vision, and all she could do was cling to the man she loved and call his name forever.
Chapter Sixteen
“The power of the almighty dollar,” Nigel McQueen said, taking his megaphone from his assistant. “Not even the cops can compete against it.”
Turning away from Aslin, the director strode across the old Hyde Park Barracks’ ground floor—now turned into a gunfire-devastated scene of destruction by the set-design department—and called for silence.
After four days of not a single frame being shot, silence fell over the set in an instant. Aslin suspected every crew and cast member present knew now was not the time to test the director.
Four days of no filming made for one very agitated, stressed and intense Nigel McQueen.
Four days of no filming for Aslin however, meant four days of quietly investigating every possibility presented to him regarding Rowan’s attacker.
Of repeated frustration when every possibility lead nowhere.
Even the police seemed to believe the detonation of his trailer was an accident. When they’d finished with that, they’d begun to ask about the accident in the dormitory, questioning how a beam installed by the crew could splinter and fall to the ground. Aslin had done his best to glean anything from their behaviour and body language, but there was only so much a fight consultant was allowed to hear.
He’d suggested it wasn’t an accident when they’d spoken to him about it. Or should that be interrogated? It didn’t take more than two questions for Aslin to realize the investigating officer was suspicious about him.
To give the cop his due, Aslin would be suspicious as well. The accidents hadn’t started until he arrived, and he always seemed to be connected or involved in some way. He was in Chris’s trailer when the steps were tampered with, he was on set when the beam splintered and fell, and it was his trailer that had exploded.
That didn’t assuage his simmering rage in any way. Nor did it help him find out who was targeting Rowan.
And despite all the possibilities that lead nowhere he still couldn’t shake the belief Rowan was in danger. He’d investigated crew members that had shared angry words with Rowan during the first U.S. section of shooting, only to discover they were not a part of the Australian team. He’d spoken to Chris’s agent about any fan mail that may have mentioned Rowan, learning there was none. Hell, he’d even tracked down the owner of the empty gas-heater box found in one of the film set’s dumpsters, his hopes shattered when it belonged to a member of the makeup team who’d come down with the flu.
Four days of coming up empty and stalking shadows.
And four days of falling deeper and deeper in love with Rowan.
When he wasn’t on set trying to find a lead, Aslin was with Rowan. Often they were both with Chris. The actor had settled into a relaxed routine since filming shut down. He’d collect Aslin from the Hilton in the morning, go for a surf with Jeff and Warren while Aslin watched from the sand, drop Warren back on set and spend the day hanging out with Aslin and Rowan. He never questioned his sister why she hadn’t left Aslin’s room. He spent most of the time with his feet up, flicking through his dog-eared script, discussing certain aspects with Aslin, talking over future film offers with Rowan.
Occasionally, Tilly would call or arrive to deliver something—script changes Nigel had decided on, gifts from Australian fans, requests from local media for appearances, but for the most part, he was just a young man hanging out, making his sister laugh.
For that, Aslin would protect the actor with his life.
Because every time Rowan laughed, Aslin’s life gained greater meaning. Deeper purpose.
Every time she smiled, he knew what his future held. Not the life of a rock-star’s bodyguard. Not the possibility of returning to the UK for active duty again. Not even the uncertainty of a future career.
Her. Forever. No matter where she was, where she went.
Nick had paid him well during his time, very well. He didn’t need to earn a cent for many years if he didn’t want to. And he didn’t. He just wanted to be with Rowan.
Four days had shown him that.
Four days of relaxed company, eating room service, watching television, enjoying Chris’s company as Aslin allowed Rowan to heal.
Four nights of making love to her until they were both weak and breathless and dripping in sweat.
If anyone had told him sex was a better workout than an hour or two at a punching bag, he would have laughed at them. But it was. And the more Rowan’s physical injuries healed, the more fierce their lovemaking became.
A warm tension curled deep in the pit of Aslin’s stomach at the thought. More than fierce. Profound.
Last night, after Rowan had promised to tie him up and spank him if he didn’t make her come three times in a row, he’d chased her around his suite, both laughing themselves silly. He’d chased her and she’d run, only to be finally cornered at the door.
He’d pinned her there with his hips, his erection grinding to her belly, tormenting her with his lips as he told her she was the one going to be spanked, thank you very much. She was going to be spanked and he was going to be the spanker.
She’d wriggled against him, laughed her denials and reached for the doorknob at her hip. She’d twisted it and yanked the door open before he knew what she was doing, squealing in delight as she tumbled over the threshold.
They’d both stood frozen for a split second—Rowan in the hallway, naked as the day she was born, Aslin staring at her from inside, equally as naked.
“Holy shit,” she’d burst out, her eyes sparkling with sheer happiness, her fingers pressed to her smiling lips. “I opened the door, Rhodes. I opened the fucking door!”
He didn’t get the chance to respond. Laughing, she launched herself back into his suite. She wrapped her legs around his
hips, her arms around his shoulders, and then they were both on the floor. Rowan kissed him, laughing and crying over and over that she’d opened the door, she’d opened the fucking door, as the door closed behind her.
They’d made love. He’d given her her demanded three-orgasm climax, and then they’d showered and gone out to the movies, catching a late showing of the newest superhero film playing.
Life couldn’t be more wonderful.
Except for the nagging belief she was still in danger.
“Are you ready, Chris? Vin?”
Nigel’s amplified voice sounded through the silence, jerking Aslin back to the here and now. He looked over at the scene about to be shot—an intense moment when the film’s antagonist declares his intentions to Chris’s hero before supposedly shooting himself in the head.
Aslin wasn’t needed for this scene. In fact, he wasn’t required at all for the rest of scheduled shooting. His job as a consultant during the Australian component of filming was essentially finished.
But Nigel had asked him this morning to remain in the role until wrap, which meant Berlin, followed by London and finally Hollywood.
Aslin hadn’t told Rowan. He had to tell Nick first.
“Just going outside for a sec,” he whispered in her ear, unable to wait any longer to do so. “Need to talk to my old boss.”
She’d studied him for a long beat. “Old?”
He dropped a kiss on her lips and walked away before she could whisper the question he wasn’t ready to answer yet.
“Aslin?” Chris’s voice drew him to a halt and he turned back to the set. “Any chance you can grab my script from my trailer while you’re out? Fucking left it there. Tilly, can you give Mr. Rhodes the key?”
“I can get it, Mr. Huntley,” Tilly called from beside a tungsten light.
“It’s okay, Tilly.” Aslin calmed her eager-puppy expression with a wave of his hand. “I can do it.”
He waited for the young woman to hurry over to him, giving her a smile as she handed him the key. “Thanks.”
Muscle for Hire Page 18
