by Riley Ashby
I sighed and walked over to the door connecting our suites and knocked gently.
“You there, Josie?”
No answer.
“Listen, I have something to say. I’m coming in.”
I opened the door by inches, peeking around the doorframe to make sure she hadn’t gone to the opposite extreme and was parading around naked. That would definitely send me over the edge.
“Josie?” She wasn’t in the kitchen or living room. My heart rate rose at the thought of her bleeding out in the bathroom, veins teased open with a pair of tweezers or an overlooked paring knife. The door to her bedroom was wide open, but it was empty as well as her bathroom. No Josie.
Fuck. She wouldn’t take off, would she? Just to spite me? The front closet door was ajar in the entryway. The clunky bag she’d brought with her had been emptied onto the kitchen counter. I sorted through the contents quickly to find her ID was gone.
Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit. She really had run out on me.
I ran back to my apartment to struggle into some shoes and was out the door without a second thought. I didn’t even want to think about the kind of people she would run in to out there. She would either be so jumpy she’d end up killing someone on accident, or she’d get herself picked up again. I imagined finding her collapsed on the pavement, blood spread like a halo around her head. My gut clenched at the thought. What would happen to my career prospects if I let her die? What kind of life would I be able to lead if she got damaged or injured on my watch? Fuck my career prospects, how would I be able to live with myself? I couldn’t let anything happen. She hadn’t done anything to deserve the way I spoke to her or the way I had treated her over the past week. It wasn’t her fault that I couldn’t keep my feelings in check, or my desire for her buried far enough down where she shouldn’t see it.
No, finding her was about more than just doing my job and keeping my paycheck coming. It was about admitting that she meant something to me, superficial though it may be. She was my responsibility in more ways than one, and I had to keep her safe.
On the street level, I glanced up and down the sidewalk with nervous indecision. Which way would she have gone? Tourists and locals alike poured down the sidewalk like water. I strained my eyes either way, trying to catch a glimpse of her. A scream sounded to my right, and I whirled, only to find myself face to face with a girl wearing a tiara and a Bachelorette sash, stopping just short of running into me. Her friends apologized with a laugh and pulled her to the side, steadying her wobbly knees.
I walked in the opposite direction of them, hoping to God I wasn’t headed the wrong way. What would I do if I couldn’t find her? There had to be some way for me to track her without her knowing. I peered down every alley I passed and peeked in every bar, but she was nowhere. And then, finally, a flash of blue among the masses. I pushed through the crowd like a salmon swimming upstream. No one noticed my rudeness; the crowds were drunk on the early evening and ready to begin the night.
As quickly as I moved, I couldn’t get close enough to grab her. I didn’t want to yell; she would surely bolt the moment she knew I had followed her. I wasn’t worried about triggering her by grabbing her out of nowhere. I would drag her back to the apartment by her hair if I had to, damn what the passersby thought. I had absolute authority over her movements, no matter what she thought about being free now that she was out of the consortium’s hold. She would come home with me one way or another.
When I was only a few steps away from grabbing her, she turned suddenly and gained immediate entrance to a nightclub. It was still early, but the bass thumped into the street loud enough to rock my ears. A bouncer gave her an appreciative glance before waving off her cover charge and letting her into the club, stamping her hand as she passed. I crashed after her only to be stopped with a firm hand on my chest.
“Cover’s twenty dollars,” the bouncer said, holding out his hand and looking at me suspiciously.
“You need to let me in there now,” I growled.
He shrugged. “No problem. The cover is still twenty bucks.”
I resisted the urge to punch him in the teeth as I pulled out my wallet and pushed a twenty into his hand.
“You sure you at the right place, buddy?” he asked as he stamped my hand. I ignored him and pushed into the club.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the low light. The dance floor in the center of the room was lit intermittently by strobe lights, and some remixed pop anthem pumped through unseen speakers. I scanned the booths around the room, looking for a scrap of blue or a curl of brown hair that would alert me to her presence.
No dice.
I prowled around the edge of the room, trying to stay out of the light. It wasn’t difficult; people weren’t meant to see each other in this place. I thought about the night that other rescued woman who’d found herself falling for me had come upon me in a place like this, and the horror I’d felt when I realized who she was. I felt even sicker later as I wondered if it really would have been so bad to let her continue. I would have been kind to her. She wouldn’t have had to be afraid of me. But at the bottom of her desire for me was an inexplicable need to be controlled, not by a person she cared about but by someone with authority. Anyone, really. Not me. Not Bryce Archer.
The way Josie looked at me said otherwise. We’d spent so much more intimate time together. I’d traced the scars on her palm and tried to help her knit the broken pieces of her soul back together with the precision of the surgeons who had worked on her hand. We had even laughed together at times for hours when I had let my guard down, or we were comfortably full after a meal. I knew her smiles. I could tell when she was sad. And she, in turn, had pried more out of me than anyone had ever attempted in the past. She knew secrets that other men had literally taken to their graves. She didn’t even have to try because I gave them to her willingly.
I shook my head. No, Josie might think she knew me, but if she ever found out the truth of what I had done to lose my job, she would lose all respect for me. Better to never let that surface. Better to keep her at arm’s length. And her reasons for wanting me weren’t based on any real feelings anyway. She’d gotten used to being a slave, and some part of me reminded her of him. That was the only reason she wanted me.
I finally found her across the room by the far wall. She was standing at the bar, leaning halfway across the bar top with her arms underneath her chest, pushing her tits up through the high neckline.
My brain told me to go to her immediately, throw her over my shoulder, and take her back to the apartment despite her protests, but I couldn’t move. My knees wobbled, and I let myself lean against the wall and watch her for a moment, unencumbered and unaware of my presence. She was smiling, really beaming, as she chatted with the female bartender. The real smile. The one I got when I cracked a joke during the daytime soap operas or came back from my run with her favorite gyros.
A couple of girls sat down the bar from her, talking and sipping drinks.
I took another look around the room and finally realized why the bouncer had looked at me so strangely. I was one of only a handful of men here and, almost assuredly, the only straight one.
Shaking off the surprise of finding myself in a lesbian bar, I started to cross the dance floor. No time to wonder why she had chosen to come in here; I needed to get her out before she ruined the hearing in her good ear. But before I could make it halfway across, a girl with short black hair in skinny jeans, a tank top, and Chuck Taylors sidled up next to my charge. I stopped short, not only at the bold way she put her hand on Josie’s wrist but also at the way Josie smiled at her.
The real smile.
For someone besides me.
And in an instant, the need to get her out of here and home was subsumed, replaced by hot green jealousy flaring like wildfire in the pit of my stomach.
Josie licked her lips as she took a sip of her drink, and the other girl pushed her card across to the bartender before Josie could pull
out her own cash. Josie blushed a little.
Seeing an empty booth near the back, I took the opportunity to slip in unseen. Sitting in the shadows, I was nearly invisible to anyone looking in from the dance floor. I hoped the brighter lighting near the bar blinded the people standing there to my presence rather than illuminate me more. I already stuck out like a sore thumb.
There was no talking to her, not when I was like this. Not when I could barely see for how angry I was.
Skinny jeans girl pulled Josie away from the bar, not quite to the dance floor but close enough that they could sway to the music together. As the beat turned from a frenetic bumping to a more rhythmic R&B vibe, the girl wrapped her arm around Josie’s waist and pulled her a little bit closer. Josie held the glass precariously in her right hand and wrapped her other arm around the girl’s neck.
My brain and my gut were both screaming at me to get her out of this place, but looking around, I couldn’t actually sense any danger. These were just two women who had found each other in a club and were having a good time together.
But as the girl pulled Josie the final distance to kiss her lips, I knew what the twisting in my stomach was.
She tried to kiss you like that earlier.
I shouldn’t be jealous. This was a good thing. She should be looking for this connection with someone else. Definitely not from me, the man being paid to protect her. The one who had sat with her through the worst of the pain and changed the TV channel when she couldn’t work the remote. The one who had kept her from giving up more times than either of us could count after a disappointing physical therapy session. The one who evoked that little whimper from her when she kissed me.
I knew I should let them be together.
That thought shouldn’t make me angry. I shouldn’t have this rock in my throat; my stomach shouldn’t feel like it was going to eat itself watching them share that connection. The connection I wanted to have.
But I saw the problem long before she knew it was happening. Her right hand was still too weak. She’d half-assed her physical therapy work recently, pissed off as she was at me for hurting her. She shouldn’t be holding anything for a long time, particularly not something breakable. She was distracted, focused on the woman in front of her, but I was there to pay attention.
I was on my feet the second the glass tumbled from her hand and shattered on the floor.
She was coming home. She needed me to take care of her, and I wasn’t fucking letting her go.
“Shit,” Carly exclaimed as she jumped back. I didn’t even notice. My stomach was in my throat, and I was staring at my hand. The broken and weak hand I had forgotten for a moment.
I had lost sight of my injury for a few minutes. I kissed this beautiful girl while we danced to a song I remembered from high school. And everything was perfect until I dropped the glass.
“I’m sorry,” I moaned, pulling my damaged hand against my side as I started to shake. I fucked up and broke something fragile. Was it valuable? This was bad. I was going to be sick all over her if I didn’t get out of here. I tapped my wrist, trying to center myself, but it was like someone had jacked up the volume on the music and sped up the lights flashing across us. I couldn’t make sense of anything.
“Oh dearie, it looks like you’ve broken another vase.”
I was crouched at the far end of the room, but I raised my eyes just in time to watch him push a vase full of roses from the table to the floor. It shattered on the ground, spilling water and red blooms across the marble like blood.
I whimpered and hid my head against my hands again. If he was manufacturing reasons to punish me, it meant he’d had a bad day, and he’d be particularly cruel.
“Come pick these up,” he said, and I crawled as fast as I could. I reached out a hand to pick up the rose nearest to me but had to bite my lip to stifle my cry as his foot came down on my fingers. “Not with your hands, with your mouth. And suck up some of that water while you’re down there. It’s all you’ll get today.”
I blinked back tears as I flexed my sore fingers, determined not to lose any more dignity. But I was so thirsty. I dropped my lips to the growing puddle and sucked up as much water as I dared, spitting out shards of glass, before wrapping my lips around one stem, then another. As the number grew in my mouth, I couldn’t avoid the thorns that carved gashes into my tongue.
The world surged back into focus, and the too-loud music pounded in my ears.
“It’s fine,” Carly said, gesturing to a waiter to come clean up the glass. “Let’s get you …”
“I have to go,” I choked out, turning despite her protestations, only to run into a very hard chest.
I knew exactly what he felt like, but still, I looked up to confirm it was Archer before letting myself sink into his chest as one of his arms wrapped around my waist. The other extended to hold off Carly.
“I’ll get her home,” he shouted over the music.
I couldn’t see Carly anymore, but I heard the suspicion in her voice. “And who the hell are you?”
“Her bodyguard,” he answered, and then he was moving me toward the door and out into the LA night. I sucked in deep breaths, choking from the cigarette smoke, but somehow it was fresher than the air inside that room.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I sobbed over and over again as he led me to the curb to hail a cab.
“It’s all right, Josie. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He folded me into a car but didn’t put me in my own seat. Instead, he pulled me onto his lap with one arm around my shoulders and the other holding my knees up off the floor as I sobbed into his neck. “It was an accident. That’s all it was.”
“No, it wasn’t. If I hadn’t run off, this wouldn’t have happened. I should have gone to bed like you said.”
His short beard scraped against my scalp as he shook his head. “I was wrong to yell at you. You do have a right to feel good about yourself. And you look ...” He paused and seemed to gather the courage to keep speaking. “You look amazing, Josie. She didn’t waste any time buying you that drink. Everyone in there was staring at you.”
I sniffled. I didn’t really care about the other people staring at me.
Strong fingers under my chin tipped my head up. I rushed to wipe away my tears so I could see him clearly.
“I’m proud of you.” He stroked his thumb along my jawline, seemingly without noticing. “You took a big risk. It was very brave of you to go out in public and meet someone new. You should be happy. But …” He pushed his fingertip against my lips as I started to reply. “Don’t leave like that without me again.” He took a deep breath. “You scared me. You could have been hurt. I just kept thinking that I would find you on the ground in a pool of your own blood, and this time, I would be too late to do anything.”
My mouth was dry. Was he really admitting that he cared about what happened to me?
I seized his hand and pulled it to the side, letting his large palm encase my cheek like he had in the hospital. “You pushed me away.”
“I won’t again. I promise.”
I could have just nodded. That was what I should have done, but I felt so connected to him. The way he had swooped in to save me from my own embarrassment. The way he had let me enjoy myself for a little bit even though I ran off on him. The way he had apologized for being such a dick. And now, the way he was looking at me like I’d been lost, and he was so relieved to find me.
So instead, I turned my head, pursed my lips, and kissed his finger.
He was almost expressionless except for the way his lips parted as he sucked in a tiny gasp. I waited for him to jerk away, to push me off his lap and stare out the window. But instead, I felt movement against my leg as his cock twitched.
I parted my lips, pushing my tongue forward to lick his fingertip.
“You’re drunk,” he whispered. I shook my head and opened my mouth wider, swallowing his finger and moving my head down to take the entire thing in my mouth. I lapped up the salt sitting on the to
p of his skin and ran my tongue over the creases of his knuckles. He let out a small moan. The arm around my shoulders slid down my back.
I reached to grab his hand and pulled his middle finger into his mouth along with the index. My tongue ran up the seam between his fingers, and he shifted forward to give his cock more room to grow. The fingers of his other hand brushed my ass, then gripped my hip. Where before there had been bone, I now had some flesh he could sink his grip in to. I reveled in the feel of his hands on me, holding me in place and directing me.
He pulled his hand away from my mouth and grabbed the back of my neck, putting his tongue where his fingers had been only moments before, and then it was my turn to moan. Burying his wet fingers in my hair, he pulled me against him like I had been gone for much longer than an hour. Like he had missed me.
“Come here,” he moaned, shifting me so that I straddled his lap instead of sitting sideways. His length pressed against my core through my underwear, the skirt of my dress riding up my thighs as he ground against me.
“We’re here,” the cab driver snapped as he slammed on his brakes outside our building. We broke apart with a gasp, heat rising to my cheeks as I realized how we must have looked to him. I searched Archer’s face for some sign of what he was feeling, but I couldn’t read anything in his expression. He kept his eyes on me as he pulled out his wallet and threw a couple of bills at the cabbie.
“Keep the change,” he said, and then he was pulling me out of the cab and through the lobby, pushing me up against the wall in the elevator before the doors even closed.
“Cameras,” I whispered even as my fingernails raked down his back. It took everything I had not to push up the hem of his shirt right there.
“Fuck ‘em,” he muttered with his mouth on my neck. “They’ll enjoy the show.”
His mouth was all over me, branding my lips and cheeks and throat with bruising pressure. One of his palms slid up my thigh, hiking up my skirt as he jerked my leg toward him to slide right up against me. He rocked his hips forward to press us together. I could feel how damp my panties were, and the shuddering in my thighs forced me to rely on him to hold me up.
