Billie had a moment to register her agent had resorted to using her full name, just like a mother would a naughty child in need of reprimand, before guilt made her aware of the panic in Adelaide’s voice.
But guilt wasn’t enough to stop her from hurrying to the intercom panel. If nothing else, she wanted to see what a stalker called Gilbert looked like—if it was indeed Gilbert pressing the button on the other side of her locked gate.
“It’s okay,” she muttered into her phone as she approached the entry foyer. “Whoever it is, they can’t get in. I’ve got a state-of-the-art security system, remember.”
The buzzer drowned out Adelaide’s response.
Heart thumping, she jabbed at the button beside the comm-link and activated the CCTV camera positioned above the security panel at her gate.
She had to see whoever it was before she said anything.
The small black screen in the control panel instantly filled with a full-color image of the man purporting to be from Guarded Souls Security and Protection.
A shiver ran up Billie’s spine, turning her nipples hard. Her lips parted in a soft gasp. The junction of her thighs throbbed.
He was tall. Tall and broad-shouldered and lean-hipped. The faded jeans and black leather jacket did nothing to hide how muscular, how exquisite his body was. Nor did the dark shaggy hair lessen the impact of his square jaw and hawkish nose and incredible lips.
Good gravy, the guy was gorgeous.
And looking right at you.
He was. It was as if he knew she was looking at the screen at that very second. Piercing gray eyes connected with hers through the video feed, which Billie knew was absolutely ridiculous. He couldn’t see her. He had no idea where she was looking, nor even that she’d activated the CCTV camera, but despite that, he was looking at her. Into her soul. Seeing her…
Billie jerked her finger from the control panel and took a step backward, her stare fixed on the now black screen.
Silence wrapped around her, thick and heavy.
Was he still looking at her? Through the inactive camera?
“Billie?”
The almost imperceptible cry of her name made Billie gasp again. Realization hit her, and, face flooding with heat, she rammed her cellphone to her ear.
“Adelaide, what’s Gilbert look like?” she asked, studying the control panel of her security system and its black screen. She could feel the man outside her gate watching her through the camera. Surely it had to be her mind playing tricks on her? Damn it, her pulse and heart were competing for the title of fastest beating thing in her body.
“Short, five-six at the most,” Adelaide answered. “Bit fleshy. Got a paunch. Receding hairline.”
“So,” Billie said, her heart and pulse increasing in speed, “not six-foot plus and completely gorgeous?”
Adelaide barked out a dry laugh. “Not even close.”
“Okay, so I’m going to talk to the man at my gate.”
“What?” Adelaide yelped.
Jabbing her finger onto the intercom button, Billie leaned closer to the microphone. “Yes?”
“Ms. Sheridan?” the man’s deep voice rumbled through the speaker. The kind of voice her acting coach would describe as “panty-creaming”.
“Who is this?” Billie asked, utilizing her Destiny voice—the one her character used when facing down malevolent demons and vampires.
“Nathanial Knight, Ms. Sheridan,” the man with the panty-creaming voice outside her gate answered. “From Guarded Souls Security and Protection agency.”
A little lick of heat traced its way through the pit of Billie’s stomach at the way he pronounced her name. Followed by a finger of unease as her brain processed what he’d said.
She pressed the intercom button again. “Did you say Knight?”
A low chortle came as an answer. It was just as deliciously sexy as his voice. Oh God, if it really was Gilbert outside trying to fool her, she was going to have a hard time being freaked out by him with a voice and laugh like that.
“Yes, Ms. Sheridan. And yes, I recognize the absurd coincidence of a security expert called Knight coming to the rescue of the star of Destiny’s Knight.”
Billie caught her bottom lip with her teeth, a frown pulling at her eyebrows. The faint sounds of outside wafted through the speaker. Nathanial Knight—if that’s who he really was—didn’t contribute to any of them.
Pressing her cell phone harder to her ear, she frowned at the black screen. “Adelaide, the man at my gate says he’s Nathanial Knight from the security agency.”
“Knight?” Adelaide echoed. “Seriously, he said his last name is Knight? Is he kidding?”
“I don’t know, but he’s—”
Billie stopped herself before she could say incredibly hot. What the hell was wrong with her?
Your adrenaline is spiking. Or your libido. One or the other.
The security buzzer sounded again.
“Gotta go,” Billie told Adelaide. “It’s not Gilbert, so I guess that means the cavalry’s arrived.”
“Bill—”
Billie killed the connection, and closed the small distance between her and the security control panel.
Mouth dry, muscles tight, she pressed the intercom button again. “Please show me your identification, Mr. Knight.”
Without waiting for the man at her gate to answer, she moved her finger to the CCTV button.
The screen filled with a vivid image of him holding his ID up to the camera. Billie didn’t miss the crooked smile playing with his lips as he did so. Nor did she miss the way her body responded to that smile.
It had been a while since her body had reacted in such a way. Not since her very private, very brief “relationship” with the show’s producer eighteen months ago.
Of course, when said producer told her he was going back to his estranged wife, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t continue to “see” each other, her bodily reactions to him changed completely.
It made for a charged work environment, which, it seemed, made her energy on the screen electric.
Her heart may have been broken, but her rating had soared.
She’d gone to bed every night since with those high ratings to keep her warm—and a vibrator she affectionately called Roger.
“Give me a moment please,” she said, before releasing the intercom button and swiping up a number on her cell.
“Everything okay, Ms. Sheridan?” a mumbling, sleep-slurred voice answered on the other end.
“Hi Riccardo. Sorry for calling in the middle of the night, but can you find something out for me?”
Her personal assistant yawned out a laugh. “Sure.”
God love him. He was perfect. So used to dealing with her impulsiveness. She needed to give him a pay rise. “Can you find out if someone called Nathanial Knight works at the Guarded Souls Security and Protection agency, and what he looks like, please?”
“Guarded Souls?” Riccardo grunted. “Cheesy. And seriously? Nathanial Knight?”
“Seriously.” She pressed the CCTV button again and narrowed her eyes at the tall streak of hunk waiting calmly for her at her gate. If he was a psycho, he was a patient one.
“Let me just google…” The sound of tapping keys wafted through the phone connection. Did Riccardo have his laptop beside his bed? Just in case his crazy boss asked him for weird information in the middle of the night?
Yeah, she really needed to up his pay.
“Okay,” he said, more awake now. “There is a security firm called Guarded Souls. The website is very impressive. Looks expensive. Whoa, some of their client testimonials are…wow, Chris Hemsworth is a client? Whoa. Do you think they’d introduce—”
“Riccardo.”
He laughed. “Sorry, Ms. Sheridan. Okay, back to the matter at…yeah, yeah, there he is. Nathanial Knight. One of their experts. Dayum, he looks good…um, I mean, he looks intimidating.”
She bit her lip, studying Knight through the CCTV screen. Looks g
ood didn’t even come close. “Describe him, please.”
“Do you want the PG or R-rated description?”
“Riccardo.”
“Sorry. It’s only a head and shoulders shot on the website, but he’s got dark hair, what look like gray eyes, a square jaw. Wide shoulders. Looks strong. He clearly works out.”
Yep, that was the man at her gate.
“Well, at least I know he’s legit,” she muttered.
“Legit?” Confusion filled Riccardo’s voice. “Are you okay, Ms. Sheridan?”
“I’m okay.” Guilt tickled at her. “Sorry for waking you, Riccardo. Thanks for checking that out for me. Go back to sleep.”
She ended the call and depressed the intercom button again. “Okay, so you are who you say you are.”
“I am.” Knight smiled, returning his ID to his back pocket, his gaze holding hers through the CCTV camera’s lens. “Now I ask, will you invite me in? Please?”
Throat thick, heart racing, stomach an insane mass of butterflies, Billie pressed the button that would unlock the security gate.
It wasn’t until she’d opened her front door to find the drop-dead gorgeous man standing on the other side of the threshold that it dawned on her his question had been worded exactly the same way Wraif had first asked permission to enter Destiny’s home on the show.
By then, however, it was too late.
*
She’d opened the door to him.
It was a mistake, of course. It sealed her fate, as well. He’d been watching her for a while, all too aware of her. How could he not be, given what she was?
She didn’t know what she’d started by that simple series of actions—the turning of the doorknob, the opening of the door, her gaze finding his—and he could no longer fight that awareness. He’d tried. God knows, he’d tried.
But he was used to failing. It was something he excelled at. The reason for his current situation, as it were. He’d failed to perform to expectation, failed to blindly follow, failed to repress that which he’d felt…and here he was, where Wilhelmina Sheridan also was, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t deny his awareness of her.
Which brought him to where he was now.
At her door. On her threshold. Looking at her.
He hoped God would forgive him for what he was about to do next, but he knew there was no such luck. God had turned his back on him a long time ago.
Such was the life of a fallen angel.
So, Nathanial Knight, are you ready to fuck up your life a whole lot more?
“Ms. Sheridan,” he said, watching her study him. Her heart rate quickened when their eyes connected. He could feel its accelerated beat—an intoxicating rhythm he was already addicted to—moving the very fabric of existence around them both.
Uncertainty, followed by primal lust, and then fear gleamed in her eyes as she studied him. He didn’t need to see her hand to know she was gripping the doorknob with white-knuckle pressure.
She had no idea who he was, she questioned whether he was indeed who he said he was, but despite that, he affected her.
Just as she did him. The difference was, she’d been affecting him for eons. And he knew how to stop that from showing in his eyes and face.
Billie Sheridan had no such advantage.
Which made standing so close to her now the most difficult thing he’d ever done in the boundless years of his life.
A minute movement in the smooth column of her throat told him she’d swallowed. Was her mouth dry with anticipation? Unease? Or filling with moisture at his proximity? Any option could be the case, and while he could sense so many physical things about her, he did not have the gift of reading her mind or emotions.
An angel born for war was not granted such luxury.
“May I see your identification again, please?” she asked, extending her hand, palm up, toward him.
His body reacted at the husky quality of her voice. His blood ran hotter through his veins.
“You may,” he said with a gentle smile, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans to withdraw his wallet once more.
He flipped it open to his ID and offered it to her.
She took it. For a fraction of a second, the tips of her index and middle fingers brushed over his thumb, and it was all he could do to stay motionless as a tsunami of concentrated desire flooded through him.
At Billie’s faintest intake of breath, he knew she’d experienced it as well. Her pupils dilated for a heartbeat before she tore her stare from his and directed it at his badge.
Nathanial drew his own breath, keeping it slow and steady.
Curses, he was in trouble. How was he to fight her magnetism now?
He had to, though. If he didn’t, who knew what could happen? God alone…and again, God was no longer talking to him.
As Billie studied his ID, he allowed himself a moment to let his gaze roam over the top of her head, her face. Her lashes were long and dark, free of the mascara her job dictated she wear daily.
The long auburn waves of her hair cascaded over her shoulders in a tousled mess, its ends brushing the tops of her breasts.
Nathanial forced himself to draw his gaze away from the curves of flesh concealed by the black cotton of her tank top, lifting his focus back to her face.
Like her lashes, her lips were unadorned by cosmetics, their natural fullness a delicate pink. Why did human females cover their God-given beauty with artificial color? It was a behavior he had never understood, even before being cast out.
“Sorry to keep checking,” Billie said, returning her attention to him again, “But there are a lot of weirdos out there.”
Direct blue eyes challenged him. Her stare did not waver.
The woman standing before him now exuded control, confidence and not a whisper of fear. And yet, her pulse beat with frenzied speed in her throat.
“I don’t mind,” he answered, aching to cross her threshold. “And there’s no need to be afraid.”
Prickly fire erupted in Billie’s eyes, a blue inferno of indignance, righteousness and—he couldn’t miss it—anger. “Afraid? I’m not afraid, Mr. Knight.”
Nathanial bit back his chuckle. “I’m sorry, Ms. Sheridan. I didn’t mean to—”
Her cell phone rang, AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” rocked the room.
She arched a dark red eyebrow at him. “Wait here. Do not move from that spot.”
He nodded to show his compliance, even as he frowned.
Still holding his wallet, she walked—backward, her stare fixed on him—to a console table. With the quickest of glances at its surface, she scooped up a smartphone, tapped her thumb over its screen and then lifted the phone to her ear. “Everything okay, Riccardo?”
A brief pause followed as Riccardo answered her.
“Ahh, no it’s all good, hon.” Her lips curled in a warm smile, the same emotion dancing in her eyes. “Sorry to freak you out. I’m okay. Home. Safe. Can you let Adelaide know I’m okay? I think I may have freaked her out a bit as well earlier.”
Nathanial didn’t move. He knew of her personal assistant. The young man was efficient and loyal to her. If Nathanial did anything to spook her, with one word from Billie, Riccardo would call the police.
That wouldn’t be a good thing.
Still studying him, she let out a low chuckle. “Ask Adelaide. I’ve got to go.” Lowering her phone from her ear, her smile disappeared as she locked her focus on Nathanial once more.
Cautious. She is cautious and intelligent and not easily fooled.
A finger of admiration traced up Nathanial’s spine. She was all those things and so much more. There was a reason he had fallen for—
“If you step across that threshold,” she said, “I’ll be forced to beat the shit out of you. I’m not quite ready to ask you in yet.”
Nathanial blinked at her almost off-handed declaration. “I’m sorry? What?”
Her smile returned, but there was nothing friendly or warm about it. It was the kind
of smile he recognized well. The smile of a soldier about to commence battle. “Beat the shit out of you,” she repeated. “I can do that. I’m quite adept at it, actually. Put it this way, I’ve never needed a stunt woman on the show to kick arse.”
Arse. The thoroughly non-American pronunciation sent a lick of something tight and hungry through Nathanial. She’d lost her Australian accent within a year of moving to LA. He’d been sad to hear it go, but occasionally the odd inflection from her formative years slipped out, sounding at odds with the exotically ambiguous accent she had now.
Letting his own lips stretch once again into an affable smile, he inclined his head in a single nod. “I don’t doubt it.”
She ran a quick look over him. He barely resisted the urge to shuffle on his feet at the inspection. What would she think if she really knew who—what—she was looking at?
“Good. Now, tell me why you’re here.”
With a relaxed, unhurried move, Nathanial rested his elbow against the doorjamb next to his head. “To get my arse kicked by you?”
He’d spent almost fifty years in Australia a century ago. He could speak Strayan, as the locals called it, with the best of them if needed.
Billie arched an eyebrow at him. “How’s a broken clavicle sound?”
“Painful,” he answered honestly. The last being to break his clavicle was his fellow angel, Erah, three millennia ago.
She crossed her arms over her breasts with an expectant expression.
It dawned on him she wore only a loose pair of black boxer shorts to go with her black tank top. Her feminine form called to him, fit and toned and subtly muscled.
He knew she worked out. He also knew she’d failed to pass her black-belt ranking when she was a teenager in Sydney. She still trained in the martial arts, despite never trying to achieve the venerated belt again, and her technique and speed were impressive. He’d also witnessed the strength of her body at work both on set and in the gym. And she jogged. She loved to jog. Her fitness levels were admirable.
Before he could stop himself, he took in the perfection of her exposed legs. Every part of his body tightened. Various parts of his body grew thicker. Harder.
“Oi, pretty boy.”
He startled at her blunt exclamation. Startled. When was the last time he’d startled? Not since he’d been cast out, that was for certain. Definitely not since his time began among mortals here on Earth.
Destiny's Knight: A Fallen Angel Protector Paranormal Romantic Suspense Book (Guarded Souls 1) Page 2
