Like a bottled water, for one.
That’s a solution that Declan never thought of. Or maybe he just listened to Maximoff stubbornly say just let it go.
Maximoff opens his mouth to speak, but the brunette slips up beside him. Yanking his attention to the left, and he tells her, “Give me one more second! Your drink is on the bar!”
“Take your time! I’ll be waiting!” She bites her bottom lip and slides onto her stool.
My pulse is wedged in my esophagus.
Maximoff whispers in my ear, “The talk I wanted to have with you…” His voice is noticeably tight. “I can’t have her in my car unless she signs an NDA. So you’ll need to take her to the VIP section while I hang around the club’s security.”
This is really happening. I don’t blink.
Do your motherfucking job, Farrow.
Shit.
I have to stay professional. I have to give him what he wants, and if this is it…
I ask him, “You don’t want to be around for that conversation?”
He shakes his head. “My presence usually pressures them, and I want her to sign the NDA on her own terms.”
I have no real ability to nod or to even force a smile. My body refuses, but I’m able to lean back from him. A painfully cold acceptance mortars my features like brick on brick. This is about to be hell. A hell that I’m obligated to walk through, and really, it’s my fault.
For liking him in the first place.
In the briefest second, our eyes touch, but I’m the one who bails on the moment this time. My head swerves towards the bar. “Okay!” I yell back at Moffy.
On my way to the girl, I lower my volume on my radio, the soft chatter grating on me all of a sudden. Just when I look up at the brunette, a strong hand grabs my bicep from behind.
“Farrow, wait.” His voice is right against my ear.
Slowly, I turn to face him, and he breathes like he ran five miles to reach me.
I tilt my head, still hesitant about the direction this all may go. What do you want, Maximoff? Stopped in place, I bear hard on my teeth.
And then I freeze. I watch him subtly check out my features: my cheeks, my piercings, the freckle on my jaw, and he finally allows his gaze to drop to my lips.
“Maximoff—”
“I can’t do this.”
A pit wedges in my ribs. “Be more specific.”
“I’m going home.” He gestures to the exit with his water bottle. “I’m leaving right now after I tell her goodbye.” He takes a half a second to kindly say goodbye to the girl. Then his focus is on me.
Heaviness hoists off my chest, my lips beginning to upturn.
A night listening to him fuck someone else averted. And I didn’t even have to be a prick.
I move to lead him out. “I’m walking in front of you.” He’s already trying to push ahead of my stride, but he stops himself short.
And he says, “Walk beside me.”
I do. We move with equally strong, determined gaits, but we’re both sitting on the beginning of something unknown. And we carry our familiar tension like a third companion and a bomb.
14
MAXIMOFF HALE
Neither of us breaks the silence while I drive home. Compounding and compounding in each untouched second. Every moment weighs down. Sunken in eternal slow-mo.
Farrow reaches for the air vents. Languid, sensual—his tattooed fingers slide the vent open. Cold air gushes out. But it does absolutely jack shit to temper the heat brewing against my skin.
I lick my lips for the thousandth fucking time. My cock throbs, aching to harden. To be stroked. To be fucked and to fuck.
I force my gaze to the highway. Gripping the leather steering wheel in an iron-tight vice. His hot gaze shifts from the road where paparazzi trail after my Audi—to me. Over and over.
Road, then me. Road, then me.
I’m watched and observed all the time. By strangers. By cameramen. By people. And never, never have I come undone. Until now, until his eyes feel like hands, and I want them all over me.
“Brake,” he says deeply.
I slow the car at the last second. Hitting bumper-to-bumper traffic. Now the car is unbearably still. I feel like my Audi has shrunk into a compact.
Too small.
The middle console barely divides his body from mine. And my body from his. Do I even want a divide anymore? No. And yes. He’s my bodyguard—that’s not changing.
It’s not.
But I can’t even think about anyone else. He hasn’t just pitched a tent in my brain and dick. He’s built a fucking stone castle that no wolf can ever blow down.
What am I supposed to say to him? My cock only wants you. My brain only wants you. I didn’t pick up that girl because I only want you.
Or: if I fucked someone else tonight, it would’ve made me sick.
None of that extinguishes this one cold fact: it’s ethically wrong to be with my bodyguard.
“Maximoff,” Farrow says, my name slicing the dense air like dropping a guillotine.
I steal a quick glance at him.
He rubs his bottom, pierced lip with his thumb, and his brows rise. “Ready to talk about this?”
“This,” I say, imagining my hands ripping his shirt off his head. Muscle against muscle, lips against lips—I blink. “This traffic is fucking terrible.”
“This as in you and me.” He pauses. “Us.”
Headlights glare in my rearview. My stringent posture contracts my shoulders, my deltoids, my whole body. And I switch lanes fast. Windows of a nearby SUV roll down, a Canon pointing at my car.
Great.
I drive thirty-over just to desert the SUV. Farrow keeps an eye on neighboring vehicles while he says, “I know talking about this isn’t easy. In any other situation, I’d just kiss you.”
Fuck. I lick my lips again. Muscles flexing.
I harden beneath my jeans and boxer-briefs. “You sure I wouldn’t be the one to kiss you?” I counter.
I can feel his lips lifting. For how close we are, the space between us couldn’t feel farther away. Whoever makes the first move will have to cross miles, scale mountains, ferry oceans to reach the other side.
I glance at him.
And his amused smile stretches wider. “In your dreams, maybe you’d kiss me first.” Talk of my dreams reminds me of how long I’ve crushed on him.
Since I was sixteen.
I start to padlock my emotion with a thousand iron keys.
His smile slowly falls. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” I say instinctively, and then, “I don’t know.” Beware: he’s your bodyguard! scrolls across my vision like a tickertape warning. For Christ’s sake, we can’t even kiss without having a conversation beforehand. It’s all so elementary.
Kissing.
I want to do more. I want more. In a way that I’ve never even had before, and is that what’s being offered? Is it even possible?
“What are you thinking?” he asks. “Because I don’t know where you stand. You have so many boundaries, you’re practically a walking-talking Don’t Enter sign.”
“Like you don’t have any?” I combat.
He laughs into a grin. “I consider some boundaries like cautionary tales. Proceed with caution, but you know, still go on ahead.” He flashes me the hottest smile I’ve ever seen, and I bear on my molars, my erection wanting pressure. A mouth, a hand, an ass.