Page 25 of My Shifty Bodyguard

I am going to stay mad at him.

I have decided. It's on my list now, right under practice frowning and right above find out if alpacas can swim. Stay mad at Dax.

The trouble is that I'm bad at it. I sit in the passenger seat of his enormous truck with my arms crossed and my chin up and I stare out the window at the pines going by, and I deploy my best technique. I imagine that Dax kicked a goat. A small one. A baby goat, even, with little knobby legs.

It doesn't work. It worked great an hour ago. Now every time I get the goat halfway into my mind, it dissolves, because a man who kicks goats does not walk back into a diner and tell you the truth when telling you the truth could get him in trouble with his Alpha.

I sneak a look at him. His jaw is tight. His enormous hands are perfectly steady on the wheel.

"I'm still mad at you," I announce.

"Understandable,” he says. "Stay mad. You've earned it."

That's the second time he's told me I'm allowed to be upset, and it is extremely unfair, because it makes it almost impossible to keep doing.

The goat trots back into my mind and lies down, curling up happily. Even my imaginary goat can’t stay mad.

We pull up to his cabin as the light goes long and gold through the trees. Dax turns off the engine and sits there a second, both hands still on the wheel.

Neither of us moves. It’s the kind of silence where you can hear your own heartbeat, where everything outside the truck cab might as well be a thousand miles away. Finally, he exhales. Reaches over and kills the headlights. The world goes soft and amber through the windshield—just the trees now, just us.

"Come on," he says, and his voice is rough.

We don't talk on the walk to the door. Don't talk while he's fumbling with the key, while we're stepping inside to the smell of pine and leather and something that's just his. The door closes behind us. The outside world is officially gone.

She reaches for me first, fingers curling into the front of my shirt.

I'm already half-hard, and her touch makes it a full problem. I grab her waist—not gentle, not even trying—and back her toward the nearest wall. She doesn't resist. There's a second where our eyes lock, and I feel a thrill straight down to my soul.

I kiss her like I've been starving. Because I have been. Her mouth opens under mine and fuck, the taste of her—I'm done for. My hands are already under her shirt, dragging the fabric up and over her head. She breaks the kiss to help, and the second that top is off I'm burying my face in her neck, her collarbone, the curve where her shoulder meets that soft hollow.

She's already working on my shirt buttons. Her hands are shaking. "Take it off," she says, and it's not a request.

I shrug out of it, watch her eyes track over my chest. Then she's kissing me again, hands flat against my ribs, and we're stumbling backward toward the bedroom.

The mattress hits the back of my knees and I'm pulling her down with me, getting her bra off between kisses and somehow managing not to tear it. She's straddling my thighs and the feeling of her—bare skin, the heat between her legs pressed against me through fabric—makes me buck up involuntarily.

"You’re killing me,” I growl.

“Serves you right, Sexy Murder Man.”

She undoes my jeans and I help her, shoving them down as she frees my cock and takes it in her hands.

She strokes me once. Twice. I'm not going to last long enough for a medal at this rate.

She positions herself over me and I grip her hips because if I don't have something to hold on to I'm going to lose my mind. The second she sinks down onto me everything in my body goes rigid. For a second neither of us moves. I'm buried in her, she's got her eyes closed, and it's the closest I've ever come to a religious experience.

Then she starts moving.

It's not slow or sweet—there's nothing careful about any of this. She's riding me hard, and I'm right there with her, matching her rhythm, probably leaving marks on her hips. She's making sounds—small gasps and soft moans that I want to drown in.

I sit up, wrap one arm around her back to pull her closer, use the leverage to thrust up into her harder. She locks her arms around my neck and her face is buried in my shoulder and I'm completely fucking undone. The angle is better like this. Deeper. She's clenching around me and whimpering and I can't think about anything except making her come.

I shift my weight, get a hand between us, find her clit. She jerks against me, gasps something incoherent. I keep at it—steady, firm pressure—while she rides me harder, faster, her breath coming in pants against my neck.

"Come on," I say into her hair. "Come for me."

She does. Suddenly, without warning. Her whole body goes tight and she's trembling against me, gasping my name, and that's enough to push me over the edge. I bury myself deep and hold there while I finish, while she's still spasming around me, while everything else in the world stops mattering.