Beauty and the Bodyguard

by Merline Lovelace

  When he tumbled her to the bed some time later, she was stripped of everything but a pair of bikini panties that rode high on her hips. Rafe stood beside the bed, his hands on the snap of his jeans. His shirt had been discarded, along with most of her clothes, during the sensual dance that had brought them into the bedroom.

  As he gazed down at her, his hand stilled. The bedroom lights were off, leaving only the dim glow from the sitting room to pearl her skin. Her mouth was swollen and red from his. Her breasts had peaked under his hands.

  She was so beautiful. So damned beautiful.

  Allie groaned at his hesitation. “If you tell me again this is dumb or against your professional ethics or some such nonsense, I’m going to…to do something very unprofessional.”

  Rafe couldn’t help himself. Eyes gleaming, he planted his hands on his hips. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  She angled her head to gauge the degree of his resistance. Then she curled her legs under her and got to her knees. Brushing his hands aside, she took possession of his zipper.

  “Like this, Rafe.”

  The metal tab inched down, prong by prong. His stomach hollowed at the touch of her lips against his skin.

  “Mmm…” she murmured, nuzzling the dark hair swirling around his belly button. “Nice. And so deliciously unethical. So unsmart.”

  The tab reached the bottom of the zipper. Palming his hips, she slid his jeans over his flanks. All the while, her mouth hovered inches from his skin. The moist heat of her breath came through his cotton Jockey shorts like a warm, curling mist.

  “Still being stubborn?” She hooked her hands in the waistband of his shorts.

  Rafe didn’t think he could get any harder. He was wrong. When her mouth brushed against his straining flesh, he knew he’d never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Allie. With a groan, he buried both hands in her hair and tilted her face up to his. Planting a knee on the bed beside her, he covered her mouth with his. She went boneless beneath his assault, and they fell back to the sheets.

  Within moments, Allie was lost in a panting, straining world of pure sensation. Rafe’s mouth held hers captive while his knee pried hers apart. His hands shaped and stroked and invaded her. She heard the rasp of her breath against his, felt the slickness of her inner flesh as he brought her to aching, greedy readiness. She clutched at him, moaning a soft protest when he eased aside for a few moments to sheathe himself, then opened eagerly for his entry.

  She arched under him, meeting his every thrust with one of her own. His hands anchored her head for a kiss that left her spinning. Her body tightened around him, her muscles clenching rhythmically.

  It might have been moments, or maybe it was hours, before he reached down between their sweat-slick bodies and found her center. Allie’s fingers clutched frantically at his shoulders as he stroked her. A far corner of her mind registered the coiled, straining muscles of one shoulder, the ridges on the other. Then her world splintered into white-hot shards of pure sensation.

  He climaxed not long after her. Driving into her with all the force of his powerful thighs, he left Allie shuddering with pleasure.

  Gradually the thunder in Allie’s ears receded. Slowly, the harsh rasp of Rafe’s breathing softened. He rolled to his side, taking her with him, and she found the same warm notch between neck and shoulder she’d discovered last night.

  She felt boneless. And slightly stunned. And wonderful.

  Rafe, she noted when she opened her eyes some time later, didn’t appear to share her wonder. The shadows in the bedroom had darkened during their fevered ballet. Just enough light spilled in from the sitting room for her to catch his frown.

  “Don’t you dare say this was dumb,” she warned, in a voice still husky from passion.

  “I won’t. But it does…complicate things.”

  Allie fought a little niggle of hurt at the note of reserve in his voice. She was still tingling from head to toe, and it sounded as though he were already regretting the explosive passion they’d just shared.

  “It doesn’t have to complicate anything,” she said, managing a weak smile. “Just because I jumped your bones tonight that doesn’t mean I’ll lose all control. We can take this slowly, Rafe. Or try to.”

  He brushed a strand of hair from her flushed, perspiration-sheened face. “Don’t kid yourself. I wanted you to jump my bones. Or anything else you had a mind to. Badly.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  Rafe hesitated. He didn’t want to lay his unfounded suspicions on her, but he knew she wouldn’t accept half truths or evasions. Any more than he could offer them. Not now. Not after what they’d just shared.

  “The problem is last night’s call,” he said softly, easing out of the bed. “It bothered me.”

  Allie scooted up, pulling the sheet with her. She crossed her arms under her breasts, and Rafe dragged his hungry gaze from the plumped-up slopes.

  “Well, it didn’t exactly thrill me,” she replied.

  “I know, sweetheart.”

  The endearment came out before he could stop it. Cursing himself for the slip, Rafe groped for his shorts. He hadn’t lied to Allie. The mind-blowing passion he’d just experienced complicated the hell out of things. His instincts told him he’d need every one of his senses on full alert for the next few days. He couldn’t lose himself in Allie, and possibly lose her, as well. Following a faint trail of golden light, he located his jeans and stepped into them.

  “Tell me again the pitch of the caller’s voice,” he ordered.

  A ripple of unease crossed her face, robbing it of its rosy flush. Regret lanced through Rafe like a sharp dagger at its loss, but he persisted.

  “Describe the caller’s voice to me, Allie.”

  “Low and whispery,” she answered reluctantly. “And sort of draggy, almost as though he was speaking in slow motion. And…and he always calls me Allison.”

  “The police suspect he’s using a synthesizer to disguise his voice.”

  “Why would he need to disguise his—?” Her words died as she understood the answer to her own question. “Oh, my God! Do they think the caller might not be some obsessed fan? That someone I know could be making these calls?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Her fingers clutched the sheet. “But who?”

  “Someone who wants to frighten you. Someone who’s so obsessed with you, he wants to control you through these calls. Someone like Avendez,” he suggested, anticipating her reaction.

  It came with hurricane force. She jerked upright in the bed, her eyes flashing. “No way! Not Dom!”

  “Why not? He’s in love with you, Allie. Has been for a long while, I’d guess.”

  She shagged a hand through her hair. “For heaven’s sake, I know that. We’ve talked about it. Many times. But I can’t give him what he needs, and we’ve both agreed not to let it destroy our friendship.”

  Rafe shook his head. “You can’t be friends with a man who’s in love with you.”

  “Yes, I can,” she argued stubbornly. “Especially with a man who’s in love with me. I don’t have that many friends, Rafe. This business doesn’t allow it. I’m not going to abandon one I trust and admire.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Allie. No man is content with just friendship from a woman he lusts for.”

  Her head snapped back. “Lusts for?”

  “You said yourself he was in love with you.”

  She didn’t answer for a moment. When she did, her voice was low and strained. “Not everyone equates love with lust.”

  Rafe reached for the light switch, aware of the need to see her face while he negotiated this dangerous turn in the conversation.

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” he told her, choosing his words with great care. “The kind who can mix a man up. Mix him up so much he could confuse lust with love. Friendship with obsession.”

  Her brown eyes stared up at him for long moments. Rafe cursed himself for the doubt he saw in them.

  “
Do I confuse you, Rafe?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  He couldn’t give her anything but the truth. “You confuse the hell out of me.”

  “I see.”

  He ached to take her in his arms. To stop the retreat he saw in her eyes before it became a full rout. He curled his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her.

  Hurt washed through Allie in tiny, lapping waves. She couldn’t believe Rafe thought the soaring passion they’d shared was mere animal lust. At this point, she wasn’t quite sure what it was. Right now, she wasn’t sure she cared.

  “I’m not saying Avendez made those calls,” he said. “Just that it’s a possibility.”

  Allie listened mutely while he related his request to have the police check the records of the mobile phone in the processing unit. A hard lump formed in her throat as he mentioned his reservations about the other members of the crew, including the gangly intern.

  “I know these people,” she said tightly. “I can’t believe any of one them is so…so obsessed with me that he’d want to hurt me.”

  “Just keep your eyes open, okay? And the beeper with you.”

  Allie nodded, unable to speak around the lump in her throat.

  “Get dressed, and I’ll take you back to dinner,” he said quietly.

  Only moments ago, she’d felt replete and relaxed and wonderful. Now, she wanted Rafe out of her room before she did something stupid, like crying. In tight silence, she watched as he bent to snag his shirt from the floor.

  Seeing his full torso in the light for the first time, Allie couldn’t prevent a startled gasp. The scars that disfigured one side of his chin and neck continued over his shoulder and made a tortured moonscape of his back.

  At the sound of her shock, Rafe froze. Then he shrugged into his shirt and turned, his fingers working the buttons. “I’ll wait for you in the sitting room.”

  “Wait!” Furious with herself for her unguarded response, Allie scrambled off the bed, dragging the sheet with her. “Rafe, I’m sorry. It’s just that your back… It must have…”

  She reached out to touch him, her own hurt swamped by an awareness of the anguish he must have suffered.

  He caught her hand and held it away. “It’s okay, Allie. I’m used to that kind of reaction.”

  Nine

  After a strained dinner with Michael and Rafe, followed by an endless night of tossing and turning, Allie woke hollow-eyed and irritable the next morning. Even a hard, driving run through a colorful dawn couldn’t clear her sluggish mind.

  Every time she thought of the possibility that someone on the crew could have been making the calls, she felt a little sick.

  And every time she tried to make sense of those moments in Rafe’s arms, he distracted her. She could hear his rasping breath as he paced her. See the gray sweats plastered against his chest and his pumping thighs from the corner of her eye. Remember the feel of those thighs against hers as he brought her to a shattering climax. Whenever Allie contrasted their breathless passion with Rafe’s subsequent withdrawal, she grew angry all over again. And hurt. And confused.

  Whenever she replayed that first startling glimpse of his back in her mind and heard her dismayed gasp, she berated herself. It had been obvious from the way Rafe drew away from her touch that his scars went deeper than the surface disfigurement. How deep, she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure he did, either.

  She was still struggling with these conflicting, draining emotions when the crew piled into rented vehicles and drove into the mountains, to the site of the day’s shoot. Even surrounded by tall stands of pine and whispering aspen groves, she couldn’t clear her mind and concentrate on her work.

  Rafe’s suspicions of Dom plagued her. Throughout the shoot, her muscles felt still and uncoordinated, and her thoughts wandered down paths that made her tense with worry.

  “Allie, for God’s sake!” the photographer snarled after three frustrating hours. “You’re supposed to be enjoying your little walk through these trees! It’s hard enough to shoot in this shifting light, without you looking like you just stepped in a pile of fresh deer poop. What’s with you this morning?”

  “Nothing,” she murmured.

  “Well, loosen up.” He bent over the camera. “Lift your chin. Give me some teeth. Some, I said!”

  Allie tilted her face to the canopy formed by the silver-barked aspens. Glittering green leaves with just a hint of gold to herald the frosts to come fluttered in the morning breeze. Sunlight filtered through the branches and dappled her face.

  “Hold it,” Dom ordered. “Hold it. Now tilt your head back. More. More.”

  The crisp mountain air should have cleared her mind, but it didn’t. The sharp tang of pine resin should have replaced the lingering scent of Rafe’s skin, yet she carried its essence with her. The rough bark under her fingertips should have erased the remembered feel of the ridged scars. Instead, the scaly bark only served to remind her of what he must have suffered. Her face tightened in sympathy.

  “Dammit!” Dom stalked to her side, dried leaves crunching under his foot with each angry step. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  Allie twisted her neck a little to ease the aching muscles. “Nothing.”

  He glared at her. “You’ve been stiff as a board this morning.”

  She tried to summon up the energy to soothe his ragged temper, and failed. “Sorry,” she returned shortly.

  A flush stained his neck at her unaccustomed curtness. “I want your head back. Back, dammit!”

  Splaying his fingers through her hair, he yanked her head to the required angle. Their wills clashed, and for an instant, treacherous doubt snaked through Allie’s mind. Was this just another display of Dom’s infamous temper? Or was there something more, something darker, behind the heat in his eyes?

  “Take your hands off her, Avendez.”

  Dom slewed around, his face a mask of fury. “Butt out, Stone. This isn’t any of your business.”

  “Wrong. She is my business.”

  Allie might have been grateful for Rafe’s intervention, if his words hadn’t brought memories of last night crashing down on her once more. He’d warned her then that a business arrangement was all that bound them. She should have listened, she told herself bitterly. She darn well should have listened. If she had, maybe she wouldn’t be having these awful doubts about herself and Rafe and a man who’d been her friend longer than she could remember.

  “It’s all right,” she snapped, earning a hard look from both men.

  Allie could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d lost her poise during a shoot. If she didn’t get herself under control, this might be one of them.

  “We’ve got a lot to do today and tonight,” she said, in a more even tone. “Let’s just get on with it.”

  As the day wore on, Dom’s temper went from bad to worse. The tension took its toll on everyone, from the equipment handlers to the art director, who stalked off in a huff when Dom informed him he wouldn’t recognize an effective layout if it jumped up and took a chunk out of his ass. When their rented vehicles finally drove through the gates of Rancho Tremayo an hour before dusk, Allie might have wept with relief if she didn’t know she would soon be heading back out again. This time in velvet and pearls.

  Of all the nights to shoot against the backdrop of a gala benefit performance at the Santa Fe Opera, she thought wearily. She felt about as gay and glamorous as a lump of uncooked cookie dough.

  Rafe tugged at his black satin bow tie as he crossed to Allie’s casita. Of all the nights to have to rig himself out in a rented tux and starched white shirt, he thought savagely. He was tired, edgy, and frustrated by the fact that the NYPD detective working Allie’s case had come down with the flu and no one else in the damned department knew anything about a record of calls from the mobile phone.

  Even worse, he’d had to struggle all day to keep his mind on his client’s security and off their moments locked in each other’s arms last night. Desp
ite his every effort to suppress it, Rafe’s need for the woman had grown with every passing hour. After a long, sleepless night and a morning of watching her move with deliberate grace among the trees, he’d ached with the urge to drag Allie away from the crew, lay her down in the lush meadow grass and make love to her under the endless blue sky.

  By late afternoon, however, his desire had shifted focus. Then, Rafe had wanted only to drag her away from the crew and lay her down and watch her drift into sleep. She desperately needed rest, yet she pushed herself even harder than the Zebra pushed her. It had been hard enough on Rafe to stand on the sidelines while Avendez savaged her all day. Now he had to watch the entire process repeat itself tonight.

  If the woman who opened the door to him a few moments later felt drained or fatigued, however, she didn’t show it. She looked composed and in control and so elegant that Rafe’s stomach twisted up in a bow to match his tie.

  By now, he knew enough about her profession to recognize the hallmarks of the trade. A master stylist had swept her hair up in a mass of loose curls. Skillful shading added dramatic emphasis to her eyes and full mouth. The black velvet gown that hugged her slender figure like a glove had to have come from a designer’s private collection.

  Yet as Rafe waited for the ground to steady under him, he decided that Allie didn’t owe her innate elegance to any outside factors. It was more a matter of personal style. The way she carried herself. Her grace under constant, unrelenting pressure. As if to prove the validity of his assessment, she smiled through the strain that had hovered between them since last night.

  “Nice tie.”

  “Don’t get too used to it,” he warned, following her lead. “I’ve got the other one in my pocket.”

  One delicate brow rose as he took her cloak. “You do? Why?”

  “It’s my version of American Express,” he replied, settling the heavy velvet around her shoulders. “I never leave home without it.”

  She angled her head, surprise sculpting her face as she glanced up at him. “What is it, a lucky charm?”

  “More or less.”