A Steamy Bodyguard Romance Anthology: Just One Look

by Joanne Rock

  She would have gladly let him take her on the floor of his living room except that she imagined a man might keep his condoms by his bed as opposed to his coffee table.

  And she liked being carried this way since it put her breasts at feasting level for him and he used the short trip to suck her deep into his mouth.

  She felt the power of that kiss all the way to her core, her hips tilting in helpless response. Her foot grazed the door frame as he angled them into his bedroom, and the small jolt helped her stave off the orgasm that threatened. He hadn’t even touched her between her thighs yet and already she was wound tight enough for mind-numbing release.

  “Sorry,” he whispered as he stalked past a huge wardrobe and a media center toward the back of the room where his sleigh bed loomed high off the hardwood floor. Everything in the room felt big and masculine from the stark, chunky furnishings to the steely muscles binding her to him.

  “My toe doesn’t hurt half as much as other places, believe me.” She’d barely felt the knock against her foot, whereas the ache in her womb taunted her with a persistence that wouldn’t go away without his help.

  Grinning, he lowered her onto his bed.

  “We can’t have you in pain.” He smoothed a palm across her belly, his pinky finger dipping into the waistband of her jeans to torment her even more. “I promise I can take care of that.”

  Donata struggled between the desire to simply lie back and allow him to have his wicked way with her—preferably as soon as possible—and the need to pull off his clothes. She finally compromised by keeping her hips glued to the bed where he was touching her and giving her hands free rein to tug off his shirt.

  She unveiled his abs first, an impressive wall of muscles carved into six neat squares. Breaking her own code to stay still, she couldn’t resist leaning forward to run her tongue along the ridge of those muscles, defining each one with a slow lick.

  His low groan pleased her, the heat from his skin making her shiver in anticipation.

  “I don’t think I can wait.” She sat up abruptly, figuring if he wasn’t used to her blunt-speaking ways by now, there would be no point proceeding with this encounter anyhow.

  “Patience is overrated,” he agreed, reaching into the nightstand drawer and coming back with a foil packet he tossed on the bed. “I’ll take all the time in the world later—after we take the edge off.”

  Gotta love practical men. Passionate men.

  Reaching for the snap on her jeans, she started to wriggle out of the denim at the same time he removed his completely. He’d been commando underneath, so this new view distracted her from her own efforts.

  Men might not be beautiful the way women were beautiful, but he looked damn good to her right now. His shaft rose high and straight, the darkly engorged head calling to her fingertips urgently.

  She transplanted her touch to his erection, her hand encircling him while her thumb traced the head. Thankfully, Sean’s nimble fingers took over the task of peeling off her remaining clothes, his fingers hesitating only briefly to circle the tattooed rose on her hip before he tugged off her lacy red thong.

  She hoped he didn’t have nosy neighbors because the shades hadn’t been drawn on the two windows near the media center. Fortunately, it was dark in his bedroom, with only the streetlights below to illuminate them as they faced off in total nakedness.

  The feel of cool air against her nether regions sent a warning spasm through her whole body, a precursor of the way she’d fly apart in a million pieces soon.

  “I’m not kidding, Sean.” She wrapped her hand around his hip to pull him down to the bed with her. “It’s been a really long time for me.”

  She needed him now.

  He didn’t ask her to spell out how long, but maybe he could already guess given how devoted she’d been to her work.

  “Just one quick taste.” His gaze was fastened to her bikini line and she was grateful she’d kept herself neatly groomed despite the total lack of bedroom action for four years.

  “No.” Another spasm threatened and she squeezed her legs together to ward it off until he was ready to join her. “Please. I want this first release to happen when I have you inside me.”

  The admission revealed a need for intimacy she hadn’t meant to show him, but she hadn’t known how much she wanted that kind of completion until the words fell out of her mouth.

  She reached for the condom to facilitate her wishes and he pulled her to the edge of the bed at the same time while he remained standing over her. He cradled the backs of her thighs, lifting them, lifting her against the hard heat of him. She tore open the packet and sheathed him with trembling fingers while he smoothed his hands up to her bottom to cup her.

  How could she have forgotten how deeply personal this moment could be? She stared at him in the reflected glow of city lights that cast the room in shadows. Modern media often depicted sex with such casualness that she’d almost bought into the idea a man and woman could fulfill one another’s sexual needs without entangling themselves in deeper emotions.

  But just now she realized that would never be true for her. There would be hell to pay for her heart, her feelings, her good mental health after this night with Sean, but she wouldn’t have stopped now for anything. The need inside her twisted painfully and she raised her hips to take him.

  She bit her lip to take her mind off the incredible pleasure since she was determined to have him fully inside her before she let herself go. She’d always liked to maintain a certain amount of control in the bedroom, but it was becoming impossible with this man.

  “Am I hurting you?” He paused to stroke her thighs and he bent forward to kiss her eyelids.

  The tenderness inherent in that gesture threatened to swamp her with emotions. She prayed for some control, some sense of restraint behind passions that could easily overwhelm her.

  “It’s too good for words,” she admitted, her breath coming in and out at high speed as she held herself utterly still, mesmerized by powerful sensations. “I’m just trying to stall the inevitable.”

  He studied her through half-lowered lashes, his assessing gaze missing nothing, seeing deep inside her to raw emotions she didn’t quite know how to veil. Sean saw too much.

  But just when she felt her most vulnerable, when she came the closest to weeping with hunger and need and longing, he pushed her legs farther apart and seated himself fully inside her.

  “Don’t hold back.” He spoke directly into her ear as he withdrew from her slowly and then repeated the breath-stealing thrust inside her. “I want to see you unravel for me, Donata. Only for me.”

  He licked his thumb and then centered the damp pad on her clit as he repeated the thrust. The sweet pressure at the center of her combined with the thick heat between her legs had her spiraling out of control in no time, her shout of fulfillment echoing throughout the room and maybe the whole apartment.

  Tiny spasms fluttered over her skin as deep, lush contractions squeezed her insides as wave after wave of sensual nirvana washed through her whole body. She squeezed him, too, her feminine muscles clenching around him until he had no choice but to join her in the mindless abyss of endless pleasure.

  Words escaped her as they lay in silence afterward. Simply breathing seemed a monumental task since she swore she could have died from the thrill of rediscovering passion. No, not rediscovering. This was better than anything she’d ever felt before so she seemed to be unearthing something all new and wonderful.

  Assuming she didn’t let it cloud her judgment.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Her mind floated away to half sleep and she knew she shouldn’t have been so utterly selfish, putting her needs first. But she’d been powerless to thwart the demands of her body that had been so long denied.

  Still, as her breathing finally slowed down to soft hitches, Donata wondered how she would ever resurrect her facade of cool distance with this man after a night that caused her to come so undone in more ways than one.r />
  CHAPTER 6

  WHEN SEAN FIRST MET Donata, she’d been the outspoken girlfriend of a gangster. Mouthy, haughty and fiercely protective of her man if any cops came around to give Sergio a hard time.

  But as much as he abhorred Sergio’s crimes, Sean had always found something to admire about Donata, even before he knew she was only staying with the guy to help bust him. Maybe the rogue cop within him had responded to her fearlessness bordering on recklessness, the devil-may-care spirit that allowed her to lie to protect her own at any cost.

  Sean had thought that woman was long dead and buried—or maybe she’d only been an act pulled off by a woman bent on revenge. But after tonight, he knew that fearless, borderline reckless Donata was alive and well and more appealing than ever. The fiery, passionate woman she’d always been had steeled into a resourceful, determined woman he could truly admire on many levels.

  Now, lying beside her in the middle of the night, he stroked a kinky strand of blond hair from her forehead and marveled that she had fallen asleep in his bed and in his arms. She’d rallied after they made love the first time, making noises about leaving so they could salvage a working relationship without worrying sex would confuse things. But he’d talked her around. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d touched her and teased her until she saw his point of view on the subject.

  The second time they’d come together had been even more incredible than the first. And that was saying something because it had taken him half an hour to catch his breath after the first time. Donata held nothing back in bed, a sharp contrast from the way she conducted herself in her day-to-day life. At work, she hid her earthy side under conservative suits and clipped cop-speak. But when she set aside those restraints—Well, damn. He was still seeing stars from the aftermath.

  “I can’t afford to mess up my career.” Donata’s sudden soft words surprised him since he thought she’d been sleeping.

  “You’re not going to hurt your career.” He didn’t know what she was worried about since she’d put in a boatload of unpaid overtime already in the days since they’d met again. “You’re working your butt off on this case.”

  “I know, but it doesn’t feel right since I’ve hardly seen Mick this week.” Her eyes fluttered open as she tightened her hold on the sheet. “With his daughter giving him the runaround and her mother not putting her foot down about it, Mick is stuck playing the bad guy. He’s just so anxious to keep Katie safe that his mind isn’t on work.”

  She was silent for a moment, staring down at the assortments of rings on her fingers until she met his gaze again.

  “Doesn’t his ex-wife get how damaging it is for Katie to have no limits?”

  Donata’s question helped the pieces fall into place for Sean as he realized how much she must identify with the girl who hadn’t been given boundaries.

  “How damaging is it?” He didn’t mean to pry, per se. But he was curious about Donata’s life. Her past. What led her to shack up with a gangster as a teenager?

  “Sorry. I don’t believe in pawning off my hard-luck story to make it sound like I had the worst childhood in history.” She propped herself up in his bed, drawing her knees up close to her chest while she tucked the tawny-colored blankets underneath her chin. “I’ve heard tales a hell of a lot worse since I’ve been on the force and I’m sure you did, too. I just wish so-called enlightened parents would get a clue that their open-minded approach to raising kids is a one-way ticket to disaster for a teenager.”

  “I’m asking to hear your story, Donata, because we’re friends. That’s not the same as you pawning it off on me.” Although, he admitted to himself, he admired her even more for not using her past as an excuse for her choices. He liked that bottom-line mentality she had that suggested she wasn’t one to pass the buck.

  Staring down over her knees, she tucked the thermal blanket between her toes.

  “My mom took off on my dad before I was ten. I loved her, I missed her, I blamed myself even though I knew my father wasn’t a picnic to live with. Blaming me seemed easier than blaming her since, you know, she was my mom.”

  Sitting up in the bed, he wrapped an arm around her while she spoke, wishing she’d been raised with a little more tenderness. What parent walked away from her own kid?

  “And before you commiserate about how much that sucked, trust me, in my neighborhood it wasn’t such a bad fate. I had friends whose mothers beat them or who sold their daughter’s virginity to a drug dealer to support a meth habit. I had a Disney upbringing by comparison.” She glared at him in the shadowed light of the room.

  Sean got the message—she wanted him to stay quiet while she told the story she clearly didn’t share very often. And so he didn’t say a word, merely rubbed her bare back, his fingers trailing over her spine to trace an outline over the hummingbird fluttering just above her hips.

  “Anyway, my dad was a hippie throwback, a guy who believed in free love and open marriage and no locks on his front door. He didn’t care where I went as long as I was ‘finding myself.’ It didn’t take many years for me to realize that I’d find myself dead or raped in my own bed if he didn’t install locks on our doors. We got robbed three times in a year before I left. The last time, I woke up to some bug-eyed dude on a heroin trip who figured he’d steal my first time from me since there was virtually nothing else in the house to be stolen by then.”

  Memories of his sister’s encounter with a molester flooded him with anger and he didn’t stand a chance of staying quiet any longer.

  “Son of a—”

  “Nothing happened,” she explained quickly, shaking her head before he let loose the full gamut of expletives and fury he felt on her behalf. “As luck would have it, I’d eaten an apple that night before bed and I still had the knife that I used to peel it on the nightstand. Joe Bug-Eyes got a hell of a surprise when he tried to take my clothes off.”

  She released a pent-up breath and he had the feeling there was more to this story.

  “But you said he was tripping. Did he even feel it when you stabbed him?” Sean had seen guys single-handedly battle three cops when they were flying too high.

  “The guy raised the roof with screaming at me. Half the neighborhood ended up in my bedroom that night, including Sergio from down the street who—for all I know—was the bastard who sold the drugs to my attacker.” She shook her head and Sean could see the disillusionment in her eyes when she turned to look at him. “But at the time, he looked clean and strong and well dressed. To a sixteen-year-old kid, that’s a hell of an endorsement for a guy’s character. It didn’t take long for me to decide life with Sergio—and four walls with locking doors—would be a lot safer than living under my father’s roof.”

  “I’m sure it was. For all of Serg’s faults, I imagine he wouldn’t let anyone else touch you.” Which was more than she could say for her own father.

  “The joys of dysfunction.” She lifted a halfhearted smile in his direction. “I learned in therapy that he was a surrogate father figure, a fact that totally grossed me out, but it ultimately gave me enough distance from him to start seeing him for the criminal he really was. Although, now that I think about it, the fact that he took a mistress in the later years helped me feel pretty distant from him, too.”

  “Rosie Gillespie. I remember the flap because her photos were posted on the same Internet Web site as my sister’s. I questioned her way back when about that but she made it clear she didn’t want any part of cops.” Sean didn’t mention that she’d also claimed Sergio as her protector. Not that it scared off Sean, but the woman had made it plain she considered the police her enemies. “You said you were in therapy before you left Sergio?”

  He’d always imagined Donata had straightened her life out more recently—when she’d signed on to the force.

  “Aside from his criminal pursuits, he used to get a real paycheck from an auto body shop and the benefits were great. The HMO let me visit a shrink after I made a case that I was like a common-law wife a
fter I turned twenty.” She twisted a curly lock around one finger. “I got out of the house by letting Serg think I needed my hair done every week.”

  She winked at him, and he caught a mental picture of what she must have been like then, faking vanity to get real help for herself.

  “You’re amazing.” He wondered how many twenty-year-olds could untangle the myriad of clauses in an HMO well enough to obtain free counseling, let alone have enough self-awareness to want to undertake such a feat.

  “Hardly. I’m a scrapper at heart. I just cover it up better now that I’ve learned skills for professional behavior.” Yawning, she tipped her head sideways to rest on her knees.

  “You must be tired.” He wanted to hold her while she slept, to protect her for a few hours to make up for the way she’d had to look out for herself for most of her life.

  And wasn’t that a surprise? He’d never felt called to play the role of guardian for a woman—except his sister—outside his old police work. Yet this fiercely independent female had him thinking about all the ways he could step into the line of fire for her.

  “I should get home before I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.”

  He didn’t want her to go. He even contemplated using the case to convince her to stay. While he had a few other ideas about where to take the investigation next, he was trying not to step on her toes so they could both do their jobs.

  “A court order could force the store to release the credit card numbers of whoever bought the equipment to send to my fake ID. If Sara Chapman received her webcam equipment the same way, you’d have good leverage to obtain the order.”

  Had he thought he could keep his opinions to himself? Dumb ass. Just when he’d successfully stifled one suggestion on her case, another one came flying out his mouth.

  A startled expression crossed her face at his sudden change of topic. “I’ll talk to Mick about that and I’m going to have to face Sergio if I want any resolution on how my photos are getting passed around.” Donata untucked the blanket from her toes. “I know he’s probably the driving force behind the move to discredit me, but since he’s in jail, there has to be someone else doing the dirty work.”