She hesitated, and I jabbed the air in front of her.
“Nah, you won’t do it. It’s not fancy enough. Tell you what, I’ll go call a masseuse and a celebrity therapist. Maybe order you some bonbons so you can perch on your throne and cry about how hard writing songs is.”
Her eyes narrowed and I grinned, dancing back and forth in front of her. She took a stance—a terrible, terrible stance—and raised her fists.
“All right, let’s go!” she said, bouncing from foot to foot.
“Hold on, hold on,” I said. “Gotta have the right music for this.”
I set up my little portable stereo and flipped through my phone for the right song. Heavy rock, a fighting beat. My body reacted immediately, loosening and heating in response. It was what I trained to.
“Nice,” she said appreciatively.
I looked at her in surprise. “You like this? It’s not really your kind of thing.”
“It’s not what I sing,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me. Careful where you point that thing. “I think that’s why I like listening to it so much. I don’t have to dissect it, I can just let it tear through me.”
“Watch your phrasing.” The suggestive warning in my voice made her flush red, and I bit my lip. “All right, put ’em up. Come at me.”
I took her down in four seconds, gently. She lay breathless on the floor, staring at the ceiling, pinned under my arm. “Nice try. Get up.”
“How did you do that?” she gasped as I pulled her to her feet.
“I’ll show you. In slow motion this time. Throw a punch, slowly.”
Her tiny fist came at me, projecting and over-extended. I grabbed her wrist and twisted.
“So you see right now, you’re balanced on your toes. Your whole back is arched. All of your weight is over empty air. You’re not coming back from this, you’re going down.”
I pulled her back up and spun her away.
“Okay, so what? Don’t throw punches?” she asked.
“Yep, if you can’t do it the first time, you quit,” I said sarcastically.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, shoving me lightly. “Come on, teach me.”
“I’m not a teacher, I’m a bodyguard.”
A bodyguard who was having a really hard time resisting the urge to wrap her up and pin her to the floor. Her soft turquoise yoga pants outlined literally every curve, drawing my eye to the shape of her. Too much more of this and I would blow the whole scheme. Well, somebody would blow something… I shook the thought away.
“So, I’ll pay you for both,” she said, flashing a defiant grin. “Come on, won’t your job be easier if I’m able to take care of myself?”
“I’ll be out of a job if you can take care of yourself,” I pointed out.
“No, because you’re still a big, intimidating man. I’d rather have the stalkers run away before they try anything than have to prove I can fight.” She said it lightheartedly, but I saw the shadow of fear behind her expression.
“You get a lot of stalkers?” I asked casually, putting my fists up again.
“A girl can dream, can’t she?” Paisley grinned, chasing the shadow away. She put her own fists back up, crouching into another unbalanced stance.
Sighing, I dropped my hands.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You’re defeating your own self,” I said with mock irritation. “Your shoulders are all the way over here.” I pushed them back, centering them over her hips. “And your hips are all wonky.”
It was a pleasant wonky, that little feminine tilt curving her waist, but it was completely useless for fighting. I pushed her hip down. Electricity shot from my palm to my crotch. I ignored it.
“And all of your weight is on your toes. You aren’t wearing heels, don’t pretend you are. Pretend you have a ball in the arch of your foot. Keep your feet moving, rolling, so you can anchor yourself wherever you need to be.”
She settled herself on her feet, visualizing what I’d said.
“Good. Now that same fluid feeling, take it up to your knees. Keep your legs moving, they’ll never know where you’re coming from. You gotta keep your weight balanced, but you have to keep that balance moving. Make sense?”
“Like dancing,” she said, nodding.
She started to circle me, keeping her weight centered.
“Good. You’re quick.” And lithe, and curvy…
“I’m normally pretty good with my body,” she said innocently.
“I bet you are.”
She blushed furiously and jabbed with her fist. I put her on the ground again.
“What the hell?” she gasped, frustrated.
“You’re leaning into the punch. You’re giving your balance to me, and I’m taking it.” I helped her up, and she blew out an aggravated breath.
Chuckling, I pushed her gently toward the door. “Let me put my stuff away. We’ll practice later.”
“All right,” she said reluctantly. “I’m going for a run.”
I frowned, thinking that was exactly what I shouldn’t let her do if I was actually guarding her. She saw my look and returned one of thinly veiled annoyance.
“I’ve gone running every day. Nobody’s bothered me yet. Trust me, if something happens, you’ll be my first call.”
“All right,” I agreed, playing up the reluctance. “What’s your route?”
“Two miles up the river, around the cemetery, two miles back along the river.”
“You run around a cemetery every day? No wonder you’re depressed.”
“I’m not depressed,” she objected. “And cemeteries are great. All that emotion, all that old poetry… They’re inspiring.”
“If you say so,” I shrugged. “How long do you expect to be?”
“An hour, hour and a half. Depends on how fast I want to go.”
“Great, then if you aren’t back by eleven thirty, I’m coming to find you.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Yes, Daddy. Have fun unpacking.”
I almost threw the whole plan out the window right then. Her pouting red lips, the little shake of her cotton-clad hips, that random “Daddy”… It was all I could do to keep my hands to myself until she sashayed out of the room.
I watched from the window as she ran across the yard and hit the path beside the river, jiggling in all the right places with every step.
“Set it up, boy,” I told myself. “Make it worth it.”
It would be worth it either way. Her body on mine would be payment enough, but I had bigger fish to fry.
I checked my phone for information about Billy and didn’t like what I saw. Jeanne had set up a crowdfunding page three days ago which had pulled in a whole twenty dollars. I needed that money. Billy and Jeanne needed that money. A payout like this could keep me stocked in basic necessities for the rest of time; or it could cover the cost of living until Billy recovered or died. I’d seen his life insurance policy. Jeanne would disagree, but that boy was worth more dead.
With Billy’s family in mind, I unzipped the big duffel bag. It was filled to bursting with security cameras, the tiny ones which could hide in plain sight. I positioned one in my room, pointing it at the bed. Turning it on, I checked the connection to my laptop. Perfect. Her room should have been next, but an uncomfortable wriggle of guilt turned my stomach and I moved on.
“If I were banging a pop star, where would I do it?” I asked myself.
The piano, obviously.
I shoved a camera into the strange reedy plant she kept in there, pointing it at the piano. You really have to put one in her room, I told myself. If you get this, she’s going to want it on her turf.
Cursing my own logic, I dragged the duffel bag back upstairs. My heart pounded when I turned the handle, making my palms sweat.
“God, it’s not like you’re going to get in trouble,” I snapped at myself. “She’ll never know you were in there.”
Well, she would eventually. For the first time, I realized
that she would definitely see the sex tape. It would show up, frozen in a blurred, grainy image on the entertainment channels and rumor mills. Her face would be everywhere. Everybody would see her on me, me inside her. That thought struck a chord, and I found myself uncomfortably turned on.
“Sorry, Paisley,” I said, sticking a camera among the stuffed animals lined up on top of her dresser. “It’ll blow over eventually.”
I didn’t bother checking the camera after I turned it on. Shaking the doubt and hesitation away, I jogged back downstairs.
“All right, where else? Couch. Table. Oh, kitchen…”
Listing off every place where I would potentially screw Paisley freaking Abbott tightened the front of my jeans, distracting me. I should have been paying attention.
Chapter 8
Paisley
Maybe I should have brought him with me. That feeling of eyes watching me was stronger than ever, making me falter every few steps. Music in my ears didn’t seem to help at all and by the time I reached the cemetery, I was a wreck. My palms were sweating, my heart was pounding, I was gasping for breath; but it wasn’t from the exercise.
“Damn it,” I whispered under my breath as I paused at the peak of a rolling hill.
The river rushed by on my left, swollen and frothing over wicked rapids. The thought came, unbidden, that it wouldn’t take much to kill me here. A little shove, and it would all be over. Wind whistled through the cemetery to my right, accentuating the grim fantasy. I should have gone in there. I needed the inspiration, didn’t I? But the headstones rose high over the tangled undergrowth, and all I could see were hundreds of places for a stalker to hide.
“All right, that’s it,” I muttered as I turned on my heel and ran back toward the house. “I’m hexing Lacey and Jude and Tyler, in that order, for making me paranoid.”
The boldness in my tone was a complete lie. Adrenaline filled my veins and I flew, fleeing the invisible terror at my back.
There’s nobody there, I told myself. You’re running from nothing. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t slow down, couldn’t catch an easy breath, not until I skidded to a stop in front of my house. My brain screamed that monsters were grabbing at my ankles as I leapt up the front steps. One last burst of speed and I was inside, locking the door against the nothing.
My attention was caught by the very-much-not-nothing happening in the foyer. Tyler stood frozen on the top step of a ladder, staring at me like a kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He held a camera in his left hand, which he was screwing to the wall with his right. A camera?
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He licked his lips nervously and slowly backed down the ladder. “Problem with heights,” he said with an embarrassed little laugh. “I was trying to hang the security camera. There are way too many points of entry around here. We need more eyes on the doors.”
Eyes. I shuddered.
“Good thinking,” I said with relief. “I’m glad you’re here, Tyler.”
“Happy to be here,” he said with a smile. “I’m steadier now, let me finish this. How was your run?”
“Oh…it was fine. I didn’t go all the way, but it was good.”
“Why not?” he asked, climbing back up the ladder with barely a tremble.
Nothing like a woman to bring the man out, I thought. It was actually kind of funny that he was pretending to be fine now after I caught him frozen in terror.
“Just wasn’t feeling it today,” I said.
It was the truth, sort of. I just didn’t want him to think I was crazy right away and disappear on me.
I watched him put the camera in place and climb down, noticing how his muscles rippled under the thin white undershirt he wore. It was almost a picture frame, accentuating the tattoos on his arms. Now that I really had a chance to look at them, I noticed so many intricate little details that I never would have imagined.
He caught me staring. “Like the ink?” he asked with a grin.
My fingers reached out to trace a purple line from the apex of his shoulder down to his wrist, snaking this way and that around the clustered illustrations.
“I really do,” I said, fascinated as the picture changed with his goosebumps. “These flowers…are they made of skulls?”
“Yeah,” he said with a little deprecating laugh. “The angst was strong.”
I glanced up at those intense green eyes, hazy with nostalgia. They cleared as he met my gaze with a defensive little smile. “What?”
“You intrigue me,” I told him, resting my hand on his arm.
His lips quirked as he hooded his eyes suggestively. Warmth spread across my body from my blushing cheeks to my hips and between, and I snatched my hand back before I did something incredibly stupid.
“So… Is the security all in place?” I winced at the thin breathiness of my own tone.
“Yep, everything’s locked down tight. What’s next? Writing?”
I nodded. That’s definitely what I needed to do.
What I really wanted to do, though, was see how far those tattoos spread across his chest. Trace the images with my fingers and eyes and tongue. With a jolt, I realized that he was going to be living here, for a while at least. If I didn’t get myself under control, I was going to be in serious trouble.
“I usually write alone,” I told him. “But I really doubt that I’ll get anything usable done today anyway, so feel free to come hang out if you get bored.” The words came out too fast, giving me away.
I didn’t give him the chance to dissect the moment. Walking away into the piano room, I found myself hoping that he would follow. Just to give me something to look at, I told myself.
I felt him behind me as I sat at the piano, and I turned around.
“Sorry,” he said, stepping back. “Did you not actually want me in here?”
“Oh, I do,” I said quickly. “I’m just a little jumpy right now, that’s all.”
“You can’t get creative if you’re that tense,” he said, resting his hands on my shoulders. “You gotta relax.”
He began rubbing my shoulders, working the knots out. His strong hands turned my tight muscles to warm butter, and a gentle moan escaped my throat as the vertebrae along my spine cracked and popped.
Pressing a little harder, sinking a little deeper, he ignited my nerves. Tension released, pleasure flowed through me from my head to the curling tips of my toes, and I tilted my head back against him.
“There you go,” he said energetically, clapping his hands against my shoulders. “Now you can work.”
I blinked in surprise, trying to shift back to reality without a clutch. He plopped himself in a chair and kicked his feet up on the ottoman, examining his hands. After a long, confused moment, he looked up at me.
“Did you need something?”
“Uh… Nope.”
I shook out my hands and trickled them over the keys, looking for the chord to reflect the warm, semi-erotic frustration swirling through my body. It wasn’t unpleasant; quite the contrary.
I found a friendly chord, paired it with an upbeat tune, and got to work. Tyler sat there quietly, watching me work, until he seemed to fade into the background. Just another piece of furniture in the room, until he moved, and then he was like an explosion of flavor through the air.
“Are you doing that on purpose?” he asked suddenly.
I paused, my fingers hovering over the keys. “Doing what?”
“That… That! Whatever it is you’re doing.” He gestured at the piano sharply.
“Depends…what are you feeling?” I asked. He raised a brow at me, and I rolled my eyes. “With regard to the music, macho man.”
“Blue-balled,” he said shortly. “I keep expecting there to be another beat or something, and then you move on to something else that’s also nice, but then there isn’t that…finishing beat.”
I laughed, clapping my hands. “Then yes, that is deliberate,” I told him with a grin. “I’m glad it’s workin
g.”
“What are you trying to do, frustrate all of your fans?”
“Yes, for three minutes. And then I’m going to satisfy those frustrated needs.”
A flicker of carnal interest crossed his face, and I kept an innocent mask firmly in place. I wrote down what I had developed, satisfied with the opening. I moved on to the chorus, leaving that expected beat off, laughing as Tyler started pacing agitatedly.
“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” I giggled. “It’s going to be like this all day, probably. I need to frustrate myself until I know exactly how to finish it.”
He shot me an inquisitive look, then sidled over to lean against the piano.
“It’s bothering you? I thought you were just taking sadistic pleasure in torturing me.”
“Oh, well, that too,” I admitted with a wicked grin. “But yeah. I have to grind myself against the music, crawl inside it so I know it. I’ve spent days swimming in a tune that’s just barely not right, just to feel how uncomfortable it is and figure out why.
“This one is uncomfortable because, like you said, it’s not finished. There’s no resolution; it just keeps you hanging. That’s an easy one. Other things, like minor keys interrupting a major flow, those are a little harder to pin down. Or stair steps that go down-down-down-up instead of up-up-up-down.” I demonstrated on the piano as I talked, and he seemed to be captivated.
“Man. I always figured you just sort of played around and came up with stuff. I didn’t know you were a genius.”
“Oh, I’m not a genius,” I laughed. “I just understand how it works, you know?”
He glanced dubiously at the piano, then whipped his body around and slid onto the bench beside me.
“All right. I taught you, you teach me.”
“You barely taught me,” I objected.
“So barely teach me! Come on, show me how it works.” He was intensely interested, like a little kid. It was endearing, in a surprising sort of way.
“Okay. The basics are super simple. That side is low, this side is high. It’s an even gradient, so every key,” I pressed one. “Is the same distance from the keys above and below. Distance isn’t quite right. It’s like…frequencies.”
Protect Me - A Steamy Bodyguard Romance (You Can't Resist a Bad Boy Book 5) Page 5