by Chloe Cox
“I was kind of planning to wing it tonight,” she said, doing one final makeup check.
“You’re always best when you improvise,” Tiff said. “But you know they’re expecting it right? They have this new social media director trying to get the attention of the youths or whatever.”
“Is that why they were so bummed when I told them I’d be bringing a bodyguard?”
Tiff laughed. “Probably. Think the Slimebag will show his slimy face tonight?”
“I freaking hope not,” Sierra said.
But she smiled at Tiff’s nickname for her stalker. The whole creepy stalker thing was new to her, and she was most definitely not a fan, although she tried not to show it. It was how her father had died; of course she was utterly, lay-awake-at-night, afraid-to-move terrified. But she absolutely refused to give that slimebag stalker, whoever he was, the satisfaction.
Tiffany knew this, obviously. And she also knew that her insistence on joking about everything actually kinda helped Sierra calm down.
“You know other girls are jealous, right?” Tiff said, sliding into her ironic bimbo voice. “You have an honest to God stalker, you bitch.”
“Tiff, you are nuts. That is nuts. All of you are nuts.”
“Of course we are,” Tiff said. “Anyway, I’m more excited about the bodyguard. What are you going to do if he’s hot? I bet he’s going to be hot.”
Sierra rolled her eyes. “Like I need more stress.”
Which was a lie. She’d been fantasizing about a hot bodyguard, too.
Well, she was human, after all, and it had been a long dry spell and, well, yeah. If you had to have a bodyguard, you might as well have one you could ogle.
Which was also why she’d gone with Lyons Security.
Her brother Jared had tried to get her to hire one of “his guys” as a bodyguard, which…no. Jared had shown way more interest in her than he ever had before as soon as someone started threatening her life, but he still looked at her with all the old barely concealed contempt and resentment. Lovely combination. So Sierra had made sure to go with her own choice for protection.
“Where did you find him, anyway?” Tiff asked. “The bodyguard, I mean, not the Slimebag.”
Sierra looked down and pretended to look for something in her makeup drawer, hiding her smile.
Funny you should ask…
Even Tiff didn’t know this side of her. No one did, except for a few very discrete kinksters all the way in London, and they hadn’t really known Sierra outside of, well, kink. So she couldn’t very well explain that she’d been obsessively checking on the progress of the new Club Volare Boston ever since she came home, hoping there would be a place for her to submit to the right Dom. She’d sent in an application, she’d been approved, but…
She’d never worked up the courage to actually go, worried that she’d be outed, her real self exposed to the world rather than her carefully curated image. But she had done enough googling to find out that the owner of Club Volare Boston, one Kane Lyons, also owned a security firm. A really good security firm. Like, one of the best in the country.
So when it came time to hire a bodyguard, Sierra knew just who to call. It might be the closest she’d get to an actual Dom for a long, long time.
She bit her lip at the thought.
And then she had another thought, and this time her lips made the very distinctive “oh shit” shape.
She’d been worried about how a regular bodyguard would deal with the silly shenanigans she had to pull for work. But that was child’s play next to the real question.
How would a Dom bodyguard deal with her shenanigans?
You are in trouble, Sierra, she thought. Big, big trouble.
Yay?
Two
Sierra didn’t know whether to hope or fear that her new bodyguard would be a Dom, but she did know she would do whatever she had to in order to escape her family’s legacy and live her own life. Which meant doing crazy stuff to promote her makeup line before launch.
No one, not even a Dom, could stop her from doing that.
Even if she lost her freaking mind in the process.
“Hey, am I reading this right?” Tiff said, interrupting Sierra’s NSFW thoughts one more time. Tiff was looking at Sierra’s tentative schedule for the next few months; her business partners had sent it to her for mark up. “Your big product launch is scheduled on your actual birthday?”
“Yeah, that was on purpose,” Sierra said. “No way I want to have to spend it with Jared.”
“It’s the big one, right?”
Sierra sighed. “Yup. The big one.”
She and Jared were turning twenty-six at the end of the summer, which, in addition to being the age when the brain finally finishes developing — something she learned in one of those late night googling sessions on a night when the stalker thing had kept her up — was the age when their inheritances kicked in. Their father had put his assets in two separate trusts before he died, one for Jared and Sierra each, with strict instructions that they weren’t to get control of those assets until their twenty-sixth birthday.
Sierra secretly suspected their father might have known the thing about brain development. It wouldn’t have surprised her, anyway. Literally nothing could have surprised her after learning that he’d left her fully half of his assets. The only other person more surprised by that fact had been Jared.
And oh man had Jared been surprised. Surprised, and really, really mad.
Vincent Fiore hadn’t exactly been subtle about his favoritism when they were kids. Jared was the boy, so it was just expected that he would take over the business, such as it was. So Jared was the one who went with their father to meetings, who met all the important people, who helped with the legitimate business stuff, like her father’s songbook and publishing rights. Sierra got clothes and makeup.
Which, fine: she liked clothes and makeup. But it wasn’t all she was interested in.
Maybe in a normal family that would have been ok. But in Sierra’s family…there was no right way to be herself. If she did anything other than smile and be pleasant and pretend to be kind of dumb, she risked her brother’s wrath and her father’s disappointment.
It used to hurt, a lot. Maybe it still did, and she’d just gone numb to it. And either way, it definitely wasn’t right. But then her father had started writing letters to her at university, letters that were impossibly personal compared to any conversation they’d ever had, letters that confused and bewildered her but that she cherished. And over time, she realized that Vincent Fiore just hadn’t known how to deal with a daughter. Especially not one who reminded him so much of his dead wife.
Jared’s anger whenever Sierra dared to shine even a little bit, however, remained one of the crappier mysteries of life. Up until their father’s will was read, anyway. After that surprise bombshell, Jared hadn’t bothered to hide how angry he was.
So. She had a plan. She’d launch her product line, she’d inherit, and then she’d donate all her father’s money to the various charities she’d been scouting out for that purpose. And then she’d be done, and free to live her life however she wanted.
Whatever that was.
And it was right then that the phone to the security desk rang.
“Bodyguard time!” Tiff squealed, clapping her hands together. “I’m staying, so don’t even try to kick me out. I have to see this guy. Have to. Like it will be a crime against humanity if I don’t.”
Sierra barely heard her friend, or, truthfully, Lenny the security guy on the phone. Her lips moved, she said all the right words, but her mind was somewhere else.
Because, very suddenly, it was all real. It was happening.
She had hired a security firm based on the fact that it was owned by a Dom, and now whoever they had sent was here. Who makes a decision like that? What kind of crazy lady does that?
A crazy lady who wants to take something scary and turn it into something maybe kind of sexy, at least around the
edges, that’s who.
Right. Ok. She might be crazy, but hopefully it was the fun kind of crazy. And this Conor Kelly guy would almost certainly be just a normal bodyguard, not some sort of Club Volare Dom sex god. Like that was not actually something that happened in real life. Fantasies never actually came true.
Sierra calmed down, her hand on the doorknob.
Then she opened the door.
And there was Conor freaking Kelly.
Conor clocked it from shower to Sierra’s door. Under ten minutes.
In the walk over he’d already turned his hyper vigilance skills up to eleven, letting old habits come back online, familiarizing himself with the terrain. Getting in the zone.
But there was a problem. Shooting a load off in the shower was supposed to clear his head, let him focus.
He was still thinking about her.
The buzz behind his balls never went away. The charge wasn’t gone. The dull colors on Beacon Street glowed a little brighter as he walked on, and the heaviness in his chest rolled over, a hibernating bear showing signs of movement.
He knew the physiological signs. It was pure arousal. Every goddamn type of arousal at once, fight and fuck most predominant. Because not only did he want her. But he was close to getting justice. For the first time in years, he was close.
So: dressed in no time. Just threw on the black shirt, black jeans, his holstered weapon, his leather jacket.
In five minutes flat, he was walking down Newbury Street, his mind clicking into gear. He clocked a bar where Sierra had been photographed ass up, drunk, scandalous. Another restaurant, the only one where she’d been photographed with her brother, looking uncomfortable and vigilant. And finally, the fancy ass loft condo building where she lived.
Conor’s eyes narrowed as he studied the building from across the street. Quick assessment: someone had put a ton of money into the security set up. State of the art camera system, not just at the front entry, but apparently on windows that could theoretically be accessed from the street or nearby buildings. There were even motion sensors on the penthouse floor.
That would be Sierra.
So there was a brand new security system, plus a security guard in the lobby who didn’t look like a total candyass. The man was barrel-chested, thick-armed, with a mustache that could strain soup. He rose to meet Conor as Conor walked into the entryway, his hand on his weapon even though Conor was still on the other side of bulletproof glass. Conor recognized him from his file—he’d memorized the faces of everyone who worked with Sierra or who might have access to her. This one was Lenny Berra. Retired cop. Conor put his hands up and leaned into the speaker.
“Conor Kelly,” he said. “For Sierra Fiore. I’m expected.”
Lenny Berra picked up a phone, never taking his eyes off Conor. After a moment, he nodded, and Conor was buzzed in.
“Good looking out,” Conor said, nodding as he walked by. He liked people who did their jobs well.
Berra watched him closely. Another good sign.
“I’ll key you in,” he said. “Otherwise no access to the penthouse floor.”
“Sophisticated,” Conor said. “This new?”
Berra nodded. “Compliments of Miss Fiore herself.”
Conor said nothing as he stepped into the elevator. Berra leaned in, keyed in the penthouse floor, and nodded at Conor as the elevator doors began to close. Conor nodded back, making a note to talk to the man again later. But right now, this moment, as the elevator carried him up to Sierra Fiore’s well-defended penthouse loft, he was thinking of one thing: what kind of woman made a living as a hot mess of a party girl with no concept of responsibility, and then set herself up in Fort Knox?
A complicated one.
Conor grinned despite himself as the doors opened on the penthouse floor. He liked complicated women. And most of all, he liked the inherent tension in the situation, because he liked a damn challenge.
There was no getting away from the fact that Sierra Fiore’s job was to take risks in public, and Conor’s job was to stop her. And he was going to enjoy doing it.
He knocked on the door.
And when it opened, his jaw clenched and his cock jumped.
He ignored the softness of her eyes, the way her skin glowed. The scent he could almost taste. He had a job to do.
What the hell was she wearing?
Whatever it was was green, and barely covered her otherwise naked body. Just a couple of swathes of strategic fabric some artsy designer stitched together to cover the important parts, and only just because they had to. She stood in front of him, door open, hand on the sweet curve of her hip, eyebrow arched a little too high for her confidence to be genuine. He could see her pulse beating a little too fast in her neck, saw the flush on her nearly bare chest begin to spread.
The first time Conor looked Sierra Fiore up and down, he did it to make a point. But the second time he did it for himself.
She blinked, her blush deepening.
“You’re Conor Kelly?” she said.
“Yup,” he said. “And you’re already in trouble, Sierra Fiore.”
She blinked again.
“Trouble?”
“Strike one is opening the door without confirming who’s on the other side,” he said. “Strike two is thinking you’re leaving the house in that dress. Care to find out what happens when you get that third strike, Princess?”
Sierra Fiore’s beautiful lips parted just as the pink flush rose in her cheeks. She looked down at what she mostly wasn’t wearing — Christ, could you even call that a dress? — and looked back up at Conor, slowly.
“This dress is for work,” she said.
Conor grinned. “You have an interesting job.”
Sierra Fiore licked her lips, and swallowed, her eyes still wide and looking at him like someone had stunned her with just enough voltage to sting.
“Wait,” she said. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”
Conor didn’t respond, didn’t react. He just pinned her eyes with his own, and waited.
Jesus, those soft eyes.
Instincts kicking into gear, connections firing in his brain. Patterns recognized. Conor knew this dynamic. Knew the current flowing between them, the way she breathed a little deeper, the way the tension rose the longer he went without answering her. It was like Sierra Fiore stepped into a dance they both knew.
She’s still a newbie. Move on.
But the mission always came first, and Conor Kelly was one ruthless son of a bitch. And he needed to know what he was dealing with. So when he spoke next, he didn’t fuck around.
He used the Dom voice.
“Say that again,” he ordered.
Sierra’s lips were moving before she even knew what she was saying. “I said, who the hell do you think you are?”
Good girl.
“We already established that, Princess,” he said. “I’m Conor Kelly. Otherwise known as the man in charge of you from now on. Now get inside, close the door, and listen up. We have to get some things straight.”
It was a risky gambit, and he was kind of a dick for doing it.
But it worked.
Sierra stepped back automatically, reflexively, her eyes down. Then she caught herself, aware of what she’d just done, blushing again.
Christ, it was pretty. He wanted to see more of it. He wanted to see if she flushed that dusky red all over. He wanted to see for sure what her submission looked like, because now, whether she knew it or not, he knew she had it in her.
And now he knew how to talk to her an emergency to get her going. To get her safe. He’d just use his Dom voice.
He just wouldn’t order her to bend and spread when he was done.
This was going to be a goddamn challenge.
Three
Sierra’s jaw practically hit the floor.
Conor Kelly was not just some regular bodyguard, whatever that was. He was a couple of inches north of six feet, with black, black hair that might glint blue i
n the right light, ice blue eyes, and a tailored suit jacket that did absolutely nothing to hide the fact that he was a walking wall of muscle.
But it was the way he looked at her that totally undid her.
His pale blue eyes glittered over her, unhurried, unbothered. It was familiar, somehow, and she didn’t want it to stop. Her whole body responded wherever his eyes touched her in a way that was beyond her control. It had been a long, long time since she felt anything like that. Like possibly forever.
Sierra looked back, and that’s when he took her breath away.
The sheer strength he projected was, well, awesome. Good quality in a bodyguard, sure, but it was a total panty-dropper in a man. But it was more than that. The quiet confidence that rolled off him in waves, the tattoos visible where he’d rolled the cuffs of his jacket up, and those damn eyes, looking her up and down?
Yeah, she’d seen that look before. But never so blatantly, never so nakedly.
Only Doms had ever looked at her like that.
Sierra’s breath hitched at the thought. Her body was way ahead of her. She was actually, for real, wet. Her nipples were hardening, which would be extremely visible in this freaking dress, and her whole awareness was beginning to concentrate on the sensation between her legs as her clit throbbed to life.
Jesus Christ, he’d only looked at her.
And then? He laughed. And he ordered her around.
She had already stepped back and let him into the apartment when she realized what had just happened. She’d literally just met this man, and he had her…
She didn’t even know. But she was pretty sure that if he ordered her to take that dress off, she would freaking do it.
Tiffany’s dropped jaw notwithstanding.
“Tiffany Halston, this is Conor Kelly,” she heard herself saying, weakly. “My new bodyguard.”
“I already know who she is, and this isn’t a social visit, Princess,” Conor said, scanning the room. “No offense to Miss Halston.”
Sierra blinked, and flushed head to toe. Oh, God. The way he said that…