Lifting her in one arm, he used his free hand to yank up the shirt. He positioned himself and pushed into her swollen heat.
“Oh!” she gasped, digging her nails into his shoulders.
No doubt she was sore, because it took him four passes before he buried himself in her gripping tightness. The sensation of being sheathed inside her shivers down his back. Again. He couldn’t get enough of her.
She gripped his shoulders. “Slower. Please?”
“Whatever you need, honey.” He cupped her face in one hand, staring into her luminous eyes.
The height of the countertop prohibited him from entering her fully. Determined to change that, he lifted her up off the counter. She hooked her ankles at his lower spine. She slid all the way down his erection and he groaned.
He moved her hips up and down on him, so deep, so tight. “You feel so good, baby.”
She gently bit his neck. “More,” she insisted.
For added stability, he shifted and turned to the left until her back met the fridge. Instantly her nipples hardened beneath the shirt. Lifting the fabric, he dropped his head to capture one, then the other in his mouth, obsessed with the beaded texture on his tongue, and the incredible fullness of her breasts bouncing up and down against his chest.
It was like she’d been made for him—and him alone.
If he’d created a list describing his perfect woman, Lindsey is what she’d look and feel like. Lush and beautiful, proportioned just the way he craved.
His long, slow strokes caused her back to smudge against the stainless steel. Folding his arms around her, he shielded her from the impact of his lunges.
When she came she shook in his arms. He followed right behind her with rapid bursts of release shooting deep into her core. She sagged against him, resting her cheek on his shoulder.
As their breathing normalized, and he held her securely, a sharp sense of duty took hold.
They’d been so caught up in satisfying their intense lust for each other, they hadn’t discussed the more complex details of this arrangement. He needed her to understand he’d take full responsibility and stand by her side through everything. Appointments, ultrasounds, the delivery. And after the baby came, there would be late night feedings, diaper changing and complete exhaustion, followed by her gradual physical recovery. He’d help her through that, too.
Returning her to the countertop, he eased her legs from around his waist where they dangled limply. He loved that he did that to her, reduced her to a dreamy-eyed, sexually satisfied female.
An elated sigh left her lips and made him want to give it to her again. He restrained himself, zipped up his fly, then ignited the two burners on the stove again. She returned to munching on red peppers.
He swore his cheeks were frozen in a permanent grin. One that just might never fade, as long as she was in his life. A strange sensation—good, really good, but foreign to him.
“I’m curious,” she mused aloud. “Is it necessary to have sex this often to get pregnant? I’ve read on several online chat sites that some doctors recommend every other day.”
“I say, the more often, the better your chances.”
Grinning, she rolled her eyes. “You’re a guy. Of course you’d say that.”
“What does it matter, as long as it gets the job done?” When she fell suspiciously silent, he replayed the words back in his mind and realized his tactical error. Not that making love to you is a job or a chore. Believe it, it’s not. More like pure hedonism with a purpose.”
She snorted, her mood appearing to lighten, which relieved him. “I have to admit,” she said, “this is ten thousand times better than the turkey baster method.”
“Damn I hope so. I’d better be.”
Hopping off the counter, she wrapped her arms around his bare waist and rested her cheek between his shoulder blades where scar tissue twisted and matted like ropes. “You are, Mr. Insatiable.”
Her touch did dangerous things to him. Made him want to offer her what he’d never offered to any woman—his heart in his hands.
But that wasn’t part of the arrangement…at least, not yet.
“Can you grab some plates, babe?” he asked.
“Sure. It’s the least I can do for my resident chef.” She set two square plates beside the stove. “Especially since you lowered yourself to the miserable depths of cooking tofu for me.”
“You’re lucky I like you.”
“I know,” she said with instant certainty that bemused him.
Anymore, when it came to Lindsey, the word “no” didn’t exist in his vocabulary.
After plating their dinners, he took them to the two-seater kitchen table. He sat across from her, watching her enjoy her tofu stir fry as if he’d created some delicacy. The texture of that stuff gave him hives and triggered his gag reflex if he thought too much about it.
Starved after expending countless calories during a glorious day of constant sex, he inhaled his two chicken breasts and side of broccoli before he came up for air. Setting down his silverware, he contemplated his next words.
“I need you to know something,” he said, examining her features to gauge her reaction. “You’re not in this by yourself. I’ll be here for you in any capacity you need. And for me, that goes way beyond sex.”
Appearing startled, she blinked. “It does?”
He nodded. “Like you said yourself, I don’t do anything halfway. Whatever our personal situation is between us after the baby is born, you can count on me for child support.”
Her fork clattered to her plate. “You’re not serious.”
“Completely.”
“But, Slone…I’d expected to do this all on my own. I don’t want your money.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said in a quiet, serious tone. “Like hell I’ll bring a kid into this world and let you two fend for yourselves. I’m going to make sure you’re both well taken care of.”
Her lips parted but no words came out for a long moment. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But I’m going to, so I wanted you to know.”
“I’m not sure what to say,” she whispered, her eyes wide blue pools of emotion.
“Nothing to say.” He shrugged. “Everything will be taken care of—you’ll be taken care of, and so will the baby. That’s how I want this to go down, so don’t argue with me. I already made up my mind.”
“You reserve the right to walk away any time. I won’t hold you to anything.” She swallowed hard. “You aren’t obligated.”
“I won’t abandon you. That’s all I’m saying.”
She nodded. Her lashes drifted down, a trace of wetness clinging to the tips.
Fear or relief? Maybe both. She looked like she wasn’t sure if she should believe him.
Seeing her vulnerability in its full light, Slone decided to make some serious adjustments. In civilian life he’d never had this before, someone—potentially two someones—counting on him for the most fundamental asset. Security. He needed to provide that for Lindsey and the baby, starting with the physical demands and financial aspects of his job.
When it mattered most, he took care of his own.
Always.
No longer was it okay for him to pick up and take off without a second thought, to perform protective detail on some person halfway across the country who meant nothing more than a paycheck to him. Stability, concerning his consistent presence here in Denver, rose to the top of his priorities.
He needed to step up. Take a different career path.
So after calculated consideration, he went to Adam Soren.
“Hey man, you got a minute?” Slone asked, knocking on the boss’s open door.
Adam’s stripped-down and bare-basics space made a person at any level of the company feel comfortable. Unlike Trey’s or Cade’s offices with their cushy trappings, Adam’s didn’t resemble a typical office at all—probably because he was rarely in it—offering a no-bullshit zone Slone appreciated.
In fact, he counted on it.
“Yeah, c’mon in.” Adam narrowed his eyes at the laptop on his desk. He stood before it like he wanted to take a hammer to the keyboard. “I hate this thing. I need an assistant just to interpret all this techy crap for me. Anyway, what’s up?”
“I want to talk to you about something,” Slone said, getting right to the point.
Adam never required the how-you-doing small talk a lot of bosses expected. “Shoot.”
“I want to change positions in the company.”
“Okay.”
Slone crossed his arms. “Bring me on as a high-level consultant.”
“What are you consulting?”
“You,” Slone said.
Adam smirked. “Why do I need your help?”
“Because I have twelve years of experience in the military. Former Navy SEAL commander, oh-five rank. I know how to delegate people. I want to help you assign your bodyguard crews. I can convince your guys to take assignments they normally wouldn’t take, because I’m that good.”
“Are you?” Adam walked a circle around Slone, his heavy steel-toed biker boots thumping the floor. “That’s a lot of shit you’re talking. Care to back that up?”
“Give me a chance.” Slone shrugged. “I’ll prove myself on day one.”
A hard smile twisted Adam’s lips. “You have the motherfucking gall to come up to me on the sixth floor, stand in my office, and tell me what I need.”
“Yep. I can do what you’re doing in my sleep, only better.”
Adam cracked up laughing, his green eyes sharp with the intelligence a man earns on the street or out in the field, not in a classroom. “I like you, Rowan. You speak my language. Are you any good with electronics, email, all that detail crap?”
Slone nodded.
“Good.” Adam picked up his laptop and shoved it into Slone’s hands with enough force to pop the cord out of the socket. “All yours.”
“Where do you want me to start?”
Adam waved at the computer. “Just get that thing out of my face. I never want to have to read or respond to another email again.”
“Done.”
Eyeing him, Adam sized him up and appeared relieved. “This could be the beginning of a beautiful thing.”
“Sorry, man. You’re not really my type.”
Adam snorted. “What if I buy you dinner first?”
“Sure, what the hell? But I’m not a cheap date.”
“What kind of figure are you thinking?” Adam asked, growing serious as the topic returned to the job Slone wanted.
“A hundred-and-thirty grand a year, to start.”
“Damn.” Adam let out a low whistle. “You better be worth it. Because you know I’ll have you by the shorthairs. When I tell you to bend over, you nod and take it.”
Instantly, Slone felt at home as Adam’s right hand. Adam talked to him with the same gritty irreverence the same way that he and his guys used to bullshit on their missions. “Yeah, I get it. You say jump, I say how high.”
“Nothing gets by you,” Adam muttered. He pointed at the laptop like the thing caused him endless grief. “There’s a backlog of fifteen-hundred emails that need an answer by the end of the day. Pull up a seat.” He patted the back of a leather chair near his desk. “Let’s get to work.”
*
Slone’s first week working with Adam required he stay glued to his company laptop for twelve to fourteen hours a day. Not what he’d signed on for, but it kept him available in his protective role for Lindsey, as well as keeping his thoughts wholly occupied so he didn’t have time to think much about when or whether Lindsey became pregnant.
She slept in his bed every night now. Damn it felt great, her warm body always within arm’s reach. Sometimes he’d roll over in the middle of the night to watch her sleep or kiss her awake and make love to her.
Then there was morning sex. Also lunch sex, and some days before dinner, other days after. The sex kept getting better, and the release was almost as necessary to him as breathing, especially with the huge added workload of becoming Adam’s right-hand man.
Most of the time he worked from the house, only going into the office for a few hours when needed for meetings or strategy sessions. Those days he dropped Lindsey off at Kylie and Cade’s penthouse, where the sisters poured over research to incriminate their mother’s husband in her murder.
Slone rarely watched the news for that exact reason. So much real stuff, hard shit, devastating families and places all over the world, yet people in their first-world country killed someone off usually for their own convenience. He found that more screwed up than what he’d done on all of his covert ops missions combined.
When he wasn’t in the office and Lindsey wasn’t at Kylie’s, Lindsey scrubbed the house from top to bottom, and again from bottom to top. If he dropped a pretzel on the floor, the five-second rule didn’t apply. He could’ve eaten off her sparkling floors without a plate. She even dusted the rungs of the kitchen chairs and climbed on a ladder to scrub the crown molding along the ceilings.
Apparently, the whole nesting thing took hold before a girl got pregnant. He thought about telling her to relax, give it a rest, but cleaning kept her occupied and content. Considering his revised workload, he decided it was probably better she remained active so she, too, didn’t grow too obsessed with things like her basal temperature or the texture of her vaginal fluid—which he assured her daily was perfect.
With the winter holidays around the corner, he continued pulling double duty alongside Adam. Bodyguards didn’t receive luxuries like holidays. Their paid time off, if they were full-time employees of Soren Security, came between assignments. So the approaching holidays meant nothing to Adam’s department.
Beyond interacting with his guys and setting them up on assignments, Adam applied zero effort to administration duties or the correspondence end of his co-CEO position.
At first the negligence had irritated Slone to no end, since it forced him to pick up the slack for Adam in that regard. Then Slone used Adam’s user name and password—all with Adam’s permission—to go through Adam’s previous correspondence. The guy had never erased an email, so there were over ten thousand.
A couple hundred emails into his review, Slone encountered a curious set of recurring issues. Adam had cc’d his devoted secretary, Judy—a patient, older, librarian-looking woman—on every email. Every one. The emails sent by Adam required extensive rewriting, which Judy returned to Adam fully revised, and Adam subsequently sent the revised email to the intended recipient.
Not to mention Adam’s text messages were always very short, full of misspellings. Slone ended up calling the guy anyway to decipher what he’d texted.
Beyond a doubt, Adam wasn’t stupid. Far from it.
So one afternoon while Lindsey was with Kylie, Slone approached Cade’s office. His and Cade’s paths rarely intersected. They might as well have existed in separate universes. Cade’s days were devoted to the public relations and marketing aspects of the company and its image in the public eye.
Slone didn’t exactly look forward to their interaction. Cade tended to look at him with a wary eye, since Slone had stupidly admitted his interest in Kylie when he’d acted as bodyguard for the pair. But since Lindsey had come into his sphere, any interest he’d shown toward Kylie seemed like a lifetime ago and had long since disappeared. But Cade possessed an equally long memory and exerted his territorial side when it came to his fiancée.
Today, however, when Slone knocked on Cade’s door, the man invited him in with a smile. “What’s on your mind?” Cade asked, coming around his sprawling desk to shake his hand.
Slone kept his grip loose but sincere. “Have you heard I’m working with Adam?”
Cade nodded. “I have. And thank God. Adam needs the help more than you can imagine.”
“Yeah, about that.” Slone rubbed the back of his neck. “It has to do with some emails he wrote—”
“I’ll stop you
there, because I know where you’re going.” Cade closed his office door and returned to his desk. “Adam has the instincts of a sniper and the determination of ten men. He’s loyal to a fault and devoted to the core. But he has a severe case of dyslexia that’s plagued him all his life.”
All of Slone’s questions were answered in that single revelation. “Makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.”
Holding up his hand, Cade cautioned, “Whatever you do, don’t bring it up or talk to him about it. As you can imagine, it’s a sore subject for him.”
“Understandable.” Slone wondered how Adam had accomplished as much as he had, considering his CEO position and visibility in the company. Slone found his respect not just for Adam but for Trey, Cade and Liam grow exponentially. They must’ve worked hard to help Adam conceal his handicap—though it seemed odd to call it that, since Adam came off as robust and capable as any of the guys he’d gone with on Special Ops missions.
“Adam dropped out of high school his freshman year,” Cade continued. “At fifteen he became a full-time employee at our fathers’ bail bond business. Before he could drive, he was hunting and taking down criminals in the streets of Las Vegas like he’d been born for it.”
Arching an eyebrow, Slone nodded. “I can see that. Easily. He’s a big dude.”
“And smart. He wasn’t just good. He was the best. He staged undercover operations to haul in skips, with no direction from anyone. He taught some of our bounty hunters his skills and tactics, and those guys went on to open their own bail bond/bounty hunter businesses through the franchises Trey and I created to branch out. Adam used to fly to each new location and teach the fresh recruits how to do what he did. Hands down, though, he’s top dog anywhere.”
Considering this information, Slone revised his thoughts about his initial meeting with Adam about his new position. Adam hadn’t needed his help at all to do the job—what he’d needed was a partner with shared dedication and similar tactical knowledge to keep his secret safe. Adam choosing him had been a good move, since in his former career Slone had mastered the art of keeping information top secret. He had the scars to prove it. But Adam had probably suspected that, too.
The Bodyguard's Baby (Billionaire Bodyguard Series) Page 10