The man snickers. “If you don’t tell me how Calloway pussy tastes, then I’ll just find out myself. Starting with the youngest one—”
Ryke lunges and swings—
Maximoff abruptly clicks off his phone. The screen blinks to black. Taking a huge breath, he asks me, “Did that video remind you of me?” He stares me dead in the eye. Building defenses against my upcoming response.
I want to be transparent with him. No hoarding secrets, no doling out lies, but this truth will hurt him a little. I suck in a breath through my teeth. Pinching my fingers, I say, “Seventy-five percent.”
Maximoff digests this silently and then he eyes my fingers, obsessed with my hands for some precious reason. “Your seventy-five percent looks a hell of a lot like two-percent.”
I smile, and as the music booms, I have to raise my voice. “Then you’re not looking closely enough!”
“Purposefully!” he shouts back, gripping his cellphone in a tight fist.
I chew my gum, assessing his tense state. Turning my head into his neck, my lips a breath from his ear, I say, “Lean back with me.”
“What?” He stiffens.
I raise my brows. “He’s never relaxed on a couch.” I let out a long whistle. “The new things I’m showing him.”
Maximoff realizes what I mean. He pockets his phone like he’s accepting a bet, and then he slides back until his spine hits the leather. His shoulders unwind, somewhat.
After a short, silent beat, he says, “Thanks for being honest with me. I mean it.”
I hear the deep sincerity in his voice. “Anytime, wolf scout.”
Our arms touch unconsciously, and when our heads turn towards one another, our faces are only a couple inches apart.
The air seems to crack with that familiar, hard-to-breathe tension that I felt weeks ago when I massaged him. Our gazes grip securely.
In my head, I can be his bodyguard and sleep with him.
I’m that good. And it’s that simple.
In his head, I’m not sure what’s going on up there.
He inhales strongly, his chest rising, and his gaze bores into mine, searching for a sign. Mine caress his like the stroke of flesh against flesh. I want to slide nearer. I want to wrap my arm across his shoulders and close the two-inch distance.
My muscles tighten as I stay still, pulse pounding. And the next look he wears, I know that look. The look that melts his forest-green eyes and softly and forcefully begs, kiss me.
I breathe, my body doused with kerosene. Lit on fire, and just before I make a move, a sound, a clearer, more visible acknowledgement for him, his gaze just drops.
Off of me completely. To the ground, then the bar where girls start squealing in glee at the eye contact he gives them.
I grit down, pained like someone ripped out a rib. I comb my hands through my hair, and Maximoff stands up.
I stand not a millisecond after. “Where are you going?” I ask tensely.
“I don’t know,” he mutters, and then shakes his head like he’s trying to catch his bearings.
“We need to talk,” I say, but he can’t hear me over the sudden switch in songs, a hardcore rock anthem blasting. He’s already leaving the VIP area.
I follow. Step-for-step beside him, and a stool instantly opens at the crowded bar. Maximoff smiles at a short brunette in a sequined mini-dress. “You can sit!” he tells her. “Don’t get up for me!”
I restrain an eye roll.
She giggles.
He flags down the bartender and orders drinks.
For his safety, I have no other choice but to do my job. I stand behind him like an intimidating authority, someone that says don’t fuck with him. Since he wants to be approached tonight, I shouldn’t be scowling this hard.
I’m out of the way, but in the way. Unseen, but seen. All of those oxymorons are killing me tonight.
She gasps and says, “No way!” a thousand times.
Moffy leans down, cups his hand by her ear, and whispers for a full two minutes. Her eyes glow like she hit a jackpot, and she nods repeatedly.
I can only imagine that he’s telling her he wants to fuck her. In a subtler way but still blunt. Upfront. Sex only.
I spit my gum into my wrapper, my jaw aching. I pocket the thing, and then the girl hops off the barstool and heads for the bathroom.
Maximoff stays by the bar, and since this is my first time being his bodyguard while he’s trying to get ass, I’m somewhat in the dark. It’s not like he listed this in his rules.
He faces me. “We need to talk!” He has one-hundred percent padlocked his feelings. I glare, his face so impassive, so inexpressive—you’d think he’s channeling Connor Cobalt. His uncle who can will away emotion whenever he likes.
I hate it.
I step towards him and whisper in the pit of his ear. “Are we discussing your flirting techniques?” I unwrap a new piece of gum while he struggles to hide his feelings.
Let it out, wolf scout.
He gestures to me. “I assume you’re asking for advice.”
I smile and pop gum in my mouth. “That’s funny, I assumed you wanted advice from me.”
“You should look up the word joke because I don’t think you know the definition of funny.”
I whistle. “You’re just on a fucking roll today, aren’t you?” He can’t answer. A server swoops in with his earlier drink order. Club soda for him and a cocktail for the girl. She sets the cocktail on the bar, and I grab the club soda off the tray.
I pause before I put my lips to the rim. “You’ve never taken a sip of alcohol,” I say to Moffy, “which means you don’t know what it tastes like.”
He stares at me, blank faced. “Is there a question in there or are you just Nancy Drew-ing shit out loud?”
“I’m more of a Hardy Boy, but nice try.” Our eyes lock, more headily, all the while I put my lips to the glass and sip.
Sharp alcohol bites my tongue. “It’s spiked with vodka.” I look for the server.
“Just let it go. It’s not a big deal.” When he sees me searching for a server, he adds, “Farrow, it’s fine.”
He refuses to complain, but he can send back a spiked drink. And if the act makes him feel like an asshole, I’ll fucking do it for him.
Maximoff tells me, “Declan would just drop it.”
“I’m not Declan,” I remind him for the forty-fourth time this week. I catch a server’s attention. “I need a bottled water, sealed.” I give her a fifty-dollar bill.
“Right away.” She darts behind the bar, scoots beside the bartender, and then tosses me a bottled water. When I turn around to Maximoff, he looks stunned.
He licks his lips, emotion raising his carriage.
“Take it.” I pass the water.
He holds the bottled water like he’s never seen Evian before.
“It’s just water.”
Maximoff is frozen still. “You didn’t have to do that.” He means get him the water.
“Okay, but I did.” It’s not the first time he’s been like this after I helped him. I step closer. “Don’t you see, Maximoff? There’s a cement wall in front of you, and you’ve just been told to be satisfied with staring at it.” He listens intently. “And so you just stand there, not able to see the other side.” The wall is paparazzi.
The wall is the people who spike his drink.
The wall is hecklers and his lack of privacy.
Screw it all.
“What’s the alternative?” he combats. “Me hating my life?”
“No!” I shout as chatter escalates around us. “It’s my job to help you over the wall! Declan may’ve told you to accept the shit in your life, but I’m going to give you what you’ve never been given!”
Like a bottled water, for one.
That’s a solution that Declan never thought of. Or maybe he just listened to Maximoff stubbornly say just let it go.
Maximoff opens his mouth to speak, but the brunette slips up beside him. Yanking his attenti
on to the left, and he tells her, “Give me one more second! Your drink is on the bar!”
“Take your time! I’ll be waiting!” She bites her bottom lip and slides onto her stool.
My pulse is wedged in my esophagus.
Maximoff whispers in my ear, “The talk I wanted to have with you…” His voice is noticeably tight. “I can’t have her in my car unless she signs an NDA. So you’ll need to take her to the VIP section while I hang around the club’s security.”
This is really happening. I don’t blink.
Do your motherfucking job, Farrow.
Shit.
I have to stay professional. I have to give him what he wants, and if this is it…
I ask him, “You don’t want to be around for that conversation?”
He shakes his head. “My presence usually pressures them, and I want her to sign the NDA on her own terms.”
I have no real ability to nod or to even force a smile. My body refuses, but I’m able to lean back from him. A painfully cold acceptance mortars my features like brick on brick. This is about to be hell. A hell that I’m obligated to walk through, and really, it’s my fault.
For liking him in the first place.
In the briefest second, our eyes touch, but I’m the one who bails on the moment this time. My head swerves towards the bar. “Okay!” I yell back at Moffy.
On my way to the girl, I lower my volume on my radio, the soft chatter grating on me all of a sudden. Just when I look up at the brunette, a strong hand grabs my bicep from behind.
“Farrow, wait.” His voice is right against my ear.
Slowly, I turn to face him, and he breathes like he ran five miles to reach me.
I tilt my head, still hesitant about the direction this all may go. What do you want, Maximoff? Stopped in place, I bear hard on my teeth.
And then I freeze. I watch him subtly check out my features: my cheeks, my piercings, the freckle on my jaw, and he finally allows his gaze to drop to my lips.
“Maximoff—”
“I can’t do this.”
A pit wedges in my ribs. “Be more specific.”
“I’m going home.” He gestures to the exit with his water bottle. “I’m leaving right now after I tell her goodbye.” He takes a half a second to kindly say goodbye to the girl. Then his focus is on me.
Heaviness hoists off my chest, my lips beginning to upturn.
A night listening to him fuck someone else averted. And I didn’t even have to be a prick.
I move to lead him out. “I’m walking in front of you.” He’s already trying to push ahead of my stride, but he stops himself short.
And he says, “Walk beside me.”
I do. We move with equally strong, determined gaits, but we’re both sitting on the beginning of something unknown. And we carry our familiar tension like a third companion and a bomb.
14
MAXIMOFF HALE
NEITHER OF US breaks the silence while I drive home. Compounding and compounding in each untouched second. Every moment weighs down. Sunken in eternal slow-mo.
Farrow reaches for the air vents. Languid, sensual—his tattooed fingers slide the vent open. Cold air gushes out. But it does absolutely jack shit to temper the heat brewing against my skin.
I lick my lips for the thousandth fucking time. My cock throbs, aching to harden. To be stroked. To be fucked and to fuck.
I force my gaze to the highway. Gripping the leather steering wheel in an iron-tight vice. His hot gaze shifts from the road where paparazzi trail after my Audi—to me. Over and over.
Road, then me. Road, then me.
I’m watched and observed all the time. By strangers. By cameramen. By people. And never, never have I come undone. Until now, until his eyes feel like hands, and I want them all over me.
“Brake,” he says deeply.
I slow the car at the last second. Hitting bumper-to-bumper traffic. Now the car is unbearably still. I feel like my Audi has shrunk into a compact.
Too small.
The middle console barely divides his body from mine. And my body from his. Do I even want a divide anymore? No. And yes. He’s my bodyguard—that’s not changing.
It’s not.
But I can’t even think about anyone else. He hasn’t just pitched a tent in my brain and dick. He’s built a fucking stone castle that no wolf can ever blow down.
What am I supposed to say to him? My cock only wants you. My brain only wants you. I didn’t pick up that girl because I only want you.
Or: if I fucked someone else tonight, it would’ve made me sick.
None of that extinguishes this one cold fact: it’s ethically wrong to be with my bodyguard.
“Maximoff,” Farrow says, my name slicing the dense air like dropping a guillotine.
I steal a quick glance at him.
He rubs his bottom, pierced lip with his thumb, and his brows rise. “Ready to talk about this?”
“This,” I say, imagining my hands ripping his shirt off his head. Muscle against muscle, lips against lips—I blink. “This traffic is fucking terrible.”
“This as in you and me.” He pauses. “Us.”
Headlights glare in my rearview. My stringent posture contracts my shoulders, my deltoids, my whole body. And I switch lanes fast. Windows of a nearby SUV roll down, a Canon pointing at my car.
Great.
I drive thirty-over just to desert the SUV. Farrow keeps an eye on neighboring vehicles while he says, “I know talking about this isn’t easy. In any other situation, I’d just kiss you.”
Fuck. I lick my lips again. Muscles flexing.
I harden beneath my jeans and boxer-briefs. “You sure I wouldn’t be the one to kiss you?” I counter.
I can feel his lips lifting. For how close we are, the space between us couldn’t feel farther away. Whoever makes the first move will have to cross miles, scale mountains, ferry oceans to reach the other side.
I glance at him.
And his amused smile stretches wider. “In your dreams, maybe you’d kiss me first.” Talk of my dreams reminds me of how long I’ve crushed on him.
Since I was sixteen.
I start to padlock my emotion with a thousand iron keys.
His smile slowly falls. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” I say instinctively, and then, “I don’t know.” Beware: he’s your bodyguard! scrolls across my vision like a tickertape warning. For Christ’s sake, we can’t even kiss without having a conversation beforehand. It’s all so elementary.
Kissing.
I want to do more. I want more. In a way that I’ve never even had before, and is that what’s being offered? Is it even possible?
“What are you thinking?” he asks. “Because I don’t know where you stand. You have so many boundaries, you’re practically a walking-talking Don’t Enter sign.”
“Like you don’t have any?” I combat.
He laughs into a grin. “I consider some boundaries like cautionary tales. Proceed with caution, but you know, still go on ahead.” He flashes me the hottest smile I’ve ever seen, and I bear on my molars, my erection wanting pressure. A mouth, a hand, an ass.
His mouth, his hand.
His ass.
I find myself shaking my head.
“What?” he asks.
I have to tell him my biggest roadblock. As though it’s not in-his-face-obvious enough. “I value self-awareness.” I take a colossal breath. “The ability to understand and perceive every facet of my own weird existence. In Greek ethics, it’s said only the self-aware understand what is right, and therefore will have the knowledge to do what is good.”
I want to do what is right. To do good.
To be good.
Farrow taps the middle console, his thumb ring clicking against leather. His hand is an inch from my arm. He nods, understanding. “And you see being with your bodyguard as wrong. And wrong leads to bad; and bad equals unhappy in your philosophically-bound head. You realize that not e
veryone thinks that way, Maximoff?”
My brows knot. “In what universe does wrong lead to rays of fucking sunshine and happily-ever-afters, Farrow? Please, enlighten me.”
“How about rewinding and asking yourself, is it really wrong? Or how about this one: what is ethical to begin with? Who decided on these moral rights?” He leans back, boot on his seat. “Or what about what Thoreau said?”
I frown. “You’ve read Thoreau?”
“I took philosophy and lit during undergrad.”
I give him a brief look like he’s flown off this planet. “That was over seven years ago.” And I doubt he reads in his spare time. While my shelves are stacked and stacked with comics, graphic novels, and philosophy texts—his one small bedroom bookshelf is bare.
“I remember everything I skim,” he says, not even lying about “skimming” texts.
One right turn and I drive onto our street.
We go silent.
I pass rows and rows of townhouses, both of our homes in view. Then I pull onto the short driveway. He clicks the garage button. And I park next to Jane’s baby blue Beetle. After shutting off the ignition, the garage door grinds closed.
We stay right here. Inside my three-car garage, sheltered from the Philly noise.
Quiet. Alone.
In one single breath, Farrow turns towards me. His arm extends over the back of my leather seat. My muscles burn and tighten like rubber bands that beg to snap. I want him even closer. But I hold still, marbleized.
His other arm rests on the middle console. His hand one move away from my leg.
Farrow caresses my gaze as he says, “Thoreau said, ‘Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.’”
His deep voice and Thoreau’s words pour through me like liquid honesty. “Be not simply good.” Self-perfection has its limits. Being moral, making moral choices—it all means nothing in comparison to doing good for others. I don’t need to be the perfect picture of morality in order to help someone in need.
I’d rather be good for something.
For someone.
So I look at him.
I’m talking a real look. Like I’m excavating his every thought and desire. My eyes bore into his eyes, and then my gaze melts in a carnal wave against his gaze.
Damaged Like Us (Like Us Series Book 1) Page 12