by Michele Hauf
“You succeeded.”
“I did?”
“Come here.” He pulled her down and kissed her breast through the dress. He had but to nudge the red fabric aside with his nose to lick the inner curve.
Becca wriggled her hips and pushed her breast gently against his mouth. Yes, she wanted him to taste her. His tongue lashed close to her nipple, not quite touching. She curled her fingers around his hard biceps and tilted back her head, gasping out a sigh, and arching her chest forward. Giving him what he sought.
The heat that suddenly surrounded her nipple made her cry out and gasp, “Oh, Hawk, do that. More of that.”
He suckled her slowly, dragging his tongue firmly across the circle of concentrated nerve endings that seemed intent on making her lose her mind. Grinding her mons against his hard-on, she arched her back farther. Hawk pinched her wet nipple. The hard squeeze sent electric stabs of delicious sensation throughout her being.
She slid a hand up to cup her other breast and teased the nipple across his lips. His hot breath devastated her. Groaning deeply from within her belly, Becca teased open his lips and put her nipple between them. She slid her fingers along his stubbled jaw as his mouth mastered her, coaxing her close to orgasm. Because everything meshed at this moment. The smell of him, the hardness of his cock crushed against her wetness. The irresistible moans that she could not stop because letting out her voice was the only way she could endure such crazy teasing from him.
She wanted him inside her. She needed to feel the slow entrance of his thick, hard erection filling her.
“Oh, Hawk…”
Her phone on the table vibrated and flashed. Hawk moaned and shifted his hips, pulling her hips hard against his. He rocked upward, teasing her with the firm length that strained against his jeans.
The phone shuddered on the glass. “No! Not now!”
Hawk's teeth teased her nipple. A shudder of anticipation shook her body above his.
The phone buzzed again.
Becca glanced over. A photo had been texted to her and appeared on the screen. Even while Hawk sucked her nipple, she couldn’t prevent the curiosity that leaned her to the right to get a better view of the picture on her phone. A man being handcuffed by a policeman—he looked familiar!
She grabbed the phone and in the process pulled from Hawk’s attentive mouth.
“Really?” he complained.
“Hawk, look at this!” She read the text quickly and then turned the phone toward him. “It’s from Candace. You know, the redhead?” She knew many of the paparazzi who followed her by name and liked Candace because she was polite and had, many times, alerted her to paparazzi who were trying to set her up in a compromising situation.
Swearing and yet giving her breast a quick kiss, Hawk then studied the phone screen. “That’s the asshole you were going to ride off into the sunset with.”
“Moonlight.”
“Right. Wonder what the charges were?”
“Candace’s text says TMZ videotaped it. I’ll have to watch tomorrow. You were right about him.”
He glided his hands over her breasts, the warmth of his skin sending tingles across her wet but cooling flesh. “Sometimes, I wish you would trust me more. Then we could have avoided what I’m sure will be Page Six tomorrow morning.”
“You know I always like to challenge authority.” She set the phone on the coffee table and turned to sit between Hawk’s thighs, her legs dangling over the sofa. “It’s my thing.”
He teased at a long strand of hair that had pulled free from her braid. “I thought the wild child was your thing?”
“I am the wild child.”
And the wild child was suddenly relieved to have dodged a ride with the biker and yet stunningly aghast at what she had been doing. Making out with her bodyguard. Because she wanted to. And he was awesome. But the photo had slammed her passion into a drawer. She didn’t want to do this right now. She couldn't.
The wild child had to grow up, sooner or later. Page Six was not the be-all and end-all. She did have standards. It was time to live up to them. If only, to earn the respect of the one person from which such admiration really meant something to her.
She stood and pulled up the straps of her dress. “I should get to bed.”
Hawk sat up, pulled down his shirt, and reached for the gun and coat. “Did I do something wrong?”
She shook her head but couldn't make herself meet what would be his puppy dog gaze. “You may have done something right. But you know how I am with right.”
“Not your style. Whew! I'm going to need to work this one off.”
“You and your hand?” she asked, feeling instantly guilty for leaving him high and dry.
“With weights, princess.” He stood and wandered to the door. “And…my hand, too." He smirked. “You going to church in the morning?”
“Always. You heading to the gun range?”
“Always. See you on Monday.”
“Good night, Hawk. Uh, don’t read too much into me stopping the fast and frenzied, okay? I just needed to slow it down.”
“I get that. Doesn't mean I understand it, though.”
He closed the door behind him, and Becca fell back onto the sofa. She eyed the phone. “What am I doing? I should have gone for the ride. Would have been easier not to…” She sighed.
Easier not to feel the feelings she was having now. She'd hurt Hawk in a way that she couldn't quite understand. Or maybe she did understand but wasn't willing to accept her actions. He cared about her. Beyond a bodyguard protecting his employer.
Now the question was, did she want to dive deep into her emotions to discover if she also cared for him?
7
Every Sunday morning, Miss Wylde put on a prim dress that was never cut too low or too high, and sensible shoes—probably designer, but the heels weren’t stilettos. She exited the building via the employee entrance, walked down an alley, turned left, and after making her way another block east, crossed a park and entered the church of St Mary.
Hawk knew this because every Sunday morning at 8:30 he followed her out of the building and down the alley and around the corner. He never went as far as the church, instead stopping in the adjacent park to read a newspaper or listened to an audiobook. About three hours later, Miss Wylde returned, following the same path, looking gratified.
She’d never seen him, and he’d never tell her that he spent his morning off tracking her instead of going to the gun range like she thought. It wasn’t because he was so curious about what she did on Sundays. It was because he couldn’t turn the bodyguard off. For as careful as she was, he wanted to be there if something went wrong. Like if a crazy biker wanted to ride off into the moonlight with her.
Today, she waved down a taxi before crossing the street from the park side. Hawk could hear her tell the driver to take her to Starbucks. She’d pay the driver—generously—to run in for her, and then she’d return home. She did that about once a month. She had two fancy coffee makers stuffed somewhere in her kitchen. Probably didn’t know how to use either one of them.
Satisfied that she would be fine, he clicked off the audiobook, and headed north toward the gun range. He had to chuckle to himself over the morning's antics.
They were like an old married couple, stuck in a rut. Church on Sunday morning for her; reading for him. He smiled as he strolled through the breezy fall air. He wasn’t sure what she did on Sunday afternoons; he only knew she stayed in the penthouse. He was curious, but to knock on her door and ask what she was up to had never occurred to him.
What would she think if he did so today? Would she pull him in by the collar and push him on the sofa for another make-out session like last night?
He'd pulled her over his knee and spanked her.
He still couldn’t believe he’d done that. It hadn’t begun as a sexual thing. But when she had gasped after that second spanking, his attitude had shifted, and he’d realized she had gotten off from the playful swat. So, he’d
done it once more and had been rewarded with a moan. And then a full-on kiss that had led to bared skin and nipples in his mouth.
He couldn’t get her scent out of his senses. The prototype perfume was uniquely Becca Wylde. As well, he could conjure the feel of her skin by rubbing his fingers together now. He wanted more. But he wasn’t sure how to get it. Because she had an irritating habit of shutting him down just as he was beginning to think the ride would last.
Was that all he was to her? A plaything to tease and tempt?
He’d have to keep the job for another year, at the least, in order to fulfill his dreams of buying the boat.
Could his heart survive the torture that long?
Becca found the wrapped box from Tiffany & Co. on top of the mail pile that she had ignored yesterday. It hadn’t come by post, but rather the store had probably delivered it, and the maid had signed for it while Becca had been out.
“Oh, Daddy,” she said with a world-slaying sigh. “I do love sparklies.”
Tugging loose the white ribbon and lifting the robin’s-egg blue box top, she peeled aside the tissue paper to reveal the platinum bracelet lying on black velvet. Rubies to drape about her wrist. Big ones, about two dozen ladybug-sized stones. It glittered in the sunlight that beamed through the kitchen window. It called to her on a visceral level that no woman would or could ignore.
Pushing the box to the side, Becca caught her chin in hand and looked away from the tempting jewels. Colored stuff. She knew that was the thieves’ lingo for any stone that wasn’t a clear diamond. Why she knew that was beyond her, but the idea of living a life by stealing precious jewels from around women’s necks and jetting from country to country, always one step ahead of the authorities, appealed to her inner wild child.
She’d played the jewel thief many a time as a kid, sneaking into her mother’s room using elaborate moves to climb under the invisible laser beams—that weren’t there, only in her imagination—and climbing up the side of the great rosewood dresser, checking that the security cameras did not record her, and then filching the booty.
Becca smiled at the memory of how her mother had once played the distraught victim of jewel theft and had questioned Becca as if she might have a clue. The missing jewels showed up on her mother’s pillow the following morning.
Caroline Wylde had died from alcohol poisoning when Becca was eight. How she’d wanted to steal into that coffin and leave a diamond ring on her mother’s pillow next to her head. Her father had discouraged her from looking in the coffin. Becca had tugged from his grip and run up to the front of the cathedral.
She did not regret stealing that last look. Because, some days, the memories of her childhood featured a woman in diamonds and pearls, a stylish black cocktail dress, with a martini in hand. And yet, her face was fuzzy. So she’d rush to the box she kept in her closet and pull it out to study the photos, deftly stolen from her father’s desktop computer and printed by the maid at the drug store in Times Square.
Theodore Wylde—Teddy to his friends, but never his real estate clients—had swiftly moved on following his wife’s unsuccessful battle with alcoholism. Too swiftly. In the years immediately following, he had gotten engaged three times and married two of those women. He tallied two divorces. And yet, currently he had another fiancée. He’d called Becca last month to tell her that he was marrying on Christmas Eve, and he’d love to have her fly to Switzerland to celebrate with him.
“Fat chance,” she muttered, recalling her father had said the fiancée was 22. “Twenty-two. She’s younger than me. That’s just wrong.”
Shoving the Tiffany box farther away on the counter, she couldn’t bother with reading the mail. Instead she tugged out her phone and checked her emails and texts. The Jesster was feeling better. She believed it had been the egg salad from lunch. And she had forgotten about Becca and Hawk’s fight in the alley over the biker. Did not need a reminder, she messaged back, followed by shocked-face emojis.
Becca hadn’t turned the television on today, but there must be some hubbub about last night’s adventure. Wandering into her bedroom, she clicked on the TV and scrolled through the rest of her texts. The entertainment channel featuring celebrity gossip was currently discussing Justin Bieber's latest foray into religion. But the ticker across the bottom of the screen detailed: Wild Child’s ride with biker stalled by jealous bodyguard.
“Oh, brother. Hawk is not going to like that one. The jealous bodyguard?”
Though he had confirmed as much last night when they’d been making out.
She clicked through the channels, looking for TMZ, as Candace’s message had remarked that they’d gotten the better photos and a video of the police arrest of her biker. Landing on the channel, it was on commercial, so she answered Jess’s text with a chicken soup icon and a few balloons.
Another anonymous message made her shake her head. Your nudies are awesome!
“Seriously, what is with these people? Again, don’t they know I don’t do skin?”
She deleted the text and wondered what it would take to go totally off the grid. No social media. No paparazzi. No random messages ever again. Not even the encouraging ones or the fans who gushed about her beauty and who wanted to be wild and young just like her.
“No, I’d miss the attention.”
Because how else would she get it? The ruby bracelet was not attention. Or love. It was guilt. Her dad may love her because she was his daughter, but she doubted he felt it in his tiny, black heart. The last time she’d known real love had been in her mother’s arms.
TMZ returned from a commercial, and there it was, the footage of biker guy getting arrested. The show’s host explained the exciting yelling match between the wild child heiress and her bodyguard as she attempted to take off on the back of a motorcycle with the rowdy biker. And it featured still shots of Hawk carting her away, over his shoulder. Thankfully, Hawk's hand had held down her skirt, preventing any upskirt shots.
Becca shook her head. “He shouldn’t have pulled out the caveman move. I could have walked.”
But would she have walked away? Probably not. She’d been in a mood last night.
The host then detailed that only twenty minutes later the biker was pulled over by the police and arrested for possession of heroin. Guess the wild child’s bodyguard had her good interests in mind, after all.
“He really did. Oh, Hawk. I always give you a hard time when you never deserve it.”
She clicked off the TV. Some of those deeply hidden emotions were beginning to rise. And one of them, in particular, felt really good.
The text from Miss Wylde simply read: Upstairs.
Hawk finished filling the dishwasher, added a soap tablet, and turned on the machine. He downed a steel canteen of ice water, refilled it, and put it in the fridge. It was early, seven o’clock, but he couldn’t imagine what she had in mind for a Sunday evening. The nightclubs she frequented weren’t open, and most of her girlfriends used Sundays to do manicures and prep for the week. Why he knew that was something for which he would never purposely take credit.
So that left the chance that he was in trouble for some minor travesty he didn’t realize he’d committed. Or, most likely, she had seen the tabloids on TV plastered with that picture of him hefting the wayward wild child over a shoulder. She couldn’t have checked Twitter. If she’d seen the meme about the naughty heiress, he would have heard her feet stomping by now.
Tossing her over his shoulder had been a bad choice. But if the option had been to let her ride off with a man who had only minutes later been arrested for heroin possession? Hawk decided he’d made the best call. And he was not a jealous bodyguard. Why did the tabloids have to label everyone with some sensational title?
Okay, maybe a little jealous. Not that he had any right to that emotion. He’d kissed her a few times. The woman was playing with him. But he didn’t mind the tease when it earned him a kiss or a lick of her soft, hand-sized breasts that he could taste right now— Yes! He'd bee
n jealous.
His cell phone buzzed with another text. NOW.
“Yes, Miss Wylde,” he muttered.
Leaving his gun and holster on the table—because at home he always took it off when he ate—he headed up the private stairs to the penthouse.
The door opened and a hand reached out to grab him by the tee shirt and yank him inside. He barely got the door closed before her mouth landed on his and one of her legs hooked up on his hip. His hands slid up slippery fabric to her back. She jumped a little and wrapped her other leg around his hip so he held her and kissed her and…
“What are you doing?” he asked, carrying her to the sofa and attempting to set her on the back of it. She clung to him, keeping her arms wrapped around his neck and legs at his hips. “Miss Wylde?”
“It’s Becca, and I’m trying to seduce you.”
While he shouldn’t protest her efforts, something felt off. Forced. However, the sexy negligee made it difficult to not kiss her again. Tearing the bit of pink off her body? Too easy.
“Why?”
“Hawk, you’re not supposed to ask why, you’re supposed to fall under my tantalizing powers of seduction.” She kissed him harder and dashed her tongue against his. “Working?”
“Yes.” And no.
He pushed a little harder this time and managed to untwine her from his neck and hips, setting her on the back of the couch. “Becca, I…” Was he really going to say it? Ah, hell. “I don’t want the wild child.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not you. She’s that woman you give to the public and those…men.” He stepped back and ran his fingers over his scalp. What the hell? Why was he pushing the horny heiress away from him? He'd have to turn in his man card if this continued. But he knew why. And he was done playing the game. He splayed a hand before him. “I’m not a hook up.”
He expected her to pout—hell, to yell at him. That was what they did. Pouting, yelling, sarcastic remarks, the back and forth argument was their brand of seduction.