Beloved Bodyguard (2 page)

His loss of perspective might have something
to do with the fact that his last job had been as protector to
Crin-tai, the despicable criminal who controlled two-thirds of the
Jens Quadrant. After two years of working for that horrible weasel,
it was no wonder Leelah felt like a breath of fresh air and
sunlight. He hadn’t been around an attractive female in too long
was the problem.

Ja-hun glanced down the empty hallway, and
stroked the ridge of his cock through the fabric of his trousers.
He shivered beneath his own touch. He needed some relief and this
wasn’t the place for it.

“Stedman.” He activated the comset with his
voice.

“Yes, sir.” The “sir” was grudging and
bordered on being disrespectful. Nigeri Stedman, head of household
safety, took Ja-hun’s hiring as a personal affront. President
Blaine had undermined his authority by bringing in a special
consultant. Having a personal guard placed on Leelah inside the
compound suggested Rogent doubted the security team’s ability to
truly protect her.

“I’m taking a break. Send someone to replace
me.”

Just a few minutes to himself to get his head
on straight, that was all he needed.
Please don’t let the girl
come out here and confront me about what I saw, or worse, parade
around in her skimpy little outfit, flaunting her body and mocking
me.

Stedman didn’t bother to reply, but a young
guard, Pratt, showed up to relieve Ja-hun a few minutes later.
“I’ll be back in an hour.” Ja-hun walked quickly down the hall
toward the room he’d been given for the duration of this
assignment.

Closing the door behind him, he breathed in
the cool,
mashiki
-scented air. The room was a soothing haven
in shades of gray, which made entering the dimly lit space somewhat
like walking into a fogbank. Since Ja-hun liked solitary walks on
misty days, the atmosphere suited him perfectly. He shrugged off
his jacket and tossed it over a chair, kicked off his shoes,
loosened his tie, and fell back on the bed. It was the most
comfortable mattress he’d ever slept on, conforming perfectly to
his body, not overly soft like the one he’d occupaied at Crin-tai’s
or hard like the cot in his prison cell on D’jeering.

A few moments’ rest and a mental reminder of
why he was here would center him. Recent threats from sources
possibly tied to the Insurgent Alliance had prompted President
Blaine to hire the best to ensure his daughter’s safety. Since the
threats specifically mentioned her, Ja-hun was hired to watch
Leelah around the clock. He couldn’t blame the girl for thinking
his presence outside her room was overkill. Perhaps if someone had
shared with her the specifics of those messages, she’d understand
the danger wasn’t exaggerated. But her father hadn’t wanted her to
know the exact content.

Leaving the compound to attend a party was an
unnecessary risk right now, but vivacious Leelah must feel she was
being held captive. Still, she’d found a way to pass the afternoon,
hadn’t she? Images of the woman lying half naked across her bed,
pleasuring herself, rose in Ja-hun’s mind. His cock surged upright
again.

He un-tucked his shirt and slid his hand down
his bare stomach to open the fly of his trousers. Freeing his cock
from its cloth prison, he grasped his shaft at the base and gave a
long stroke all the way to the tip, which was already leaking. He
moved his hand up and down the length of his cock in hard, almost
punishing strokes. His hips jerked, and his breathing was fast and
shallow. He wanted it over quickly and took little pleasure in
masturbating. He’d come to view orgasm as simply a biological
function he must serve now and then with either a one-night
encounter or his own hand.

Ja-hun had long ago weeded out useless
emotions from his character. They were distractions that didn’t
help him accomplish the kinds of jobs for which he was hired, jobs
that made guarding the Blaine princess seem like a vacation. In his
youth, he’d become skilled at wet work, but as he’d grown older,
he’d decided to offer himself as a protector rather than an
assassin. Guarding Crin-tai, there’d been a thin line between
business and crime, and Ja-hun had still occasionally acted as a
hired gun. This job with the Blaines was supposed to begin a
cleaner, better phase of his life.

He hadn’t counted on Leelah’s dynamic
personality ruffling his calm sea like a stormy gale. Her lithe
body and sweet, round breasts kept a low-grade fever burning in
him. Her pouting lips begged for kissing and her laughter sent
ripples of pleasure through him. But what disturbed him most were
her nearly golden eyes, hinting at her Anu heritage, which seemed
to shine a searchlight into his very soul.

Ja-hun groaned as his cock spurted its
release onto his stomach. When he came, it was not with thoughts of
her body, but with those topaz eyes filling his vision.

With a grimace, he grabbed the tail of his
shirt, and wiped the sticky mess off his skin. He’d never much
liked the earthiness of bodily fluids, which was pretty ironic,
considering all the blood he’d dealt with in his life.

Rising from the bed, he stripped and headed
into the bathroom to shower. After cleaning up and dressing in
fresh clothes, Ja-hun watched the vid screen for a few minutes. The
news clip about the Insurgent Alliance’s increasingly violent
demonstrations against the current government confirmed that Blaine
and his cabinet were right to be worried. Whether one agreed with
the I.A.’s principles or not, and it so happened Ja-hun thought
they made some good points, the organization was a dangerous
force.

After turning the vid off, he went to resume
his post at the princess’s door. As he entered the hall leading to
her quarters, his heart jolted in his chest. No one was stationed
in front of her suite, and the door was ajar. Ja-hun raced to the
room and threw open the door. The space was open, so her living
area and bedroom were one. He stared at the tumbled purple
bedcovers on which she’d recently sprawled like a hologram
fantasy.

“Leelah?”

There was no answer. He checked her bathroom
to make sure she was really missing. The entire suite was empty.
He’d had one simple task to fulfill, and he’d failed.

Ja-hun shouted into his comset for Pratt.

It was easy to give Pratt the slip. When
Leelah opened her door expecting to tease Ja-hun for the position
he’d caught her in and found Pratt instead, she realized it was her
chance to escape. He was part of the regular house security staff
and didn’t hesitate to allow her to go down to the kitchen on her
own.

“Just hurry back, please. Special Agent
Asshole will have my head if he knows I let you go alone.” Pratt
grinned.

“Ja-hun is an overprotective idiot. He should
go back where he came from.”

She’d make it up to poor Pratt somehow for
the flak he’d catch at losing track of her. But meanwhile, Leelah
raced down the stairs and headed for the underground passage out of
the compound. In her youth, she’d often used the tunnel as an
escape route. Sometimes she had gone out and made it back home
again before anyone knew she was missing. Other times, she’d been
caught outside the compound walls and punished for putting herself
in danger. Of course, she’d always been able to talk her father
into giving back her comset and vid privileges long before the
grounding was supposed to end. And if she’d wanted Trianne to come
over, all she’d had to do was let her eyes fill with tears and tell
her dad how lonely she was and that his job made her miserable.

Times had changed. The world had stabilized
and in recent years security had relaxed. Leelah had gone to
university classes like all her peers and been able to travel
pretty much everywhere, along with a bodyguard or two. It had been
several years since she’d needed to use her secret route. But with
Ja-hun’s over-the-top protective measures, today it was her only
option.

She passed through the empty kitchen and the
storeroom beyond then descended the steps to the lower level. When
she was a child, her mother had told her about the escape route the
smuggler dynasty that built the house had once used. Of course, she
hadn’t intended Leelah to evade authority through it, but by the
time Leelah had discovered and made use of the passage, her mother
was dead. There was no one else in the household who knew about her
secret exit hidden behind a panel.

Emerging from the tunnel amidst brambles and
bushes, Leelah brushed cobwebs and dirt from her clothes, rubbed at
a scratch on her arm, and called for a skycab on her comset.

A glow of victory swelled inside her as the
cab whisked her away from the estate and her overly zealous
bodyguard.

Take that, Ja-hun! I can manage my own life,
and I don’t need you or my father to make decisions for me.

* * * * *

Burdah Garan’s home was an elaborate
structure with many flexglass plates that reflected the sun,
turning the house into a sparkling gem perched above the sea.
Leelah loved the panoramic view of the blue-green ocean from the
wall of windows that overlooked it. People talking, laughing,
drinking, playing games, or dancing crowded the rooms and spilled
out onto the patio and gardens. In the evening, when it wasn’t so
hot, they’d move the whole party down to the beach.

As she entered, Leelah waved and smiled at
friends then grabbed a glass of
pinia
from a table. Taking a
long, sweet drink, she let her hips sway with the music and her
head bob to the beat. She was glad to be free at last, but ready to
network as well as have a good time.

When Trianne spotted Leelah across the room,
she shrieked loud enough to make heads turn. She jumped up from her
seat next to her boyfriend, Burdah, and ran toward her friend with
open arms. “I knew you’d find a way to make it. Come on. There’s
somebody you’ve
got
to meet.”

Leelah groaned. “I just got here, and you
wouldn’t believe how hard it was to get out. Let me just sit and
get Blissed for a few minutes, then I’ll be ready for
socializing.”

“You got it.” Trianne reached into a dish on
the table where Bliss tablets were piled like candy and handed her
one.

Leelah popped the tab into her mouth and let
it dissolve on her tongue. Almost instantly a melting feeling like
warm butterscotch syrup fired through her synapses as the potent
mineral blend hit her system. Bliss heightened the senses, but with
no letdown at the end of the ride, and the high wasn’t
addicting.

The bustle and noise of guests and the
thumping bass of the music was usually a balm to Leelah’s soul. She
was a social person who loved parties and people. But as she sipped
a smooth
pinia
and listened to Trianne and Burdah sell her
on this guy she was about to meet, all she could think of was the
trouble her disappearance would cause. As usual, she’d let her
willfullness guide her. Perhaps there really was a good reason for
her confinement, and Ja-hun wasn’t a stone-hearted bastard.

Was he really as cold and emotionless as he
seemed? He’d kept a perfectly blank face when he’d walked in on her
masturbating, but she couldn’t believe it hadn’t affected him at
all. It certainly had her. The memory of her embarrassment coupled
with intense excitement sent a flash of heat through her that
settled warmly between her legs. Bliss-enhanced arousal had her
craving to either fuck someone or dance. The latter seemed the more
prudent choice.

“All right. Enough with the sales pitch. I’m
ready to meet your guy, but only if he knows how to shake it.”

“Trust me, Danje can dance, or just about
anything else you’d want him to do.” Trianne laughed. “Here he
comes.”

Danje was a gilded statue of a man, with the
most beautiful face, flowing hair, and golden eyes that outshone
Leelah’s. He was a pureblood Anuvian with the height, grace, and
physical perfection of the race. Sometimes Leelah wondered what had
made her Anuvian mother leave her home planet with Rogent Blaine, a
common man from OldEarth stock. It really must have been true love
between the pair of them. Too bad she’d never been able to ask her
mother about such things. Sun-shi Blaine died when Leelah was still
too young to be interested in hearing her parents’ courtship story,
and Daddy couldn’t bear to talk about his lost love. He changed the
subject whenever Leelah asked questions about her mother.

Trianne made introductions, and Leelah took
Danje’s warm hand. “I hear you’re quite the dancer.”

“Come on and I’ll show you.” His smile was
like sunlight warming her. No wonder OldEarth primitives had
thought the Anuvians were gods when they’d first visited the blue
planet.

Leelah followed his lead onto the dance floor
in the center of the room where most of the gyrating couples wore
little more than their swimsuits. Danje pulled off his shirt and
tossed it aside, giving her an eyeful of sculpted chest muscles and
biceps that made her pussy clench. Leelah followed his example,
throwing her light sundress aside to dance in her bikini.

She’d always loved music and at one time
considered majoring in dance at university until she’d decided she
could contribute more to the Worlds by studying social issues. The
rhythm quickly wrapped her in its embrace, and the melody carried
her away. Her eyes half closed as she swayed to the tropical beat,
sliding in harmony with Danje in a sultry bump and grind with her
bottom pressed firmly against his pelvis. As promised, the boy was
a great dancer, and together they burned up the floor.

She and Danje danced one song, two, three,
before taking a break to gulp down a few more glasses of
pinia
. She learned that her date for the day was still a
student at the university, which made her feel a little old.

“I’ve been out two years and don’t feel like
I’ve accomplished anything,” she confessed. “I wanted to work with
people, but my father’s position makes it impossible for me to have
a job in the public sector. Your mother’s an ambassador, right? So
you must know a little of what that overprotectiveness is
like.”