Bodyguard (29 page)

“Let me get a wet washcloth to put on those,” he said.
“And I think I have some ointment in the medicine cabinet.”

“I’ll get it.” Her anger had vanished as soon as he’d touched her, and now she just sounded as if she were going to cry. She started to get up, but he pushed her back.

“No, I’ll get it. I’m doing okay with the crutches. Besides, this is my fault. You sit. Let me take care of you for once, okay?”

She nodded silently, wiping away the tears that had flooded her eyes.

George avoided his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he wet a cloth with cool water. This evening was turning out exactly opposite from the way he’d planned. He’d wanted to do something nice for Kim, and instead he’d completely upset her. He’d wanted to sit separated by the dining-room table and talk to her, take their physical relationship as far out of the picture as possible. He wanted to continue to let her know that every single evening didn’t have to end with her getting him off.

Instead, he was going to go back in there and sit on the bed, with her wearing only a pair of microscopic thong panties. God, he was already hard. It would take her about point oh-seven seconds to notice that, and then she’d be all over him.

And although she’d insisted otherwise, he still didn’t quite believe she really liked any kind of sex at all.

He maneuvered clumsily out of the bathroom. Kim had flopped back on the bed and lay staring at the ceiling, her feet still on the floor. She turned her head to look at him as he came into the bedroom, her mascara smeared slightly underneath her eyes, making her look even more exotic and sexy than usual.

Of course the fact that she was nearly naked helped.

“Did I mention how completely, absolutely, incredibly
sorry I am?” he said as he sat next to her. “Scoot back, will you?”

She obediently moved back on the bed, and he took her feet into his lap, gently pressing the cool washcloth against her heels. “How’s that?” he asked. “Better?”

She nodded. “I thought … something awful had happened,” she said again in a very small voice. She was a performer, but this wasn’t any kind of act. The tears came back to her eyes. “George, would you mind holding me?”

Well, now let’s see. Would he mind touching all that smooth, sparkling skin? Would he mind pressing the softness of those goddess-quality breasts against his chest? Would he mind lightly kissing her full lips and breathing in the sweet scent of her perfume?

No, George didn’t mind at all. He kissed her, unable to keep himself from running his hand down her back, all the way down past the soft curve of her bottom. God, what a body.

He took care always to touch her gently, always lightly. Now that he knew, he never held her tightly in his arms. He always made certain she could pull free if she wanted to.

He let Kim be the one who deepened their kiss.

He just kept caressing her. Running his hand down her back and then across to her front, lightly brushing the soft velvet V of her panties with the very tips of his fingers, sweeping up her soft stomach, barely touching her breast, leaving just a whisper of sensation against her nipple, then up to her neck, her shoulder, and down her back again. And again and again and again.

She sighed, relaxing against him. “That feels so nice.”

“Mmmm. I could do this all night, if you want.”

He felt her open her eyes, her lashes brushing his neck. “You would … do just this? All night?”

“And love every minute of it.” He softly kissed her forehead.

As his fingers brushed her breast again, she made a soft sound of pleasure, pressing herself up toward him so that he actually touched her. But he didn’t let himself fill his palm with her, didn’t draw her nipple into his mouth, the way he was dying to do. What he wanted had to wait.

“You’re in control, babe,” he whispered, his hand sweeping down her back again. “You tell me or show me what you want, and I’ll do it, just the way you want. And if you want to stop, we stop.”

He let himself linger just a moment longer on the gentle mound beneath her velvet panties before moving up to touch her stomach. She didn’t pull away, so he slid his hand back down and touched her again, still lightly, still through her panties.

She made a noise, deep in her throat, that might’ve been pain or fear, and he quickly withdrew back to her stomach, tracing circles around her belly button. “Did you want me to stop?” he asked. “Is that what you wanted?”

“No.” She spoke so softly he almost didn’t hear her.

He touched her breasts again, both of them this time, not quite as lightly, but still taking care to be gentle. Her nipples were taut with desire and he wet them with the very tip of his tongue as he slowly trailed his hand down to her panties. He traced the edge of them with one finger. “May I?”

She was trembling, drawing in one ragged breath after another.

“I’m just going to touch you like this.” He demonstrated on the outside of her panties, just the same light, barely there caress. “Okay?”

He held his breath, both terrified and elated that she would trust him as much as she already had. He prayed
that she wasn’t doing this because she thought he wanted her to. He prayed that he could make her see that whatever had happened in her past wasn’t about sex and pleasure, but rather violence and power. And that while they might seem similar on the surface, they were two entirely different acts.

George didn’t have much he could give her, but he could give her that knowledge, that truth. If she’d only let him.

He kept touching her, and she opened her legs slightly for him. Just a little bit, and then just a little bit more.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” he whispered, slipping her panties down her thighs. She kicked them free—another sign of agreement—and then he touched her. Lightly. Gently. Just the way he’d promised.

Touching her was like touching satin, smooth and warm and perfect. And still she didn’t pull away.

He kissed her breasts, tugging gently on her nipples with his lips. She moaned, lifting her hips to press herself against his fingers, surprising him and surprising herself even more.

Then she froze, and George lifted his head to look down into her eyes. She was still breathing hard, still trembling. As he gazed at her, she moistened her lips and gave him a shaky smile.

“Oh, my,” she said.

He smiled, feeling a burst of pleasure so intense, it nearly brought tears to his eyes. It was amazing really. He had a hard-on the size of the space shuttle, yet it was his heart that seemed to explode in his chest. “More?”

She nodded.

He pressed his fingers more deeply inside of her, watching her eyes as he used his thumb to slowly caress her.

“Oh,” she breathed. She moistened her lips again. “Can you …”

“Yes,” he said. “Whatever you want, babe, absolutely, unequivocally yes.”

She actually blushed. “Can you make it feel this good with your … you know?”

He did know. “Yes.”

He rocked onto his back, grabbing for a condom from his bedside table drawer with one hand, while still touching her with the other. He had his pants open and pushed down and himself covered, all with one hand, in the blink of an eye.

“You say stop, we stop,” he told her again as he rolled her onto her side and nestled himself behind her. This way he wasn’t on top of her. This way she wouldn’t feel pinned down and out of control.

And still he touched her, still gently, his arm around her. He pressed himself against her from behind, slowly entering her with just the tip of his arousal before just as slowly pulling back again. He did it again, going a little bit farther this time, careful not to move too fast.

She made a soft sound, and when he did it again, she moved with him.

She didn’t tense up, she didn’t pull away, she didn’t tell him to stop. Slowly, impossibly slowly, he made love to her. Each stroke seemed to take a lifetime in which he lived and died and lived again.

Dear God, this was probably going to kill him—but what a way to go.

She began to climax with him deep inside her, and he felt his own release begin, but still he kept it slow, pulling back in a movement that felt so good, he was certain this was it. His brain was definitely going to explode. The next slow thrust pushed him over the edge as she continued to tremble around him, and he came in an eruption of
pleasure so intense he saw lights and colors behind his closed eyes.

But his physical pleasure was nothing compared to the joy of the knowledge that he’d taken this woman to a place she’d never been before.

“Omigod,” Kim was saying. “Omigod, omigod. I didn’t know. I never knew.”

She turned toward him, her beautiful brown eyes brimming with tears. She was shaking, and he held her, still gently, still making sure she knew she could pull free.

But she reached up and touched his face, surprise in her voice as she looked at him. “You’re crying.”

He was.

She kissed him. “Oh God, George,” she whispered and her own tears overflowed. “What am I going to do? I don’t want to be in love with you.”

Shaun went into the playroom to find Mindy upside down on the couch, watching Gilligan’s Island.

“I think this time they’re really going to make it off the island,” she told him. Her head was dangling off the front of the couch, her long legs stretched up against the wall behind it. Gravity was doing funny things to her breasts.

Shaun looked away, uncomfortable at the thought of Mindy having breasts. He didn’t really think of her as a girl. Not the way he thought of the redhead from California.

“The Professor’s built a radio out of coconuts,” Mindy reported. “If he’s smart, all he needs to do is use one of Ginger’s underwire bras for an antennae.”

Shaun walked to the window under the front eaves, bending slightly to keep from hitting his head. “I hate to break it to you, Mind, but they never get off the island.”

“Well, why would they want to?” she asked. “They’re
in paradise. You know, I used to wonder why the Professor didn’t just choose Mary Ann. I mean, what was he waiting for? She was so obviously the nicest person on the island. But then I figured it out. The Professor’s gay. All those years, he had a thing for Gilligan.”

Shaun stood silently, looking down from the vantage point at the third-floor window, looking out at the street in front of the house. No traffic passed. No cars pulled up. Nothing moved.

“Well, jeez,” Mindy said, turning right side up as she muted the TV with the remote control. “You must’ve left your sense of humor down in the kitchen.”

He didn’t look at her. “I don’t think the idea of someone being gay is particularly funny.”

Mindy was silent, and when he turned to look at her, her eyes were even more enormous than ever behind her glasses. It was strange. He rarely noticed the odd effect her glasses had on her eyes anymore. She’d spent every afternoon at his house for the past three days, and was here again, this Saturday morning. Instead of driving him completely insane, he’d found he liked her company. He liked turning around and finding her there. He even liked the really stupid jokes she made.

Most of the time.

“No,” he said. “I’m not gay. Why do people always think I’m gay?” He answered his own question. “Because I like to dance? That’s so stupid.”

“It’s okay if you are,” she said softly. “I’ll still be your friend.”

Friend. She was his friend and would be no matter what, and he still made her hide her bike behind the house and sneak in through the back door. They’d talked about all kinds of deeply personal, private things, yet he never gave her more than a cursory nod when they
passed in the hall at school. He never sat with her at lunch, even though they both often sat alone.

She may have been his friend, but he was no kind of real friend to her.

To his complete horror, his eyes filled with tears. He quickly turned back to the window.

“You’re freaking out because your father’s not here yet,” Mindy said in that same quiet voice.

“I don’t think he’s coming.” Shaun finally admitted it to himself. Oh, he’d played the game, telling himself that he was tough, he was able to face reality, that he wouldn’t believe Harry was really going to visit until he got here. But the truth was, he’d hoped.

He’d even prayed.

He’d pretended it was for Emily’s sake, when the truth was, he’d wanted Harry to come. He’d wanted his daddy to come and make everything right again.

But Harry wasn’t coming.

Any minute now, the phone would ring, and Harry would apologize and—

“Mindy!” Em was standing right outside the playroom door, shouting loud enough to knock it off its hinges. “Are you in there?”

Even though Shaun was farther away, he was faster and he reached the door first, opening it. “Don’t shout! Aunt Marge is working downstairs,” he said. “God, how could someone so short be so loud?”

Emily stood outside, holding a box that was nearly as big as she was. “I’m here to see Mindy.”

“Oh, Em, thanks.” Mindy pushed past him and took the box. “You brought me the—”

“Photo albums?” Shaun couldn’t believe it. All he needed to do now was to have to sit with his little sister and look at pictures taken back when his life was more than this unbearable mixture of sadness, fear, and hurt.
Pictures of his mother with her arms around him, laughter lighting both of their faces.

God, he missed her. He missed Kevin, too.

The tears that were never far from the surface these days clogged his throat.

There was no way he could do this today, no way he could sit with Em and make up more of his lies about why Harry didn’t come see them more often. Daddy loved her, of course Daddy loved her, but he was just too busy with his goddamn important job. He was too busy saving the world. And that meant he couldn’t spend even one lousy day with them out of three hundred and sixty-five.

His voice shook as he turned to look at Mindy. “You asked Em to bring up the photo albums?”

Mindy looked perplexed. “Is that bad?”

Shaun glared at his little sister. “You know you’re supposed to ask Marge before you take these out.”

“That was my fault,” Mindy cut in. “I wanted to see what your father looks like.”