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She shifted in his hold, and he realized his arm was locked around her so tight she probably couldn’t breathe. Loosening his grip, he looked down into her sleepy brown eyes, full of anxiety she couldn’t quite hide.

Her tongue came out to lick her lips and he chased its path with the pad of his thumb. Her voice was husky when she spoke, “What are you thinking?”

A thousand replies rushed through his brain, none of them appropriate. Anything he could think of would either expose the chaos roiling in his head or would come out sounding glib and cheesy. And his feelings for her ran way too deep for him to feign nonchalance. The realization of just how much he cared made him swallow convulsively.

At his continued silence Reggie propped herself up onto his chest. “Never mind. That’s a stupid question anyway. It’s one of those chick questions girls ask when they can’t think of anything to say, and they don’t really want to hear the answer anyway.”

She was on a roll, chattering nervously with no sign of stopping. “Because the truth is, at a time like this, guys are usually thinking something dumb, like whether they missed
SportsCenter
, or that they need to pee. Or something you don’t want to know, like how your ass didn’t look that big clothed, or how long she’s going to want to cuddle before she’ll shut up and go to sleep so he can sneak out without an uncomfortable good-bye.”

He cut her off the only way guaranteed to shut her up, flipping her neatly under him and covering her mouth with his. He didn’t let up until he was certain she was dazed and, for the moment, speechless. A condition that didn’t last long.

Feeling his semihard cock surge against her belly, Reggie grinned and squirmed lasciviously against him. “Bet I know what you’re thinking
now.”

Laughing, he bent and nipped the top of her breast. “Darlin’, the spirit is willing, but the flesh isn’t eighteen anymore. You need to give me at least another five minutes.”

Another kiss and he gently pulled away to go to the bathroom where he got rid of the condom and attempted to compose himself. He eased back into bed beside her, struck by how
right
this felt, climbing into bed with her and pulling her close. Holy shit, he was in big trouble.

“Are you upset?” She idly stroked his chest, next to where her cheek rested. “About breaking your own rules, I mean?”

He sighed, wishing they could both just let it go, enjoy the night without unpacking all of his baggage. “I’m a by-the-book guy because I had to learn to be. I used to react emotionally to every situation, but when I was in Special Forces, I had to learn to distance myself. If any one of us went off half-cocked and broke the rules, there’d be a cluster fuck.” He shifted, shoving his arm up under his head.

She pushed up on her elbows, her forehead wrinkling. “But you have to let your emotions get involved sometime.”

“Not when it comes to work. If I let emotions take over, I lose control of the situation. I might do something stupid, or worse, put you in danger.” He paused, carefully weighing his next words. Truthfully, he had no desire to ruin the moment by dredging up memories of his past stupidity. On the other hand, Reggie deserved to know the truth of why he had fought so hard to keep her at arm’s length. “The last time I let my emotions get involved, I almost ruined everything.”

Reggie tensed. Now she’d finally gotten him talking, maybe she’d rather he shut up. But what could he confess that would be so awful?

“Remember when we met in Hawaii, you mentioned Marly Chase was staying at the resort?”

“Uh-huh,” she nodded warily.

“I was there as her bodyguard.”

She was afraid she knew where this was going. “And let me guess, you were sleeping with her too.”

His “yep” was barely audible.

Her stomach sank as she vividly remembered Marly Chase, stretched out on a lounger at the Grand Wailea in Maui, her taut, lean physique tanned a gorgeous golden bronze. Then she remembered her own curvy figure encased in a one-piece as she huddled under an umbrella to shade her fair skin from the fierce Hawaiian sun. She’d actually gotten naked in front of a guy who’d dated some perfect, hot, centerfold-worthy actress. If only she had one of those memory erasers from
Men in Black
to permanently delete the image of her naked white ass from his mind.

As revelations went, sleeping with a woman who was widely considered to have one of the best bodies on television wasn’t the worst thing he could have admitted, but it sucked pretty hard just the same. She rolled over onto the free pillow and pulled the covers up to her chin.

He snuggled against her, ignoring the hint.

“So before Marly this was a regular thing for you, banging your clients, providing any extra services they might desire?” She knew she sounded bitchy but couldn’t stop herself, hating the idea that she might be yet another in a line of faceless women that he forgot as soon as he issued the last invoice.

“No, dammit.” That genuinely pissed him off, judging from the sudden flare in his dark eyes. “I didn’t sleep with my clients before that. Granted, they were mostly men, or wives of men I was protecting, but that’s beside the point.”

“So Marly was too tempting to resist?”

He hooked his arm around her waist and propped up on his other elbow. “She’s an attractive woman; she came on strong, and I fell for it. Honestly, I think she was a little bored and wanted to entertain herself by slumming with the help.”

She snorted. “Whatever. Like you don’t know you’re gorgeous.”

That sidetracked him. “Gorgeous? Yeah?”

More gorgeous than any guy she’d seen in real life, but she wasn’t about to admit that now. “I suppose it’s impossible to say no when the world’s most perfect ass is swinging in your face,” she said sourly.

“Hey now.” She held herself stiff as he rolled on top of her, pinned her in place, and forced her chin up to meet his gaze. “She may have looked good on a magazine cover, but in person she was all bones and abnormally large boobs. And when it came down to sex…”

Reggie wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this.

He whispered conspiratorially, “It was like fucking a cricket.”

A reluctant smile stretched her face. “So what was the appeal, then?” she prodded.

He released an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know. I guess I was taken in by her needy little-girl act and I liked feeling like a hero.” His gaze softened and he kissed her with a sweetness that had warmth blooming in her chest and tears stinging her eyes. “I got a little starstruck, that’s all.”

She wondered how his feelings for her compared, but stopped herself from digging deeper. It wasn’t fair to try to pin him down when her own emotions were in a royal tangle.

She had no right to be jealous of any of his women, past or future, when she wasn’t sure herself exactly what she wanted from him. She liked Gabe a lot, no question about it, and the sex was beyond anything she’d ever imagined. But that didn’t mean they were any closer to having something real than they’d been that one night in Hawaii. Once the stalker stopped, well, stalking, Gabe would go back to his life in Los Angeles. As for her, she was so busy she didn’t have time to pursue a relationship with a guy who lived down the street, much less one who lived in another city.

She shoved the thought from her mind, unwilling to let reality invade and ruin what was left of her postorgasmic glow. “So what happened to make you so dead set against getting personally involved?”

Gabe struggled with how to explain the fact that he’d beat the crap out of someone without making himself sound like a ruthless thug preying on some wimpy photographer. As he’d learned in high school, no matter what you saw in the movies, girls generally weren’t impressed by guys who got into fistfights with any regularity. His stomach twisted as he remembered Reggie’s look of shocked horror when he’d subdued the junkie in the convenience store.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want,” she whispered.

The temptation to seize her offer of an out was so strong he could taste it. But he didn’t succumb. He’d been an asshole to her for the past several weeks, running hot and cold as he struggled to push her away. She deserved to know the truth, even if it did change her opinion of him.

“After I got out of the forces, a good friend of mine, Malcolm, who was in my unit, hired me to work at his security firm. He runs a high-end group, has a lot of corporate clients, some overseas contracts, and a handful of celebrities. I thought I was hot shit, even though the job was basically grunt work, nothing strategic about it. But it was high profile, and he gave it to me because I clean up good and for the most part can blend in.”

Reggie snorted.

“What?”

“Blend in? Are you kidding? You may as well have ‘badass’ tattooed across your forehead. No matter how much you clean up, you still look barely civilized.” She nuzzled against his chest and continued, “The first time I saw you, I thought you looked dangerous, a little scary.”

“When you met me, I was dangerous, given what had happened. A couple nights before, Marly and I were out in Lahaina having dinner. We’d been keeping it quiet, not letting on that there was anything going on beyond a professional relationship.” Though she’d protested vehemently to the contrary, Gabe knew that Marly hadn’t wanted to sully her good-girl image by letting it be known she was sleeping with the hired help. But he’d let it go, since he’d known it could be potentially bad publicity for his friend’s company. He’d stupidly thought he’d had the whole situation under control, unaware that it was about to blow up spectacularly in his face. And even though he couldn’t deny he was mostly at fault in the ensuing debacle, it bothered him still that Marly could so easily fool the world with her wholesome, girl-next-door image when, in reality, she was a calculating, self-centered media whore.

His fingers tangled idly in Reggie’s thick dark hair. “Now that I look back on it, I think the idea of sneaking around was more appealing than anything.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“She’d had a few glasses of wine at dinner and got a little loopy, and as we were leaving the restaurant she started kissing me.” Reggie tensed in his arms, and he stroked a soothing hand down her back. “She didn’t kiss near as well as you, sweet thing.” He reached down and squeezed the soft curve of her ass for extra reassurance. “Out of nowhere this guy jumps out and starts taking our picture, and pretty soon a crowd is gathering. Marly pushed me away, but the photographer started taunting her, saying really evil, disgusting stuff, trying to get a rise out of her for more photos.”

He paused, then shook his head against the pillow. “I lost it. I completely lost my shit, like I haven’t since high school. I didn’t act like a bodyguard, I acted like a boyfriend defending his girlfriend’s honor. I grabbed the guy and started punching him, and by the time I stopped his nose was broken and his camera was in twelve pieces.”

“Sounds like he deserved it.”

“Whether he did or not, he still threatened to sue Marly, who, in turn, threatened to sue my company. In the end, Marly twisted the whole thing in the press to make it sound like I’d gone off unprovoked, and Malcolm had to pay the guy a hefty chunk of change to convince him not to press charges.”

“And you got hung out to dry,” Reggie said quietly.

“I don’t blame Malcolm for firing me. I would have done the same. It was unprofessional to sleep with a client to begin with, and I was bad for the company image and a liability. He still refers clients to me, but if they dig deep enough in the background check they always find out.”

She rolled to the side, propping up on one elbow as she reached out to stroke his hair. “Lucky for you Natalie’s not thorough enough to run a background check.”

He frowned. “Normally, I’d lay into both of you for being so careless, but in this case I suppose it’s worked to my advantage.”

She raised her eyebrow in mock-offense. “You suppose?”

He grinned as she tugged on a tuft of hair in punishment. Rolling over until he was pressed more firmly against her, he sank his fingers into the plush curve of her hip. Her eyelids drooped and her low purr of satisfaction vibrated all the way down to his groin.

Her face was so close he could see every individual eyelash and the greenish gold flecks in her brown eyes. When he spoke, his lips brushed hers. “So you’re not upset that you unwittingly hired someone with a reputation as a brutal thug?”

Her palm was warm against his cheek. “Like I said, it sounds like the guy deserved it, and maybe if he sees a brutal thug shadowing me, scrotum boy will think twice before he makes good on his threats to confront me in person.”

“A lot of people would still be afraid to trust me.”

Silently, she studied him for a moment. “Whatever you did, it was because your instincts told you it was the right thing. And despite how you see it, I don’t think you ever completely lost control.”

“No?”

“All you did was break his nose, right? Look at you”—she reached down and squeezed his biceps for emphasis—“you could have maimed him, killed him if you really let loose. All you did was fire a warning shot over his bow.”

“I should never have hit him in the first place.”

“But I doubt he would have gotten the message to shut up and leave you alone any other way.”

Gabe had to concede that point.

Her tongue came out to moisten her lips, officially moving him from the recovery stage to rarin’ to fuckin’ go in a millisecond. “The most important thing is I know you would never hurt
me,
no matter how mad you got, and if this all ends with you giving my stalker a concussion, or worse, I see that as a bonus.”

“Bloodthirsty little thing, aren’t you?” He buried his face in the curve of her neck, nipping and licking at the soft skin until she squealed.

Something inside him untwisted a little. He would never let himself off the hook, never forgive himself for his loss of control and the clusterfuck that had ensued. But Reggie’s soft words of trust got to him. Scary how quickly she’d pierced the armor he worked so hard to maintain. Scary how much her opinion of him mattered.