Gambling on the Bodyguard (5 page)

He slanted his head. Drew her closer. Felt the crush of her breasts against his chest. Resisted the urge to touch them. To grab her ass. To haul her into bed.

So much for good behavior.

He liked her. He definitely wanted her, but he also wanted the chance to get to know her, and that wasn’t likely to happen if he threw her down on her bed right then. He didn’t want her merely willing to share her body. He wanted her feverish and wet and
begging
for it.

He tried to break free of the kiss and failed. Little parting nibbles turned into more, and she’d only halfway released his shirt. Only then to wind her fingers through his hair, to drag him in and make his dick harder than it had ever been.

“You’re not as innocent as you look,” he managed to mutter.

“Actually I am,” she said, her tone laced with something suspiciously close to regret. “Dreadfully so.”

He remembered her words from the night before. “You still looking to misbehave?”

She grinned. “When in Rome.”

“Wrong casino, but I can get a room over there if you’d like.”

She laughed, and against his better judgment he kissed her again. Breaking free nearly broke
him
.

“I had other plans,” he managed. But her room smelled of a fresh shower and the light scent of her skin had him turned inside out. “You can’t be all that innocent to make me forget so quickly.”

She rolled her eyes. Smiled so damn pretty he hurt inside. “You’d be surprised,” she said.

“Actually, I already am,” he admitted. “But I’ll make you a deal.”

A grin softened the lips he’d made swollen with his kisses. “What’s that?”

“Spend the rest of the day with me,” he said. The need for her to say yes astounded him. Not just because he wanted her, but because he wanted to be with her. His sister’s face flashed before him. Trusting. Defiant.
Warning
.

What was he
doing
?

“Didn’t we already have that deal?” Ellie asked.

His sister’s face faded, but not the guilt. “Yes. No. Dammit.”

If she tried to hide her smile, she did a sorry job of it. Thank God she didn’t see him for what he was. What he’d been for too damn long to ever change.

He’d failed his sister. He had no right to be happy while she lay in a box in the ground, but he shoved away those thoughts. He’d been given Ellie. A day, maybe two. He could borrow that much happiness, couldn’t he? He didn’t have to deserve it.

He already had it.

He snagged her hand. Pulled her in. Kissed her. Felt it to his toes, and should have known right then and there he was in over his head, but probably didn’t care. It had been too long since someone had walked into his life—all smiles and sunshine—and made him want to bask in anything but guilt.

Only… He broke free, immediately feeling the loss. He took a few steps back before he lost it. “We absolutely do not have that deal.”

She looked at him. Confused. Maybe a little hurt.

Asshole
. “What I mean by that is I don’t want you with me because you feel like you have to be.”

His response appeared to only amplify her bewilderment. “Why would I think that?”

“You may have mentioned blackmail as a factor.”

Caution broke into a grin. “And then I mentioned Rome.”

Her breasts drew his eyes. Why the fuck wasn’t she wearing a bra? That sweater of hers was tight knit, loose, but thin. He’d need a straitjacket if those nipples didn’t retract. “Rome is most certainly not going to happen because of blackmail.”

Humor glinting in her eyes, she asked, “What if I just kind of tolerate you because I want to, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Rome?”

He leaned back against the wall and kicked one foot over the other. “Just kind of tolerate me, huh?”

She blushed, but she didn’t look down. Not this time.

He made her nervous. He liked that. Really liked it. Wished she’d do to him what she was doing to her bottom lip, but if she closed her eyes it would kill him. He needed her looking at him like that.

“I might be willing,” she said, edging closer. Or maybe edging for the door. Her nipples were about to poke holes through her sweater. He thought about offering to warm them up for her, but that was for later.

If this was to be the best damned day of his life, that was.

“Good.” He reached out and stuck his finger under the hem of her sweater, tugging gently until she obliged his unspoken request. Until mere inches separated them. With him leaning on the wall, his feet stretched between hers, the difference in their heights evened out. He had an unobstructed view of her eyes. Light brown and flecked with color, they reminded him of the desert.

But the desert had never been as beautiful as that.

He cupped the back of her head. Curled his fingers through the long, loose waves that matched her eyes and drew her mouth to his.

She didn’t resist. The relief that sweltered through him was short-lived, quickly flamed out by an all-consuming need to taste the rest of her. But he held back. Didn’t want to scare her, to see distrust in her eyes.

He slanted his head. Her eyes fluttered closed, and he mourned that until she met him in the kiss. Soft and sweet, nothing had ever sounded better than the tiny sounds of contentment she whispered as he made her his, deepening the contact, savoring the gift. By the time they took a breath she was, for all practical purposes, in his lap, her legs straddling his, his hand still caught up in her sweater. He unwound from the loose hold and reached beneath the fabric. Traced his fingertips against her stomach—not too high, not too low—and enjoyed the quick breath she drew. He kept her gaze. Loved that she didn’t seem anxious to look away.

He slipped his hand to her back, his arm still under her shirt, both of them under the same spell. She took the cue and fell into him, soft as fresh-fallen snow. Warm as fuck. She was one pair of jeans and one pair of whatever she was wearing away from riding him, and his balls would probably never forgive him for not mounting up. But for the first time in his life, something more tugged at him. He wanted to know her. Wanted to bask in all that sunshine, to enjoy the innocence before he took that, along with her body.

A lock of hair had fallen in her face. No doubt his fault after dragging his fingers through the strands, so he pushed it back. Almost kissed her again. “I tell you what, Colorado. Let’s spend the day together because we want to. I’ll try not to want you so hard that I forget to see the desert through your eyes, every damned moment of it, and if you’re not sick of me when it’s over, I’ll take you back to my room or you can take me back to yours.”

One of her eyebrows lifted. That strand of hair bounded loose and caressed her cheek, making him want to do it all over again. “And then what?” she asked.

He grinned. “Then you’ll find out firsthand what happens in Vegas.”

Chapter Six

Ellie almost shook with nerves. She wasn’t sure if she’d been rejected or propositioned, but it didn’t matter. The day wasn’t over, and in fact, Jax had just asked her to spend it with him.

In. The. Desert.

“If you’d rather stay on the strip, I understand. I know you came here for…the convention.” His voice, so husky even with such ordinary words leaving his lips, mired her further under his spell.

She shook her head. The haze was still there. Better yet, he was there, hot as sin, sweet as honey. Someone with his rough edges shouldn’t be so playful, so ready to smile. “The city will be there tonight,” she said. “It’s not quite as interesting without the neon.” A conclusion that had found her as she stood in her hotel room, staring at the streets below. Waiting for him to reply to her text.

And what convention? She could
not
care less. Not as long as Wolverine remained an option.

“But you don’t know me,” he said, “and going off grid isn’t in the safety handbook.”

She looked up, surprised.

He laughed. “I figured if you weren’t into walking the strip alone, an excursion to the desert might wave a red flag or two. I probably shouldn’t have asked, but what you said about the mountains…that’s how I feel out there. I want to share it with you.”

She averted her eyes for the briefest moment before zeroing in on him. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, but I’m telling a friend where I’m going. And with whom.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” He pulled his security ID from his pocket and handed it to her. “Take a picture and send it to your friend.”

Ellie accepted the tag and grinned. Or maybe combusted. Even staring straight-faced at the camera, he was smoking hot. The eyes…they were incredible. Taylor would lose her mind.

Ellie probably already had.

“You know,” he said, “if you looked at me like that—actual me, not just a picture of me—I’d be a goner.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” she said. “But don’t think I haven’t been.”

His brow lifted. A grin touched his lips.

Her stomach dipped, roller coaster style. She shook it off, or at least pretended she could, and snapped a picture of the ID. As she handed him back the card, she asked, “Where are we headed?”

“Valley of Fire,” he said. “It’s just up I-15 north, less than an hour out of the city. Exit seventy-five.”

She tapped out her message and hit send. “If I end up on Dateline, I’m going to haunt you.”

“Got a feeling you’re going to haunt me anyway, Colorado.”

“That’s not comforting,” she said. But it was. God, it was.

They left her room. She pulled shut the door, then he took her hand. Why did that simple gesture have to feel so good? Why did a guy she was destined to know for three days, tops, have to be so thoughtful?

And she…hadn’t been at all thoughtful.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I totally forgot to thank you for breakfast.”

“I think you already did,” he said as they stepped onto the elevator. “Besides, it was more of an apology on my part.”

“I didn’t eat it all,” she said.

He pressed the button for the lobby. “I don’t know where you’d have put it. I just wasn’t sure what you liked.”

“Bacon.” She sighed. Or rather swooned. “I never eat bacon.”

A corner of his mouth quirked. “Yet you ate the bacon?”

“You ever have bacon with syrup?” she asked.

“If you’d be willing to feed it to me,” he said, “and then lay there very still while I lick the syrup off your fingers, I might be willing to give it a try.”

And just like that, he’d turned bacon into a sexual experience—one that may or may not ever leave the recesses of her mind, but that she’d relive with every strip of bacon she ever consumed.

The elevator doors slid open to mayhem. At least that’s what she thought of the crowds, noise, and lights that comprised the hotel’s ground floor casino. Maybe it was the romance convention. Or maybe it was just Vegas. She missed the solitude of the mountains, but now when she pictured being alone there, the image was inexplicably entwined with one of Jax. She suddenly understood why he wanted to show her the desert, because she wanted nothing more than to see the mountains in his eyes.

He led her easily through the melee, so unfazed by it that she had no choice but to believe it was yet another shot of normalcy that, anywhere else, would be anything but.

“How are we getting to the desert?”

“You’re already there. But to answer your question, I have a big, black, environmentally disastrous SUV.” On cue, they reached the valet. Jax handed over his ticket, and moments later they were met at the door by a jacked up tank. Not
really
a tank, but she doubted anything got in its way.

He waved off the valet with cash and helped her up himself. “Kind of ironic to take one of those out to enjoy nature, isn’t it?”

“On one hand, yes.”

She ran her fingertips over the soft leather seats and inhaled deeply. “What’s the other hand?”

He eased shut her door and didn’t answer until he had jumped into the driver’s seat. With a firm pat to the dash, he said, “The desert is wide open. You can go pretty much anywhere, and it’s better to do it in four wheel drive.”

She gawked, and not just because the man was unfairly sexy. He exuded power, navigating with ease onto the busy street. She could probably stare at him all day. In fact, she’d love to get stuck with him, but in the desert? “Mud can’t possibly be an issue.”

“Nah, but rocks can be.” He glanced at the rearview while she admired his profile. “When it does rain,” he said, “flash flooding is a thing. Which means swales become one, only they’re more like concrete drainage ditches by the time the sun bakes them. You hit one good enough, you’ll leave your axle behind in it.”

Oh
. “So is that what you do? Guard bodies by night and wander the desert by day?”

He shot her a sideways grin. “I guess. Never thought of it that way, but close enough.”

She leaned back into the leather and watched the city ease past, surprised to find that a sense of normalcy prevailed away from the strip. Vegas was very much an oasis in the desert—the view from an airplane left no doubt as to the emptiness of the surrounding landscape—but as they left the city, the rearview added a new dimension to the storied location. As wide as the interstate sprawled and as tall as the hotel casinos pierced the air above, the vast desert so quickly consumed the skyline that she wondered if she hadn’t imagined the whole place.

But she hadn’t imagined Jax. Couldn’t have conjured him if she’d tried. It was hard to believe that a mere twenty-four hours before she’d been in the air, high above that very road. Anticipating all the wrong things. If someone had told her that a day later she’d be riding shotgun with a tattooed hottie doing eighty through the desert, she’d have laughed. Or fled.

She certainly would never imagined she’d feel so free.

She caught her reflection in the side mirror and barely recognized herself. Smiling. Sun kissed. Hair all over the place, probably from the breeze that struck while she was hopping up into the truck. Laughing, she pulled it back, then felt the heat of his gaze.

“You’re so damn pretty,” he said. He paused, looking her way. Hesitant, like he wanted to say something else, but in the end he turned back toward the road.

But she didn’t. She watched him, knowing he could feel her eyes on him, but did it anyway. She itched to touch the stubble that darkened his jaw. Already knew what it felt like against her skin. She couldn’t forget the softness of his lips or the tenderness with which he explored her mouth. Something deeper had simmered, flaring in his eyes, but he remained so gentle. If it was a strategy, she had to give him credit. Already he had her longing for the crush, for the explosion of demand and utter possession of her body he promised. The tease wasn’t enough. Every good girl thing she thought she’d known about herself had been obliterated by this man, and the desire to get closer to him had her vibrating on a frequency that had nothing to do with the hum of the tires on the pavement.

The miles flew, the distant shift of the mountains against the horizon the only real indication of the passing distance. She hadn’t realized a world this vast existed outside of her own, that a relatively bare terrain could seem so wild. Or that she could harbor a need so fierce. She ached for him, the desire to be touched coiled so tight she couldn’t imagine the force of the explosion.

In no time, they were off the interstate and entering the park. He greeted the guy at the entrance station by name, then rolled through.

“You didn’t have to pay?”

“Annual pass. I was here two days ago showing it to the same man. They know me.”

She didn’t respond. She was too blown away by the scenery to form words. Red rock and desert scrub stretched as far as the eye could see. And not just any rock, but endless thin layers of sediment that swirled and looped, somehow at once meticulous and wild.

“Wow.” She had never imagined nature could be more stunning than the jagged peaks of the Rockies, but then again, she could never have fathomed anything like this.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked softly.

“I almost feel like an intruder.”

“You up for a walk? The park is open until sunset.”

Sunset. Here. With him. She shivered, though it had nothing to do with the temperature. She’d forgotten her jacket, but the air was still warm. She wished she at least had a bra, but she’d hand-washed her one only to find her luggage suspiciously devoid of another. Not such a big deal for hanging out at her hotel or for the duo of dresses she’d brought for the two formal events she planned to attend, but another issue entirely when she realized she’d be out. With him. She was far from cold—probably too long adapted to what she’d left behind eight thousand feet up in the snowy Rockies—but she knew temperatures fell quickly in the desert. January could be frigid after sunset.

She glanced at Jax and decided there’s be no absence of heat in the desert that night.

“I’d love to walk with you,” she said.

He steered into the next parking area. His was the only vehicle there. The world was theirs alone, and something about that felt so incredibly right.

She jumped down before he could help her, and with the chirp of his door lock, they left civilization behind. In some ways, she felt like they’d left earth entirely. The rocks in the park took every alien shape imaginable, from the delicately streaked dunes to arches and columns and beehive formations. The path they walked meandered between rocks, around bends, each turn more breathtaking than the one before it.

“Wait until the sun starts to set,” he said. “You’ll see how the park gets its name.”

“You mean I don’t already?”

“Not even close.”

They walked a bit longer, eventually stopping at an outcropping with a view of the sun. Already, it colored the sky.

He gestured toward the view, but he needn’t. She was already transfixed.

“What you said last night about the mountains made me think of how I feel here,” he said. A breeze lifted a strand of her hair. He brushed back the errant piece. Smiled. “Just like you said, then and now. You can’t see it and not let it be a part of you.”

She swallowed the lump that threatened her throat. She hadn’t imagined anyone else could understand what she felt, and she wouldn’t have thought it possible that the person who did could have been found in a place that was the exact opposite of hers—a place that could never be her home. They couldn’t have been more different, she and Jax, but the connection she felt to him suggested otherwise.

So did the look in his eyes. They captured her, held her for a long moment before he spoke. “What are you running from out there, gorgeous?”

“Not running. Just looking.” That old familiar ache returned, and she wondered, not for the first time, why she bothered with the search. Especially now. She’d always been so careful. Had waited to give herself to the man she was going to marry. In retrospect, she could see the relationship wouldn’t have worked, and not just because of the horrible way it ended. Maybe she tried too hard to make it something it wasn’t. In the end it hadn’t mattered, but the failure had left her confused. She thrived on caution. Planning. Every piece had been carefully arranged, only to have all those years of meticulous construction end in a broken heap. It probably wasn’t the best way to shape a partnership, but on paper it should have worked. If she couldn’t trust a man after three years, how long was she supposed to wait for things to fall apart before she believed they wouldn’t?

She looked to Jax. He studied her with such intent, as if her response meant something. How was it possible his eyes seemed to hold so much promise? And what did it matter if they did? Anything they held wasn’t for her.

Couldn’t be.

She thought about his question. Telling him the truth back to the beginning—that her parents had checked out a long time ago, leaving a little girl to be raised by a string of nannies—had lonely and desperate written all over it. She hadn’t any siblings. For as long as she could remember, it had just been her. That a family had been all she wanted, and she’d wasted too many years wanting it with the wrong person. Now her relationship was over, her parents were off playing tourists in Outer Mongolia or somewhere equally absurd, and she’d been left utterly alone.

Inexplicably, she didn’t feel that way now. But she wouldn’t admit that, either.

“Have you found it yet?” he asked. “That thing you’re looking for?”

She whittled back the hurt and confusion. The pain of so many lost years. It wasn’t anything on which she wanted to focus. Not with him filling the void in a way she hadn’t thought anyone could—especially not a man who had never been part of her plan. “Sometimes I think it’s less about what I’ve lost and more about what I’m finding along the way.”

He looked away. His throat bobbed, and she knew he got it.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I just get so damn tired of looking.”

She reached for his hand, and his fingers immediately curled through hers. “Maybe sometimes you should stop looking,” she said. “Maybe, for a little while, just
be
.”