Muscle for Hire (7 page)

That same hot lick teased her again at the thought. Why
couldn’t
she lean on him? Would it truly be so bad?

“Thanks, doc.” Nigel’s voice jerked her from the ridiculous question, and she focused her attention on the film director. “Aslin, can I trouble you to take Rowan…” He stopped, giving Rowan a frown. “Where are you staying, Rowan?”

She blinked. She hadn’t booked into a hotel room yet. She hadn’t planned on her brother ending up in the ER. Just like she hadn’t planned to spend the evening being seduced by a British super-soldier.

Or making out with said soldier in an alley behind a bar.

“She can crash in my suite tonight,” Chris piped up. “But after that you’re on your own, sis. You cramp my style too much.”

Nigel laughed. Even the doctor chuckled.

Rowan glared at them all. “Your style? Falling flat on your face, you mean?”

Chris smirked. “That’s the one.”

“Fun’s over,” the doctor said. “Time for everyone to go. Mr. McQueen, as the person who brought Mr. Huntley in, can I get you to sign some paper work at the nurses desk, please?”

“Sure thing, doc.” Nigel extended his arm across Chris, and Rowan almost yelped when Aslin brushed against her to complete the handshake. “Thanks for taking care of Rowan for us, Aslin. Back to normal on set tomorrow, okay? Shall we say ten a.m.?”

“We shall,” Aslin answered.

Or at least she thought he did. All she could hear was the roaring of her blood in her ears. With just one small touch of his body—his chest on her shoulder, of all things—she was almost panting with need. God, how was she going to survive the motorcycle ride to Chris’s hotel?

“Give me a kiss, sis.” Chris chuckled. “And stop freaking out.”

Heart far too fast for its own good, Rowan leant forward and dropped a kiss on her brother’s cheek, right beside the blooming purple bruise. “I’m not freaking out,” she muttered.

Chris laughed. “Yes, you are,” he shot back, his voice low. “And I know exactly why and it has nothing to do with me.” He slid a quick look over her shoulder, a shoulder still tingling from Aslin’s contact.

A thick lump formed in Rowan’s throat. She forgot sometimes how astute and observant her brother was. The world knew him as a sexy, handsome funny-man, a guy with a quick wit and a killer smile, and sometimes she herself was guilty of pigeon-holing him the same way. But he was more than that. He was smart and perceptive and tuned into her moods as only a brother who’d survived a nightmare with his sister could be.

“Love you, Rowie,” he murmured into her ear. “Now fuck off and have some fun for a change, will you?”

Rowan swallowed, unable to find any words. Instead, she gave her brother a quick nod, straightened and stepped back from his bed.

“Okay, Mr. Huntley,” the doctor said, just as a tall male nurse arrived and released the locking mechanism on the bed’s casters. “Time to exit left. Or is the appropriate term ‘That’s a wrap’?” The elder gentleman chuckled, slid his pen into his top pocket and gave Rowan a smile. “Do not stress, miss. Your brother will be fine.” And with that, and a quick inclination of his head to Aslin, he left.

As did Chris, the male nurse pulling the bed from its place without warning and maneuvering him away.

“I was about to say welcome to the weird world of film making, Mr. Rhodes—” Nigel chuckled, “—but I suspect the music world is equally weird, right?”

“Somewhat.” A shiver rippled up Rowan’s spine at Aslin’s voice. Damn it, when was she going to stop reacting to his accent?

Never?

Nigel laughed and then turned to her. “Rowan, Tilly has Chris’s hotel key. She’s waiting on set until she hears from me. Give her a call to let her know you’re on your way to collect them.”

Rowan nodded. “Thanks, Nigel.”

The director cast them both a contemplative look, as if seeing something he hadn’t expected, and then strode through the private room toward another door on the other side.

Which left Rowan alone with Aslin.

Again.

For some stupid reason her mouth went dry.

When Aslin placed his hand on the small of her back—the very place she’d been aching for it to be since he removed it—she jumped.

She lifted her stare up to his face, her lips prickling with a sudden rush of blood. “I…” she began.

A crooked smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. “Let’s go. There’s things that need to be done.”

Rowan’s heart smashed against her breastbone. She swallowed, her stomach muscles clenching. “Aslin, what we did—”

His dark gaze grew intense. “Isn’t finished.” And with that, he directed her from the room out into the ER waiting area beyond.

There were no camera flashes to been seen as they crossed the floor. She didn’t hear any more mutters of Nick Blackthorne’s name from the surrounding seats, nor the word
bodyguard
whispered, but the tension in Aslin’s body as they walked to the elevator told Rowan he suspected the paparazzi were still lurking there.

Or maybe he was tense because of her? Maybe, despite how calm and cool he seemed, he was just as disturbed by the sexual chemistry between them both?

She didn’t let herself ponder the possibility. When they stepped into the elevator, she pulled her cell phone from her hip pocket and dialed Chris’s personal assistant’s number, refusing to look at Aslin as she waited for Tilly to answer.

She heard him chuckle, a low rumble that made her sex throb, and then Tilly, in her subtle Californian accent, was saying, “Oh my God, Ms. Hemsworth, is Mr. Huntley okay?” in her ear.

The duration of the trip down to the parking level was spent arranging with Tilly to meet at Chris’s trailer within the hour. Rowan kept her stare on the closed elevator doors the whole time. It was gutless coward’s way to deal with a situation, but all Rowan could manage. The whole thing was too overwhelming. Too confronting and confusing. Better to spend longer than normal talking to Chris’s perky personal assistant than deal with the…the…
thing
hanging between her and the Brit. Not until she got her head around it. And decided on the next course of action.

She was still talking to Tilly—enquiring about Chris’s food intake while she’d been in Canada, of all things—when she and Aslin crossed the parking level to his Ducati. Their footfalls bounced around the quiet space, a soft tempo that rivaled the rapid beating of her heart. By the time Tilly said goodbye, Rowan was so tense, so on-edge, she could barely draw breath.

Getting back onto the Ducati was insane.

Pressing her chest and belly to Aslin’s broad back, nudging his butt cheeks with her spread pussy, hugging his hips with her inner thighs…all insane. God, at this rate she would come the second he started the bike.

Long, firm fingers circled her upper arms a heartbeat before a tall, hard body appeared directly before her. She stiffened, her stare clashing with Aslin’s. “You can’t ignore me forever, Rowan,” he spoke, that sexy British accent doing wicked things to her senses. “Especially when I do this.”

He lowered his head and captured her lips with his, his tongue delving into her mouth with velvet ease.

She didn’t fight him. There was no point. She wanted this kiss, this touch as much as he did. Maybe more. She’d denied her sexual needs for a long time, putting Chris’s wellbeing above everything else except her driving need to never be weak and vulnerable again. The number of dates she’d been on since
Twice Too Many
hit the air could be counted on two hands. If she wasn’t looking out for her brother, protecting him in the only way she knew how, she was working out in the dojo, training, sweating out the fears and the nightmares of her parents’ murders until she was nothing but a well-honed machine capable of breaking a fully-grown man in two with a simple jiu-jitsu move. And yet here she was now, rendered vulnerable to an emotion far more all-consuming than fear and terror.

Here she was, surrendering to a fully grown man’s mastery over her body with no more fight than a whimpered groan.

Surrendering willingly. Despite the fact they were in a parking lot. Despite the fact her brother was somewhere in the hospital above her, injured due to a suspicious situation.

Surrendering and aching for more. Aching for Aslin’s total and utter possession of her body.

Weak.

Vulnerable.

Defeated.

Oh God, she’d never felt so damn on fire. So damn alive.

She pressed her hips to his, rolled them, wanting to feel the solid steel of his erection trapped by his jeans grind against the curve of her sex.

He growled into her mouth. That was the only word for it, a growl, animalistic and dominating. Her pussy turned to liquid need at the purely male sound. She raked her nails over his shoulder, knotted her fingers in the hair at his nape. He lashed his tongue against hers, his rigid cock pressing into her belly.

Her head swam. Her sex throbbed. She gave herself over to his control, the kiss igniting a need within her she could no longer ignore.

He circled his hands around her waist and, without tearing his lips from hers, hauled her from the ground. She moaned into his mouth as he spun her around and deposited her onto the seat of his bike, wrapped her legs around his hips and slammed his trapped cock to the junction of her thighs.

Chapter Five

The last place Aslin wanted to make love to Rowan was on the back of his motorbike. First against a wall in an alleyway, now an uneven bike seat in a cold, concrete parking lot. The trouble was the second, the very second, she looked up at him with those mesmerizing blue eyes of hers, any sodding notion of controlling his lust vanished.

Kissing her wasn’t enough.

He needed to be inside her. Now.

He dug his fingers into the firm muscles of her arse cheeks and squeezed, pressing his cock to her heat as he did so. Pleasurable pain shot through his groin and he groaned into her mouth, hauling her harder to his erection. She raked at his shoulders with her nails, her thighs squeezing his hips, her own moans loud in the near-empty parking level.

Stop, boyo. Not here. Not like this…

But he couldn’t. His hands roamed her legs, up her ribcage, over her breasts. She gasped into his mouth when he pinched one nipple through her shirt, her nails scraping at the back of his neck in response. He liked it. A lot. He’d never been one for BDSM, but the pain Rowan wrought on his body was delicious.

Pinching her nipple again, he steeled himself against the agony of her nails on his flesh. The pain came, sending fresh hot blood surging through his straining dick and he groaned again. More pain followed, pleasurable pain, when she snared a fistful of his hair and tugged. Fast and hard.

He tore his mouth from her lips, sucking in a steady breath as he stared down into her eyes. “I can fuck you here and now, Rowan. On my bike. Where anyone can stumble upon us. I don’t care. I’m beyond caring. But it’s your call. I don’t want you to—”

A sudden white flash bleached Rowan’s face, followed by another, and another.

Aslin spun around, his glare falling on a familiar man standing but a few feet away, a large SLR camera held up to his face.

Aslin’s gut clenched, cold fury storming through him.

Holston.

“Now that’s what I call an action shot, Rhodes,” the notorious Australian paparazzo called out, removing the memory card from the camera with swift hands. “You been taking lessons from that boss of yours?” He shoved the card into his back pocket with a smirk. “How is Nick by the way? Fucking around on his wife yet? I was hoping you’d lead me to him, but instead I found—”

Rowan stiffened in Aslin’s arms. For a second. Only one. And then she was off his bike and sprinting toward Holston, a feline grace claiming her body.

The paparazzo froze. His mouth gaped, sheer shock on his face as Rowan flung her body into the most elegant spinning kick Aslin had ever seen, her heel smashing into Holston’s jaw with a crunching thud.

The photographer stumbled sideways and fell to his knees. His camera clattered to the concrete, skittering across the ground just as Rowan’s leg completed its blurring arc.

It was poetry in motion. Aslin had never seen anything so beautiful. So perfect.

“Fuckin’ bitch!” Holston screeched, desperately trying to regain his feet. “You fucking—”

Rowan’s foot struck out in a blurring streak. There was a distinct cracking sound, a surprised yelp from the photographer and then Holston’s camera was flying through the air, rising, rising…

And then smashing down to the ground in pieces.

“Now try and take our photo, fucker,” Rowan’s coldly calm voice reached Aslin. “Or better still, get a real job.”

She turned and walked back to Aslin, as if she hadn’t just put the most infamous paparazzo in the country on the ground.

Aslin cocked an eyebrow. “That was interesting.”

She looked up at him. “That was an interruption.” Her glare slid behind him and she shook her head. “Don’t even think about it.”

Aslin twisted at the waist, a grin pulling at his lips at the sight of Holston frozen in an awkward half-crouch. How many years had he wanted to beat the shit out of the bastard? How many times had the sod invaded Nick’s world and Aslin had been forced to pull punches longing to be swung?