Bodyguard (Hollywood A-List #2)

“Say my name when you come.”

“Ca . . . ah . . . ah . . .”

“Whole word.”

“Carter.” I spit it out, the last R sounding like a freight train as I bucked in his arms. He held me up while I came, pushing his erection against me, lightening the touch of his fingers to extend the orgasm past any reasonable length.

He stopped, cupping where I was now sensitive without moving, as if he still wanted to touch it but didn’t want to hurt me. I went limp, and he held me up.

“Thank you,” I gasped, getting my bearings.

“I don’t want to freak you out, but the cat was watching the entire time.”

Grey sat next to a mostly empty food bowl and washed herself as if she hadn’t seen a thing. I flattened my feet, and once they held me, Carter let me go.

“You should have named her Perv.”

I straightened myself. Waistband up. Shirt down. Deep breath. I was going to have to reciprocate.

I couldn’t wait to get to it.

The feel of his cock against my bottom had sent me over the edge. I wanted to touch it, but when I went for his belt, he gently stopped me.

“I need to use the bathroom,” he said, then kissed my knuckles.

“Sure.” I wove my fingers in his and guided him inside.





CHAPTER 22





CARTER


I didn’t want to wash the smell of her off my fingertips, but I had to get rid of my hard-on, and the full bladder wasn’t helping. I washed her off my hands and looked in the mirror, brushing my wet fingers through my hair.

In a few hours, Fabian would start working with her as his primary client, and I’d go home, have dinner, put Phin to bed, and watch a little TV before crashing. Almost like normal.

Was normal going to cut it anymore? Was maintenance enough?

I’d worked hard to maintain a steady schedule for Phin’s sake. I made sure he didn’t have anything else to cope with except growing up. Not bringing a woman around the house for him to get used to was a conscious choice.

My choices were becoming less and less conscious.

I didn’t have any control around Emily. I knew plenty of beautiful women and plenty of smart ones. She had real talent, but in Hollywood, talent was cheap. My reaction to her came from the gut. My body overrode my common sense. I had to have her. I’d never been addicted to anything, so I was unprepared for what an addiction did to a guy.

I didn’t know if I liked it, but I knew I couldn’t do anything about it. Like any addict, I felt powerless in the face of my addiction.

She’d left the studio door open for me, and Grey stood guard in front of it. The tick of a metronome came over the speakers, much louder than the ambient volume of Darlene’s singing voice. Emily stood in the center of the room in tight black shorts and a crop top, facing a wall of mirrors.

“Stop,” she said, and I froze halfway in. Grey wasn’t as obedient, hopping onto the chair and folding herself into a sphinx. “Back five.”

It took me a second to realize she wasn’t telling me to stop. The speakers beeped and the song started again from a different point. She stepped, bent, threw her arms up, spun, and landed.

“Stop. Take notation.” She saw me in the mirror. “Hi, Carter.” On a screen above her, the words Hi Carter appeared below a musical staff. She shook her head quickly and said, “Pause.” The dictation stopped.

“Sorry,” she said to me.

“It’s all right.”

“I owe you one,” she said. “For the . . . um . . .” She wrung her hands together and went a little pink in the cheeks.

“Orgasm?”

Grey meowed behind me.

“Yeah.”

“It was my gift. And I’m still on duty. You can lose control that way, but I can’t.”

She seemed disappointed, looking down at her bare feet.

“Another time, then.”

“Soon. Are you going to stay here or go back to Citizens Warehouse?”

I was just doing my job, but I wanted to stay. I wanted to give her security system another run-through to make sure Vince wouldn’t use my visit as an excuse to drop in on her.

And I wanted her to myself. Even if she didn’t say a word to me, I wanted to be the only one in her orbit.

“Can we stay?” she said. “I get more work done when I’m alone, and this thing really needs work.”

“Absolutely. I’ll call the studio and let them know you’re working from here.”

“Tell Simon I’m giving my dancers the afternoon off. They deserve it.”

“I will. I’m going to check your closed-circuit monitors, then I’ll be back.”

“Good.” She went to her laptop and turned on her system, but just as I was about to leave, she called out.

“Carter?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

She was thanking me for more than making a phone call and checking the security system. I nodded and backed out before I kissed her again.





CHAPTER 23





EMILY


When I let my hips move to the music instead of directing them, my thinking got very clear. I heard only the music and moved. My body served the music and let my mind work.

My worry, my fear, my deep neuroses about Carter, stopped nagging at me. He could get hurt by Vince or he could be as bad as Vince. He could hurt himself trying to protect me. He could get sick of the way I lived and leave me.

All those things could happen, but while I danced, they didn’t bother me.

My first boyfriend, Noah, had dumped me when I was seventeen. He had curly blond locks that reached his shoulders and blue-gray eyes as big as classroom globes. We’d had awkward sex in his parents’ garage a few times, exchanged sweet words, and held hands in the courtyard at Lincoln Park High. A week later, he changed. He denied it, but adolescent girls are pretty intuitive. He didn’t meet me by my locker in the morning, and he didn’t break away from his friends to kiss me on the lips. He sat with Stu Marren in physics lab instead of me and said it was because Stu was just better at physics. He didn’t save me a seat at the basketball game against Lake View because there was no room. I sat with a few girls I knew, but my close friends were the performing arts kids and Darlene, who lived on the other side of the river. Besides gymnastics, I saw her only when she could take the bus to me or when she was having a hard time at home.

Noah was respectful enough to not go out with Tammy Winston for a few weeks. But by spring break they were a thing, and I’d had no closure.

There had been men when we got to Los Angeles. Darlene and I tore up the town. Men swarmed around us. Managers. Agents. Record-label guys. Other musicians trying to latch on. Was it because we were both talented? Or just Darlene? I never knew, and I never questioned it until Vince.

Until Vince, I was in control. I felt little, worked a lot, never lost focus.