The Alpha Bodyguards Books #1-3

Chapter Seventeen

O h my G od, oh my God.

Scrambling, I fumbled with the door handle before shoving it open. “Wait!” Oh my God . They were aiming their guns at Harrison.

Harrison dropped the bag in sheer fright.

“Back in the vehicle, Calandra,” Damian barked without taking his eyes off Harrison. “ Now .”

“That’s Harrison! He’s my assistant. Harrison, what are you doing here so early?” He usually didn’t come in until noon.

Dead white, his eyes skipping back and forth between the two guns pointed at him, Harrison didn’t say a word.

Slow, measured, Collins and Damian lowered their weapons in perfect unison as if it was choreographed.

Collins stepped toward Harrison. “Arms out,” he clipped.

His petrified stare glued to Collins, Harrison silently lifted his arms.

Collins patted him down, actually patted him down, then he tipped his chin at Damian. “Clear.”

I rushed toward Harrison, but right before I got to him, a wall of muscle stepped in front of me.

Damian leveled me with a look that spoke volumes. “You didn’t mention another assistant.”

“He works the gallery.” I stepped around Damian. “I’m so sorry, Harrison. Are you okay?”

Regaining some of his usual unflappable composure, Harrison smoothed his hand down the front of his perfectly pressed shirt. “Yes, fine.” He glanced at Collins. “Can’t say as I’ve ever been frisked before. ”

Any other time, I would have smiled.

“She asked you a question,” Damian clipped.

Harrison looked curiously at Damian for a moment, before looking back at me. “We sold two small pieces yesterday. The transaction was in cash, and I forgot to make the deposit last night. With all the paintings coming in yesterday for the show, it slipped my mind. My apologies. I came in early before we open to handle it.” He glanced at Collins. “Can I pick up my bag now?”

Damian looked down at me like he thought Harrison was lying.

“He always takes the bank deposit bag in his duffle,” I explained. “You can never be too careful.”

Harrison picked up his duffle.

Collins stepped forward. “Open the bag.”

Raising an eyebrow, Harrison looked at me.

“That won’t be necessary,” I told Collins. “Harrison, please make the deposit. Then we can go over the positions of the pieces.”

“Of course.” He glanced between Collins and Damian, then met my gaze. “But I’m hesitant to leave you. You never mentioned anything about extra security yesterday. Has something happened?” His voice dropped and concern etched across his handsome features as he took my hand. “Are you okay?”

I wasn’t about to lie to Harrison and use the cover story Damian and I came up with. Harrison was too smart for that. He worked by my side five days a week. I did not keep our relationship strictly professional. It was not as if we were friends who spent time together outside the gallery, but we did speak of personal matters on occasion.

Squeezing his hand, I gave him a smile I hoped reassured him. “Everything’s fine. Mr. Tyler and Mr. Collins will be at the opening and the party just as a precaution.” It wasn’t a complete lie.

Harrison leaned toward me, and his New Orleans accent came out. “They’re armed , ma cherie .”

I grasped his arm, noticing his bicep, while defined, was no match for Damian’s. “It’s fine. I promise, Harrison. Please, if you will, make the deposit for me. Then we can finalize the layout.”

Despite the two walls of muscle on either side of me, Harrison did what Harrison always did when he left for the day. He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “Back soon, cher .” Giving Collins the eye, he walked around him and went to his slick black Audi and got in.

Damian took my upper arm and led me to the back door of the gallery. Using the key I gave him, he opened it, stepped inside and found the alarm panel. Punching in the code I’d given him like he had done it a hundred times, he disabled the system.

Looking over my shoulder, he glanced at Collins and they exchanged a silent communication. Then Damian was striding down the long hall that led to the gallery floor.

I took a step after him, and Collins caught my arm.

“Wait,” he instructed. “Let him do a sweep.”

Oh, for goodness’ sake. “There’s no one here. Harrison is the only one besides myself who has a key, and he just left.”

“He’s not looking for bodies, ma’am.”

Still flustered over how they’d treated Harrison, a smart retort was on the tip of my tongue about the difficulties of hiding a body in an open gallery, but when I turned toward Collins and saw his deadly serious expression, I bit back my response.

My silence didn’t deter Collins’s gaze. He looked at me like he was trying to figure something out, and for the first time, I noticed how ruggedly handsome he was. The angles to his face were sharp and unforgiving, but his square jaw and strong chin were a perfect match for his deep eyes and dark hair. He wasn’t beautiful like Damian, if you could call a man beautiful. In fact, no man I’d ever laid eyes on was as striking as Damian, but Collins was very handsome when he wasn’t scowling.

“It’s reciprocal?” he asked abruptly.

I frowned. “Pardon me?”

He tipped his chin down the hall. “You and pretty boy. You like him?”

Heat hit my cheeks. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think— ”

“He likes you,” he stated. “Never seen that before.”

Okay. This was beyond inappropriate and unprofessional. But I was the one who’d kissed him. What did I expect? That Collins would not have seen us in my driveway? Inhaling, not knowing how long I had before Damian returned, I did something I never do. I pried. “Surely he’s had a girlfriend before.” But the second I said girlfriend, I realized the word didn’t fit in any sentence with Damian. Just like he’d told me earlier, he wasn’t the type of man to have a girlfriend. I’d inferred at the time he’d meant he didn’t do relationships, but I was beginning to understand that maybe Damian was simply… old-fashioned. Maybe he didn’t do girlfriends because he was waiting to meet a wife.

“Women yes, girlfriends no,” Collins replied, answering my question and my thoughts.

“How does one make it to…?” I didn’t even know his age. “How old is Damian?”

“Damian.” Collins smirked. “No one calls him that.”

“I do.”

“Right.” He drew the word out. “ Damian is twenty-nine.”

He was so confident, he seemed older. “So how does one make it to thirty without having had a girlfriend?”

“You got a boyfriend?” Collins challenged.

“I didn’t have time for that.”

Collins stared at me.

I exhaled. “Fine. Point taken.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded me.

Damian came back down the hallway. Opening the doors to the storage room, my office and the restroom, and giving each location a cursory glance, he saved me from having to answer Collin’s probing questions.

Damian nodded at Collins. “All clear. Front position.”

“Copy.” Collins walked toward the front of the gallery.

Giving me the most detached expression I’d ever seen grace his face, Damian held the door to my office open. “A word?”

Feeling like I was being sent to the headmaster’s office, I walked into my own space. Not knowing if I should stand behind my desk to put the glass and chrome between us or if I should take what was coming next with a clear escape path to the exit, I hesitated.

Damian stepped in behind me, shut the door, and before I could move away, he made the decision for me by pulling out the guest chair closest to me. “Sit.”

I sat.

He leaned against the desk and crossed his arms. His intense gaze zeroed in and he studied me.

It was suddenly hard to swallow. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Harrison.”

His expression turned to ice. “You sleeping with him?”

My mouth opened then closed.

“Answer me,” he demanded.

“Harrison works for me.”

“Clearly.”

“I do not—” I stopped myself midsentence. I was about to say I did not mix business with pleasure, but the angry man in front of me was living proof that I did.

“I asked you a question, Calandra.”

Oh my God. It hit me straight on. “You’re jealous.”

His nostrils flared. “I don’t get jealous.”

Slowly, I rose, and embracing danger like I was walking a plank, I stepped toward him. I placed my hand on his chest, above his muscled crossed forearms. “I am not attracted to Harrison.”

He didn’t budge. He didn’t even blink. “Not what I asked.”

This time, I didn’t hesitate. “I am not sleeping with him.”

His chest rose with an inhale as he stared into my eyes more intently than any man I’d ever met. “Do you know what I drive?”

I struggled to remember if he had mentioned the make of his vehicle to André Luna this morning, wondering how this pertained to Harrison.

“I’ll save you the suspense.” He interrupted my thoughts. “American. Camaro.” He paused, as if waiting for me to respond. When I didn’t, he continued. “I’m not an Audi or a Jag man. I’m not going to ever dress in custom-tailored suits, and I will always be carrying. I eat pizza. I’ve got four obnoxious brothers. My bank account’s going to be wiped out after this job when I buy my mom a house. I like to fuck, lift and work. I never went to college, and I don’t know the first fucking thing about art or where you come from.” He inhaled. “Any of that a problem, tell me now.”

I blinked.

Grasping my wrist, he removed my hand from his chest and pushed me back. He took a step away from me.

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” I blurted.

“I’m getting that.” He took another step toward the door.

I panicked. “I like you.”

He paused, but he didn’t turn around.

I opened my mouth and words tumbled out. “I like you more than I should. I liked you when I first saw you on that video. I made assumptions about you as a person based on how you treated that poor girl, and I thought… I thought you were the type of man I wanted to be with. Which was unprecedented, because I’ve never wanted to be with a man. I’ve never felt like I belonged to anyone. I don’t… I don’t trust people. But then I met you, and your eyes, they held me in your gaze and it was like… I don’t know. I felt important. But not because of who my father is or where I came from. You made me feel important.”

He turned.

I wanted to stop. God help me, I wanted to stop speaking, but it was as if a dam had been broken, and I couldn’t staunch it. “This is crazy. I don’t believe in love at first sight, and I’m not even sure about lust at first sight. I always thought I was more… cerebral than that. But I just knew. I looked at you on the video, carrying that woman across the sand on the beach, no regard for yourself, and I knew. You were selfless and handsome and strong— so strong. And I wanted to know you. Then I met you, and it was all at once overwhelming and not enough. I needed more. For the first time in my life, I wanted so much more. It was like I was living with the lights turned off, then you smiled at me and there wasn’t just light, but air. Air filling my lungs in a way I never imagined was possible.”

The car bomb replayed in my head like it had been doing all day, and I choked back a sob. “Then you carried me away from an exploding car after being thrown meters in the air, and you didn’t even hesitate. You leapt up and came for me. My heart had stopped when I saw you lying there, and all I could think about was that you had died and I never, ever got to feel what it’s like to have you.”

As the last word tumbled from my mouth, his hands caught my face.

His lips crashed into mine, and I was flying.

Soaring, dipping, dropping, my stomach crested and swooped like a roller coaster as he plunged his tongue into my mouth and dominated me.

I didn’t stop to think about the other bodyguard in the front of the gallery. I didn’t worry about my employee coming back from the bank. I didn’t think about the stalker who could end my life.

I was in the arms of a man I’d inexplicably fallen for in a matter of hours, and crazy had a new plateau. Running to the edge of its insanity, I wrapped my arms around his neck.

Then I kissed him back.

With everything I didn’t have to give.

I didn’t have answers or reasons or sanity. I didn’t know what the very next second would bring. I couldn’t give him a single promise except that I madly, frantically, recklessly wanted him.

Right now.

As if knowing my thoughts, Damian angled my head and kissed me deeper. Gripping my hair with one hand, he grasped the back of my thigh with the other and brought my leg around his waist.

Grinding his hips into my core, he pressed the small of my back into him, and I moaned.

“That’s it, gorgeous,” he spoke against my mouth, nipping my bottom lip. “Let me know how good it feels. ”

“More,” I pleaded.

“I’m just getting started, beautiful.” Dragging his hand over my hips, his fingers splayed across my ribs until his thumb stroked under my breast.

My back arched.

He plunged his tongue back into my mouth as he pinched my aching nipple.

If his mouth wasn’t over mine, my cry of pleasure would have sounded through the whole gallery.

He thrust against my aching core.

Wild, reckless, I wanted him. All of him. “Please, Damian,” I begged.

Instantly pulling back, he gripped the sides of my face. Slow, measured, he ground his hard length against me. “Please what, Princess?”

The tip of him, constrained by his pants, rubbed across my pulsing opening. I’d never wanted anything more in that moment than him inside me, but the words choked in my throat.

Sensing my hesitation, he leaned forward and placed a sweet, open-mouthed kiss on my neck. Rough, deep, his voice filled my head. “You don’t strike me as a quick fuck against your desk kind of woman, beautiful. We have plenty of time to make this happen.”

That was just it.

Did we?

Wasn’t the car bomb proof that life was short?

The words left my lips before I knew what I was saying. “I don’t want time. I want now.” I needed now. I’d lived my whole life with one foot in the past and one in the future. I was tired of straddling that impossible line. “I want now,” I repeated, grasping handfuls of his soft hair and bringing his face back to mine. “ I want now .”

Releasing me, he stepped back a foot.

My stomach bottomed out with rejection. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to….”

He locked the office door .

With a fierce expression, he withdrew his gun from its holster. Leaning toward me, he set it on the desk. “Tell me to stop,” he warned.

The scent of him—man, musk, soap—it mixed with the faint smell of burning.

I licked my bottom lip. “I don’t want you to stop.”

No part of his body touching mine, he brought his lips a fraction of an inch from my throat. “You ever fuck on your desk?”

Oh God . “No.” My core pulsed.

“In your office?” His breath touched my neck.

I shivered. “No.”

“You ever had your hands pressed against those white walls out there?” His lips skimmed across my neck. “You ever been taken from behind while people walked by on the street?”

My breath hitched. “No,” I barely whispered, suddenly wanting something I had never, ever thought about.

“I’m going to do all those things to you, Princess.”

“Damian,” I breathed.

His teeth caught the bottom of my ear. “All of them,” he promised.

“Kiss me.” I needed his mouth on me. I needed to feel him.

His lips skimmed across my cheek as his hands landed on my thighs, just under the hem of my dress. “But know this.” His rough, calloused fingers slid up, taking my dress with them. “I didn’t plan on taking you for the first time against a desk.”

My heart hammering against my ribs, my core pulsing on emptiness, my nipples aching, I grabbed the edge of my desk. “You had a plan?” I didn’t want a plan. I wanted now.

“You deserve more,” he said, ignoring my question.

“No one deserves anything.” Life wasn’t based on merit, and justification was for the weak.

He dropped to one knee. “Oh Princess.” Shoving my dress up to my waist, he grasped the edge of my lace thong. “You deserve to come like you never have before.” He yanked the thin material to the side, and his mouth crashed over my most sensitive spot .

His tongue stroked hard, and my entire body spasmed.

My head fell back, my fingers dug into cold glass, and I shoved my hips toward him. Panting, shaking, I bit my tongue to keep from crying out as he licked, bit and swirled his tongue in a mind-altering, body-bending rhythm that had me sinking toward the ground until he plunged a finger into me.

My back bowed. My arms went straight, and my body jerked to my full height.

He shot up with me, his mouth crashing over mine, stealing my cry at his sudden invasion.

My taste on his lips, his tongue driving into my mouth, he growled as his finger curled inside me.

A sensation I had never, ever experienced ripped through my body.

My legs, my arms, my hands, my heart, everything shook as pens rattled in the cup holder on my desk.

And I came.

Wave after wave shocking my system, the orgasm simultaneously made me arch and curl in on myself. Keening in to his mouth, I couldn’t tell him to stop. I couldn’t tell him to keep going. I couldn’t do anything except give in to the liquid loss of control of my legs as I embraced every pleasure-pain curl of his finger.

“That’s it, gorgeous. So fucking beautiful.” He stroked his finger. “Give me that release.” He kissed my mouth, my neck. “So tight.” He bit my neck. “Shit, you’re tight, sweetheart.” The sound of a zipper going down made my stomach flutter.

“I can’t,” I panted. “I can’t stand.”

“I got you.” His thumb slowly circled my clit. “Arms around me, beautiful.”

My fingers still gripping handfuls of his hair, I let go only to grab him around the neck.

His arm snaked around my waist, and he effortlessly lifted me to my desk. Cold glass hit my bare backside, and I shivered.

Pulling back just enough to give me his eyes, his heated gaze took in every inch of my face. Looking more intense and fiercer than I had ever seen any man look, he eased his finger in and out of me once. “You ready for more?”

I didn’t have words. More would ruin me. This man made me leave my body with just his hands and his mouth. I couldn’t fathom having him inside me. He would wreck me as surely as that bomb could have killed us. Yet, I could think of nothing I wanted to experience more than what it would feel like to have him inside me.

Beyond any kind of voiced response, I tightened my arms around his strong neck and pulled him to me. Then I did something I had never been bold enough to do before. Tasting his bottom lip with one sweep, I stroked my tongue into his mouth.

The sound of thousand horses trampling didn’t come close to the groan that resonated from his chest and vibrated through my mouth and in to my heart.

Emboldened, I kissed him.

For two seconds.

His finger left my core, his arm left my waist, and two huge, rough hands snaked into my hair and fisted. Pulling me off him, his lips shinning with my kiss, he growled at me. “Answer me with words.”

It wasn’t a question.

It was a demand. A dominant, aggressive, life-changing demand.

A surge of moisture flooded my core.

There was no choice.

I was already his.

“Take me,” I whispered.