Chapter 2
Diana
SOME WOMEN COLLECT shoes. I collect men.
The thought isn’t new, but it sharpens when I watch the man in the ring land a hook that rattles his sparring partner’s head. My new bodyguard. My new live-in bodyguard. And he has the face and body that look the way trouble always looks when it’s about to ruin your life. Gorgeous.
I’ve been a lawyer for seventeen years. High-profile cases, vicious opponents, courtrooms that swallow ordinary people whole.
I’ve gone toe-to-toe with cartel attorneys, with senators’ fixers, with men who believed their net worth made them untouchable.
Not once have I needed a bodyguard. Not once has anyone threatened me with enough specificity that the senior partner slash owner picked up the phone himself.
The Torresse case changed that.
The details of the threat don’t matter to me right now. What matters is that I’m standing in the basement gym of the most elite security firm in Halo City, watching my new bodyguard dismantle a man for sport.
When the Jack Rutherford called Vance Landon, Vance took the contract personally. We’ll assign you our best. I told him good, because I didn’t care what “best” looked like. I only cared about staying alive.
But now I’m watching “best” duck under a right hook, and his torso rotates, and my mouth goes dry. The overhead lights catch the sheen of sweat on his neck, on his forearms. He smells—from twenty feet away, even through the rubber-and-metal scent of the gym—warm. Salt and exertion and skin.
I’m a very sexual person. I don’t apologize for it. Sex is maintenance. A biological function I manage the same way I manage coffee and eight hours of sleep. It keeps me sharp. It keeps me sane. It keeps me from taking my frustrations out on junior associates who don’t know what they’re doing yet.
Right now, the maintenance schedule is flashing red because my new bodyguard moves like violence, and violence does very specific things to very specific parts of my anatomy.
This is going to be a problem.
Vance interrupts the sparring with a single raised hand. Kai climbs out of the ring, removes his shirt and uses it as a towel, and follows us down a corridor lined with frosted glass. Vance shows us into a conference room, gives me a small nod, and closes the door behind him.
Then it’s the two of us.
Kai Romero stands facing me, holding his shirt in one fist. His chest rises and falls with the last of the fight. The split on his eyebrow has stopped bleeding, but the skin around it is swelling. He’s in gray shorts and nothing else.
“Take those off.”
His hand closes tighter around the shirt. Those blue-gray eyes narrow.
“I need you to strip.”
“Can I ask why?”
I lean against the edge of the desk and fold my arms.
“I had a security detail assigned to me before. The bodyguard was a plant. He had a blade taped to his inner thigh.” I pause, letting the lie land with the weight of fact. “He tried to kill me. So you’ll understand I have a policy now.”
It’s completely invented. But nobody doubts a woman who delivers a story sounding emotionally untouched.
He drops the shirt on the floor. His hands go to the waistband, and he pushes it down, steps out of it. Black boxer briefs. His thighs are thick, carved. His calves belong to a man who runs distance, dense and defined.
And he is semi-hard, and for obvious reasons, I can tell.
The outline is unmistakable against the dark fabric, the length pressing to the left, not fully erect but nowhere near soft. My stomach contracts. Warmth pulls low in my belly.
I want to know what that looks like at full attention.
“Those too.”
He doesn’t hesitate this time. His thumbs hook the elastic and he pulls it down in one motion. He steps out of the boxers and stands in front of me completely naked, hands loose at his sides, breathing even, eyes on mine.
He is big. Semi-hard and already thick enough that my longest fingernail would barely graze my thumb if I wrapped my hand around him. That too I can tell. I’ve gotten good at measuring with my eyes.
I let my gaze travel. Slowly. The focal point first, then up the trail of dark hair below his navel, to the flat plane of his stomach, to his chest, his shoulders.
His skin is golden, and I take my time because I want to and because looking at him while he stands there naked is its own kind of pleasure.
“Not that I’m being difficult,” I say, bringing my eyes back to his face, “but you’re semi-erect.”
He doesn’t flinch.
“We’re the only two people in this room, Kai.”
Here is where the fantasy lives. The small, embarrassing corner of my brain wants him to say it’s because of me.
I want to hear a twenty-five-year-old with a body built for war tell me that a forty-year-old woman with no makeup made his cock hard.
But that’s fantasy, and I’ve always been better with facts.
Men his age want women their age. Or younger. That’s the rule, and it’s fine. Biology, not personal. But sometimes it’s nice to dream.
“Intense physical activity increases blood flow.”
Of course it does. The kickboxing. I nod. There goes the fantasy. “Sure.”
I let a beat pass. Two.
“This is a live-in position,” I say. “You’ll be in my home. My space. That’s the arrangement.”
He nods. Still very naked. Still not reaching for his clothes.
“So I need to know, and I’m asking for my own peace of mind—you’re not attracted to me. Right?”
His answer is immediate. “No.”
Ouch. The small, stupid part of me that was still dreaming deflates a little.
“Good.” I smile. “That’s what I was hoping to hear.”
I push off the desk and take a step toward him. Then another.
“You won’t mind if I make sure, then. Forced proximity does things to people.”
His mouth opens. He’s about to say something, but I don’t wait for it. My hand reaches forward and closes around his cock.