All That Glitters: A Dark Hollywood Bodyguard Romance (Cruel Empire Book 1)

Chapter 1

Aplane crash ruined my life.

Do all survivors of that kind of trauma wake up screaming, tangled in their sheets with sweat pouring off them? I hadn’t been there with my parents when they took off, hadn’t joined them on the flight, but the nightmares put me in the seat beside them as we all went down. The alarms screeched, and my mom screamed in my ear, “We’re going to die!”

I always manage to wake up right before the private jet crashes nose first into the ground.

Tonight, it takes a while for me to fully wake, even as my blurry eyes latch onto the shadows of swaying palms outside my bedroom window.

The nightmares still take me by surprise, even when they shouldn’t, when they’re frequent enough to have me buying up makeup companies to try and cover the dark circles underneath my eyes.

It’s always impossible to go back to sleep after. I lay in bed with my gaze fastened to the ceiling, praying I haven’t woken Marcus.

I slap a hand to the frantic beating thing in my chest. It’s too raw to call it a heart, not anymore.

The tabloids got a hold of pictures of the wreck and published them without me knowing. The blood, the mangled bodies, the shards of metal everywhere; now, when I think about my parents, all I see is death.

It’s been three months since they left me, and two weeks since I turned eighteen.

The price of being part of the fabric of Hollywood, I’d been told.

To be expected.

Sucks, but what can you do?

The tabloids don’t give a shit that I’m an orphan.

The hand I swipe over my forehead comes back smeared with sweat, and I groan, swallowing convulsively as the images of the crash slowly start to fade.

Not today. Today, I have to keep things under control. There’s too much to do, too many eyes watching me.

A glance back toward the window shows me a sky that never truly goes dark, not in Hollywood.

The door to my room slams open and knocks against the opposite wall with a gut-wrenching bang, and I sit up, clutching the blankets to my chest. Marcus rushes inside in his underwear, his shoulders curved, and his hands curled into fists at his sides.

“What the fuck happened?” His voice is gravely from sleep.

He’s ready to fight, ready to do whatever he can to make sure the threat is taken care of.

I swallow again, a lump forming in the back of my throat.

“You were screaming.”

I bob my head, watching him walk, stalk toward me without making a sound. Every footstep sinks into plush carpet.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” I say. “It was bad tonight.”

“How bad?” he asks.

I don’t answer him. Worse than tired, I sound thready and fearful, as though the blood and bodies from my dreams will somehow morph into a reality worse than the one I currently live in.

“Well, fuck.” He glances out the door. “I thought someone broke in. I thought you were getting your throat slit or something from the way you were screaming.”

I swallow hard, the blankets still clutched to my chest.

Marcus sleeps in his boxers. I focus on the cut of the fabric, the design of silver playing cards against a black velvet background. The boxers are low on his hips, giving me the perfect view of the V cut of muscles and the curling black hair at his chest.

He shakes his head and drops down hard on the end of the bed, close enough to sit right on my feet and have me dragging them closer. I pull my knees up to my chest, arms wrapping around to make myself as small as possible beneath the sheets, like the movement will somehow make me feel less ashamed for scaring him.

“I was in the plane again, going down, everyone screaming. We were falling.” I’m not sure why I feel the need to explain. Tears continue to trickle down my cheeks, and I swipe my forearm across my face.

“Fuck, Empire.”

A single, explosive curse, and in my next breath, Marcus hauls me out from under the covers and cradles me on his lap, against his chest.

His heartbeat is steady, strong.

“I’m right here. Do you understand? Stop sounding so fucking ashamed for having nightmares. They’re a natural part of this grieving business.” He huffs. “So I hear.”

His scent does what it always has for me, trailing up through my nostrils until it burns the inside of my lungs, lemongrass and sweat. Marcus is a combination of the two, and it works fantastically well for him.

Muscular arms keep me contained, not budging an inch. As if I’d go anywhere. As if there is somewhere else I’d rather be.

“Cry if you need,” he replies eventually.

“Crying gets me nowhere.” I’ve cried too many times to count. “It makes me feel weak.”

There were days, in the beginning, I wondered if I was strong enough to get out of bed. We were all adjusting to the new normal. Me to a life where Mom and Dad weren’t there to guide me through the choppy waters of fame, and Marcus with the loss of his top clients and the gain of one reluctant ward.

Hollywood’s sweetheart, that’s what the press used to call me.

Marcus used to say they’d change the nickname in a heartbeat if they knew the real me, the one who complains when the sun is too hot or the ocean too cold. Now, my complaints have narrowed down to one thing: I’m alone.

I want my old life back.

“The nightmares are worse since the press leaked the photos, aren’t they?” Marcus groans when I start shivering. “Those publicity whores shoved pictures in your face. It’s only been a couple days.”

He knows. Without me having to clarify or explain, he knows. Usually, I’d make a joke about how that kind of wisdom comes with age, since he’s over forty. Instead, my lips zip on their own.

The fight’s gone out of him, but he still carries tension in his muscles. I crack a blurry eye open to stare at the velvety gold skin of his arm.

“It’s okay to have nightmares,” he continues in a whisper. He skims his fingers along the line of my arm from bicep to elbow and back again, a soothing gesture.

“Not for me,” I whisper back.

“Especially for you. We’re not in public right now, Empire. Grieve. Cry. Lord knows anyone else in your position would be throwing a tantrum. I guess you’ve been pretty mild in comparison. You haven’t sent me out there to do damage control.”

He’s holding me like a damn baby, and I don’t care. I can’t bring myself to move or even think about telling him I’m fine. Those two words are always a lie, aren’t they?

I’m fine.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be fucking fine again.

“Are you sure it’s not too much trouble for you to have to handle a spoiled brat like me?” I throw his own words from yesterday back at him, the ones he likes to repeat every so often to remind me he’d never wanted this responsibility. “Even if I’m not throwing public tantrums?”

“I said I had no use for you,” he corrects gruffly. “There’s a difference.”

It hadn’t been an argument in any traditional sense. No one raised their voices, but the sneer he’d given me, the way the look in his eyes cut me down to an inch tall… Is this our version of sweeping it all under the rug?

“What changed your mind?” I ask.

Neither one of us move for the longest time.

I curl my hand into a fist against his chest, my cheek pressed to his skin, inhaling, exhaling, memorizing the scent of him until the combination softens the knots in my belly. Until I almost feel ready to act like a confident woman again rather than a terrified child.

“I haven’t changed my mind,” he answers at last.

I lift my head, pulling back to look into his eyes. They’re as dark as the night outside with his thick brows furrowed down, and I search his gaze, but I have no idea what I’m looking for.

“So you still think I’m useless?” I question.

“I don’t hate you, Empire. I never have. You just don’t make my job any easier, and to me, that equates to uselessness. You’re an actress who’s never worked in front of the camera, and every small part I’ve thrown your way you’ve either turned down outright, or made excuses not to accept.”

Thus, the argument earlier.

Do I blame him for being upset? No. He went from manager to caretaker with one accident, and although I appreciate Marcus handling the estate and the money, he hasn’t gone out of his way to be accommodating to me.

I got it.

He started his career with my parents, built everything around them, and lost it all when they died. I liked to think he was as heartbroken over their deaths as me, but he never showed it, not even once.

When I asked, briefly, he told me he didn’t claw his way up to the top from the shitty side of town to be questioned by a princess with a silver spoon in her mouth. He doesn’t seem to get how much I’ve changed.

I’m not the extroverted girl who clung to her mother’s glittering ball gowns.

Every day is a struggle.

“We’ll talk about it more in the morning, okay?” He shifts casually, as though to let go of me, and I loop my arm around his neck to keep him in place.

“Don’t leave me.”

“This—” he begins.

“Please, Marcus. Stay.”

My words are softer than a whisper and more heartbroken than any tears. I’ll kick myself for this later. I know I will. The thought barely forms before I crane my chin high and kiss him on the lips.

A chaste gesture, small. Barely a peck on the lips, but his warmth seeps into me immediately. The stubble dappling his chin and the strong lines of his jaw brush against my skin, and I shiver. Taking a risk, I keep the kiss going, lingering longer than I dare and waiting for something to break.

Only a few seconds of contact, but more than a friendly peck. We both understand, through sleep and fear, how loaded this kiss is, how much potential waits to be explored.

More importantly, I feel his reaction to me. Those muscles all go granite hard at the same time. He pulls back, barely visible, and his hand squeezes my arm.

“Empire.”

It’s only my name and the two of us as he lifts his fingers to push my head down on his shoulder. One small kiss, barely anything, and my body rages for an entirely different reason. My chest heaves, and my nipples harden into peaks beneath my tank top.

The nightmares are entirely gone now, replaced with dreams equally as dangerous to my mental health.

“I’ll never let anything happen to you,” Marcus finishes once there’s enough space between us. “I’ll keep you safe, even from me. But I’m not going to stay.”

He sets me aside gently, peeling himself off the bed and walking rigidly to the door, his boxers tighter than they’d been when he burst inside the room.

As I curl on my side and stare after him, I think that, even though he didn’t stay, we both know he wanted to.

If only it meant something. Wanting is one thing, but action… Action is everything.