CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
At approximately two AM, Lachlan quietly slips out of the Estate after handing over to Carrigan for the next few hours.
He offers only minimal explanation. The same vague excuse he uses on the rare occasions he leaves for a few hours to be alone.
Tracking Jules isn’t easy at first but then, strangely enough, when he checks the old tracker, the bracelet, he finds it roughly thirty miles away at a frat house. ‘Clever boy,’ he whispers to himself.
Lachlan hums along to the radio on the drive there, makes short work of the trip, feels almost manic but in a good way.
Definitely a good way.
He’s given Jules almost exactly four hours.
That’s a good thing, he knows it.
He parks up outside the towering student house, assessing.
A tall black security fence surrounding the property is all sharp iron bars and spikes clearly intended to keep drunk students from wandering in or out the wrong way.
Bass rolls through the night alongside bursts of laughter and flashing coloured lights that strobe intermittently across the upper floors, visible through the windows. It looks like a nightmare to Lachlan.
He bets that Jules is loving it.
After ten patient minutes waiting in the car, he sees movement.
Jules is climbing over the high fence.
Lachlan gets out, scanning around for immediate danger, but finds none.
The party rages on. The main gates are locked, which is why Jules is scaling the spiked fence.
He jogs over, poised to call his name when Jules yelps and falls.
The jog bursts into a run and Lachlan is there in seconds, kneeling beside his crumpled form. ‘Are you hurt? Jules, are you injured?’
Jules is laughing, breathlessly beautiful, it’s full belly laughter and Lachlan has never seen it before.
He can’t catch his breath he’s giggling so hard.
Jules has on eyeliner, shimmer, lip gloss, although it’s messy and he smells of cheap cologne, sweat and…
something else. ‘Bodyguard,’ he pants, tears in his eyes from laughing. ‘Did you see… me fall?’
‘Yes, I definitely saw you fall.’ Lachlan is all business, but that beautiful laugh is something he’ll cherish forever. It’s like Jules is being tickled. ‘Show me where it hurts.’
‘I c-caught my thigh on the spiky bit.’
‘Christ,’ Lachlan complains, seeing a red stain spreading beneath tight blue denim. ‘That’s a pretty dangerous area to snag, kid.’
‘Not a kid,’ Jules tells him with breathy, gleaming joy. ‘Not anymore.’
‘Uh huh,’ Lachlan intones, very focused on the wound. ‘I need to see it. Back of the car is pretty spacious. Come on.’
He helps Jules into the back of the SUV and locks the doors once they’re both inside.
The windows are fully tinted, impossible to see through from the outside even with the interior lights on, which they are.
Lachlan drops the front passenger seat flat to give himself room to turn while Jules remains sitting upright in the back, flushed from alcohol, adrenaline and the climb over the fence.
‘This is nice,’ he says, looking around.
‘Just a car. Can I see it?’
‘OK, yeah.’ Jules wriggles out of his jeans, talks while he does.
‘Bodyguard, I had so much fun! I met this guy. He was so dumb but gorgeous, and he danced with me for like an hour!’ Jules winces when he peels off his jeans revealing a bloody patch on his innermost thigh that worries Lachlan instantly.
‘Then we were making out in his room and oh my God it was such a mess, this guy was a slob, and he tried to lie and tell me it was someone else’s room, but I saw a picture of him and his dad, so I know he was—’
‘I’m gonna need to stitch this,’ he tells Jules seriously.
‘—lying to impress me or avoid embarrassment for the mess, but it was actually so cool! I loved it being all messy and trashed and his gross socks were just everywhere, and he was whimpering these little noises, and he just keeps saying, “It’s not my room I promise” and I couldn’t stop laughing but then I did stop laughing when I saw his dick because that would be really cool and then—’
‘Jules!’
‘Sorry what?’
‘I need to stitch your thigh.’
It doesn’t sink in right away. ‘You… what? Sorry.’
‘I have to stitch it here and now or your father will find out.’
Jules sobers but the joy doesn’t fade. ‘OK, sure. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, it’s fine. I have a whole med-kit.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘And I can sew stitches.’
‘Of course you can. How do we do this?’
‘Can you pull your underwear up a bit, please,’ Lachlan says, monotone and polite. He more clearly sees the jagged little tear, relieved it didn’t nick anything serious, but it definitely needs stitches. ‘OK, this won’t take long. I just need you to sit very still.’
‘Mkay, no problem.’
‘Slow your breathing way down.’
‘Right, sure.’
‘Your heart’s jackrabbiting.’
‘Is it?’
‘I can see it in the hollow of your throat.’
Jules snorts, giggling. ‘That was so weirdly sexy. The hollow of my throat, Bodyguard? You’re outrageous sometimes.’
‘Focus, Jules. Nice slow breaths for me, yeah?’
‘OK sure.’ He breathes slow and deep.
‘This is gonna hurt.’
‘Please, it can’t be as bad as actually catching it on the—ow!’ Lachlan sterilises the wound and Jules flinches hard. ‘Fuck me. That stings so bad, ahh!’
‘Sorry,’ Lachlan says, threading the needle. Second time in twenty-four hours he’s having to use a needle on him. ‘Slow your heart now, yeah?’
‘OK. Slow.’ Jules settles back in the seat. ‘Slow heart.’
‘Good.’ Lachlan is highly aware of his proximity to Jules in this way, but there’s no getting around it. Jules’ inner thigh is sticky with blood, a light smattering of soft hair dusting the sunless skin. The wound is small but jagged. ‘This is awkward for both of us, so I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘It’s not awkward for me,’ Jules hums, sounds like he has his eyes closed. Lachlan starts sewing the stitches and Jules tenses up but stays quiet, breathing slow. ‘I can’t believe I had sex.’
‘While I’m thrilled for you,’ Lachlan says, pushing needle through skin, ‘could we maybe not talk about that while I’m sewing up your inner thigh?’
Jules giggles. ‘You’re so snippy sometimes. I love it.’
Lachlan rolls his eyes and continues. It’s definitely going to scar but the medical he had today allowed for him to keep his underwear on so it should be possible to keep secret. ‘I’m glad you had fun.’
‘I did. People love me, Bodyguard. It’s crazy. They were begging for my number. I felt like Cinderella.’
‘Does that make me the pumpkin?’
‘No, you can be the mouse.’ Jules flinches when Lachlan pulls the string tight. ‘Ahh, fuck, that hurts!’
‘I know, I’m sorry. Hold onto me if—’
Jules’ hand slips into his hair, gripping.
Lachlan freezes. ‘Maybe not like that,’ he says, voice hoarse.
‘It really, really hurts.’
‘OK, fine.’ He huffs a breath and stitches the small wound efficiently. When he’s done, he has to bite the string to cut it which means his nose brushes against Jules’ inner thigh.
Jules actually whimpers when he does that.
All of Lachlan’s focus is going into pretending he doesn’t see Jules’ arousal and pretending he isn’t fighting his own. Some physiological responses are unavoidable under the right conditions.
It’s natural, normal and meaningless.
‘There, all done.’
Jules’ hand stays in his hair when Lachlan comes out from between Jules’ thighs, has his blood all over his fingers and a swipe at the corner of his mouth too but Lachlan doubts it’ll show, his face is so traitorously warm.
The windows in the car are fogged up.
Jules’ breaths are rapid and shallow, eyes glassy but fixed on Lachlan and his grip hasn’t waned once.
He uses it pull him close, gaze roaming.
‘Thank you,’ he whispers, and it’s a wet whisper, the type of thing where Lachlan hears him swallow, hears the sounds of his tongue.
It hits him all at once how fucking attracted he is to Jules in this moment, like his body was just waiting for some kind of permission and now given, it’s gone wild. ‘That hurt.’
Lachlan nods, doesn’t know what he’ll do if Jules tries to kiss him.
He’s not certain he’d push him off.
All the world has narrowed to the back of this car, just them and the blood and the air they’re sharing.
‘You were very brave.’
Jules pulls him closer.
‘It hurt when he fucked me too.’
Lachlan’s mind shifts tracks without friction, Focus Mode taking over before the thought has even fully formed. ‘He hurt you?’
‘Not like that, just…’ Jules takes a shaky breath. Lachlan feels the vibrations of it, the boy strung tight like a harpsichord. ‘Hurt like I think it’s meant to.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I liked it, yeah.’
‘Oh.’ He tries to relax. ‘OK, good.’
‘Would you kill him if he did hurt me?’
‘Probably, yeah.’
‘Because you’re my bodyguard?’ Jules slides down in the seat while pulling Lachlan very gradually on top of him. ‘Or because you like me?’
Intelligently, Lachlan says, ‘I am… your bodyguard.’
‘Yeah, you are, and you’re so good at it,’ Jules praises, lying sideways across the seats now, reeling Lachlan in with slow, smooth movements, like he knows anything abrupt might startle him. ‘Do you wanna know a secret?’
Despite knowing it’s a monumental mistake, Lachlan nods, dazed, mesmerised, already so fucking caught. ‘Tell me.’
‘I didn’t let him kiss me on the mouth,’ Jules whispers, still gripping his hair in one hand, caressing Lachlan’s blood-marked cheek with the other. Lachlan is on top of him now, and he cannot fathom how it happened.
Stupidly, Lachlan asks, ‘Why not?’
Jules smiles and he says, in a sensory whisper so full of sound it’s like he’s inside Lachlan’s skull, ‘Because I want it to be you, Bodyguard.
Lachlan’s pulse misfires.
‘What?’
‘You’re all I want for my birthday.’