Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 185811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 929(@200wpm)___ 743(@250wpm)___ 619(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 185811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 929(@200wpm)___ 743(@250wpm)___ 619(@300wpm)
So unless the occasion was special, I put good food in my mouth and didn’t drink much outside water, flavored water, sparkling water, with the odd antioxidant vitamin drink thrown in.
So yeah, I was slender.
And two of me could make this guy.
Maybe three.
He moved forward.
I moved back.
His movements were unwieldy. Not clumsy—heavy and plodding.
It didn’t matter this guy was a bull in a china shop.
He’d terrify small children.
Hell, he’d terrify grown men.
And that had nothing to do with the gun worn openly on his hip.
It had to do with what that compression shirt barely contained, not to mention the carved protrusion of the muscles of his biceps exposed by the short sleeves, the sinewy, richly veined lengths of his forearms and the trunks of his long legs covered in dark gray commando pants.
He shut the door behind him, twisted at the waist and I heard the lock click.
He twisted back to me.
“Hey,” I forced out.
He dipped his chin.
“You’re Mo,” I stated unnecessarily.
“Yup,” he agreed.
“Okay, so…”
I stood there, barefoot, in my tight tank that had ridden up to gather around my middle and as such exposed an inch of flat belly over my low-slung faded jeans, and I didn’t know what to do.
He was looking me in the eye.
Right in the eye.
Not once did his gaze drift down.
Or up, to my hair.
I had great hair.
And great tits.
And, well, not to be conceited or anything, but considering a lot of folks came to watch me take my clothes off, it wasn’t lost on me I had a good body. But I already knew that because I just did.
I was struggling with dealing with a man who not only looked like this but was also as big as this and was there for the purpose he was there.
But it was worse because I had no clue how to deal with a man who looked me right in the eye and appeared to have no interest in anything beyond that.
Except for the fact I was no longer freaked out, and considering Smithie had phoned to tell me I now had a bodyguard, though he’d shared he’d explain why later, my freakout might have been mild, but I’d still been freaking.
Now, instead, I was battling the urge to climb him like a tree.
I contained the urge and asked, “How freaked out should I be that Smithie put you on me?”
“Hawk’ll get into that.”
Well, there you go.
Freakout returned.
I mean…
Hawk Delgado?
Smithie hadn’t mentioned Hawk Delgado.
Smithie had only mentioned I had a bodyguard, and ugly stuff had gone down at the club in the past. Ugly stuff that tore Smithie up. So I put it down to him being overcautious, something he was now on a normal basis.
Hawk Delgado was either reaching the extremes of overcautious or shit was serious.
And my guess was, Smithie didn’t tell me about Hawk because he was parceling out the bad news.
Shit.
“Right. Hawk,” I said. “Now how freaked out should I be that Smithie brought in a guy like Hawk Delgado for whatever is going on?”
This guy made no reply.
He just kept looking me in the eye.
“Mo—”
“Hawk’ll get into that,” he repeated.
I threw up a hand. “Listen, I’m sure this is no big thing. It isn’t unusual to have guys fixate on me. It’s happened before. They’re typically harmless.”
Mo had nothing to say to that either.
“Or Smithie has a word with him or sends in Joaquim or Jaylen and they back off. If they had the guts, they’d just approach me from the beginning.”
Mo still didn’t feel like replying.
“If Smithie’s freaked and called in Hawk, that says to me I should be seriously freaked,” I pointed out.
Again, no input from Mo, but it cut through my freakout that he might not be moving his mouth, but his eyes said, “Yes, you should be seriously freaked.”
So I went from getting seriously freaked to being seriously freaking freaked.
“Ohmigod,” I whispered, my hand drifting to my belly. “This is bad.”
That was when it happened.
That exact moment was when my entire life changed.
His gaze moved down to my belly.
And his face went from harsh and impassive to wholly beautiful.
This was because it softened.
Whatever was happening, he hated it was happening.
Whatever had Smithie freaked, me freaked, Hawk Delgado (of all people) pulled in to deal with it, Mo didn’t want it to be happening. He didn’t want me to feel what I was feeling, what I would feel until this situation was brought to an end.
He hated I would be feeling that too.
He was there. He was going to get paid to protect me from it.
But it was not just a job to him.
It was more.
He did not know me, and I wasn’t just a great pair of tits and a fantastic head of hair any guy with a dick would want to see go unharmed.
I was a person who was feeling something sucky and he was a person who didn’t like people to feel sucky.