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I love that man with all my heart and soul. He’s it for me. I know this much is true. And I want him to be mine. All mine.
What you need to know about Manhattan Protector:
Cranky/Sunshine Knitting Beans on toast A nap date Pesky stalker Betrayal Familiar Manhattan faces Jet setting foreplay Mine. Mine. Mine. She’s mine! Showering with clothes on
It wasn’t even 8 a.m. yet, and I knew which option I was veering toward.
Rounding the corner, my legs ache from exertion, letting me know I’ve probably run more than the usual nine miles, but there’s a little way left to go, so I don’t stop.
Instead, I mull over the dilemma, knowing there’s no solution I can willingly face, or I would have done it at any point during the last two years when the same issues arose. It was as though I enjoyed the tightened noose I’d put around my neck.
Having prided myself on successful assignments for more than a decade of growing my security business, a sought-after firm in New York. The most long-term client we’ve had, is an infuriating nuisance. Though I’ve tried to hand the job off to others many times, it always backfires in my face because she prefers me.
Huffing in the cool morning air as I pound the ground beneath me, the cold sweat clings to the back of my shirt.
Sometimes running helps.
Other times, like today, it’s something to do to keep me steady and in control.
I live a solitary life. Some would accuse I live for my work, and they might be right. Drinking only when I want to, I don’t date, getting what I want from women when the urge takes me. Socializing is kept to a minimum. My family isn’t huge, so there aren’t many gatherings to attend, though I see my nana every week to make sure she’s okay and has everything she needs. Luckily, it’s easy to pay for services to ensure she is taken care of.
I like my life the way it is.
It’s taken me years to get to a place of comfort, unbothered by others.
So what if I’m a workaholic? How can that be a bad thing?
It’s not a disconnect. It’s self-preservation. Or so I thought.
And then this client happened and shot all the shit I knew out of the water.
Having spent my early twenties, as most men do, obsessed with using their dick and getting wasted, chasing pussy and not giving a damn about the future, I’d started my business out small and grew it myself. It centered me, gave me a purpose, and now I’m thirty-seven, it’s hard to recognize that person from a decade ago.
Bodyguarding is a full-time endeavor.
I’d entered Columbus Circle to Central Park more than an hour ago, taking the looped areas most joggers take. But at stupid o’clock, when I prefer to run, it wasn’t so busy that I was tripping over slow bodies.
I’m not fond of mouth breathers being too near when I need quiet to think.
Getting a call at 6 a.m. to let me know she insisted on leaving the apartment. Again. Lying in bed this morning with only enough sleep to stop my brain from malfunctioning, I could feel my blood pressure rising through the fucking roof. Picturing her in those tight pink yoga pants she prances around in each morning. I could only imagine the barista’s eyes bugging out of his young head when he saw her waltzing into the coffee shop, a smile on her face, happy to see everyone and talking like they were old friends.
I put out that fire with one call, but had to come for a run before I knew the next flames would appear.
They always do.
For two years, I’ve been putting out fires left and right.
Not infernos.
Not even raging bonfires.
But flickering flames, every single day.
Every other job I take is a cakewalk.
Senators, celebrities, dignitaries. Nothing goes wrong. I hire only the best ex-military people who know how to handle themselves and protect those we’re paid to keep alive.
Nothing goes wrong.
Not once.
And we’ve all been in dicey situations where our skills came to the forefront. I’ve dealt with enough crazies over the years, and nothing interfered with my professionalism.
She intimidates my people because she’s too nice, too giving, and caring, with no spatial awareness of what personal boundaries she might be crossing.
She wants to know their life story. What makes them tick, laugh, and cry?
She tries to help them, feed them, give advice to better their lives.
I’ve never known anyone to give that much of a shit about another person and not expect a thing in return.
It’s always something, even when I’ve made it known they’re there to do a job, not become her best friend.
If there was a modern-day Pollyanna, then she was it.
And then I feel a vibration at the top of my arm, and a sigh coats out of me as I come to a slow stop, my lungs burning as I rub a hand through my damp hair and yank the phone from the holster sitting on my bicep.
“Yes?” I bark. Expecting what Tony on the other end is going to say.
“Boss, you’re needed.”
Of course, I am.
The groan gusts out of me like a downpour.
I should stop to take a shower first, but I don’t.
It’s as though my feet know where we’re going and take me there against my will. So by the time I was let into the exclusive building in the financial district by the security guards I vetted personally, and took the elevator up to the 10th floor. I’m cold with sweat clinging to the damp, hooded running jacket.
Tony opens the door after checking it is me, and I stride inside, arching a brow at him, silently accusing his pussy-ass of fearing a little girl.
Tony is ex SAS, for fuck’s sake. He’s been to war zones; he guarded the last president and traveled on the tour bus with a one-hit-wonder pop star who caused holy hell with drugs and hookers, but Tony panics around one British woman who likes to chat.
“I should fire you,” I rumble as he scrapes a hand over his dark hair, half-smiling.
Not midday and yet already it has been a long fucking day.
Though, most of them are when your entire job is keeping another person alive.
“Nah, you like me around too much, boss,” he jokes. “You know she prefers you. I’ll be outside,” he adds and makes his escape. It was noted he carried a container of food with him. Pussy.
Advancing into the sprawling three-bed apartment, my gaze clocks on the people already here. Her place is rarely empty of bodies. It gets claustrophobic as fuck, but she likes the company.
Today it’s her assistant, a manager, and a publicist. They call out hellos, but I only jut my chin in greeting. Without coffee, I can’t be responsible for the unfiltered sarcasm to come out of my mouth.
And then there she is.
Strutting out of the bedroom.
Grey yoga shorts, a flowing shirt billowing around her stomach.
And a ready smile when she sees me.
At that moment, I feel every one of my thirty-seven years.
Like an old man looking at a rare diamond.
A twenty-five-year-old British bombshell.
Katarina Young. The it-girl in the modeling world. On every billboard and catwalk. Wanted by men, coveted by thousands.
The bane of my fucking life.
Okay, she’s not.
She’s a good client, hardly whines at all, no matter what I tell her to do for her safety.
But it doesn’t stop my back teeth from clenching together the closer she gets.
This irritation isn’t new.
It bore life the week I started guarding her.
Katarina’s smile brightens, and it changes the atmosphere in the room. It constantly changes the mood, especially within my veins.
My teeth clench harder.
My day of solitude has gone to hell. I at least expected to see her in some form of trouble if I had to come in on my one day off this month.
Instead, she keeps smiling, and I scowl.
“Why am I here?”
Her eyes round but don’t lose any of the twinkle. She sips from a tumbler of whatever smoothie it is today. Katarina is big on smoothies instead of actual chewable food. Some dumb advice from one of her shit-for-brains team who hired a nutritionist that told her it would be the end of the world if she dared to gain a pound.
“Don’t ask me. One minute I was talking to Tony, and then he’s crying on the phone to you.” She shrugs.
Great.
Fucking wonderful.
That meant she’d over shared or pushed her little nose into Tony’s business and badgered my elite bodyguard to death.
Turning on my heel, I head for the door.
My shadow is behind me as she slurps on the end part of the smoothie.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I warn. “Tony is outside. Don’t bother him; he’s here to work, not get life advice from a little girl.”
“Hardly little, but I won’t talk to Tony, seeing as he’s so sensitive and needs daddy to hold his hand.” I hear the amusement in her voice. When I shoot a glance over my shoulder, she’s looking at my ass. Her gaze travels up slowly until our eyes meet.
“You’re terribly sweaty, Iceman.”
My nickname on her lips goes through me like an atom bomb detonating, and my jaw cracks from how tight I’m grinding it.
“I’ll be back. Don’t move your ass from this apartment, Katarina.”
She laughs at the silent or else tacked on at the end.
Not the first time I’ve had to threaten the modeling world princess.
Safeguard the client at all costs. Never allow them to grow attached. Don’t form personal connections. It’s bodyguarding 101. Until supermodel, Katarina Young, sashayed into my life with her optimistic smiles. She’s a good girl. I’m not the right man for her, no matter how under Katarina’s spell I am. Keeping her safe is easy. It’s my only priority. She’s become vital to me. But keeping my hands off her is the real mission.
MINE TO LOVE
I believe people come into our lives for a reason. Danger brought Hunter Madsen into mine. And I’m praying love keeps him there. Hunter wants to protect me and I want everything else from him. His love, most of all. Can I get my monosyllabic, sometimes cranky bodyguard to fall under my British charms? I’d bet all the tea and crumpets I could.
It’s the rustling of the white hotel sheets that wakes me.
Turning my head on the pillow, there’s no roiling gut or slice of pain through my skull.
In my messier drunk days, being stoned would have been a good excuse for waking up in bed with a woman.
There’s only one reason I’m here. And it has nothing to do with narcotics and everything to do with the sweet-smelling woman beside me.
Cutting a gaze to the nightstand, I see it’s after 10 a.m.
Every second from the past seventeen hours comes back in a rush.
I’m hoping for an explosive pint-sized reaction when she realizes what’s happened.
I smirk, scrubbing a hand over my shorn dark hair.
Watching her sleeping form, I feel so many things.
With a hand tucked beneath her chin, she looks like cotton candy wouldn’t melt in her angelic mouth. Whereas I know she’s the devil’s apprentice, expelled out of Hell to torture mortal men under her heel.
Hell will be raised when she wakes, that much I know. I might even want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted. To see her react.
She’ll paint me as the bad guy in this situation. Huh, maybe I am. Did I try to stop what we did? Not even once. I went full steam ahead with hardly any provocation.
I used to be foolishly reckless, trying to live up to a rock star reputation and hide who I am at the same time.
My name, my family legacy and fame.
You don’t get to be where I am—I don’t mean in bed with a blonde demoness—without a lot of irresponsible decisions. Helped by Johnnie Walker and Jameson. I’ve made so many, you can stack them up on top of each other and they’d reach into the clouds.
Looking across at who I’m in bed with … some would say it’s reckless. but I know it’s the best decision of all.
I don’t feel stuck in my life anymore.
That’s progress as ma would say.
I’m almost twenty-eight but feel one hundred most days. It takes the right incentive to learn how to slow the fuck down.
I don’t touch her. Nor do I reach out and move the strands of hair from her cheek, though the need is there. I watch for a couple of minutes. She shifts under the sheet, baring a tanned leg like a seductress sent to drag every man to purgatory. Me especially.
She’s going to be so mad, with her verbal violence aimed my way.
I can’t wait to handle her and calm her down. I’m enamored in her bursts of spontaneous temper.
Miss Professional, with her endless rules and bossy ways, didn’t plan for this but it was entirely her idea. I’m twistedly looking forward to seeing how she responds.
A little dark chuckle escapes. Checking she’s still fast asleep, I slip out of bed.
Something catches my eye and I glance down at my left hand. A day ago, I wore a hand of silver rings I’ve collected over the years.
Now only a black band sits on my finger.
I glance her way, feeling a new pull in my shoulder blades.
With her around, I’ve felt a lot of pulls, some stronger than others.
Possessiveness seems to be the forerunner.
But there’s no denying she’s been my biggest inspiration for a long time.
I’m the son of a crime boss. Anything can disappear. This is an accepted fact, not that I’ve utilized that privilege. My father would be overjoyed if I did. But when it comes to her, I’ve learned that logic means nothing, and she wins every time.
She stirs, and the sheet falls lower. My abdomen tightens to a fist as my eyes follow the shape of her exposed leg and now bare stomach.
She’s wearing underwear. I’m not a complete pervert, though I know every inch of her body already.
My eyes betray what I feel by roaming over her like I own her.
I’m sitting at the round table when she finally surfaces. A zombie groan mutters from her and I hide my smile in a coffee mug.
“Oh, god.” She groans.
Poor hungover baby.
She’s going to explode in seconds. Eyes I know as well as my own search around the room. She scoots herself up against the headboard, clutching the cotton sheet to her chest. Pity, she has beautiful tits. They feel perfect in my mouth.
I’ve had those killer hangovers before. I know the pain her skull is in, from too much champagne. What kind of gentleman would I have been if I didn’t indulge her last night when she wanted to celebrate?
She knows better than most I am not a gentleman. Far from it. I’m a hungry bastard with an appetite for one.
A left-handed diamond glints on her finger. It’s a chore to hold in a genuine grin, but I can’t distract myself with humor, not if I want to witness her awakening.
“What… the…. ugh.” She croaks, finally seeing me.
Her face is a wash of feelings. She never hides it.
Oh, though she’s tried to these past few days, by attempting to put distance in the way.
“Tommy? You know you shouldn’t be here… are…are you in your underwear? What are you doing in my room in only your underwear?”
I place the cup on the table, half turning toward her blazing eyes.
Ah, it hasn’t sunken in yet.
Pity.
I was hoping she’d fly across the room and put her mouth on me.
All in good time.
I’m patient as the next asshole with numerous Grammy’s and accolades to my name.
“This is my room,” I tell her. And for good teasing measure, I add. “And you’re in my bed.” This is all true. She hasn’t been in my bed in days. Such long days, punishing us both.
Her eyes widen. I see she’s trying to find answers.
I have them all here for her.
So, I start with the most important one of all.
“Good morning, my wife.”
I’m positive the hotel guests from five floors away hear the loudness of her stare when she arrows it in my direction.
I grin my fucking delight.
This woman. My woman.
She’s not so in control now, is she?
I’m ready for what comes next, especially if it includes Raene and her biting little claws.
♡Where the Happily Ever After Lives♡ 