“I’m not letting them near her.” He pulls Sarah up off the couch and into him. “I’m gonna protect her—which means decimating the fuck out of them. Do you understand me?Decimating them.”
“Whoa,” I say. “Calm down.” Every hair on my body is standing on end. What the fuck is happening right now? He’s spiraling into some sort of panic attack and I don’t fully understand why.
“I’m not gonna let it happen again, Josh,” he blurts. “I couldn’t survive it this time—I know I couldn’t. I barely survived it before. You didn’t see what I saw... the blood... it was everywhere. You weren’t there.” He shuts his eyes tight. “You didn’t see her. I’m not gonna let it happen again. I can’t do it again.”
I feel like he just punched me in the teeth. Why the fuck is he saying this to me, especially in front of Sarah and Kat? I’m well aware I was sitting at a fucking football game, cheering happily, while Jonas watched our mother being fileted like a fish. No one needs to remind me of that fact.
“Jonas... Oh my God,” I say.
“I thoughtyou’dunderstand, of all people.” Jonas’ voice is thick with emotion. “I don’t want to do this alone, but I will. I’ll do whatever I have to do, don’t you understand? I can’t let anything happen to her. Not again. Never again.”
This is insane. I can’t believe Jonas is comparing this situation to what happened to our mom. Motherfucker. He’s crossed a line here. He’s fucking crossed a motherfucking line. “Ladies, could you give us a minute?” I say, gritting my teeth. “Please.”
Jonas juts his chin at me and squeezes Sarah like he’s worried I might fucking attack her or something.
“Jonas,” Sarah whispers, brushing her lips against his jawline. “Talk to your brother, baby. He’s on your team.” She touches his face. “Your brother’s on your side. Just listen to him. He dropped everything to come here for you. Listen to him.”
Jonas lets go of Sarah’s hand, grabs her face with both hands, and kisses the hell out of her. Clearly, his kiss is a giant “fuck you” to me, but I don’t understand what I’ve done to deserve it.
When Jonas pulls away from kissing Sarah, he looks fiercely at me, his nostrils flaring, glaring at me like he’s daring me to say a fucking word. But I’m not even tempted to speak. There’s nothing I could possibly say that wouldn’t involve the words “crazy” and “fuck” and “you.”
“One can easily forgive a child who’s afraid of the dark,” Jonas says, visibly trembling. “The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
I roll my eyes. Fan-fucking-tastic. Another Plato quote from my crazy-ass brother. Fuck me. This is gonna be a long fucking night.
Three
Kat
As Derek kisses my lips, he runs his fingertips along my thigh underneath my pencil skirt. I return his kiss with equal enthusiasm and run my fingers through his hair. Heck yeah, I do. Derek the ex-SEAL-bodyguard is way,wayhotter than Kevin Costner ever was (and Kevin Costner was pretty freaking hot back in the day). I lean back onto the arm of my couch, pulling Derek’s lips with me as I go and coaxing Derek’s body on top of mine. Holy shitballs, this man’s clearly got a hard body beneath that Men’s Wearhouse suit. And that’s not all that’s hard about Derek, either—the bulge behind his slacks feels like it was forged in a steel factory. Good lord.
It’s all I can do not to bust out singing Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”—not because I will always love Derek Insert-Last-Name-Here, obviously. I only met the guy less than twenty-four hours ago, and, as far as I can tell, he’s got the personality of a baseball bat. No, that iconic song is on the tip of my (extremely busy) tongue right now becauseoh my effing GodI’m about to fulfill a fantasy I’ve had since I first witnessed a certain juggernaut of cinematic artistry at the tender age of nine.
My mom rentedThe Bodyguardfrom Blockbuster Video on a Friday night (plus video games for my dad and four brothers to keep them distracted while we two girls watched our movie), and by Sunday afternoon, I’d watched that damned movie at least six times from start to finish (and that was a full year before we got our first DVD player, which means I actually had torewindthat freaking thing every time I wanted to re-watch it, so that tells you how committed I was to Whitney and Kevin’s once-in-a-lifetime love).
And all through the years since that firstBodyguardmarathon, through puberty and high school and college, whenever I’ve been dumped or no one asked me to a dance or I’ve had PMS or gotten a crappy-ass grade in a class (that last one being a fairly common occurrence), I’ve watched Kevin and Whitneyas a sort of therapy, I guess, kind of like digging into a cinematic pint of Ben and Jerry’s.
So it’s no wonder that now, as a twenty-four-year-old woman with an unapologetic sex drive and an unwavering dedication to you-only-live-once, having hot sex with my very own real-life bodyguard is right at the top of my sexual bucket list. I mean, come on. Not all sex has to be about some kind of deep soul connection—sometimes, it can simply be about making a lifelong sexual fantasy come true.
“Katherine Morgan?” Derek the Bodyguard asked yesterday when I opened the front door of my apartment and beheld his no-nonsense hotness for the first time. I leaned against the doorjamb and smiled broadly, pleasantly surprised about the gift the universe had just plopped into my lap (or, more accurately, the surprise Sarah’s new boyfriend, Jonas, had just plopped into my lap).
“Yes, I’m Katherine Morgan,” I replied to Derek yesterday, extending my hand and flashing him my most flirtatious smile. “But please, call me Kat.” I knew a bodyguard would be coming to my house, of course—Jonas had already said as much earlier that morning—but only in my wildest dreams did I imagine he’d look like Derek.
“Miss Morgan,” Derek said, seemingly impervious to my charms. “My name is Derek Something-or-Other, and I’ve been assigned to protect you.” He looked at his phone. “By a Jonas P. Faraday?”
“Yeah. Jonas mentioned he’d be sending someone. Thanks for coming.”
“I’ll be watching over you during the daytime,” Derek continued matter-of-factly. “And my partner, Rodney, will take the night shift.” He motioned across the street. “That’s Rodney over there, just so you know what he looks like.”
I walked out of my apartment and peered across the street in the direction Derek was pointing—and there, sitting in a nondescript sedan, was Father Time. When Rodney saw me looking at him, he curtly waved, started his engine, and drove away, and I suppressed the urge to laugh with glee that Derek had been the one to show up on my doorstep to take the first shift.
“Come in,” I purred to Derek, brushing past him into my apartment.
“Sure. Just to do a sweep of your surroundings and give you a safety de-briefing. After that, I’ll keep watch from across the street to give you privacy.” His tone was strictly professional—very Kevin-Costner-at-the-beginning-of-The-Bodyguard.Not the least bit flirtatious.
Things looked grim for my chances of singing Whitney’s tune right about then—and honestly I might have dropped the whole thing if it weren’t for what happened next: Derek’s eyes unmistakably darted down to the curve of my breasts in my tight-fitting blouse and then down to my hips in my slim-fitting business skirt and then back up to my lips—at which point theyflickered with unmistakable desire.And that’s when I knew Mr. Professional Bodyguard maybe wasn’t quite as all-business underneath that dark suit as he seemed—and that maybe, just maybe, it was only a matter of time before Derek the Bodyguard would be whispering things like, “No, Kat, I can’t protect you like this” and “Not on my shift” and “I was hired to protect you, not to help you shop” into my ear.
“Come in, Derek,” I said, waltzing back into my apartment from the walkway. “You wanna cup of coffee?” I asked breezily, even though coffee wasn’t at all what I was thinking about.
