Bodyguard (25 page)

She still wasn’t meeting his eyes. “Since you’ve been injured, it seems less likely I’ll hurt you if …” She stopped herself and shrugged. “Honestly? I like it better.”

“You like the fact that you’ve given me about four hundred orgasms, and I’ve given you only two?”

“You want to go down on me?” The way she said it, it sounded about as appealing an idea to her as torture.

“Right now, I want to talk.”

Her face brightened. “If you want, you could talk, and I could—”

“I have to admit, it’s completely outside my realm of
experience, turning down an offer like that,” he said, not wanting to hear exactly what it was she could do while he talked. She was unusually creative when it came to oral sex, and he was already more than half aroused. Still, he knew next to nothing about this woman who had all but moved into his apartment.

“But it’s nearly midnight,” he continued. He put out his cigarette butt in the ashtray and set it back on the bedside table. “My leg aches like a bitch, and I just want to lie here with my arms around you and talk for a while. May we do that, please?”

Kim’s brown eyes were enormous in her face. Silently, she slipped into the crook of his arm, resting her head on his shoulder, letting her hand lie somewhat stiffly on his chest. She was much too tense.

“I don’t know much about you,” George said, letting his cheek rest against the silky smoothness of her dark hair, running his fingers up and down her back in an attempt to relax her. What was she afraid of? “I don’t even know where you grew up.”

“In the city,” she said. “I’ve always lived here in New York.”

“And you’ve never wanted to live anywhere else?” he asked. “I’d have thought a dancer with your talent would’ve headed down to Atlantic City by now. Or even out to Las Vegas. I’m not criticizing, but the Fantasy Club is pretty low-rent.”

She lifted her head. “God, I’d love to go to Vegas.”

“So what’s keeping you here?”

The tension that had been starting to flow out of her was instantly back. “Nothing. Everything. I don’t know.” She tucked her head against him again, tightly closing her eyes.

George felt a flash of alarm. “Kim …” He cleared his throat. “Uh, you’re not sticking around New York because
of me, are you? Because, I have to be honest with you, nothing’s changed since that first night we got together. I’m still not … There’s no chance of … Nothing’s changed. We’ve got no real future.”

“I know that.” She lifted her head again, steadily meeting his gaze. “You’re still hung up on your ex.”

George had to laugh. “Of all the crazy … I never said that.”

She gently pushed his hair back from his face. “You didn’t have to.”

He gazed back at her for several long moments, wondering what else she knew about him. “Okay,” he finally said. “So you know my deep, dark secret. It’s only fair you tell me yours. Why don’t you ever want to do anything in bed besides, well, what you do?”

She chewed on her lip as she gazed at him, as if deciding exactly what to say. She opted for what had to be the truth. “I don’t like, you know, doing … the other.” She shrugged. “I just … don’t like it.”

“Why not? I mean, I’m … Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t like sex.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you,” she told him earnestly.

“Well, gee, that’s good, I guess.” George looked at her. She was lying next to him, nearly naked. She had one of the most incredible bodies he’d ever seen in his life. It was a body built for sex—all positions, all styles, all the time.

“It makes me feel like I can’t breathe,” she tried to explain. “Kind of panicky and scared. I don’t like feeling like that, so I try not to do it. I don’t … you know, climax. I just … fake it if I have to. But if you really want to—”

“No. God. If it makes you feel bad, that kind of takes the fun out of it for me.”

“Some guys wouldn’t care.”

“Well, jeez, I’m not just some guy.”

She smiled almost shyly. “Yeah, I guess not.”

“So … about the other … You know, the, um, oral sex. Do you really like doing that, or is it just the least worst option?”

Kim didn’t hesitate. “Oh, no, I like it.”

“You sure you’re being honest with me?”

“I like it,” she said again. “I guess I like knowing that even though you’re bigger than me, I’m the one with the … I don’t know, power, I guess.”

“So it’s a control thing,” George said. “You want to be the one in charge. That’s … interesting.”

“You think I’m interesting?”

“Yes, I do. And I also think something pretty awful must’ve happened to you, probably when you were a kid, huh?”

She didn’t say anything, but he could see from the look in her eyes that he was dead on target.

“If you ever want to talk about it,” he said quietly, “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

She nodded.

“I have one more question for you,” he said, pushing her hair back from her face so he could look into her eyes. “If you know I’m still hung up on my ex, why exactly are you here?”

She rested her head on his chest, listening to his heart beating. “I like that you need me,” she told him. “And I really like that you don’t need me too much.”

“I should do it.” Harry’s voice broke through Alessandra’s reverie. She turned away from the drops of rain
that were beading on the window, glittering from the lights of the other cars on the road, and looked at him.

He’d slept some. Yesterday, while she was driving. He still looked awful, though. The bags under his eyes were dark and pronounced, his eyes themselves were bloodshot. And he was having a particularly bad hair day. His mouth was a grim line, surrounded by that more-than-stubble, not-quite-beard.

But, as if he felt her looking at him in the quiet darkness, he turned and gave her a very small, heartbreakingly rueful smile. “I mean, who am I kidding, you know? My kids need stability, and, well, if you read my personnel file, stability wouldn’t be a word that comes up much.”

He was talking about granting custody of his children to his stepsister. No, what was it he’d said? Marge wasn’t even related to him by marriage. But sister or not, how could he even consider giving away his children?

“You probably shouldn’t make any major decisions while you’re so tired,” Alessandra said diplomatically. “Why don’t we just get there, get the bloody hell out of this car? That alone will make you feel better. You can hug your kids, and then you can sleep on it, see if you still feel the same way in the morning.”

“Hell,” Harry said. “You said hell. You said bloody hell.” He laughed. “This is clearly another example of my bad influence.”

“If it were an example of your bad influence,” Alessandra informed him, “I would have suggested we arrive and get the fuck out of the car. Or perhaps, get out of the fucking car, which has a different meaning altogether, doesn’t it?”

Harry shouted with laughter, just as she knew he would. “You know, when you say it, it sounds almost polite.”

“You’re going to have to watch your mouth around your kids.”

“I will,” he said. “I do. I know.”

He was quiet again, his laughter fading far too quickly. The windshield wipers were moving with a rhythm that suddenly seemed too loud in the stillness.

“I’m scared to death,” he said. They were approaching an exit, and he pulled across the highway, signaling to get off. “Allie, I’m sorry, but we have to stop. I can’t show up at Marge’s, looking like this, in the middle of the night. It’ll be nearly one-thirty before we get to Hardy, and that’s no good.”

Hardy. The name of her new hometown was Hardy, Colorado.

The clock on the dash read a few minutes after twelve. They were close. Really close. God, she hoped Hardy was more sophisticated than some of the little clusters of mobile homes passing for towns that they’d driven past.

“I think it’s a good idea to stop for the night,” she agreed. “You’ll feel better if you shave and change your clothes. If you want, I’ll even cut your hair. I’m not really that good at it, but frankly, it can’t get much worse.”

Harry shot her a crooked smile. “When you put it like that, how could I turn you down?”

“H
EY,”
H
ARRY SAID
. “You’re supposed to cut my hair, not criticize my wardrobe.”

Alessandra turned and gave him a look that was both disdainful and pitying. “What wardrobe? An extra pair of dirty jeans wadded into an unrecognizable mass, three wrinkled T-shirts, two pairs of socks—one with holes in the toes, one with holes in the heels—and two pairs of silk boxers do not form even the most basic foundation for a wardrobe.”

Harry rubbed his head with his towel then carefully began rewrapping his ribs with the Ace bandage. “I’ll bet you didn’t know I was the silk boxer type.”

She studiously ignored him, glaring down at his three clean T-shirts, all faded, all wrinkled, as if doing so would change them into something more presentable. “I think we should buy you something new to wear tomorrow morning. Something like khakis would be relaxed, but not as relaxed as jeans. And a polo shirt, casual, but with a collar. That would be a good look for you. Something in red would—”

“It’s a good idea,” he interrupted. “In theory.”

She stopped ignoring him. “Why is it only good in theory?”

“I’m nearly all out of cash. We need gas and breakfast, and unless you’re too tired, I’d love to have a beer or two
tonight.” Even with the door tightly closed, Harry could hear the music from the bar attached to the motel office. Somebody was playing Travis Tritt through a sound system that was set all the way up to ten. “Once we’re in Hardy, I can get money from the bank—I have an account in Marge’s name I can access. But until then we can’t afford much of anything.”

Alessandra wouldn’t give up. “So we’ll go to the bank first, buy the clothes after we get to town, and—”

“Marge has my bank card.”

She was only temporarily stopped. “Okay, so we go to a laundromat. We can afford to spend a few bucks to wash your jeans, can’t we? You can wear clean jeans and one of my new T-shirts. They’re all men’s extra large. You won’t look perfect, but you’ll look all right. Particularly after we cut your hair.”

“We? I thought you were cutting my hair. If you expect any help from me …”

“You can help by sitting here.” Alessandra pulled out the rickety chair that sat in front of a desk beneath a mirror. She patted it invitingly.

Harry sat.

Alessandra was examining him from all angles, her eyes narrowed and her lower lip caught between her teeth.

He grimaced as he faced himself in the mirror. He looked better having shaved, but not a whole lot better. “I look like shit.”

Her eyes met his in the mirror. “You better practice using a cleaner vocabulary.”

“I look like crap.”

She smiled. “That’s not a whole lot better.”

She was touching him now, combing his still-wet hair, running her fingers through it, checking the length. It felt unbelievably good.

“I don’t know how else to say it. I look like some kind of ghoul from Night of the Living Dead.”

Alessandra attempted to center his head, frowning as she concentrated. She leaned forward from behind him, and he could feel the softness of her breasts against the back of his head. If he was lucky, she’d stay right there, just like that, forever.

“You don’t look that bad,” she said. “Just tired. A little Visine, some cucumbers on your eyes in the morning …”

“Cucumbers?”

“Don’t move.” She backed away.

“Did you say cucumbers? On my eyes?” He tried to hold his head perfectly still, watching her in the mirror as she picked up the scissors they’d bought at a twenty-four-hour pharmacy.

She began to cut his hair, slowly at first. “It’s an old beauty trick. It helps reduce swelling and bags under your eyes. Preparation H also works very well.”

“Oh, ho—no way am I putting hemorrhoid ointment on my face! Or cucumbers. Jesus.”

“Maybe getting a good night’s sleep will help.”

“Chances of that are slim to none,” he said. “I shouldn’t’ve slept in the car. Now I’ll never fall asleep.”

Particularly not with her sleeping in the bed next to him. That, combined with knowing he was going to have to face his kids in the morning … There was no doubt about it, this was going to be one of the longest nights of his life.

“We can go have a drink after this.” She brushed off some of the hair that had fallen on his bare shoulders, her long, elegant fingers cool against his skin. Her fingernails were starting to grow back; she had stopped biting them, as if her anxiety had lessened some with her decision to completely disguise herself. They were very
short, but neatly filed. “I don’t mind. Maybe that’ll help you relax.”

Harry knew exactly the way he wanted to try to relax tonight—and it involved her touching him just like that, but all over. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen. Allie wanted to keep sex out of their relationship. She had been surprisingly right about a lot of things, but in this case, she was dead wrong.

Theirs could be the perfect sexual relationship. They were close, but not too close. They knew each other well enough to see their faults and recognize their differences, to know that anything they started could never be permanent. There’d be no false expectations, no future disappointments.