The Unlikely Bodyguard. Amy Fetzer J.
strode toward her car and he enjoyed the sight of those high-heeled legs. It was leather night again. This time, flame red. He liked it. Then she saw him and stopped in the center of the street. Horns beeped and traffic moved around her. The streetlights showered a dingy yellow over her and she continued, pausing briefly to let a car pass.
“How much do you get for baby-sitting?” she called.
He arched a brow, his gaze gliding heavily over her. “You’re no baby.”
She cocked her hip and smiled “Nice of you to notice.”
“Hard not to.”
He liked the faint blush stealing into her face. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one. A real one.
“You’re.becoming a pest. Don’t you have a life, a wife, or somewhere else to be?”
Slowly he shook his head. She walked toward him and stopped beside the bike. She planted one hand on her hip and looked him over so thoroughly, Gabe felt his groin tighten. God. Did she know what she did to a man? She was temptation incarnate and Gabe knew he couldn’t do what he was thinking. He swung his boots off the handlebars and sat upright.
But just the same, he let his thoughts multiply. And he ended up with her image parading through his mind without a stitch of clothing.
“You’re cramping my style, Angel.”
He didn’t like that she called him that. It wasn’t his real name. Some whore on the street gave it to him after his first lay when he was fourteen and he could never shake it. After so many years, he let it ride. But right now, he hated it and wanted to hear her call him Gabe. He shifted, straddling the bike. “Get on.”
Her look was bland. “Get real ” She moved toward her car, turning off the alarm and opening the locks. He started the motorcycle, riding up beside her and blocking her from opening the door. The noise of the engine settled low.
She sent him an annoyed look. “I don’t need rescuing ”
“Are you admitting you did the other night?”
“I’ll admit to being drunk and nothing more.”
“Puked all night, did you?”
She blinked, all innocence and smiles. “My, how attractive of you to mention it.”
He smirked, looked away for a second, then stilled, his gaze somewhere beyond her. “Make some interesting friends tonight?” He inclined his head to Damien’s and the three men hanging around the doorway. She looked.
“Damn!” Pear—real fear—colored her voice as two of the three men pushed away from the wall and headed toward them. One took a drag on a joint, then snuffed it in his palm and shoved it into his pocket before stepping off the curb. Real bad company, Gabe thought, remembering one of them from the newspaper. But Gabe recognized the look as their eyes traveled over her, her expensive car. She was ready cash for them and nothing more. Then they spotted him.
“Get on, Calli.”
“Look, Angel. I don’t need your protection.” She leaned in, her face inches from his, her hand on her car door handle. “Go find someone who does.”
She was just too close, he thought. He wanted to taste her. All of her.
His lips tightened into a grim line as she tried opening the door, giving him an impatient glare to move his bike. Then her gaze darted frantically beyond him to the men.
“Don’t be a hero, Calli.” He could tell she was scared. “You can’t handle them and you know it.”
“I wouldn’t have to, if you’d move that hunk of steel!” She jerked on the door.
Without another word, Gabe slapped his arm around her waist and dragged her across his lap. Her legs kicked up, her elbow driving into his stomach, her fist immediately clipping him on the chin and knocking his teeth together, stunning him. But he was stronger and faster and wrestled the keys from her fist, then booted the car door shut and rode away. He twisted slightly and set the alarm, then waved at the men in the street.
She grappled for balance and he hoisted her tightly between his thighs.
Calli glared at him.
Gabe rubbed his chin. “Not a bad left cross,” he said, amused.
Her lip curled in an unattractive snarl. He dumped her keys into her lap and she scrambled before they fell to the asphalt.
Calli made a frustrated sound. “This is kidnapping, you know.”
He glanced to the left as traffic moved alongside him. “Sue me.”
“I hate you.”
“Good.”
Was that supposed to please her? “You are by far the stubbornnest, most irritating man I’ve ever met.”
The wind smoothed her hair back and on the short stretch to the next light, he slumped comfortably in the seat. “Lucky you.” He’d met worse, a lot worse. “You didn’t cross your pals, yet. I could be an angel.” He flashed her a grin that looked more like a shark baring its teeth before a kill.
And she’d had enough of him. “Stop. Stop!”
“Call!—?”
“I said stop, dammit!”
He pulled the bike to the side of the street.
Calli shifted, facing him, casually draping her legs over his thigh as if they were in a living room and he was the sofa. “Why do you keep kidnapping me, butting in where you’re not wanted?”
Gabe let his gaze slide over her legs, the skirt hiked up so that he could see the tops of her red stockings, lace, and the shadow between. He swallowed and kept his hands away from her. “Because I was watching a lamb walk into a slaughter. Again.”
“A lamb? Me?” She tapped her chest, tapered nails clicking against the zipper of her jacket.
He gestured to the street. “You see any other senseless female walking into the sludge of humanity without a thought to her life?”
She reared back, frowning. “I wouldn’t call them sludge, exactly, and what do you care about my life? You don’t even know me.”
“I know I don’t want to be identifying you from—”
She put up a hand. “I get the picture—a toe tag.”
Calli avoided his gaze, wondering how she was going to dump him and still avoid those other “friends.”
- But Gabe saw the cogs moving behind those expressive eyes and said, “Night’s over, Cal.”
Her gaze slid to his, deep blue challenging white-green. Calli knew she would lose. He would camp out on her doorstep and play he-man if she didn’t go to bed meekly. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did.
She threw her legs off his and straddled the bike, trying unsuccessfully to keep her skirt down.
He heard the bitterness in her voice when she said, “Then take me home, bad boy.”
Gabe leaned forward, her back pressed to his chest and he ached to run his hands up those legs and beneath the leather skirt. “You wouldn’t know bad,” he whispered in her ear, “if it was right behind you.”
She turned her head, meeting his piercing gaze head-on. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. Or you wouldn’t be riding with me.”
“Like I have a choice?”
He gunned the engine, spitting pebbles as he shot away from the curb. Her body mashed back against his and he slipped one arm around her waist. Her breath caught, then released slowly, and Gabe liked the soft, shuddering sound he felt rather than heard.
But he didn’t like