Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

15

Gage

I unlockedthe motel room door and ushered Savannah in ahead of me. I closed it behind us and cleared the room. It wasn’t that I thought there was a serious possibility of someone lying in wait inside the room. I’d chosen this fleabag establishment at random.

But those were the kinds of decisions I made it a habit never to consider. I stuck with protocol. Best practices were considered best for a reason. If I walked into a new room, I cleared it. Point blank. Period.

When I was satisfied we were alone, I took precautions. I made sure the blackout shades were completely drawn. I moved the dresser in front of the door.

That wouldn’t stop anyone from entering. It wasn’t a black and white movie. But I needed to get some sleep tonight if I was going to keep firing on all cylinders, and the dresser crashing to the ground would give me the heads up that someone was breaching the door, as well as the few seconds I would need to spring into action.

I checked out the bathroom. No windows. Good. That left only one point of entry—the bathroom door. And someone would need to breach the outer door before they reached it.

Not to mention make it through me.

All in all, I couldn’t have picked a better scenario for a motel room.

I dropped my bag on the bed. It was my “go bag”—a duffel full of all the essentials I’d need for up to a week that stayed in my car at all times.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have one of those, so we’d stopped at an older department store in a small town and bought her some clothes and toiletries. By choosing an older store, not part of a chain, there was a much better chance that their security cameras—if there were any—wouldn’t be hooked into any kind of network.

It was a risk. Sure. But we couldn’t keep going indefinitely with her borrowing my far-too-big clothes. It was too awkward looking. It would attract too much attention.

We needed to blend. And to blend, we needed clothes that fit.

“Do you want to shower first or second?” I looked at the bathroom. At the mention of showers, I couldn’t help but picture her, naked under the streaming water, steam rising up from the stall, the heat turning her skin pink and supple.

I gulped, willing the mental pictures away, doing my best to stay focused. It was no good, though. As soon as I pushed those away, new ones popped in. This time featuring both of us. In the shower. Together.

My dick strained in my jeans.

“You go first,” she offered. “I had a shower at the cabin.”

I nodded, using every bit of will I possessed to push aside the porn movie playing in my brain so that my voice wouldn’t come out raspy as fuck when I spoke. “Fine. Come in the bathroom with me. Lock the door. Sit on the toilet and wait for me. I won’t take long.”

Her eyebrows shot up, but before she could ask if that were really necessary, I added, “It’s safer. One more barrier between you and the motel room door. If I’m at a disadvantage, even for a few minutes, like I will be in the shower, then I’ll feel better putting as many barriers between you and the outside world as possible.”

She nodded. “Makes sense.”

She flushed, a deep red color that rose from her chest and spread all the way up her neck to her cheeks.

I wondered if she were embarrassed about something she’d been about to say...or if she had movies playing in her head that were similar to mine. Movies of the X-rated variety.

I grabbed some clothes and my dopp kit from the duffel and we ducked into the bathroom. She sat down on the toilet and drew her legs up, then squeezed her eyes shut. “Go ahead. I won’t peek. I swear.”

I shook my head, a faint smile touching my lips. Maybe she had been having the same kinds of thoughts. Either way, at least she still recognized the concept of me being naked as a big deal. It wasn’t just an everyday occurrence. It was something that made her feel the need to assure me that her eyes would be closed.

I turned on the water, disrobed and climbed in the shower, all as quickly as possible.

“You can open your eyes now,” I called, an almost imperceptible playful undertone in my voice.

I realized this was no time for levity. But, damn. I liked thinking of her, sitting less than two feet away from me, thinking about my naked body and getting a flush that crept up her skin like a wandering vine.

I rushed through the shower, getting clean as quickly as possible, with the water as cold as I could stand it. I couldn’t afford to get distracted. That would be a disaster waiting to happen, in more ways than one.

When I shut the water off, she called in, “Don’t worry. My eyes are closed again.”

I pushed aside the curtain and was almost disappointed to see that she’d been telling the truth. I wouldn’t have minded her seeing my body. I would have liked to see a slight widening of her eyes, or a spark of hunger behind them.

But, no. She was true to her word. Not only were her eyelids pressed firmly together, she’d actually turned around on the toilet seat so that she was facing away from me. In fact, the only way I even knew that her eyes were actually shut was that I could see her profile in the mirror.

I dried off and pulled on my clothes, unable to tear my eyes away from the determined set of her shoulders, or the way tendrils of her hair curled around her neck in the humid air of the enclosed space.

She was a goddess. But not a wispy one. A warrior. She was the strongest woman I’d ever met. The strongest woman I could even imagine existing.

All she’d been through—not only over the last few days, but over her entire life—and she was still standing. Still fighting.

She wasn’t just a survivor. She was a kick-ass-and-take-names, take-no-prisoners badass.

And I still loved her. There was no doubt about that. I understood now that I’d never stopped.

I also understood that I probably never would.