Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

29

Savannah

I tilted my head back,rinsing out the shampoo that I had massaged into my scalp. I couldn’t help but imagine that the water was washing all of my problems off of me and right down the drain along with the spent suds. It was a really nice fantasy. Too bad it wasn’t real.

I sensed movement and my head snapped up. Gage was standing there, in the shower with me, looking at me intently.

Completely naked.

What the—?

Was I still fantasizing? But, no. I had recognized the “wash all my problems down the drain” thing as a fantasy while it was happening. This felt real. This was real.

I looked down, lust firing in my belly.

As real as the steel-hard erection Gage was sporting. Damn. My mouth watered at the sight. My body was suddenly in flames. I wanted him. Needed him.

I needed to touch him everywhere. I needed to take him in my mouth, and take him inside me. I needed to dig my nails into his skin. I needed to look into his eyes while he thrust into me again and again.

And I needed to feel his hands on me. His mouth. I needed everything about him.

I just needed him.

I decided to tell him. After all, despite everything that had happened both to us and between us over the years, the foundation of our relationship was still the same. It always has been. We told each other everything.

I took a step closer to him, reached out and took his hand in mine. With my other hand, I pressed my palm flat against his chest. I wanted to feel his heartbeat.

"I need you," I whispered, looking into his eyes. There was an intense, desperate quality to the whisper. I could hear it, as I was sure he could. Even that, though, didn't come close to expressing what I felt inside. I didn't know if mere words ever could. "I never stopped needing you. All these years – you were my air, Gage. All these years. I haven't been able to breathe."

He grabbed me to him, pressing his lips against mine in a kiss that was every bit as desperate as the tone in my voice had been just a second ago. He wrapped his arms around me, crushed me to his chest in the most passionate embrace I had ever felt.

And it did inspire passion in me. It set my body on fire. But it was more than that. So much more. It was deeper than that. So much deeper.

I felt home again. At last. There, in Gage’s arms, everything was finally right in a way that it hadn't been… Well, since the last time I had been in his arms. On my porch step, that night of my sixteenth birthday.

He pulled back, looked into my eyes and ran his fingers down the side of my face, burying them in my hair as he caressed my cheek with his thumb.

It was like he was trying to memorize my features. Hell, maybe he was. We, more than anyone, knew that anything could be ripped from you at any moment. Anyone could be ripped from you at any moment.

How certain was I that, come tomorrow or the day after, or the day after that, I wouldn't be left with only my memories of Gage again?

The answer was: not certain at all. In fact, the only thing I was certain about, based on my own experiences, was that you couldn't count on anything in this life. The only thing that you had – that you knew you had for sure – was the moment.

So I resolved to make this moment count.

I slid my hand in between our bodies, wrapped my fingers around his thick and throbbing shaft. I drew in a sharp breath when I felt it in my hand. It was so big, so hard, so hot. So demanding.

I couldn’t help but imagine him inside me as I squeezed lightly and then started to move my hand rhythmically up and down on him. My mind was flooded with images of him pounding me, and my head thrown back in ecstasy.

In fact, I had to consciously push those images aside. They were making me so lightheaded and weak in the knees that I feared for my ability to stay on my feet.

Yeah, that’s all we need,I thought wryly. Gage goes to all this trouble to protect me, only to have me taken out by a slip and fall in the shower like a little old lady.

I should have known better than to worry about that, though. Gage would never let me fall, either metaphorically or literally.

He swept me up in his arms, and my legs snapped up instinctually to wrap around his waist, and my arms snaked around his neck.

His strong arms held me as effortlessly as if I weighed almost nothing. It wasn’t completely terrible for my self-esteem I had to admit, although I knew it was 95% about Gage’s strength and not my intermittent fasting regimen.

I mean…fine. 99.9%.

His muscular forearm pressed against my lower back as he cradled me, and I swear, even that was hot as hell. My pussy ached more and more with each passing second, my inner walls tightening as juices flooded me.

God. I couldn’t remember ever being this turned on. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I acknowledged that it was partially about the fact that we hadn’t seen each other in so long, about the danger we faced, about the fact that this was a welcome distraction from my grief and fear.

But, deep inside, I knew none of that was true. Not really. The truth of the matter was…it was Gage. He was my ultimate aphrodisiac. Nothing and no one turned me on but him, and he could turn me on by doing almost nothing. A glance, the brush of a hand. A single word spoken in just the right tone.

And now, with his arms around me, his mouth on mine, my legs around his waist…both of us naked, our bodies pressed to one another—the arousal was almost more than I could take.

“I need you,” I whimpered in his ear, and I meant something entirely different this time than I had the last time I’d said it, only moments ago.

Gage knew, though. He understood. And he gave me what I needed.

Reaching just outside the shower door, he grabbed a condom and ripped the wrapper with his teeth. My eyes widened in shocked and aroused surprise. Damn. I would have never guessed that watching someone open a package with their teeth could be sexy as hell…but, then again, I’d never imagined the “someone” in that scenario as Gage.

Pretty much everything he did was sexy as hell.

He set me gently back on my feet for a moment, then slid the thin latex tube over his rock-hard dick.

My core tightened as I watched the procedure, in anticipation of being stretched out and filled up in the way I knew only Gage could.

He got the condom fully unrolled, and looked up at me, meeting my eyes. “Are you ready?” he growled.

Fuck. It sounded more like a command than a question.

My throat was closed. I knew there was no way I could squeeze any words out, so I simply settled for nodding, hoping that the fire in my eyes would tell him how much I truly meant it.

He wrapped his arm around my waist again. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it in those short moments until I felt it there again, with that iron strength he used to hold me up.

My nipples grazed his chest hair when he drew me to him, and I cried out. They were so hard and sensitive that even that slight touch sent earth-shattering sensations rocketing through my body.

While I was still reeling from that intense and unexpected pleasure, Gage thrust into me, drawing a cry from deep in my throat that sounded like an animal to my ears. God. I felt like an animal, honestly. Operating on nothing but pure instinct. No past, no future. Just the here and now. Just Gage’s body, and mine, and the way we were coming together and giving each other pleasure.

I buried my head in his neck as he pushed himself into me again and again, deepening the sensations that rocked me with every stroke of his cock. I clung to him. In a weird way that I barely understood, clinging to him was kind of the best part. It was satisfying, and it filled an emptiness that had gnawed at me for every moment of my life that I hadn’t had him with me to cling to.

I drew back and looked into his bottomless dark eyes. Just like his facial expressions, those eyes were impossible for most people to read. But I wasn’t most people.

What I saw in them melted me.

Hunger, yes. But also affection, and care, and protective energy. It made me feel cherished in a way that even his touch couldn’t. Because they showed me his soul, and as wonderful as touching was, it could never accomplish that.

An orgasm hit me unexpectedly in a wave of sensation. Every muscle in my body clenched and trembled, and I threw my head back and groaned long and hard.

“Fuck, yes, Savannah,” he breathed, never stopping the steady yet frantic rhythm of his thrusts. “Come for me, baby. That’s right. Come for me, Savannah.”

Even after the peak energy of the orgasm had passed, as I was just breathing hard and coming back down to earth, I couldn’t stop the way that every muscle in my body—hell, every cell—trembled at his touch.

He was magic. He could take away all of my strength with one look, or one touch—but he also was my strength. I didn’t understand it. But I knew that it was true. In fact, I knew that nothing else in this world was as true for me as that.