Guarded Desires (5 page)

Behind him, the luxurious home was silent. Bethany had retired to her bedroom an hour ago after drilling him on Chris’s appointments, appearances and events for the coming days and enquiring how he intended to keep the actor safe.

He let out a ragged breath. The personal assistant was a conundrum. Her aloof proficiency was just as arousing as her wild fairy-like appearance. Both stroked the side of his libido attracted to women. Throughout their conversation about their boss’s routine, he’d hoped to see the interest he was sure he’d witnessed earlier in her eyes appear again. It hadn’t. Her voice was clipped, her manner direct and professional. He’d managed to get her to laugh a few times—mainly when he’d used some Australian colloquialism she didn’t understand. Going off like a frog in a sock had her giggling so much tears had trickled from her eyes—but apart from that, she was reserved and poised.

His
other
sexual attraction was far more frustrating.

Because there wasn’t a hope in hell he’d missed the sexual desire in Chris’s eyes earlier that night. Hell, he’d almost acted on it. Had leant forward to capture the man’s lips with his.

And then Chris had fled to the master bedroom and Liev had come close to letting out a growl of contemptuous self-disgust.

Grinding his teeth, Liev pushed himself from the balcony, cast the harbour and its boats one last look and then walked into the living area, closing the glass concertina doors behind him.

Chris Huntley’s heterosexuality was famous. According to the magazines and websites Liev’s niece devoured, the list of women he’d dated and slept with was legendary. In the last month alone, more than one had declared Huntley was to soon be a father. If Liev was to believe everything he read, the actor currently asleep in the master bedroom had sowed his wild oats with just about every young starlet in Hollywood.

But Liev
didn’t
believe everything he read.

Chris Huntley may be Hollywood’s hottest sex symbol right now, but Liev’s gut was telling him the actor’s heterosexuality wasn’t as indisputable as the world believed.

Liev had spent a lifetime caught between two sexual appetites. Close to thirty-three years of it. From the day he’d accepted the hard-on he was desperately trying to hide at school had nothing to do with the hot girl from History class sitting beside him and everything to do with the hot captain of the boys’ soccer team running around on the field in front of him—at the sage age of thirteen—he’d known he walked a line most boys didn’t.

From the first blowjob given to him by a male’s mouth, a few years later by a fellow senior from a different school during an excursion to the ski-slopes—Liev knew he didn’t care the line he walked was socially…shunned.

The first blowjob he’d received from a girl—six months after that, from the hot girl from History class—had been equally explosive and cemented the fact in his mind he was bi. Sex was sex, and Liev had no issues with the gender of his partner. If he or she turned him on, he was happy to oblige.

Was that the case with Chris Huntley? Was Chris bi as well?

He knew the sexual preference of actors, especially ones deemed sex symbols like Chris, was treated like a precious commodity. The more virile and desirable women found an actor, the more money his work could pull in. An actor who’d built his career on his potent heterosexuality could see said career destroyed at just the hint of homosexuality. Why else all the defamation lawsuits?

Or was he just grasping at straws? He’d been attracted to Chris from the first episode he’d watched of
Twice Too Many
. Guarding him from a distance last year had only furthered that desire. Now, being in Chris’s presence, breathing in his subtle scent…fair dinkum, it was pretty damn amazing. Seeing the sharp intelligence in the actor’s eyes his sitcom character didn’t allow out, watching Chris’s body move with latent strength, a body more honed to physical perfection thanks to his role in
Dead Even
…well, amazing didn’t really come close to describing how Liev felt right now.

He let out a low groan.

He had to stop thinking about the man. Even
if
Chris Huntley was sexually interested in Liev—and it was a big bloody
if
, about the size of the country to be honest—nothing could come of it. Bodyguard’s second rule. Never, ever get sexually involved with the client.

Never. It was the second rule Aslin Rhodes had taught him. It was the second rule Liev worked by.

He’d guarded more than one female politician who had suggested activities beyond his job requirement, and he’d declined every one. A bodyguard who fucked around with his client wasn’t just unprofessional. He was stupid.

Liev wasn’t stupid, despite what his older brother wanted to believe.

Whatever the spark he’d felt between him and Chris earlier that night—and Christ, he was one hundred percent certain he wasn’t the
only
one to feel it—nothing could come of it.

Even if Chris strode out of his bedroom at this very second, took Liev’s hand and wrapped it around Chris’s erect, pre-come dripping cock, Liev would pull away.

It would be fucking hard, but he would do it.

Hard. Like his dick was now.

So damn hard it hurt.

Biting back a muttered curse, he killed the lights in the living area and kitchen, hurried up the stairs to the third floor and strode to his bedroom.

The room was opposite Chris’s. The door to the master bedroom was closed. No light filtered from beneath the thin gap at the bottom.

Liev turned to his door.

And stopped as the door beside his, the door to Bethany’s bedroom, opened.

She stood on the threshold, her exquisitely petite body barely covered by a tiny pair of black knickers and a tank top that stopped short of her navel. She studied him, one hand coming to rest on the wooden doorjamb, the other playing with the small gold pendant resting in the shallow cleavage of her breasts. “Finished protecting us for the night, Liev?”

Liev’s gut clenched. He stared at her, his chest tight. There was barely an inch of fat on her frame. A belly-button ring glinted at him in the muted light, drawing his attention to a delicate tattoo beneath it. A word was inked in her flesh in an ornate script he couldn’t read from where he stood. A name maybe?

His cock throbbed. On the outside, Bethany Sloan may appear straight-laced, but the navel ring and the tattoo hinted at something else. Something…wilder.

Swallowing the frantic, beating lump in his throat, he nodded. “Yep. Doors are all locked, windows too. If someone’s getting in now, they’re using a blowtorch or wrecking ball.”

The corners of Bethany’s mouth curled. “And I assume you’d stop them before they made it through the hole.”

“I would.”

She stopped playing with her necklace and brushed her fingertips over the swell of her right breast, her gaze direct. “What are you planning to do now?”

Liev forced a chuckle to his lips. “Go to bed.”

“Alone?”

He nodded at her question.

The smile teased her lips some more. “Tell me, in your mind, who is going to be in there with you?”

Liev kept his expression relaxed. Calm. Inside…fuck a bloody duck, there was nothing calm about him. “In my mind? Jennifer Beal.”

Bethany chuckled, the sound low and more husky than any he’d heard her make. “Bullshit.”

“You don’t like Jennifer Beal?”

Bethany ran the tip of her tongue over the edge of her teeth. “If my tastes ran that way, Jennifer Beal would very much be my sexual fantasy of choice, but I call bullshit because I think
you’ve
got the gender wrong.”

An invisible fist smashed into Liev’s gut. “Really? Who do you think I’m taking to bed then? In my mind.”

Bethany laughed. “We both know who.” She flicked a glance at the closed master bedroom door.

What little composure Liev was clinging to frayed at her statement. He ground his teeth, holding his body motionless.

Bethany cocked an eyebrow. “Or am I wrong? If I asked you to join me in
my
room, what would you say?”

Liev let a slow smile spread his lips. “I’d say no. Professional duty and all. Can’t really protect the boss when I’m fucking his P.A., can I?”

Another one of those husky laughs slipped past Bethany’s lips. “No. Good to know Mr. Huntley is well guarded then. It would seem Mr. Rhodes was right about you.”

Liev couldn’t stop his eyebrows shooting up. “Oh yeah? What did Rhodes say about me?”

An ambiguous smile pulled at Bethany’s lips. “That you were just what Mr. Huntley needed.”

And with that, she stepped back into the dark shadows of her room and closed the door.

Liev’s blood roared in his ears. He stood rooted to the spot.

The irrational urge to kick her door open, to throw her on the bed and fuck her senseless surged through him. But even as the violent thought formed in his head, Bethany transformed. From a fiery redhead to a sexy blond. From a woman to a man.

From Bethany to Chris.

“Fuck,” he muttered, balling his hands into fists. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He spun on his heel and stormed into his room.

Fuck.

Shutting the door behind him, he pressed his forehead against the wall.

Damn it. Bethany had not only suspected his desire for their boss, she’d called him on it. He had no doubt the display in the doorway had been intended to test his professionalism, but then, as she’d raked her gaze over his body, he’d seen it again. That interest he’d noticed before in her eyes. There and gone in a heartbeat.

So now here he was, hornier than he’d ever been, lusting after a man he could never have and a woman who knew how much he—

Without waiting for the frustrating thought to finish, Liev yanked open his fly, shoved his jeans down his hips and wrapped his hand around his dick.

The second his fingers pressed his engorged length raw pleasure shot through him. He groaned, lolling his head back. Closing his eyes, he pumped his fist.

His knees gave out. Stumbling backward, he dropped onto his bed, pleasure rendering his legs weak. He choked his cock, fucking his hand with punishing pressure and force.

In his mind, he saw Bethany at the door. Saw that smile on her lips, that challenging, knowing smile as she brushed her fingers over the swell of her breast.

In his mind, he saw Chris watching him. He saw Chris undress. Saw him walk toward him and lower to his knees.

He groaned, letting his fevered brain tell him it was Chris’s hands on his flesh as he reached for his sac and kneaded his balls.

A searing pressure began to build in the base of his spine. Radiating through his stomach, his groin. The soles of his feet tingled. He curled his toes and pumped his cock harder, squeezing his fingers with increasing rhythm and pressure until just his hand wasn’t enough.

His hips bucked. His teeth clenched.

He mauled his scrotum and fucked his hand and watched as Chris lowered his mouth over his shaft and sucked on its rigid length.

“Fuck,” he ground out, scalding need turning his blood to molten steel. He was going to come. He was going to come and he wasn’t prepared.

He had nothing to prevent his seed splattering on the bed’s duvet but his—

His orgasm tore from him before he could release his cock. Before he could stagger to the bathroom.

He choked out a cry, wrapping his hand around the crown of his erection, his release oozing between his tight grip even as he continued to pump his hips upward.

It lasted an eternity. A lifetime. He’d jerked off before, what red-blooded male hadn’t, but never like this. Never so brutal, so punishing.

His seed continued to spurt from his dick, coating his palm, trickling down his wrist. He bit his lip, afraid if he didn’t he’d call out the one name he couldn’t. It was one thing to imagine Chris Huntley feasting on his climax. It was another to vocalize the fantasy, even if Bethany knew.

Especially when the man was only a few feet away. Only separated from him by a few feet of carpet and two closed doors.

Five minutes later, his heartbeat rapid, his breath shallow, Liev stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

“Crap,” he muttered, running cold water over his hands. “You can’t do that again, dickhead.”

He couldn’t. It was too risky.

For starters, what would happen if someone tried to gain access to the house while he was mid-ejaculation?

He needed to control himself until after the job was done. When he was back in his own home, without the immediate demands of his job hanging over his head, then he could jerk off as much as he wanted.

Until then, he was celibate.

Seven days. Seven nights. He could control himself for that length of time.

No matter what his body was telling him, he could control himself. Worst-case scenario, he’d quickly toss one off in the shower each morning. At least then he’d be less inclined to spend the day semi-erect in Chris’s company. A quick wank to take off the tension and then he could direct all his focus and energy on actually being what he was employed to be. Chris’s bodyguard. Just that. Keeping the actor safe and out of harm’s way from his adoring—