The Bodyguard: A BWWM Bad Body Romance
Cristina Grenier
Chapter 1: Caged
Juliet Brown would be the first person to tell you that her life changed the day she met Solomon Aguiler.
She was eighteen, impressionable and idealistic, and the moment his tall, lean form settled in the first row for one of her performances at a jazz club, she was smitten. Of course, it might have been the atmosphere. That particular performance had been one of Juliet’s first, and, that night, anything in the world seemed possible.
After a lifetime of nudging by her surprisingly supportive family, she’d finally given into temptation. She wanted to see if she was good enough to entertain a crowd that wasn’t made up of her blood relations. Juliet was a little overwhelmed at the response. She had always known she had a good voice - everyone she knew always asked her to sing. But singing in front of a real, live audience at the tender age of eighteen - that was something beyond her wildest dreams.
It was that na?veté that led her straight into Solomon’s waiting arms.
It was only her third or fourth show, and Juliet already had quite the following. The house was packed hours before she began a show, and men hankered after her attention; but the way Solomon looked at her was enough to make her forget about everything and everyone else. When she sang, nothing existed except him, her, and the stage at Mona’s.
She was drawn to him like a moth to a flame, and after her show, she fell for all his smooth one-liners. She sang like an angel, he’d never seen anyone more beautiful... If there was ever something a man said to draw a woman in like an expert angler, it came out of Solomon Aguiler’s mouth.
And Juliet fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
But it wasn’t just she who had been fooled - it was everyone. Solomon had charmed her friends, her family, everyone she worked with...and then, slowly but surely, he had started to isolate her from them.
But that had been his intention from the start. Solomon was a master manipulator who could get almost anyone to trust him - even those who knew what an asshole he could be. Unfortunately for his charmed victim, as soon as he got what he wanted from you, Solomon never hesitated to reveal his true nature - and the man was a fucking monster.
“Get up, Juliet. Why the hell are you still in bed?” As soon as the covers were yanked from her, Juliet bolted upright, shocked into wakefulness. Her heart raced and her head pounded as the room swam into focus. Solomon stood over her, sneering in disapproval - and he wasn’t alone.
If there was anyone more devious and fucked up than Solomon Aguiler, it was Blackjack. The thug’s real name was Angus Creed, but the Irishman preferred the moniker Blackjack because he thought it made him sound cooler. What it actually did was terrify the countless women he raped and victimized as well as those foolish enough to end up on the wrong side of an Aguiler deal.
Juliet, in only her bra and panties, quickly reached for the coverlet to hide her nakedness, but Solomon only held it out of reach, his handsome face contorted in annoyance. “I said get up.”
He was going to make her walk all the way to the bathroom with nothing on, in front of Blackjack. The burly blonde man was already eying her with a gaze lascivious enough to make her stomach turn. Quickly, Juliet rose, intending to hurry towards the bathroom with her eyes downcast. She stopped in her tracks when Solomon smacked her bare behind -hard - before taking a handful of it to impede her. His grip was so tight it made Juliet wince, but she knew better than to say a word. “Aren’t you going to say good morning to me, Amor?”
She didn’t even know why he still bothered with this. It had been a long time since Juliet felt anything but fear where he was concerned. True affection was a thing of the past. When she said what he wanted to hear, it was for the purpose of self-preservation. “Good morning.” Her head still ached from the rude awakening he’d given her, and she could still feel Blackjack’s hungry gaze burning into her backside.
“Well don’t sound so fucking enthusiastic about it,” Solomon groped her hard enough to elicit a whimper of pain. “I might think you don’t love me anymore...and then I’d have to pass you onto Jack here. He’s been aching for a taste of you.”
The very notion was enough to make Juliet’s stomach turn. Swallowing the bile, she turned into Solomon’s embrace. It shocked her now that she had ever thought him attractive. Those cold gray eyes and that fastidious little goatee were hideous, but she could never unsee them. Solomon’s face had haunted her for almost eight years now, and she had long learned that escape wasn’t an option. Juliet pressed her mouth to Solomon’s, fighting the shiver of revulsion that passed through her as his tongue pressed insistently past her lips. When he was finished, she tried again, with her best, most painful smile. “Good morning, Solomon.”
“That’s more like it, my little siren.” He smacked her behind once more before finally releasing her. It took everything Juliet had not to flee into the bathroom like a frightened mouse. Once the door was closed behind her, however, she wrapped her arms tightly about herself, taking a few deep, steadying breaths.
She was fine. Absolutely fine. In the grand spectrum of things that Solomon could do to her, groping was relatively mild. Now, she had to shower and get dressed. If she took too long, he might come after her here, and that definitely wouldn’t end nearly as well as her wake up call.