Damaged Like Us (Like Us #1)(40)

Road, then me. Road, then me.

I’m watched and observed all the time. By strangers. By cameramen. By people. And never, never have I come undone. Until now, until his eyes feel like hands, and I want them all over me.

“Brake,” he says deeply.

I slow the car at the last second. Hitting bumper-to-bumper traffic. Now the car is unbearably still. I feel like my Audi has shrunk into a compact.

Too small.

The middle console barely divides his body from mine. And my body from his. Do I even want a divide anymore? No. And yes. He’s my bodyguard—that’s not changing.

It’s not.

But I can’t even think about anyone else. He hasn’t just pitched a tent in my brain and dick. He’s built a fucking stone castle that no wolf can ever blow down.

What am I supposed to say to him? My cock only wants you. My brain only wants you. I didn’t pick up that girl because I only want you.

Or: if I fucked someone else tonight, it would’ve made me sick.

None of that extinguishes this one cold fact: it’s ethically wrong to be with my bodyguard.

“Maximoff,” Farrow says, my name slicing the dense air like dropping a guillotine.

I steal a quick glance at him.

He rubs his bottom, pierced lip with his thumb, and his brows rise. “Ready to talk about this?”

“This,” I say, imagining my hands ripping his shirt off his head. Muscle against muscle, lips against lips—I blink. “This traffic is fucking terrible.”

“This as in you and me.” He pauses. “Us.”

Headlights glare in my rearview. My stringent posture contracts my shoulders, my deltoids, my whole body. And I switch lanes fast. Windows of a nearby SUV roll down, a Canon pointing at my car.

Great.

I drive thirty-over just to desert the SUV. Farrow keeps an eye on neighboring vehicles while he says, “I know talking about this isn’t easy. In any other situation, I’d just kiss you.”

Fuck. I lick my lips again. Muscles flexing.

I harden beneath my jeans and boxer-briefs. “You sure I wouldn’t be the one to kiss you?” I counter.

I can feel his lips lifting. For how close we are, the space between us couldn’t feel farther away. Whoever makes the first move will have to cross miles, scale mountains, ferry oceans to reach the other side.

I glance at him.

And his amused smile stretches wider. “In your dreams, maybe you’d kiss me first.” Talk of my dreams reminds me of how long I’ve crushed on him.

Since I was sixteen.

I start to padlock my emotion with a thousand iron keys.

His smile slowly falls. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” I say instinctively, and then, “I don’t know.” Beware: he’s your bodyguard! scrolls across my vision like a tickertape warning. For Christ’s sake, we can’t even kiss without having a conversation beforehand. It’s all so elementary.

Kissing.

I want to do more. I want more. In a way that I’ve never even had before, and is that what’s being offered? Is it even possible?

“What are you thinking?” he asks. “Because I don’t know where you stand. You have so many boundaries, you’re practically a walking-talking Don’t Enter sign.”

“Like you don’t have any?” I combat.

He laughs into a grin. “I consider some boundaries like cautionary tales. Proceed with caution, but you know, still go on ahead.” He flashes me the hottest smile I’ve ever seen, and I bear on my molars, my erection wanting pressure. A mouth, a hand, an ass.

His mouth, his hand.

His ass.

I find myself shaking my head.

“What?” he asks.

I have to tell him my biggest roadblock. As though it’s not in-his-face-obvious enough. “I value self-awareness.” I take a colossal breath. “The ability to understand and perceive every facet of my own weird existence. In Greek ethics, it’s said only the self-aware understand what is right, and therefore will have the knowledge to do what is good.”

I want to do what is right. To do good.

To be good.

Farrow taps the middle console, his thumb ring clicking against leather. His hand is an inch from my arm. He nods, understanding. “And you see being with your bodyguard as wrong. And wrong leads to bad; and bad equals unhappy in your philosophically-bound head. You realize that not everyone thinks that way, Maximoff?”

My brows knot. “In what universe does wrong lead to rays of fucking sunshine and happily-ever-afters, Farrow? Please, enlighten me.”

“How about rewinding and asking yourself, is it really wrong? Or how about this one: what is ethical to begin with? Who decided on these moral rights?” He leans back, boot on his seat. “Or what about what Thoreau said?”

I frown. “You’ve read Thoreau?”

“I took philosophy and lit during undergrad.”

I give him a brief look like he’s flown off this planet. “That was over seven years ago.” And I doubt he reads in his spare time. While my shelves are stacked and stacked with comics, graphic novels, and philosophy texts—his one small bedroom bookshelf is bare.

“I remember everything I skim,” he says, not even lying about “skimming” texts.

One right turn and I drive onto our street.