Lovers Like Us (Like Us #2)(73)

Janie tucks her phone away and stands. “No more videos of home. Let’s enjoy tonight.”

I hug Sulli around her broad shoulders. “Remember, we’re on an adventure.”

Beckett raises his mug to his lips. “That includes half-naked bodyguards. What you’ve always wanted to see, Sulli.”

She chucks a pillow at him. “Very fucking funny.”

He laughs.

But she’s smiling. “I know I really fucking miss my parents and sister and everyone else, but I like that we’re all together with our bodyguards…this is cool.”

Jane unzips a baggie. “And there are chocolate cookies.” She passes out three cookies, and everyone accepts them but Beckett.

He picks a holiday playlist for the underwear contest. “Christmas” by Darlene Love booms.

Cocoa in the cookie is fucking overpowering. I cough in my fist and swig eggnog. Jesus.

“We’re ready!” Akara calls from the ajar door.

Jane pretends a candy cane is a microphone, angling towards Beckett’s phone as he films, the footage just for us. “I’m your host and one of four judges Jane Kitten.” She bats her lashes. “The Hot, Hot, Hot Santa Underwear Contest features the bodyguards of Security Force Omega. Who will win the ultimate prize this Christmas Eve? Let’s see. Starting in alphabetical order, we have…Akara Kitsuwon.”

Akara slips out of the second lounge. Shirtless, muscles cut, and fire-engine red boxer-briefs hug his thighs. He walks the length of the hall towards us, and Sulli whistles in a cat-call.

He mock beauty pageant waves.

I smile as Jane narrates a bio on the fly, “A Muay Thai pro, this strapping bodyguard just turned twenty-six this December and owns the extraordinary Studio 9 gym. He’s a bossy boss and a friendly friend.”

Akara puts a hand to his heart. He halts at the coffee pot counter, and Beckett tosses him a candy cane.

“Akara,” Jane says, “what do you want most this Christmas?”

Candy cane to his mouth, he says, “World peace.”

We applaud, and Sulli already marks 10 in the runway and question categories. And they said I’d be fucking biased. Akara takes over driving so Oscar can go change.

“Next up,” Jane narrates as Donnelly emerges, same red color underwear. Different style.

This time, he has on trunks, similar to boxer-briefs, but higher cut on the thigh. A tattoo I’ve never seen peeks out of the elastic band, a scorpion with fire out of its tail.

He blows kisses to us and the invisible audience.

“Donnelly, Paul Donnelly,” Jane says, “a twenty-six-year-old Leo and former tattooist. He hails from an Irish household and knows how to kick serious ass in mixed martial arts.”

Donnelly twirls at the end and then bows.

I’m subconsciously eating these shitty cookies. I finish my third one, and I’m surprised Sulli likes them enough to grab the bag for more.

Jane straightens. “Donnelly, what word best describes you?”

“Thirsty.”

Beckett cracks up laughing, and Donnelly blows a kiss to the camera. Then he plops down in the booth, waiting for the next bodyguard.

My bodyguard.

“Farrow Redford Keene,” Jane says his full name, and Farrow saunters out with casual confidence. Only wearing red briefs. The cut shows off his thigh muscles and sculpted waist—Christ, his package…the underwear barely holds him in.

And his many tattoos are on full display. Blood-red swallows fly through the mast of two pirate ships, symmetrical near his collarbones. Between them, half of a skull is inked on his sternum. A candle burns at his wrist, smoke billowing up his forearm and bicep to swarm another skull and crossbones on his shoulder.

Plus more. All black and gray except for the colorful birds. All striking.

His body is an art piece, and he knows it.

Look up.

I need to look up, and the moment my eyes hit his eyes, he’s full-on smiling that know-it-all smile. His barbell lifts with his brows. He definitely caught me checking him out.

I scribble a giant zero on my piece of paper and flash it to him.

He rolls his eyes, his smile out of this fucking world.

Jane narrates, “At twenty-seven, he’s the second oldest bodyguard in Omega. A maverick and an Aries, Farrow can make a delicious egg and bacon sandwich.”

Beckett gives Jane a what-the-fuck face.

Jane shoos her brother. “He’s the most medically savvy and also professionally MMA-trained. Farrow,” she says as he stops and takes a candy cane from Donnelly, “who is your favorite celebrity?”

He speaks into the candy cane. “Everyone but Maximoff Hale.”

God, I’m smile-grimacing. There’s something seriously wrong with me.

“Boo,” Sulli says.

“That’s two zeroes,” I tell Farrow.

His lips quirk. “I think you mean two perfect tens.” He sits at the booth, and his tattooed fingers push his white hair out of his eyelashes, too sensually. Fuck me.

“No.” I lick my lips. “I meant zero plus zero. Which equals a load of nothing.”

“And look at that,” he smiles wide, “your honesty merit badge is gone.”

I’d react somewhat differently than cringing, but my head and stomach feel weird. Like dizzy? I don’t know yet. I tear my gaze off his, but I sense him studying my features.