Twisted Games (Twisted, #2)(29)

It was a question she hadn’t asked during our impromptu Q&A session during her graduation dinner.

“Don’t eat pizza.” A grin slipped through at the shock on her face. “Kidding. Work on the gullibility, princess.”

“In two years, I’ve never seen you eat one. It’s possible,” she said defensively.

My grin widened a fraction of an inch. “It’s not my favorite food, but I’m a pepperoni guy. Simple is best.”

“I can see that.” Bridget flicked her eyes over my plain black T-shirt, pants, and boots. Some clients preferred their bodyguards to dress up—suit, tie, earpiece, the whole shebang—but Bridget wanted me to blend in, hence the casual getup.

Her perusal wasn’t sexual, but that didn’t stop my groin from tightening as her gaze slid from my shoulders to my stomach and thighs. The number of spontaneous boners I’d popped around her was embarrassing considering I was a grown-ass man, not a hormone-riddled schoolboy.

But Bridget was the kind of stunning that came along once in a lifetime, and her personality made things worse, because she actually had one. A good one, at that, at least when she wasn’t driving me nuts with her hard-headedness.

I took this job thinking she would be spoiled and stuck up like the other princesses I’d guarded, but she turned out to be smart, kind, and down to earth, with just enough fire shining through her cool facade to make me want to strip every layer off her until she was bared to me and me alone.

Bridget’s gaze lingered on the region below my belt. My cock swelled further, and I gripped my armrests with white-knuckled hands. This was so messed up. She was worried about her grandfather dying, and I was fantasizing about fucking her ten ways to Sunday in the middle of the goddamn cabin.

I have serious issues. The least of which was a case of blue balls.

“I suggest you stop lookin’ at me like that, princess,” I said, my voice lethally soft. “Unless you plan on doing something about it.”

It was perhaps the most inappropriate thing I’d ever said to her, and way out of the bounds of professionalism, but I was teetering on the edge of sanity.

Despite what I’d implied yesterday, I hadn’t touched a woman since I took this job, and I was slowly going crazy because of it. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to. I went to bars, I flirted, and I got plenty of offers, but I felt nothing every time. No sparks, no lust, no desire. I would’ve worried about my boy down there had it not been for my visceral reactions to Bridget.

The only person who made my cock hard these days was my client.

I have the worst fucking luck on the planet.

Bridget jerked her head up, her eyes wide. “I’m not...I wasn’t—”

“Ask me another question.”

“What?”

“You said you wanted to know more about me. Ask me another question,” I said through gritted teeth. Anything to get my mind off how much I want to hike up that skirt of yours and find out just how wet you are for me.

Because she was. My long, recent dry spell aside, I had enough experience with the opposite sex to spot the signs of female arousal from a mile away.

Dilated pupils, flushed cheeks, shallow breathing.

Check, check, and fucking check.

“Oh, um.” Bridget cleared her throat, looking more flustered than I’d ever seen her. “Tell me…tell me about your family.”

Talk about splashing a bucket of cold water over my libido.

I stiffened, my desire draining away as I tried to figure out how to respond.

Of course she wants to know about the one thing I hate discussing.

“Not much to tell,” I finally said. “No siblings. Mother died when I was a kid. Never knew my father. Grandparents also gone.”

Maybe I should’ve left the last part out, considering her grandfather’s situation, but Bridget didn’t appear put off. Instead, her eyes flickered with sympathy. “What happened?”

No need to clarify who she was asking about. Mother dearest. “Drug overdose,” I said curtly. “Cocaine. I was eleven, and I found her when I came home from school. She was sitting in front of the TV, and her favorite talk show was on. There was a half-eaten plate of pasta on the coffee table. I thought she fell asleep—she did that sometimes when she was watching TV—but when I walked over…” I swallowed hard. “Her eyes were wide open. Unseeing. And I knew she was gone.”

Bridget sucked in a breath. My story never failed to elicit pity from those who heard it, which was why I hated telling it. I didn’t want anyone’s pity.

“You know what the funny thing was? I picked up the plate of pasta and washed it like she’d wake up and yell at me if I didn’t. Then I did the rest of the dishes in the sink. Turned off the TV. Wiped down the coffee table. Only after all that did I call 911.” I let out a humorless laugh while Bridget stared at me with an unbearably soft expression. “She was already dead, but in my mind, she wouldn’t really be dead till the ambulance showed up and made it official. Kid logic.”

Those were the most words I’d spoken about my mother in over two decades.

“I’m so sorry,” Bridget said quietly. “Losing a parent is never easy.”

She would know better than anyone. She’d lost both her parents, one of whom she’d never met. Just like me, except there was a possibility the one I hadn’t met was still alive while hers had died in childbirth.