Her Bodyguard Read online

  36

  Max

  "I didn't figure you for a chick flick kind of girl."

  "What kind of girl do you think I am?"

  "I don't know. You throw knives and rappel down walls."

  She tosses a handful of popcorn at me before pushing the button to recline her leather seat. "Am I forcing you to have a movie night with me?"

  "What the hell else am I going to do while I'm on shift? I'm attached to you at the hip," I complain, but I'm not really complaining at all.

  She gives me a playful grin. "More like attached at the dick," she says, pressing play on the remote. The movie projects onto the giant screen, but I'm hardly paying attention to the stupid movie, not when Alexandra is sitting here looking the way she does right now. Her cheeks are flushed light pink, the way they seem to be perpetually lately, and she's wearing flannel plaid pajama bottoms and a white tank top and pink bunny rabbit slippers.

  She has a way of making the outfit insanely sexy. I think it's a million times sexier even than the sheer dress she wore that night, despite the very special place that dress now has in my heart.

  "What is this, anyway?" I ask.

  "Ten Things I Hate About You," she replies. "Are you going to sit down or what, James?"

  "Is this a Protrovian movie?"

  "Are you kidding? This is an American movie. It's basically The Taming of the Shrew."

  Now, I snort loudly. "Are you trying to send me a not-so-subtle message that I've tamed you?"

  "You wish, Bodyguard." She laughs, and I can't help but grin like a fucking lunatic, which seems to be what I do lately: grin like an idiot.

  I slide into the recliner beside her, settling into the ultra-comfortable leather seat. I've been in the palace's theatre, but not the one in the summer house, which is much less ornate. Still, holy shit. "Is this what being a royal is like?"

  "Movies at home? Don't you do that in Kentucky?"

  I laugh, reaching into her bowl for some popcorn. "We don't watch movies in our private movie theaters on our summer estates."

  "Okay, what do you do in Kentucky, then?"

  I shrug. "There's never really been much to do in my town. Outdoor stuff: fishing, mudding, tubing down the river, drinking moonshine."

  "Mudding?"

  "Oh, good Lord, of course you've never been mudding."

  "Sounds dirty."

  "It's fun. You go tear up a muddy field in a truck."

  "Yeah, sounds real fun," she says, giving me a skeptical look.

  "Out here in the country, you should be tubing. You'd like that. You have the perfect river for it back behind the house. I bet you have good fishing out there too."

  "Rafting, you mean?"

  "Tubing ain't the same thing as rafting," I say, laughing. "Tubing is floating down the river with a case of beers and some music."

  "My childhood involved music lessons and etiquette lessons and frilly white dresses at polo matches."

  I throw popcorn at her. "Wah, wah, wah," I tease. "Was your diamond tiara too heavy? Don't try to impress me with your tragic upbringing, Poor Little Rich Girl."

  She laughs as she fends off my popcorn assault. "Stop, stop! I'm saying your childhood was probably more fun than mine."

  "Yeah," I admit as a sudden wave of nostalgia for my hometown hits me. "My parents are good people. My town is full of good people. It's shrinking, though, now."

  "Why?"

  I shrug. "People moving to cities."

  "Moving to different countries," she adds.

  "Yeah, that too. The mine shut down, which made it hard for most of the people in town who worked there."

  "That's sad," she says. "You miss Kentucky, don't you?"

  I try to shake off the feeling of nostalgia. "Of course. You'd miss Protrovia if you left."

  "Sometimes I think I would," she admits. "But lots of times, I don't know. When I was a kid, I used to pretend I wasn't a princess."

  "Don't most little girls pretend to be princesses?"

  "Don't judge. I know it sounds ungrateful, the girl who has everything wanting to be a regular person."

  "It's okay, I already know you're a spoiled brat," I joke.

  She pelts me with popcorn. "Asshole."

  Then we're both quiet and settling back, neither of us saying anything as we watch the movie. The silence is comfortable. Hell, just being with her is so damned comfortable now. Logically, I know that getting comfortable with her like this is too fucking dangerous for so many reasons. The problem is that I find myself wanting to be like this with her, hanging out in pajamas and bunny slippers, a regular girl without a tiara or duties or a rich family or any of the expectations that come with privilege. Every part of me screams that she's not a regular girl and she's never going to be one. To think of her as anything other than a princess is delusional.

  So I focus on the movie.

  At the end when the girl lists everything she hates about the boy (i.e., everything she loves about him), Alexandra sniffles. I whip my head over to look at her. "Did you just sniffle?"

  "Don't look at me like that," she orders. "It's allergies."

  "Your eyes," I say. "Did they just manufacture actual tears? I didn't think that was possible. You don't believe in love or happy endings."

  "Oh, shut up," she hisses. "I told you, it's dusty in here."

  "Yeah, super dusty," I say, laughing, swatting her hand away as she palms the front of my pants. "Are you trying to distract me from the fact that you just showed a human emotion other than anger?"

  "I did not," she argues. She's also fucking persistent, her palm going down my cock. She knows I'm easily manipulated by her touch, my cock immediately hard.

  "You're such a liar," I whisper as her fingers go to my zipper. She takes out my dick and strokes it. "I'm not going to be distracted by your hand."

  She laughs. "Yeah, you're real focused," she says. Her thumb catches the pre-cum that already leaks from the tip of my cock. "Besides, I do believe in happy endings."

  "Really?" I ask as she strokes me.

  She gives me a mischievous grin. "Well, I believe in these kinds of happy endings."

  Then she jerks me off, right here in the private movie theater in the summer house.

  37

  Alexandra

  The rest of the summer flies by. I should hate it here in the summer house, holed up and removed from all semblance of civilization and culture. I should despise being cooped up here with my father and his future bride and my brother and my new stepsister, except I don't.

  Of course, I hardly ever see any of them. Albie and Belle are busy making eyes at each other most of the time, and the other part of the time they're hidden away somewhere hooking up. Albie still won't admit he's with her, so I pretend I don't see the way they look at each other. Thankfully, my father and Sofia are the same way (as totally repulsive as the thought of that is) – but at least they're keeping to themselves and not giving me grief.

  Sofia and I are in a tenuous state of détente. We're polite in public, even if I don't like the way she's blown in here and tried to take my mother's place. But she has taken my father's attention off of me, which isn't the worst thing in the entire world, either.

  All of this means that no one has seemed to notice what's been going on between me and Max. My father has taken the position that as long as I'm here at the summer house and out of the headlines, he's fine ignoring everything else. Not that anyone has seen anything – despite how careless Max and I were to hook up during the fitting session for my bridesmaid dress – and we haven't nearly been close to getting caught any other time.

  For the first time in my life, I've been content. Happy, even. I've been happy holed up here with Max. I've never wanted to spend time with just one person before, but things are different with him.

  Except that the summer is drawing to a close and that everything will change once we return to the palace. My father will get married, and with that comes increased scrutiny. Insane levels of scr