Page 29 of The Billionaire Bodyguard Next Door

I launched into motion, following behind her and shouted, “I’m not done talking.”

She flipped me off. “Sucks for you, because I am.”

“You need to at least take those earbuds out. You can’t hear the oncoming traffic.”

She tilted her head while maintaining her steady pace. “And yet I can hear you perfectly.”

The woman stopped at the next light, bouncing on the balls of her feet to keep her body warm. When the light turned, she glanced left and right then proceeded to cross. I kept pace next to her.

She threw me a nasty look. “Gohome.”

I glanced at Luna. Her shoulders were tense, and she had a look in her eye I didn’t like. “What’s wrong?”

She didn’t bother to look at me. “I already told you. Go home.”

That response didn’t sit well with me. Sure, I knew she wanted me to scram, but the way her body tensed reminded me of fight-or-flight mode. My senses were screaming at me, something about her reaction felt overblown. Sure, I may have scared her, but that would normally have been a temporary reaction, something easily shaken off. Either something else was bothering her now or something happened in the past.

I knew that mode and I knew it well. Seen it dozens of times with the people I’d served with. I saw it with clients my people and I were assigned to protect.

Because of this experience, I knew how to approach people in that mode. As frustrating as it could be, it wasn’t about approaching it directly. You had to let the person come to you in their own time.

And I could be patient.

I kept pace beside her. “I might as well accompany you for the rest of the jog. I’m a completionist.”

“Don’t I know it,” she said with a wink and a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, even if her tone had oozed sex and implication.

Danger, Will Robinson.

I shifted, grateful my pants had extra room. The last thing I needed was to sport a boner while jogging next to a woman in the middle of the night. I refused to become the kind of creep I was out here to protect her from.

Luna sped up until we made it to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. “Are we really crossing the bridge right now? It's the middle of the night.”

We’d already logged a mile and a half, and I anticipated we’d turn around any minute now and make the return trip.

“I’m just getting started.”

CHAPTER10

Luna

“I'm just getting started.”

If that was how he wanted to play it, then game on.

I hadn’t meant to go this far. Honestly, I thought I'd jog a mile or two, just a little loop and then go back home and stretch while watching the newest BBC version ofEmma.

But then he scared the absolute shit out of me. My heart was still racing, and it wasn't from the exercise. My body needed the run at this point, and I had to keep going until the adrenaline fled my body. It reminded me too much of theothernight that I couldn’t stop thinking about—the night just a few days after I slept with Beck.

Thatnight had haunted me and probably had more to do with my inability to be intimate than Beck’s prowess ruining me for all other men.

Now, in this moment, despite the futility of it, I tried to escape Beck. I sped up as fast as my legs could carry me, but Beck kept pace with me. It was too much to hope that he couldn't keep up. The man did serve overseas and ran an elite bodyguard business. Being in shape was basically a job requirement.

That didn't make it okay for him to hijack my thinking time.

The fact that he thought he could just grab me off the street and make me go home was outrageous. Nearly as outrageous as my current quest to span the Brooklyn Bridge before circling back toward my brownstone.

I groaned inwardly at my own stubbornness. I didn't usually run this far, and the bridge felt like a fun-house mirror, forever elongating.

---