Page 68 of Guarding Bristol

“I need you to arrange for CPS to pick her up here and take her to a new secure location.I can’t leave her without protection.”It was safest for her to be away from him, at an undisclosed site he didn’t know about.When he walked out that door, he wouldn’t be coming back.And if he was captured, this way he wouldn’t be able to give up her location even if they tried to torture it out of him.

Leandro was fanatical, wouldn’t risk leaving any loose ends.Bristol would only be safe once he was eliminated.

“All right.Give me some time to see what I can do.I’ll get back to you as soon as I have an answer,” Diana said.

“How soon?”

“Soon as I can.”

He set the phone down on the countertop.Forced himself to eat the cold toast he no longer wanted.The coffee was almost finished brewing, but he didn’t want that either.He wanted...

His gaze strayed back to the closed bedroom door, and his whole body tightened with renewed urgency.He should just let her sleep.It would be kinder and easier for them both if he just slipped out and went to the meeting without seeing her.Cleaner that way.

Then he heard the faint sound of water rushing through the pipes in the en suite bathroom.The shower was running.

An image of her standing naked beneath the flowing water filled his head.Rivulets of it sliding down her smooth skin, tracing her curves.

His resolve to keep his distance wavered.He’d made up his mind to leave, but right now everything in him was screaming at him to stay.To steal as much time left as he could with Bristol.

He walked over to the bedroom door.Stopped in front of it with his hand on the knob, telling himself not to go any farther.That he needed to walk away now.

But the need to see her, touch her one last time was like a living thing inside him.

He twisted the knob while his heart hammered in his ears, his whole chest burning with a raw hunger he couldn’t contain.

He caught a glimpse of rumpled sheets as his eyes swept past the bed to the bathroom.Faint wisps of steam floated out of the partially open door.

He pushed it open.

Bristol stood with her back to him, arms raised as she washed her hair.Her pose showed off the exquisite lines of her back, the muscles on either side of her spine that flowed all the way down to her rounded ass.

Her head snapped around, her hands still in her hair.Their gazes locked.

A powerful, territorial feeling coiled through his body.

His pulse continued to pound in his ears, all but drowning out the rush of the shower.Touching her again was dangerous.Like taking another hit of an illicit drug that he knew would turn him into an addict and maybe even kill him.He should leave.

Except he couldn’t.Seeing her like that, naked and only ten feet away, knowing he would have to leave her within the next hour...

There was no way in hell he could walk away without one last taste.Without one final chance to make her feel the same way he did.

Holding her gaze, he stripped off his clothes and pulled the glass door open to step inside the enclosure with her.Ready to claim the woman who had turned his world upside down and changed him forever.

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