Page 67 of The Bodyguard

“Will you tell me more?” he asked again.

“No.”

“Ahh.” He put a hand over his heart. “That hurts.”

“Give me a break, Sawyer. When I said that…” She wrapped both hands around her water bottle. “We were in this dark, warm, safe cocoon.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “In the light of day… that seems like a crazy ask. An inappropriate one.”

He eyed her. “Inappropriate is subjective.”

She blinked hard, and pink tinted her cheeks again. “True…”

Angela had said “practice.” That idea had an end goal he could work with. They would return home and stay friends. “Not exactly friends with benefits. But more like a situationship.”

Her unreadable stare offered no answer.

“Ange?”

“I don’t get the difference between the two.”

“Friends with benefits is more, ‘I’m bored, let’s hook up,’ and this would be more, ‘Kissing you at the beach was better than my vivid imagination, and I want to do it again.’”

Her jaw fell open.

Sawyer added his last selling point. “Given what happened in the water, I think it would be very,veryfun.”

Her face broke. She half laughed. “Yeah. But here’s the catch, remember? I…” She pushed her loose hair behind her ears. “Have no experience with any of this. My last relationship was such a dud that it was a business plan I didn’t notice.”

“Ange, you fuckin’ stopped my heart with that mouth of yours. So let’s consider that you may not realize you know what you’re doing, but”—he inched closer and lowered his voice—“you’re amazing at it.”

Her jaw fell open again, and her pink cheeks turned scarlet. “Oh my God, would you stop?”

“Only because you asked.” She had no idea what it was like to be wanted. His pulse strummed in his neck.

“Kissing you.” She shook her head and avoided meeting his eye. “That was the exact opposite of Paul or anything in my past. And I don’t—I can’t—”

“You sure as hell did something earlier.” He finally caught her gaze. “You can do that again.”

“I don’t know what I did. It was nothing like with—”

“We’re not talking about the past, remember?” That was one of the reasons this arrangement would work so well forhim too. “We’re talking about a here-and-now situation that’s…” Mutually beneficial? No, he wanted more than great sex.

“Exploratory,” she offered with an endearing mixture of nervous energy and excitement. “Experimental—”

His eyebrow arched. “Fun.”

Angela inhaled and squared her shoulders. “Fun.”

He grinned. “You suddenly look terrified.”

“I kinda think I’m going to pass out or puke.”

He couldn’t stop from laughing. “That’s the way to get into my pants.”

She smacked his arm. “Sawyer Cabot.”

He didn’t miss his moment. Sawyer tugged her out of her chair and into his lap. Just like in the ocean, her arm slid behind his neck as though they’d fallen into bed a hundred times before. Sawyer was acutely aware of his heartbeat. It drummed slowly and heavily in his chest, mismatched with his breathing, which now felt like a tornado in his throat. He had to think to breathe, which was a hell of a problem. “All jokes aside. Do you trust me?”

Her breath hitched. “Without question.”

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