Page 4 of Billionaire Bodyguard

“I hate you. You know that?” I growled at the immovable, infuriatingly handsome and frustrating man blocking the exit to my home.

“All I said was, wait five minutes and I’ll escort you,” he replied evenly, nonplussed by my outburst, the most recent of hundreds over the past four years. Clad in a perfectly crisp bespoke suit that fit his body to a tee and emphasized his wealth and power, Adler rarely broke character as my stone-faced bodyguard.

Rarely except for when he climbed into my bed in the dead of night when all the shadows of the past loomed closer.

To be sure, he wasn’t there for sex. I couldn’t imagine him getting into my bed for that.

Well… No, that wasn’t right. Icouldimagine it. Ihadimagined it. Many times. But actually happening? Yeah, no. Sex with him wouldn’t happen…never…ever. When he slipped in next to me, it was only to comfort me after nightmares. To protect me from the demons that tormented me—just an extension of his bodyguard duties, I supposed.

The rest of the time, I got this. My ever-present shadow and all-too-often roadblock. Adler excelled at being unemotional, ultra-reasonable—and at the same time exasperatinglyunreasonable—stoic, and more unmovable than my own personal Stone Henge.

Honestly, the man could make Buckingham Palace guards seem emotive.

“I don’twantyou to escort me,” I argued. “I’m twenty-one freaking years old. I’m perfectly old enough to take my own damn self to wherever I want to go.”

I just needed to escape here. My home was completely new in the past two years, but after my nightmares, the echoes of the past still lingered. I needed to get away.

His arms crossed, his biceps bulging against the fine fabric of his suit and his pecs stretching his crisp white button-down. “And where do you want to go?”

Where? Anywhere else. I didn’t have a specific destination in mind. A nail salon, a coffee shop, the library or a bookstore, a subway train to nowhere… I just wanted to go out. On my own.

Not that I’d admit it to Adler.

I threw my hands into the air, my palms toward him. “You know what? Never mind. I’ll go just back to my room—the room that’s insidemypenthouse for God’s sake—and rot some more in my gilded prison. And you do whatever the heck it is you do in the office—that’s inmy penthouse!”

Ending my tirade on a yell, I spun on the ball of my foot, snatched up my purse, then stomped back to my bedroom—the largest of the four in this place. It was the only one that would ever be occupied permanently because I would never meet a guy to make a family with. Strike that. I’d met the man I wanted, an irritating, annoying man. He was the only person I wanted to fill the position as my life partner and father of my imaginary children.

But he wasn’t remotely interested in me, so I’d probably die alone. Alone but well protected.

The slam of my bedroom door failed to satisfy me since my expensive jail had fancy air hinges or whatever the heck they were called. The door shooshed closed quietly, resisting when I shoved it to move faster. I was so sosoordering new hinges off the internet. I’d install them myself if I had to. I’d spent a good deal of my life poor; I was handy enough to put in new hardware.

I flipped the lock, though I was sure Adler wouldn’t follow me, then sank down, sliding my back against the slick dark-stained wood until my butt hit the highly polished hardwood planks of the bare floor.

I hated this. I was twenty-one, but I had less freedom than when I’d been a teenager. I almost felt guilty. I was the selfish, ungrateful half-sister to my sister’s Cinderella story. I’d been given everything I could dream of, right down to an exorbitant allowance that I barely spent, just building up in my bank account.

Adler was part of the deal that came with the new life I’d been thrust into at seventeen. Getting to see my sister after she married a prince? Check. Penthouse so I had the illusion of freedom? Check. Online college? Check. An allowance so I could have any material item I could ever desire? Check. Sounded like a dream.

But all of it came with a stipulation. I posed a vulnerability for my sister, a possible target to coerce access to her. Because of that, I’d been given everything behind Door Number One, aslong as I consented to constant protection. No agreement, no access to my older sister, my only living family member.

Of course, I’d said yes. Truly, I didn’t care about all the trappings of wealth. Sure, they’d been fun at first, every poor girl’s dream, but it grew old. All I really wanted was my family. Without my compliance, I wouldn’t even have that.

So Booker, my brother-in-law, gave me his prized personal protection guard, his best friend, Adler. The poor guy had ended up demoted from guarding a prince to watching a girl twelve years younger than himself.

And Adler had been my bodyguard since he and Booker had rescued my sister, Marigold, and me from Rod, the deranged pervert who’d kidnapped us. Marigold had been lucky. He hadn’t had much of a chance to do anything to her. Me…

Well, the guy was her stalker, and I was collateral damage.

I’d been his captive for two weeks.

Now, I had nightmares.

And coping mechanisms no one knew about.

And a bodyguard who didn’t give me an inch.

For my own protection.

Ridiculous. The person who’d taken me was in prison, and I wasn’t a royal like my sister. None of it was formysafety.

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