Page 24 of Single Mom's Bodyguards
Fuck.
My hips jerk. I stroke harder, imagining her mouth on me again, wet and willing, her tongue teasing the tip while Huck holds her wrists and I tell her what a perfect fucking toy she is.
I grunt, low and sharp. This isn’t about getting off. It’s aboutpurgingher from my system. Even if I already know it won’t work.
Bailey Beausoleil has always been under my skin. Last night just made it permanent. I groan her name as I come, hard and fast, heat hitting the tile and swirling down the drain. My body shakes, but not from pleasure.
From the knowledge that this won’t be the last time. Not even close.
I stand there longer than I need to—long enough for the steam to vanish, for the reality to creep back in. My hands brace on the tile. My reflection stares at me in the glass.
Still me. Still dangerous. But not in the ways I used to be. Now it’s internal. Silent. A ticking thing I don’t know how to defuse.
I’m the bomb now. I can’t let Bailey take the hit when I go off.
I towel off and redress slowly. Black T-shirt, black pants. Uniform, armor, mask. When I look in the mirror again, the man staring back is crisp and ready. Almost convincing.
But under the fabric, I’m still thinking about the way Bailey looked at me after she came the first time.
I sit on the edge of the guest bed and lace my boots, trying to ground myself. Control the breath. Recenter. Focus on the mission.Keep her safe.Keep the kids safe.
Don’t touch her again.
I tighten the laces like it might strangle the urge right out of me. I know how this works. I’ve seen it before—men letting the job get personal. Men confusing chemistry with obligation. They lose focus. They get reckless. They get peoplekilled.
I won’t be that man. Ican’tbe. Bailey has already survived enough. I stand, roll my shoulders, and walk toward the door. Every step feels like pushing back the tide.
The mansion is glorious, and not only because every part screams Bailey. It’s picture-perfect, down to the handcrafted tile and sculpted ceilings. Like an immaculate Italian villa, one that happens to house a slightly messy family. This is the world I’m supposed to protect.
And I will. I’ll draw the line again. I’ll hold it—if only to make sure she never has to. But deep down, I know the truth.
If Bailey Beausoleil looks at me again the way she did last night, the way she saidsirlike it was salvation, I’m going to break the rules all over again.
I will be just as shitty as her ex-husband. I will take the advantage she hands me. I’m only a man. How the hell am I supposed to say no to that?
7
WESLEY
Three days in,the mansion feels almost quiet enough to trick me.
We’ve mapped the perimeter, replaced the legacy cameras with our own, installed a second mesh on the network so I can sandbox anything hinky, and set up a rolling patrol schedule that rotates every four hours—Huck outside, Sean inside, me floating between ops and everywhere else like a benevolent ghost with a laptop.
It’s Sunday, which sounds restful in theory. Bailey’s upstairs in the studio room working lines, door cracked, voice lifting now and then in that practiced hush actors get when they’re test-driving emotion. The house staff has the day off. The kids are with their father, not due back till tomorrow after school.
The monitors show a long driveway that curves like a cat’s tail, a front gate that would make a bank vault jealous, and a crown of hedges that make the whole place look like a very expensive secret. I’m at the ops desk scanning event logs when the gate bell pings.
Not the intercom call. Just the bell.
“Who’s here?” I mutter to no one, tapping to pull the gate cam feed into full screen.
The gravel easement outside the gate is empty. No car idling, no Lyft sticker catching the sun, no neighbor walking a Pomeranian in a rhinestone harness. I scroll back ten seconds, then twenty.
Nothing.
I split the view to wide, thermal, low-light mono. The hedges ripple once in heat-shadow—breeze—and settle.
Another chime. Same bell. Same polite little doorbell sound, like we’re on a sitcom and not inside a fortress.
