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Sneaking around, because when Chelsea wasn’t disappearing in the daytime, she was disappearing several nights out of the week, again with her bag. She didn’t volunteer where she was going, and every time he asked, she ignored him. Not rudely. She’d just wink and give a cheery laugh and say that it was part of their agreement, and if he wasn’t going to open his locked room, she sure wasn’t going to tell him where she was going.
Except his locked room was just full of drawings. Not particularly good drawings, either. And when she came home? Half the time she came home with bruises.
So to say he was concerned was an understatement.
The sleeping arrangements were a torture he hadn’t foreseen. Every night, she showed up at his door to the point that he’d come to expect her in bed with him. And after a few nights? She’d stopped “dressing up.” Since he was going to be in his boxers, she had now started going to bed in a tiny tank top that outlined her perky breasts and pert nipples and a pair of tiny underwear. And he told himself it was fine.
He didn’t mind Chelsea crawling into bed with him. He didn’t mind the teeny tiny underwear. He didn’t mind that she was a clingy sort of sleeper, too, and that he’d wake up with her arms wrapped around one of his, her breasts pressed on either side of his bicep, or that her leg would be kicked over his.
She was gorgeous and half dressed. He’d be crazy to mind it. But that was part of the problem. They were supposed to be just friends, and he was feeling decidedly un-platonic. Every morning, he woke up with a hard-on that he had to conceal. Every evening, he had arousing, incredible dreams about her. She was in his head constantly, the subject of his furtive sketches, and the reason he took many a cold shower that week.
And they were supposed to be platonic for two years .
He was going to die. Blue balls were going to kill him.
The most annoying thing? She constantly referred to him as “safe.” As if he were some sort of nutless teddy bear she could cuddle on and not think twice about. Like he wasn’t a red-blooded male who needed sex.
It was getting harder and harder to keep things platonic, because the more he saw her? The more he wanted to roll her over in the bed and start kissing her. Press his mouth to those full, gorgeous lips, her breasts, her juicy nipples, her bouncy, tight ass that flexed in those tiny panties, everywhere. Everything she was—her personality, her body, her laugh—she totally did it for him on every level.
But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—because he remembered how stricken with terror she’d been at the hotel. He needed to figure her out before they could move things forward.
Which was why he was following the bodyguard he’d hired to protect her.
Which was another thing going terribly wrong this week.
He’d gotten a recommendation for a security company from Hunter, who had his own personal security guard who attended him when he went out in public. He’d called and explained his needs and they’d sent over a man named Rufus.
Rufus was enormous. Six foot tall and easily four hundred pounds, he had a mean scowl that would make anyone step back, and his arms, neck, and ears were covered in tattoos. He was perfect for the job, and Chelsea seemed to like him. Now she took him along when she left, and as part of his tasks, Rufus was supposed to report back to Sebastian.
Except, Chelsea had asked Rufus not to.
So now when he went to Rufus to ask how things were, he got a blank stare. It didn’t matter that Sebastian was the one cutting the check—Rufus’s loyalty was to Chelsea. And really, he was fine with that, too.
But now his curiosity was getting the better of him. Which was why he’d tailed them when they took the subway and headed across town toward a local college, Chelsea’s ever-present enormous bag on her shoulder. She was chatting Rufus’s ear off, which was how they’d managed to not notice him.
The college part baffled him. Was she taking classes? It was Saturday night—who had classes on a Saturday night? In addition, that didn’t explain the bruises.
He grew more baffled as they headed into an arena. Chelsea entered through a back door, nodding at a guard posted there. Instead of following them, Sebastian headed around to the front of the building, following the crowd that was slowly moving inside.
There were flyers and T-shirt stands and he stopped to browse through the contents, not entirely sure what he was looking at. A lot of it was tough-looking girls on roller skates. He picked up a flyer, curious.
“You got a ticket for tonight’s bout?”
Sebastian looked up. The woman in the booth was covered in tattoos and piercings, but her smile was friendly.
