Page 5 of Her Billionaire Protector

I slide the jacket off his shoulders and let it fall to the floor. He doesn’t stop me. I pause to study his face. I take it in both hands and stroke his mustache with my thumbs.

“I don’t like it,” I lie.

“Youtold me to grow it back. This silly mustache is all for you.” He’s wearing a hint of a smile. I pull him down to my level to kiss him again, and this time he accepts me. His lips part; he slides his tongue the length of mine. He breaks the kiss, but theconversation’s over. “Maybe you’ll like it more if it smells like you.” And he scoops me up off the ground.

It brings me back to those days at his cabin after the car accident. I can’t help it: I give myself the moment, let my body sink into his. I pop open a few buttons on his shirt with one hand so I can feel his skin against my cheek, and it comforts me.

He walks me over and lays me down, and he kneels at the side of the bed. “I missed you, Mia.” He takes my hand in his and kisses the backs of my knuckles.

My heart clenches, slight but unmistakeable. If we’d met before I went undercover—

Stop.

If we met five years ago, which couldn’t have happened anyway, and I became some damn desk jockey, then I wouldn’t be doing the most important work the FBI has to offer. I wouldn’t be fighting to keep women and girls safe from demons like Harvey Blagas.

“Come here.” I slide the spaghetti strap of my dress off one shoulder. “And I’ll show you how much I missed you.”

He flinches.

Armin’s in love. Not with me, he doesn’t even know me. He’s in love with a call girl, or so he thinks, and yet it hurts him to always be reminded that sex is my—herprofessional currency. Which is exactly why I keep reminding him.

But he’s so relentless. He patches up that heart I keep poking holes in, and he comes after me again.

He turns my hand over and kisses my palm. “Did you keep the SUV?”

“No,” I say, turning my eyes upward, to the exposed pipes on the ceiling. “It was too flashy. Too nice. I’m a sex worker, not a hedge fund manager.”

He laughs. It’s forced. He hates my job title.

But it’s none of his business what I really do for a living.

I drag my nails down his forearm, and his eyes flash. Always so responsive, my former sheriff, my billionaire, my mountain man turned bodyguard.

My mind conjures up the last time we were together. He started talking crazy, about killing Harvey himself. Maybe he could and get away with it. After all, heisa very wealthy man. Nothing elevates a man above the law higher and faster than money.

ButIwant to bring Harvey down. Not by murder. Death is too easy. I want him to lose everything, I want him suffering, in prison, for the rest of his life. As a warning shot to all the scum like him out there. And for all the girls whose lives he destroyed. For them, for me. For Nicole.

And that’s why I have to get rid of Armin. He’s in the way. He’s a liability—

“You know what?” He drags me to the edge of the bed, easy for a man of his size and strength, and he licks his lips. “I’llshow you how muchImissed you. How about that?” The gleam in his eyes brings a sly smile to my face.

—a liability I can keep for another hour.

Or two.

He slides my underwear down to my ankles so I can kick them off and he lets his hands linger, warm on my cold feet. His eyes are fiery; I feel it between my legs. He inches my dress up to my hips, parts my thighs, and buries his tongue inside me until he finds the place that makes me clutch at his hair and moan his name.

I can’t deny it. I did miss my mountain man and that hard-working mouth of his.

four

. . .

Armin

“You gotanything to drink in here?” It comes back to me in a rush: Mia always had that wild burst of energy after sex. I’d lay with her and hold her for hours if she’d let me. But she couldn’t be contained by a bed for very long.

“Whiskey. My usual. It’s over there in the decanter.”