Page 24 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

“Only if you have eyes and a pulse.” He shakes his head still grinning. Then it fades and he furrows his brow. “You fucked her too.” It’s a statement rather than a question.

“She spotted me staking out the refuge from the gym across the road.”

“Ah, the good old gym bunny ruse.” Connor rolls his eyes. “True James Bond style.”

I ignore him. “I took her back to my apartment.” Adrenaline pumps around my veins when I think about fucking her with my tongue, the piercing through her nipple, the way she exposed her clit for me because she knew exactly what she wanted. “She’s like no one else I’ve ever met.”

“Jesus, you’ve got it bad.”

My brother knows me better than anyone else, including Aiden, and he’s right. I already knew it in my core, but now that he’s released it into the universe, I feel like I can finally own it.

“Before you tell me that she was using me for information⁠—”

“Was she?” he asks.

“No. She took my gun last night. She could’ve killed me, but she didn’t, even though I told her nothing; she walked away and then came back again this morning. No questions asked.”

“Did she return your gun?”

“No. She’s loyal to the Pakhan, but she isn’t involved in the trafficking. I’d stake my life on it.”

Call it Irish sixth sense, or intuition, or even just my gut reacting to having my heart stolen, but we all have a past, and her past dwells in the shadows behind her eyes, fueling her vulnerability and polishing that tough veneer.

“How loyal?” Connor asks.

I recall her reaction when I asked her about Ivanov’s operations. The shield shifted back into place tempered with what could only have been bewilderment.

“Would you and I die for Aiden Kavanagh?”

My brother’s eyes narrow while he thinks. “Maybe we should show her what her boss is really made of then.”

“No.” I’m firm. “I won’t force her hand. I don’t want her to question her loyalty because I get the feeling it’s all she has.” She came to me as a virgin for fuck’s sake. “And stealing that from her will make me as bad as he is.”

I never want her to feel that she owes me anything, especially not her life. When she comes to me, it must be because she wants me, not because she has nowhere else to go.

“How does she feel about you?” Connor asks.

I can’t help smiling. “She doesn’t even know my name.”

We reach the putting green, and I watch Connor line up his shot and give the ball a gentle tap that sends it rolling into the hole. He doesn’t gloat. He doesn’t look for praise. He simply retrieves the ball, docks the putter back into his golf bag, and moves on.

“She can’t accommodate your name,” he says as we walk to the next tee. “She’s keeping you at arm’s length for a reason.”

Don’t I fucking know it. “I promised I wouldn’t try to find her.”

“That’s because you’re a decent guy, Finn.”

Connor’s smile when he glances sideways at me lights up his face and makes him look like a child again, a little boy in my old clothes with holes in the knees and sweaters that barely reached his waist. I’d kill with my bare hands for him. I’d take a bullet in the skull every fucking day if it meant he had a future because I can’t change the fucking God-awful childhood he had.

Something else Tamara said seeps slowly through my rose-tinted consciousness.

“She has a sister. She asked me if I knew where she was.”

“She’s missing?” Connor’s curiosity has been piqued.

“I didn’t dwell on it at the time.” Because I was too busy thinking of all the ways I wanted to fuck Tamara. “But she seemed to think that we were involved somehow.”

“Or more specifically that you were involved.”