I move through the room, cataloging everything, even though we aren’t officially on the clock tonight. We’re here only as light security, but the need to know my surroundings is always there. Tonight, as always, Captain and I are to protect my boss and half brother, Miles Osbourne, and his girlfriend, Mallory. Mallory is my best friend, so I’ve always got her back, and tonight is no different. We’re meant to blend in, but if something catches our eye we’re to point it out to the security on call. The charity event is auctioning off millions of dollars in different pieces, so there’s plenty of staff to handle this. Miles just likes to take extra precautions. There are art pieces, jewelry, and God knows what else here that cost more than one person makes in a lifetime. So you can’t blame the heightened awareness that’s buzzing through the room.
Moving through the crowd, I try to see if I can lose Captain in the shuffle. I can feel him following me, and I want to shake him. Nothing is happening at the event and I’m getting bored as each second ticks by. The space is locked up tight, and no one looks out of place. I don’t foresee anything happening and I might as well have a little fun. I turn, trying to see how close he is, but I’ve lost him in the crowd. He’s normally easy to spot, towering over everyone in the room, but now he’s the one hiding.
It’s one thing I’ve learned about Captain over the past few weeks—he moves like a fucking cat. I didn’t know it was possible for someone as big as he is to be able to move without making a sound. It’s unnatural and sexy as hell. We both work security at Osbourne Corporation, and technically he’s my boss, has been for years, but most of everything we’ve done together has been on calls or emails. Now I’m here working face-to-face with him every day. So all this is a very bad idea, yet I can’t help pushing for it. Just a little more every day. We work so close together, and it would be awkward if something happened, but that still isn’t enough to shake some sense into me, to stop this game I keep playing with us. Though I’m starting to question if I’m really leading the game at all.
Looking around the room, I still don’t see him, and I wonder with a pang in my heart if he’s left. He wouldn’t leave the event and go home without checking in, but I didn’t think he’d let me slip away from him so easily. Maybe all my pushing is working, and I get angry with myself.
Suddenly he’s on me. His big hands cup my biceps as he pulls me down a hallway. He presses me up against the wall, and his palms come down on either side of my face, caging me in, his giant body in front of me as he leans in and stares. His dark green eyes take the breath right out of my lungs.
“What are you doing?” I manage to whisper.
I look up at him. Even though I’m in these ridiculous heels, he still towers over me. His face is set and completely unreadable, but there isn’t a speck of blue in his eyes right now. Nothing but the dark green, and my stomach tightens as all his intensity is fixed on me. It’s intoxicating to have someone so focused on you. No one has ever cared to watch me like he does.
Except I know why he’s pissed. I might have poked a little too hard before we came here tonight. I let something, a lie, take hold, and didn’t try to stop it. We were both on Miles’s and Mallory’s details today, but I’d sneaked out and gotten Mallory a pregnancy test. Of course Captain caught me, because he catches everything. He never misses a beat and I wonder if he has a photographic memory like I do.
When he’d seen what I’d purchased, his whole body locked up. He assumed it was for me, and I didn’t correct him. I let him believe I was the one who needed the pregnancy test. I did it to piss him off. It was the one and only time I’d gotten a real reaction out of him—something that wasn’t a mannerly gesture. I’m sure his mom taught him to be polite when he was growing up, in a perfect house with his parents and three point two kids and a dog named Spike that stayed inside his white picket fence. I should have said something, but instead I let him believe that I was fucking someone and may or may not have gotten pregnant. Seeing the emotion all over his face should have been worth it, but a knot in the pit of my stomach told me maybe I’d taken it too far.
He pulls one of his hands from the wall, dropping it to my hip. I should push it away, but instead I stand there frozen, waiting to see what happens. His big palm rests on my hip, and he wraps his fingers around me. He’s touched me before, but not like this. At work when he touches me, it’s with a little too much ease. He started out only brushing past me, but then it progressed to tucking my hair behind my ear. No one touches me, except for Mallory from time to time. But the more time Ryan and I spend together, the more he does it. Like he’s been doing it forever. Like we’re lovers. As if it’s his right to do so.