Muscle for Hire(21)

Tearing through the night streets of Sydney, he headed for the old Hyde Park Barracks. He didn’t question his need to protect her. It was who he was. It was ridiculous, of course, given that she’d just handed Holston his arse with that exquisite spinning kick, but there it was. He not only wanted to fuck her, he wanted to guard her from anything that may upset or unsettle her. One day, no not even that, half a day, and he was completely focused on her emotional and physical safety.

A tight fist of disquiet twisted in his gut. Maybe he really was just a bodyguard? A man with nothing more significant to offer the world than his muscles? Was that truly it?

The answer didn’t come to him before they arrived at the film location.

Nor when he climbed off his bike and crossed to Chris’s trailer before Rowan could slide from the pillion seat.

The silence of the surrounding area put him on edge. As did the darkness lurking around them, barely penetrated by the weak glow thrown by the sparse lights scattered around the fenced-off film set. It was ludicrous to think any possible threat hid in their depths, but he moved as if there was.

Too many years knowing no other way had left its mark. With the suspicious tampering of the trailer’s steps gnawing away at the back of his mind, Aslin couldn’t stop his wary alertness.

Especially when Rowan was so close.

When the door to Chris’s trailer slammed open, his hand reached for a gun he hadn’t worn on his hip for over sixteen years.

“Hiya, Ms. Hemsworth.” Chris’s personal assistant skipped down the once-again aligned steps, a black bag hanging from her fingers. “I’ve packed Mr. Huntley’s hotel key, his cell, a change of underwear and three bottles of coconut water.”

“Thanks, Tilly.”

As always, Aslin’s body reacted to Rowan’s soft American accent. He wished he could understand why. Hell, Nick had lived in New York until returning to Australia, which meant Aslin had too, in a smaller apartment one floor down. An American accent wasn’t exotic and unusual to his ears at all. And yet every word Rowan said sounded sinfully sexy.

Every word. Even something as innocuous as, “thanks”.

He stood and watched the two women, enjoying the way Rowan’s dimple flashed as she smiled at Tilly.

Who are you kidding, boyo? It’s not just her dimple. It’s everything. And the way she handled Holston is just the icing on a very delicious cake.

A cake he really wanted to eat.

The crude thought made his cock pulse in his jeans. A dull ache shot through its length down into his balls, telling him he’d come close to erupting more than once in the last twelve hours.

He drew a slow breath, forcing calm into his muscles.

And tensed instantly when a soft scratching sound rasped on the concrete to his left.

Turning his head, he scanned the blackness engulfing the area beyond Chris’s trailer. The hair on the back of his neck prickled.

There were eyes upon him. He could feel them.

Somewhere in the shadows, someone was—

“Bye, Mr. Rhodes.”

Aslin started at Tilly’s call. He jerked his stare around, just in time to watch the young woman run past him. Straight into the arms of the tall, heavy-set man in a Dead Even T-shirt currently walking out of the darkness.

The man met Aslin’s gaze for a microsecond, and then he was kissing Tilly, his hands gripping her backside before he straightened again.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Ms. Hemsworth,” Tilly called over her shoulder as she and the man made their way back into the shadows.

“She can do better,” Rowan muttered beside Aslin. He looked down at her, noticing the frown pulling at her eyebrows.

“Trouble?”

“Just a bit of a loser.” She pulled a face. “He used to be part of Chris’s entourage. Now he’s the key grip on the film. I think Chris got him the job because he felt sorry about ending his gravy train.”

Aslin returned his scrutiny to the place Tilly and the key grip had disappeared into the night. The hairs on the back of his neck still tingled.

He didn’t like it. His gut told him something was wrong.

“Can you give me a lift to Chris’s hotel, please?”

Rowan’s question drew his attention back to her. She stood on his right, the black bag Tilly had passed to her now hanging over her shoulder, his helmet in her left hand. Those blue eyes of hers seemed to shimmer with an emotion he couldn’t read, a tension stealing through her body once more.

He understood. Twice they’d been interrupted. Twice she’d been given the opportunity to question her actions. He knew she fought what she was feeling for him—the base, physical attraction—and he also knew a thirty-minute bike ride to the Sydney Park Hyatt would only evoke her sexual need again. Holding on to him, her sex pressed to his arse, her breasts crushed to his back…