“Oh, believe me, princess,” he growls into my ear as he leans forward under the pretense of opening the glass door for me. “We’re certainly not done.”
His lips linger for a half a second more on my ear, and the words he says next have me shivering.
“We’re also not done fucking.”
And then he’s all business — all stoic looks and narrowed eyes as he does one last sweep of the crowd before ushering me inside to the cameras, the lights, and the screaming questions.
The whole time, I’m standing there forcing myself to smile. Forcing myself to look the part of the all-American girl-next-door. I’m forcing the idea from my head and trying to convince myself that the cameras and reporters don’t know what I was just doing.
And of course, I’m also trying to force myself to forget the fact that Hunter Ryan just had his fingers in my pussy, and nearly made me come.
But that, as it seems, is impossible to forget.
13.
The worst part of all of these little games and and the back and forth with Hunter is that there’s no getting away from him. There’s no escape from him, since it’s his sworn job to literally be my shadow. Of course the first thing I want to do as soon as we’re back stage at my mother’s press conference is shove him away and stalk off by myself to seethe and chastise myself for being so fucking weak that I’d let him get to me like that again.
Except I can’t do that. The second we walk through those doors, he’s just on me. He’s my shadow; my smirking, cocky, knowing-grin-on-his-stupid-face shadow.
The shadow who keeps making a show of bringing his fingers to his nose and inhaling when no one is looking but me; the shadow that keeps letting his hand trace over the small of my back as he leads me back stage in ways that a normal bodyguard would never dream of touching a charge.
“Stop touching me!” I hiss under my breath as we duck under a hanging curtain in the dark backstage area of the auditorium. There’s hardly anyone back here, which emboldens me to finally whirl and shove a finger in his face.
He licks it.
I roll my eyes and groan as I whirl back away from him and stomp away, only to hear his chuckle following me as he catches up.
“Stop being so touchable then.”
He runs his hands up my sides, and before I can stop myself, I’m closing my eyes and sighing as I sink back into him. It’s dark where we are, lit only by the lights out on stage, and we’re practically alone back here. But it’s still wildly reckless to let myself go like this. It’s insane, actually, to be out in public like this and letting my bodyguard stepbrother run his hands over my sides, his fingers tracing just shy of my breasts as he pulls me back into him. I bite my lip as I feel just how damn hard he is; the bulge at the front of his suit nestling right into the cleft of my ass through my skirt.
There’s a wild cheer suddenly from out in the auditorium, and I jerk my head out to see my mother waving and smiling as she takes the stage, Alec right behind her along with a couple aides as they move towards the microphone array on the podium.
“Hunter, stop it!” I hiss, utterly unconvincingly even to myself as I gasp and let him pull me tight against him.
Reporters are starting to ask questions, and the lights of a hundred camera flashes strobe out on stage, but back here, I’m lost in the heat and the illicitness of it all. I’m gasping as I feel his hands slide over my hips, moving down to rub me between my legs through my formal skirt and my drenched panties.
“You can’t just grope me whenever you feel like it, you fucking caveman,” I hiss. But even as I’m saying it, I’m running my hands over his muscled forearms, scratching my nails over his suit up his arms to his biceps, and then sliding my hands up to the back of his head to pull him down to my neck.
I gasp, a soft sound in the dark of the backstage area as his lips find my neck. He grazes his teeth over my exposed collarbone, making me bite my lip and sink into him as his fingers start to creep lower, to the hem of my skirt-suit.
“I’ll touch you whenever I damn well please,” he growls roughly into my ear. His fingers finally bunch up the hem of my skirt, and he starts to pull it up my thighs. “And I’ll touch you whenever I please because we both know damn well that you’re dying for me to touch you.”
I whimper as his fingers slide across the front of my panties, making me shiver and moan.
There’s another cheer from the audience that snaps me out of the total insanity of what we're doing and I freeze against him for a second.