Protect & Serve (Love at First Sight Book 3) Page 4

  Not that it made it any better in the long run. If anything, it made it worse. Since we both so obviously wanted it—or more—again, it was that much more difficult to resist.

  Trent was a strong enough man to resist for the both of us. I wished I could have said the same about myself, but there were numerous times as the weeks passed that I almost gave in to the urge to kiss him again.

  Or beg him for even more.

  I leaned back against the couch, my eyes flashing to Trent’s imposing form on the recliner as he stared straight ahead at the television screen.

  Watching movies together had proven to be a very effective way for Trent to do his job while distracting us both from the awkwardness that hung in the air whenever we were in the same room.

  But my mind would inevitably wander from whatever film we were watching to Trent again. He’d stared stoically ahead until he thought I wasn’t looking, but his eyes would always stray back to me.

  On a rare day when my parents were both out of the house for some party I had no interest in attending, Trent finally had enough of the tension. He switched off the screen and let out an irritated sound, causing me to turn and frown at him.

  “What’s up?”

  “Much as it pains me to say this, we really need to talk about what happened.”

  “Really?” I asked as I pushed myself into a sitting position and swung my legs off the couch so I could face him head-on. “Because you seemed pretty content not talking about it.”

  Trent grunted as his eyes rolled. “Yeah, but it’s weird now. We need to clear the air.”

  I had no idea what to say, so I shifted around uncomfortably before making a vague gesture with my hand as I said, “Floor’s all yours.”

  He hesitated for a long moment, clearly at odds over what to say himself. If he expected me to take the lead, he was wrong to do so. While I agreed things were weird between us, I was certain that when he said clear the air, he meant to apologize.

  The problem was—I wasn’t sorry. Quite the opposite.

  Trent proved that my hunch was correct a moment later when he scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck as he said, “I’m sorry. I was out of line.” He paused and let out a long, heavy sigh before he added, “I shouldn’t have… done what I did.”

  I let out a scoff of disbelief before I asked, “Are we talking about the same thing here? Because I swear that I was the one who kissed you.”

  “What you did was hardly a kiss, Ava,” Trent said dryly. “What I did when you started pulling away is the problem.”

  “You and I have a very different definition of the word problem.”

  I chuckled to myself before I realized that I had spoken the words aloud without thinking. He inhaled sharply and I looked up—watching with wide eyes as his narrowed to slits while he regarded me with suspicion.

  “I’m too old for you, Ava.”

  “Says who?” I whispered, gulping when he stood from the chair and started slowly approaching me.

  “Bet your father would,” he heatedly whispered before letting out a humorless chuckle. “Though I think my age would be the last thing on a very long list of complaints your mother would have.”

  If there was ever a way to kill a mood or my enthusiasm—it was definitely mentioning my parents. My mother, in particular. I leaned back against the couch, staring up at him with a frown.

  “Why would you bring them up?”

  “Because nothing can happen between us. Even if you look past your parents and our age difference—I’m your bodyguard. I’m sure there’s some kind of rule about not screwing around with your charge in the handbook.”

  A long stretch of silence passed between us and I looked down at the floor in disappointment. I knew he was right even if I disagreed, and a small part of me felt guilty about accidentally making things worse between us.

  “Is there really a handbook?” I asked quietly, hoping the joke would ease some of the tension.

  Trent smiled. “Nah. It’s more like an unwritten code of conduct.”

  “Your code of conduct,” I said, stressing the most important bit because I was certain that there were other men in Trent’s position that didn’t feel the same way.

  His eyes softened as he said, “I’m just trying to do right by you, Ava.”

  I nodded, grateful when he took the silent gesture as my acceptance and moved back over to his seat. He resumed the movie, glancing back at me and frowning when he realized that I wasn’t looking at the screen.

  No, I was too busy mentally replaying our kiss in my head and trying to fight back the terrible feelings I got as I tried to accept the fact that it was never going to happen again.

  Why was I so hung up on it? Why was my heart insisting that Trent was the be-all and end-all of men for me? Was this what love felt like?

  Growing up as a witness to my parents’ marriage hadn’t really prepared me for it. There wasn’t much love left between them—if there was ever any at all—by the time I was old enough to take notice.

  But even without the first-hand experience, I knew my own heart well enough to know that it was indeed love I felt for him. I didn’t want it to be—not when the chances of anything happening between us felt so hopelessly slim—but there was nothing I could do to control it. And I had certainly tried.

  “Ava? You okay?”

  “I’m—”

  My sentence was cut off by a door slamming so hard that it echoed all the way down into the den. Trent rose from his chair and gestured for me to stay where I was, reaching for where he’d left his holstered weapon before creeping toward the door.

  He cracked it open and started to poke his head out, but it wasn’t necessary. The booming sound of my father’s voice was clear enough for us both to hear. When my mother started in as well, he put away the gun and turned back to me.

  “We should get upstairs. Neither of us needs to hear this.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” I muttered as I heard my mom making a catty remark about my father’s inability to please her. “Back stairwell?”

  Trent nodded and the two of us crept from the room and down toward the kitchen, away from the voices of my parents as they continued to scream at each other. Thankfully, there were two staircases to the upper level on opposite ends of the house, making it easy to slink around unnoticed. Trent had griped about it being worse for security, but he had learned the benefits of it within the first few weeks of his employment.

  We had reason to use the back way more often than he expected. Hiding from their arguments was a pretty common occurrence for me. Always had been.

  After we were safely out of range, their voices still traveled enough for me to hear more than I would have liked. Trent let out a heavy sigh and gestured toward my bedroom door, which I took as a request to call it a night early. I smiled sadly at him before opening the door and stepping inside, shocked beyond belief when he put his hand in the doorway and pushed his way in.

  “Wh-What are you doing?”

  “It’s early. I know if I leave you in here, you’ll just stay up listening to them argue about shit that you don’t need to hear. We can hang out until they stop.”

  “Hang out… in my bedroom?” I asked dumbly, watching as he looked around the room with curiosity.

  My only safe haven away from Trent and my parents was my bedroom. It’s not like he had never been past the threshold, but he had yet to spend a considerable amount of time in it. Especially not a long enough amount for him to nosily look around.

  But the worst part wasn’t his nosiness. No, it was seeing him so close to my bed and wanting nothing more than to have him flop down and beckon me over. My imagination went wild as he stepped further into the room and closer to the place where I so desperately wanted him.

  Trent was oblivious. He gestured to the headphones on my nightstand and dryly asked, “That how you usually avoid this?”

  “Yeah. They’ve never let me have a TV in my room, but I’ve figured out plenty
of ways to block out the noise over the years.”

  He hesitated for a moment, giving me a weird look before he finally asked, “You want me to go?”

  I didn’t say it aloud, but that was the very last thing I wanted. So I shook my head and softly said, “Please don’t.”

  He was getting ready to protest—I could tell just by the look on his face—so I turned away and walked toward my dresser to hide my burning red cheeks from his vision. I figured that if I could manage to make myself appear more at ease about his presence, he might be convinced that we weren’t playing with fire.

  The voices of my parents grew louder as they moved further down the hall and I said a silent thank you to the universe that their bedroom was downstairs. It had saved me a lot of grief over the years and a part of me knew that was the main reason why they had put me upstairs in the first place.

  Trent let out a frustrated groan and stepped over to my oscillating fan, switching it on in the hopes that the white noise would help drown out their voices. It did to an extent, but not before I heard my mom picking the same fight about hiring Trent that she had numerous times since his arrival.

  Suddenly feeling exhausted, I moved over and plopped down on the foot of my bed. I was trying not to strain my ears to listen in on their conversation, but it was a losing battle. I couldn’t not eavesdrop—not when they were so damn loud.

  Trent sat down beside me and the close proximity combined with his scent demanded my full attention. I sucked in a breath and held it, only letting it ease out of my lungs when I felt him put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “Thanks,” I whispered, swallowing hard before I boldly leaned against his side.

  I felt his body tense, but he didn’t push me away. Instead, his hand grew a little more sure of its movements and he rubbed it soothingly up and down my arm, leaving goosebumps in its wake. I knew he felt the reaction he was causing, but he said nothing as he continued to comfort me.

  Only it wasn’t enough for me. It would never be enough.

  When I tilted my chin up and saw him roughly swallow before licking his lips—I knew it wasn’t enough for him either.

  So I did the only thing I could think of.

  I wrapped an arm around his neck and twisted my body until our lips were pressed together—our entire conversation in the den forgotten.

  I expected him to maybe kiss me back for a brief moment before pulling away—which was why it shocked me to my core to feel his arm sliding from around my back and going to my front, pushing my shoulder down until I was sprawled across the bed and Trent was hovering over me.

  “We really gonna do this?” he asked, his voice thick with lust.

  “God I hope so,” I breathed out.

  He licked his lips again, his eyes moving over my face so rapidly that I thought for sure his panic was going to get the better of him. He detached himself from my embrace and moved toward the door, but my cry for him to stop died in my throat when the sound of the lock clicking hit my ears.

  I smiled as I realized that—yeah, we were really gonna do this. Finally.

  8

  None of my previous experience with guys prepared me for the way Trent stared me down as he prowled toward my bed. There was something screaming inside of me to tell him the truth—but words failed me when he crawled up the bed and brought our lips together again.

  I gripped his shoulders tightly, moaning into his mouth as he slid his tongue between my lips and dominated the kiss. My legs wrapped around his hips when an unfamiliar instinct kicked in and he groaned as he lowered his body to fully cover mine.

  My eyes popped open when I felt his hard length pressing against me. Trent pulled away when I stopped kissing him back, frowning down at me for a moment before a smug smirk appeared when he figured out where my shock had come from.

  “You-You’re…”

  “Well-endowed?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with a combination of arrogance and amusement.

  “It certainly feels that way,” I whispered, looking at him with wide eyes as I felt a knot of fear beginning to form in my stomach.

  “It doesn’t just feel big,” Trent said with a cocky chuckle before he dipped down to nip at my neck. When he felt how tense I had become, he pulled away and frowned. “Second thoughts already?”

  “No,” I denied, gripping him tighter when I felt him beginning to pull himself back. “Not at all. It’s just… it feels so… It’s just kind of intimidating.”

  “Maybe it won’t be if you get a little better acquainted,” he suggested.

  I frowned in confusion as he propped himself on one arm, reaching to pry my hand off his shoulder and link our fingers together. He brought my hand to his lips to place a soft kiss to my knuckles before dragging both of our hands down and pressing my palm against the front of his jeans.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed out. I could tell it was long when it had pressed against my stomach, but attempting to curl my fingers around the bulge made the girth all the more prominent. “Can I—I want to see it.”

  I was shooting for sultry, but it came out as more of a nervous whisper. Trent didn’t seem to mind—in fact, he almost looked endeared by my nervousness. He smiled as he sat up on his knees and pulled his shirt over his head before his huge hands went down to work off his belt.

  I was so entranced by the sheer masculinity of his upper body that I didn’t notice what he was doing when he suddenly shifted off the bed. I was about to protest when I saw that he was safely depositing his gun on my dresser before he returned to me.

  With one knee on the bed, he asked, “You want to do the honors or should I?”

  I nodded as I sat up, thankful for the small amount of control he was giving me and I turned until I was staring directly at his cut abdomen. I bit my lip for a moment before I felt brave enough to lean forward to lick them, smiling when I felt the muscles twitching under my tongue.

  I froze when I felt his hand touch my head, but relaxed again when he simply removed the clip from my hair and tousled the strands with his fingers. My hands shook as I undid the button of his jeans and because he was so hyper-focused on me—it was only a matter of seconds before his hands covered mine and assisted me in pulling down the zipper.

  Even though something told me that I should have seen it coming—it was still a surprise when his cock immediately sprang free as he worked the denim down his hips. I inhaled sharply when he kicked them off and stood totally bare in front of me.

  The first thing I noticed was that the scars weren’t just restricted to his face. In fact, the ones littered around his body were bigger and a lot more worrisome.

  “What happened?” I asked as I trailed my hand up his thigh, swallowing hard as my eyes landed on his massive cock. My cheeks flushed, but his eyes had thankfully fallen shut.

  “Mostly shrapnel,” he grunted, licking his lips when my finger trailed closer to his hard length. “A few bullets here and there. Nothing fatal.”

  “Obviously,” I murmured as I faced my fear and took him in my hand. “You weren’t kidding. It’s… fuck, it’s huge.”

  Trent let out a breathless laugh when my fingers wrapped around his length and I whimpered when I realized I couldn’t span the entire girth. For a super-brief moment, all I could think about were the big dick jokes Layla would undoubtedly make if I ever confided with her about Trent’s size.

  All the more reason to keep it to myself.

  His fingers gently encased my wrist and snapped my attention back to him as he heatedly said, “Stand up, baby.”

  I did as he asked, gasping when he spun me around and pressed his front flush against my back while his hands eagerly roamed up my stomach to my chest.

  “You’re so little,” he murmured against my ear before biting down on the lobe. He hummed thoughtfully before he asked, “You ever been with a man like me?”

  I didn’t know if he meant like him in size or in general, but whatever he meant didn’t matter. Either way, the only answer was—<
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  “No.”

  “Think you can take it?”

  The meaning of that question was clear when he ground his cock against my ass. A shaky breath escaped my lips as I struggled to respond.

  “I don’t—I don’t know.”

  Trent slowly ran his hands down my stomach and gripped the hem of my shirt, pulling it up with an agonizing slowness as he whispered, “Guess I’ll just have to make sure you’re good and ready first.”

  My shirt and bra were discarded in a haze of moving limbs and hands and lips and it wasn’t until I felt his cock pressing insistently against my stomach that I realized that he had turned me back around. The pressure was gone as he lifted me into the air by my hips and sucked hard on my nipple, spreading kisses all over my chest before going to the other and repeating the treatment.

  “Ohh, Trent,” I moaned, my head tipping back even as my body tensed from the fear of falling as I dangled in the air.

  The feeling didn’t last long because he tossed me to the bed and rid me of my jeans a moment later. Clad in only my panties, the urge to cover myself was too strong to ignore. I didn’t consider myself shy or anything, but the way he was looking at me made the nerves impossible to fight.

  “None of that, now,” he chided as he climbed up on the bed and removed my arms from where I covered my breasts. “Let me see this sexy little body of yours.”

  How could I argue with that? Trent was gazing at me like I was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen and paired with words that said the same, it was easy enough to shove away my inhibitions. The moment my breasts were uncovered he dove down, pinching a nipple between his index finger and thumb and sucking on the other while his hips thrust against my thigh. I moaned when I felt the stickiness left behind on my skin from the head of his cock.

  I had dreamed of having him for so long that it felt unreal that I was finally getting what I wanted. Trent curling his fingers into the waistband of my panties and slowly easing them down made it all the more real. Some nervousness continued to linger, but I was determined to squash it.

  Because the thing I was the most afraid of was him stopping.