Serena stopped, every inch of that fair skin flushing in an instant. Yes. She liked that idea. He was going to have to read some of those books. Her laptop was open on a small desk in the corner. Her whole living room seemed to have been converted to a soft, feminine office. She’d been working, walking around her office and dancing. He wasn’t sure how the dancing helped, but he’d liked it.
“Let me go, please.” Serena’s voice was hoarse from the screaming, but there was a tight control to it.
Jake hesitated. “Are you going to be calm now?”
“Yes,” she replied, going completely still in his arms. “Now that I know you’re not here to kill me, I think I can be calm. You aren’t here to kill me, are you?”
Adam smiled before taking another sip. “Not at all. We’re here to congratulate you. We’re taking your case, sweetheart. We’re your new bodyguards.”
Chapter Five
Serena forced herself to calm down. Her heart was racing like a runaway freight train. She clutched the phone. Her bedroom was down the hall from where the two men who had invaded her home sat, but it still seemed a little too close for comfort.
“I want them gone.” She peered around the corner and could see Adam sitting back, her traitor dog’s head in his lap. She’d thought he was hot before in his perfectly cut suit. Now that he’d ditched the tie and jacket, she could see hints of just how cut his body was. And she’d felt for herself just how fit Jacob Dean was.
And how hard his cock could get. There had been no way to mistake the fact that once she’d started wriggling around on him, he’d responded. And so had she once she’d realized that he wasn’t there to hurt her. She’d felt a deep pull on all of her girl parts. She needed to get laid. And not by someone like Jacob Dean.
There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetie. Ian wouldn’t have assigned them if he didn’t think they were the best men for the job. I know you don’t know Ian Taggart, but he’s an honorable man. I trust him. My brother thought he could walk on water.”
Serena softened. She knew Lara’s story. She knew how much she missed her brother every day. “Why can’t this Ian person babysit me?”
“Ian is the head of the company. He can’t be with you twenty-four seven until this asshole is caught. And it’s a bodyguard, not a babysitter. You are in danger. Don’t you dare not take this seriously.” Lara’s sharp voice practically cut through the phone. When Lara loved someone, she could be fierce about it. It made her a hell of an agent. She viewed her clients as family.
“I am taking it seriously. I promise. I just wish they hadn’t broken into my house and caught me in my underwear.” That had been past humiliating. She’d ditched her PJ pants because the house had gotten warm. At least she’d managed to leave her tank top on. She really wished she hadn’t taken off her bra though. She could just imagine what those two intensely fit men had thought of her cellulite and her saggy boobs.
Lara laughed. “Oh, no. Did they catch you doing that crazy dance thing you do when you can’t quite figure out an action scene? Or did they catch you with the ménage dolls?”
She sometimes used dolls in order to get down the physicality of a love scene. She’d rapidly discovered that male dolls were deeply inflexible, so she had to use three ballerina dolls to make things work. Luckily, they were hidden in her desk drawer. “The dancing thing.”
It made her weird. She knew that, but she’d given up on finding a man who would understand her a long time back. Her friends got that she thought better while singing and dancing. They ignored it when she talked to herself because she was working on dialogue and made crazy hand gestures. They didn’t care that she non-sequitured her way through life because she had a million ideas going at once.
They didn’t make fun of her.
“The dancing thing is cute,” Lara assured her. “Ian told me that these guys know what they’re doing. Adam Miles and Jacob Dean are former Special Forces. They worked with Ian’s brother, Sean. He speaks very highly of them. They’ve been working in the private sector for five years. They’re the best in the business. And this is only until we figure out who this asshole is. I promise Ian is working on that, too.”
The cops hadn’t done much. At least if they were paying these guys, they might actually look into it. She didn’t have a problem hiring a security firm. But she did have a problem with Adam and Jake. “They’re already making fun of me.”
It was stupid. She was a twenty-eight-year-old woman. She shouldn’t give a crap what people thought, but it hurt. She’d gotten the crap kicked out of her about a million times since she’d started writing erotic romance. She’d thought she could be happy and proud telling everyone that she was a published writer. Her aunt had asked when she was going to write a real book. Her husband had read it and promptly divorced her because he hadn’t meant to marry a woman of her obviously low character. She couldn’t even find writer friends outside of her genre. The one writers’ group she’d gone to had asked her to leave because they didn’t want her to tarnish the chapter’s image. She was sick to death of being made fun of.
Lara’s voice turned cajoling. Serena had to smile because she’d heard Lara use the same tone on authors who went all diva on her. “What did they do? Look, sweetie, guys don’t understand romance. I know your covers are salacious, but they sell books. You can’t expect some straight guy to get it.”
“No, Lara. They started talking about Doms.” She could still hear her ex-husband berating her for wanting to explore BDSM. He’d called her everything from a freak to a whore. The last thing she needed was two bodyguards who thought they could look down on her.
There was a long pause. “What exactly did they say?”
She felt her whole body flush. She looked around the corner to make sure they weren’t listening in. Adam was still sitting in her desk chair, drinking her damn wine. He looked gorgeous. His dark hair fell perfectly over sculpted features. He spoke quietly to Jake, who she couldn’t see.
“Adam made a crack about Jacob spanking me if I didn’t watch my potty mouth.”
Lara’s laugh came over loud and clear. “Well, you can cuss a blue streak.”