Page 7 of Alpha Wolf Bodyguard

He reached up and cupped the side of my neck with his palm. “There’s nothing boring about you, Nate. I’ll be back in a minute.” He dropped his hand and took a step back before he looked at me again. “And if you don’t wanna catch an eyeful of alpha, you should stay in here.”

As he was walking away, he lifted his shirt up over his head before disappearing down the hall.

“And what if I want to…” I whispered under my breath.

“Then, by all means, come get some, because I’m definitely not shy.”

I stood there with my jaw hanging open, tempted to follow him. But that was wrong. I hired him to protect me, not so I could peep at him while he was doing his job. As hard as it was to resist, I dropped into the armchair and forced myself to stay there.

Something fluttered in my belly, and my bear seemed to come out of hibernation all of the sudden. No way. We were not doing that right now. I had bigger things to worry about than letting my bear run.

Garin appeared a few minutes later wearing just his pants, but holding his T-shirt in his hands. “Are there any other shifters that live around here?”

“No. I go on walks almost daily, and I’ve never scented anything other than human.”

His eyes narrowed, and he seemed to be contemplating something. “Pack a bag, Nate. We need to get out of here.”

I stood up, panic clenching my heart. “Why? What’s going on?”

“There were definitely a few cats out there recently. Like…very recently.” He grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the staircase. “Just grab a few things that you absolutely need. We can buy the rest as we go.”

I ran up the stairs with Garin hot on my heels.

He pulled his phone out while I grabbed T-shirts and underwear and threw them into my overnight bag. Garin stepped into the hall but was still within my line of sight. He was on the phone for a while, clearly arguing with the person on the other line. But the last thing I heard him say before he hung up was, “We’ll pick you up. Be ready in ten.”

“Where are we going?” I pulled out my travel toiletries bag which already had stuff for a few days away.

“Somewhere safe.” He held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

It was definitely too soon to fully trust this guy, but I handed over my unlocked phone anyway. “What are you doing to it?”

“Securing it. I wrote an app that’s kinda like a secure VPN service for phones. It ensures that your location can’t be triangulated.” He tapped around for a long moment before finishing that thought. “I would tell you just to leave it here, but if you suddenly drop off the map, and I suddenly drop off the map, that’s almost more suspicious than us pretending to be going about our lives in our own homes—without us actually being there.”

“So it’ll look like I’m at home if someone tries to track me?”

He looked at me and grinned. “Exactly. We have a satellite we connect to, and it locks in any location in the world as the point of contact. I’m setting yours to be here, and we’ll need to make a stop at my place, and I’ll lock myself in there.” He did whatever he needed to do to the phone and then slipped his arm behind my back and walked me down the stairs as if someone were about to jump out at any moment.

To make sure I wasn’t missing something in the air, I inhaled deeply, but there was nothing unexpected in my house. Just a whole lot of alpha wolf that almost made me swoon.

As soon as we were outside, I realized I didn’t have my keys. “Should we take my car?”

He glanced at the four-car garage and looked at me. “Let me guess? A Rolls?”

“Bentley.” My cheeks heated up, and I cringed. “I can’t believe I’m so predictably pretentious.” I shook my head. “But in my defense, it was my dad’s car. I don’t drive much, so I never bothered to get a new one. I should’ve just let it get towed last night.”

As we kept walking toward his BMW, I could hear the amusement in his voice. “Towed?”

“Long story, but I had to pay off a morally gray meter attendant last night to let me drive my car away. Honestly, if I’d left it there, we wouldn’t be in this situation at all right now.”

Garin opened the door to his car and held my hand as I slipped onto the passenger seat. “Well, then I have a certain meter attendant I need to thank.” Then he rolled his eyes as if catching himself. “After we survive all this, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Was he flirting with me? It seemed unlikely, but I continued to contemplate that possibility as he put his car in gear and we drove away. Garin was going in random directions, backtracking several times as if he either didn’t know where he was going or wanted to make sure we weren’t being followed.

After a while, I finally had to ask. “Are you still trying to think of a place to go? There’s a nice hotel my company uses a lot.”

“No. My roommate’s family has a house we can use. A cabin, really. Out in the mountains. But we have to make a stop at my place first. ”

I stared straight ahead, imagining what it would be like at a mountain cabin with my gorgeous wolf bodyguard. And then I quickly stopped imagining that because I was getting hard and was afraid I might give myself away if I got too excited.

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