Page 27 of Fergus

“You’re so beautiful,” Fergus groaned as he straightened, his gaze devouring every inch of her as his hand moved faster along his aroused length.

Thea gasped as his gaze settled between her thighs before his other hand moved to caress and press against her sensitive nub. She was too sensitive after three orgasms. Too?—

“Don’t move,” Fergus instructed gruffly as she tried to squirm away from those caressing fingers. “I need—” He gave a low groan as his release shot from the bulbous end of his cock, and rope after rope of his cum decorated Thea’s abdomen and breasts.

CHAPTERNINE

Thea gavea surreptitious glance in Fergus’s direction the following morning. He was sitting in the front of the SUV beside the man driving them to the private airfield just outside of Paris where the man had informed them the Wynter jet was waiting to take them back to England.

The other man was very tall and rugged, with lots of salt in his dark hair, and he wore a fitted blue suit with a white shirt and dark blue tie that did nothing to disguise his muscular arms and chest.

He had already been in the kitchen with Fergus when Thea came downstairs this morning and had introduced himself to her as Declan Quinn. The same man Fergus had told her was brilliant at his job and was going to be her personal bodyguard until the problem of her stalker was settled.

Declan appeared to be about the same age as Fergus, but the amount of salt in his hair made him appear older. He also had deep lines etched beside his shrewd and watchful blue eyes. Irish eyes, Thea would guess from his name and the slightly accented lilt she detected in his deep and gravelly voice.

There had been a dangerous stillness about Declan as he checked their surroundings before allowing Thea to leave Fergus’s Paris home. He had also positioned himself so that she was fully protected when he opened one of the back doors of the black SUV for her to climb inside.

Declan gave every appearance of behaving like a crouching tiger about to pounce on its prey if it became necessary for him to protect her.

Thea also knew, having caught sight of it when she shook his hand after the introduction that, despite the law on carrying concealed weapons both in France and the UK, Declan was wearing a shoulder holster and had a gun hidden beneath his perfectly tailored suit jacket.

Fergus didn’t seem to have brought any luggage of his own, and Thea could only assume that was because he already had clothes in his apartment in London. Thea had brought her own small suitcase into the vehicle with her, reluctant to let it out of her sight when it now also contained the pillowcase, not the pillow, obviously, which had been missing until yesterday.

She had been hurt but somehow not surprised when Fergus chose to climb into the front passenger seat of the black SUV parked outside, sitting beside Declan rather than in the back with her. The atmosphere between the two of them had been more than a little tense since Thea joined Fergus and Declan in the kitchen earlier.

She’d been alone when she woke up in Fergus’s bed this morning. They had showered together before going to bed, Fergus holding her as she fell into a deep sleep.

Thea hadn’t thought too much of waking up alone at the time, knowing they were leaving Paris first thing this morning and that Fergus probably had a few personal things in need of his attention before they left.

It was only when she saw the remoteness of his expression, once she had joined him and Declan in the kitchen after she had showered and dressed in comfortable jeans and a T-shirt for traveling, that she’d had to accept that the expected familiarity between them simply wasn’t there. The man could barely bring himself to even look at her.

It didn’t help that Fergus’s appearance was once again formal and businesslike in one of those tailored suits, charcoal gray this time, with a pale gray shirt and silver tie.

He had remained distant when he set out coffee and croissants for her breakfast, his voice lacking any real warmth.

Even then, Thea had tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, there was a third person present, and it probably wasn’t a good idea to let one of his employees realize how personal their relationship now was.

Or, at least, it had seemed so to Thea. Fergus’s distant behavior, as if none of the intimacy between them had happened, told her he didn’t feel the same way about it.

That he perhaps wished it hadn’t happened at all.

Leaving Thea with no choice but to adopt the same polite distance toward him as he had toward her.

Inwardly, she was hurt, of course. She didn’t know what she had expected, but this cold and distant Fergus certainly wasn’t the same man who had made passionate love to her the previous night. The same man whose bed she had afterward shared for the night.

Fergus followed the same pattern on the flight back to England on the luxurious twenty-seater private jet, once again choosing to sit beside Declan rather than with her.

There had been three other men, all wearing formal suits, waiting for them when Declan drove the SUV over to the plane parked on the far side of the small airfield. All the men had greeted Fergus by name before nodding acknowledgment of Thea.

She guessed this was the rest of Declan’s team.

The flight home was so tense and awkward for Thea that, although she had accepted Fergus’s assistance in returning to England on this private jet rather than running afoul of her stalker for a second time by flying from a public airport, she knew she couldn’t accept any further help from him.

Something she intended to make clear to him the moment she arrived safely back at her apartment.

Having a hostile Fergus protecting her, possibly a grudging one, was even worse than having no Fergus or protection at all.

He would probably argue against her dismissing him and his help. She already knew him well enough to understand he was a man who always liked to keep his word. But that was just too bad. Every part of him now screamed that he regretted what had happened the previous night, and that what he wanted most of all was to put distance between them.

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