Page 8 of Guarding Her Love

As it turned out, Dad was cheating on mom with his secretary, a twenty-two-year-old, who I later found out was a dominatrix. Yeah, I guess my dad is a sub. Oh, and I found out when my friend Kelly at school told me she found my dad’s profile on one of those fetish websites and showed it to me.

Awkward doesn’t even begin to explain how that felt.

So I don’t know if I was brainwashed by my mom, or whether seeing their relationship collapse just made me cynical, but any time a guy ever expressed any interest in me, I ran for it.

And it’s not like I never got any attention either. Senior year of high school, Bret Garret, the captain of the lacrosse team, asked me to the Homecoming dance. I almost said yes, but then I remembered what happened with my parents and convinced myself that he just wanted to get in my pants.

See, it actually became widely known at my school that I had never hooked up with a guy before. They called me “Joyless” and the guys started taking bets on who could get with me. I never heard Bret’s name mentioned when it came to that, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I stayed single all through high school, and now, at nineteen, I still haven’t gotten past first base with a guy.

“All clean?” Dawson jokes as he wraps me in a big, soft towel and takes my hand to help me out of the shower. I just smile, so lost in my own thoughts that I don’t even know what to say. I’m still coming down from the adrenaline rush of almost dying, and even if that hadn’t happened, I’m pretty much smitten by him.

His body is something they’d use to sell sports supplements to guys. His abs are more defined than I ever thought abs could be, and if I was looking at his picture online, I’d be tempted to believe his biceps were photoshopped.

I realize I’m staring, and with great difficulty, I tear my eyes away from him as he puts a towel on my head. I twist it around my hair and step into the living room and plonk myself down on the couch. I don’t know what else to do – all I know is that I want to be here with him.

I hear his footsteps as he heads into the bedroom, and when he returns, he’s wearing a tank top and a pair of sweatpants that do nothing to hide his boner. Again, I try not to look, despite the hot feeling between my legs.

“So you wanna tell me what that was all about?” he asks, taking a seat beside me. “It’s not every day that I save a gorgeous girl from a couple of Russian assassins.”

Gorgeous girl? My heart flutters and I take a deep breath. No one’s ever referred to me as gorgeous before.

“I—it’s a long story,” I tell him.

“We’ve got plenty of time.” He smiles. “Do you want some more te

a?”

I nod. “Yes, please.”

He gets up and heads to the kitchen and returns with two mugs. He hands one to me and takes a sip from his, all the while keeping his eyes on me. I feel like he can see right through me – like there’s nothing I can hide from him. Normally, a feeling like that would terrify me, but with Dawson, it feels…safe.

“So?” he asks. “Lay it on me.”

“Senator Bryant,” I say with a sigh. “You know him?”

“Sure.” He nods. “Isn’t he that prick that said something about women not being cut out for politics?”

“That’s the one!” I reply. “So he…it turns out that he…”

My voice trails off as my adrenaline spikes again.

“He what?”

“I—I really shouldn’t be talking about this…”

“Joy,” he says. “I saved your life. The least you can do is tell me why I had to. You can trust me.”

I look back at him and see nothing but truth in his eyes.

“I know I can,” I tell him. “Okay. Senator Bryant is running a sex-cult with women trafficked from Eastern Europe. I found out about it, and now he wants to kill me before I can tell anyone.”

Dawson’s eyes narrow. “That explains the Russians.”

“What Russians?” I ask.

“Those two men who were after you,” he replies. “One of them had a Russian Mafia tattoo. He must be working with them.”

“Ugh,” I groan. “So it’s worse than I thought.”

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