Page 6 of Her Bossy Bodyguards

No.

No. No. No.

Zeke’s voice was suddenly right beside me, his delicious self only a few inches away. I turned my head away from his voice, not wanting to make direct eye contact, not wanting him to somehow read my mind and know that I was just some overly horny virgin who wanted him to be herfirst.

Or maybe my second, if Kingston wanted to have the first turn.

“I know,” I replied and took in another breath. “I was just…”

“It’s alright,” he interjected. “Not always sticking to your routine is good. It makes things harder for people who want to hurt you. Makes you harder to predict.”

“Would you say I’m predictable so far?” I asked, finally turning to look over at him, finally having the strength. “Since you’ve been following me for a whole week?”

“I wouldn’t say you’re predictable, no.” Zeke smiled.

“What makes you say that? I mean, pretty much all I do is go to school and back to my apartment every day,” I joked. “That sounds pretty predictable to me.”

“I don’t think Kingston would want me to say what I’m thinking, Ms. Hanson, even though it counts as relevant intel.” Zeke’s smile turned into a wide smirk. “So I’m not going to say it.”

“Oh, come on. You have to tell me now,” I replied, curious about what was on his mind. “What were you going to say?”

“Fine,” Zeke relented with a loud sigh. “I was going to say, Ms. Hanson, that the most unpredictable thing about you is that you don’t seem to have a male partner in your life.”

“Why does that make me unpredictable?”

“Because it shows that there’s no direct pattern with you,” Zeke explained. “A beautiful young woman without a beau? It’s unusual, in and of itself.”

Zeke’s face then shifted into a blank expression. “Unless, and forgive me if this is overstepping, Ms. Hanson, your relationship with Kelly Thomas is more romantic than platonic.”

“Kelly’s not my girlfriend,” I clarified with a small chuckle. “I mean, she’s my friend and she’s a girl, but she’s not mygirlfriend. I’m single, actually.”

“Good,” Zeke replied, nodding toward the path ahead. “You should get to class now, Ms. Hanson.”

“Class. Right.” I nodded right back, my feet already carrying me further down the sidewalk.

Good?

Why did Zeke think me being single wasgood?

And why were there suddenly so many damn butterflies in my stomach?

Chapter 4

Zeke

This job was getting harder by the day.

And it wasn’t for the usual reasons, like having to stay up overnight several times in a row or trying my best to gauge whether a passerby happened to have a loaded weapon in their pocket. The only difficult thing about this job was keeping my distance from Natalie Hanson, pretending like I didn’t notice the sly way she looked at me out of the corner of her eye, acting like I didn’t care when she’d get undressed in front of her window, knowing full well we had surveillance set up around the outer edges of her windowpane.

I couldn’t tell if she was flirting with me or just fucking with me. It’d been a week since we’d really had any kind of conversation with each other, but I would’ve sworn that she was trying to tempt me into something Kingston would’ve definitely had my head over.

Fuck.

Maybe not. Maybe Natalie had no idea what she was doing.

Maybe this was just a psychological thing.

Although talking to her before she walked to her literature class, it had seemed like she was blushing for the entire conversation. If I didn’t know it was against protocol, I would’ve asked her what was making her blush, wanting to know if I was making her nervous because she was afraid of me or because she wanted me.

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