ONE RULE BROKEN

Lilly's back hit the wall. Samson was close enough that she could smell the rain on his jacket. Six months, he'd been her shadow. Her protector. The man who told her where she could go, who she could see, when she had to be home. The man who slept in the room next to hers with the door unlocked, as if the danger was the space between them. She shouldn't want him. But here she was craving for him,for his touch and to have him inside her. His tie was loose. His jaw was tight. He was looking at her like she might hurt him. "You keep pushing me," he said. Her pulse jumped. "Maybe you like it." Neither of them moved. Rain hit the glass walls of the penthouse. Inside, the only light came from the kitchen. Half his face was in shadow. "You have no idea what you're doing to me." He put his hand on the wall beside her head. Not touching her, but close enough that she felt the heat from his arm. He was shaking. Samson, who'd faced a man with a knife in a parking garage last March without breaking a sweat, was shaking. "Then tell me," she said. He looked at her mouth. She felt it. "I can't." "Because of your job?" "Because of you." His voice was rough. "You're the only person I've protected who made me wish I was someone else. Someone who could—" "Could what?" He closed his eyes. When he opened them, something had cracked. She saw six months of wanting and not wanting. Six months of standing in doorways while she slept, of learning how she laughed, of watching her hold a paintbrush when she was avoiding something on the canvas. "Could be selfish," he said. "Just once." She touched his chest before she thought about it. His heart was hammering. He sucked in a breath but didn't step back. For six months, she hadn't been allowed to touch him. Professional boundaries. Protocol. The wall he'd built with words like ma'am, and that's not advisable and the way he never used her first name unless he thought she was asleep. "Samson." He flinched. Not from her hand. From her voice, from his name, from the permission it gave. "Lilly." Her name came out broken. "If you don't step back right now, I'm not going to stop." "Then don't." He kissed her like he was drowning. His hands found her waist, lifted her, and pinned her between the wall and his weight. She tasted rain and whiskey, though she'd never seen him drink on duty. She got her fingers in his hair, unfamiliar, intimate, his. This was wrong. She knew it was wrong. He was hired to keep her alive, not to want her. She was paying his salary, or her father's company was, which was worse. There were ethics, contracts, the code he'd quoted the first week when she'd caught him looking at her too long. I don't blur lines, Ms. Mark. That's why your father hired me. But the lines were gone now, and she was burning in what was left. His mouth moved to her jaw, her throat,his hand found her waist and slid down to her thigh, still exploring with his hand, he found cupped her p***y which was already wet and hot. He pulled her pant down, revealing her already dripping p***y, he first started by rubbing her c******s and immediately she vibrated. "Tell me to stop," he said against her skin. "Tell me, and I will. I'll walk out and call Harrison, tell him I compromised the assignment. I'll—" "No." She pulled his mouth back to hers. "Don't you dare leave." He laughed, or maybe it was despair, and lifted her fully. Her legs went around his waist. He carried her away from the wall, through the dark living room, past the windows where the storm raged and the city lights watched. Her back hit the sofa. His weight came down over her. His hands, rough from training and scarred from a past she didn't know, moved over her ribs, her hip, the curve of her thigh. This was the man who'd memorized her schedule, her allergies, her blood type. Who knew she took her coffee black and her wine cold and her privacy seriously. Who'd spent fourteen hours in a hospital waiting room because she'd eaten bad sushi and he'd refused to let her go alone, even though the threat was food poisoning and not a gunman. He knew everything about her except this. What she sounded like when she wanted. What she felt like under his hands. What she would risk for the thing she'd been craving since the night he first stepped into her father's study and she'd thought, dangerous, before she knew his name. "Samson." She moved against him, and he groaned, his forehead dropping to her shoulder. "We can't." But he was still moving, still touching, still lost. "Lilly, we can't. If something happens to you—if I fail because I was this instead of what I'm supposed to be—" "You won't fail." She held his face, made him look at her. His eyes were wild, pupils blown wide. "You've never failed at anything in your life." "You don't know that." His voice cracked. "You don't know what I've done. What I was before your father found me." "Then tell me." He went still. The storm outside seemed to pause with them. "I can't," he said again, but this time it sounded different. Heavier. He pulled back and sat on the edge of the sofa, his back to her. She watched him put himself back together. The tie he didn't fix. The hair he didn't smooth. The mask he didn't quite get back in place. When he turned around, he was Samson-the-bodyguard again, but the cracks showed. She could see them now. She would always see them. "Get some sleep," he said. "We have the board dinner tomorrow. Harrison's sending extra security." "Harrison doesn't trust you alone with me anymore?" His jaw tightened. "Harrison doesn't know. Yet." The word hung between them. He stood and walked to the door that connected their rooms. The door he always left unlocked. She realized now that some part of him had wanted this. Had wanted her to cross the threshold, to break the rule, to make the choice he couldn't make himself. At the doorway, he stopped. Didn't turn around. "The man who threatened you six months ago," he said. "The reason your father hired me. He's not some stalker with a crush, Lilly. He's not going to stop. And when he finds a way through me—when he finds out that I'm this with you, that I can't see straight anymore—he'll use it. He'll use me to get to you." "Then don't let him." Samson's hand gripped the doorframe. She saw his knuckles whiten. "I don't know if I can stop him," he said quietly. "I don't know if I can stop this. That's why I have to try." He stepped through the door. Closed it behind him. She heard the lock turn. From his side. Lilly sat alone in the dark. The storm was still going. She could still taste him on her lips. For the first time, she understood that the danger had never been outside the penthouse at all.