5

Julius

She surprised me in one way only.

She was unexpectedly… quiet.

Maybe that was because she lived alone, but some part of me had been expecting her to talk my damn ear off about frivolous shit endlessly.

But she hardly even spoke to me.

Hell, she almost never even looked at me.

Sure, that was rude in its own way. But I definitely preferred the silence to her pestering me nonstop.

I also noticed that she was a different person in her home than on the street. At home, she was a little scattered, always having to backtrack and double-check things. On the street, she was cool, calm, and collected. An heiress, through and through.

I guess when you had a public persona, you needed to have that air about you.

I wondered if she even noticed the little trio of young women who’d gaped at her and tried to snap quick pictures when she was waiting for her dog to eat its whipped cream.

As for the flower thing, well, I thought it was maybe from an ex trying to win her back. She hadn’t even read the card, which made me think she already knew who it was from, and wanted nothing to do with them.

When the buzzer rang that evening, it turned out to be a massive chopped salad and three different kinds of wraps.

I had no idea if she ordered so much to feed me, or if she was simply that indecisive. But she really only picked at the food as she walked around the apartment with these fucking gold stickers under her eyes and her freshly washed and dried hair in big ass curlers on top of her head.

She did this, I might add, in nothing but a t-shirt and panties.

I get that she was likely used to having people around the house, invading her privacy, so she started to almost see all of us as furniture, but I wasn’t exactly immune to the sight of her long legs and half her fucking ass exposed in her cheeky panties when she reached up above her head for something in a cabinet.

I wasn’t made of stone.

And she was drop-dead motherfucking gorgeous.

I honestly hadn’t been prepared for all that pretty when I made my way into her penthouse and found her standing there looking like she’d just gotten up, despite it being past ten in the morning.

Sure, her makeup was smeared, and she looked bleary-eyed and dehydrated, but, fuck, pretty.

That gangly kid in the picture Martinus had on his desk had curved out in all my favorite ways. Long, soft thighs, flare of hip, high ass, and a great rack.

Then that face.

Christ, that face.

She had somewhat square features with a very defined jaw, pillowy pink lips, and those ice-blue eyes surrounded by dark lashes.

Then all that long, silky hair that I couldn’t help picturing wrapping around my fist and pulling.

“Fuck,” I hissed, raking a hand down my face as I made my way down the hall toward my room, wanting to put some of my shit away now that I was reasonably sure she wasn’t going to rush out without me.

But to get to my room, I first had to pass hers.

Her door was wide open.

And there she was with her back to me, pulling off the shirt she’d been wearing all day. It was a task that took longer than usual since she was trying not to dislodge her curlers.

Which meant I got a long moment to let my gaze move over her with nothing but her panties on.

She’d already changed those for the night.

She seemed concerned about panty lines because she’d opted for a fucking thong that left nothing to the imagination.

My cock stiffened as I imagined her bent over my knee, that perfect ass splayed over my lap, and my hand coming down on one of her ass cheeks as she gasped and writhed into the pain and pleasure sensation.

Shaking my head, I continued down the hall, partially closing the door to my room as I stood there for a moment, head tipped back, trying to bring some order to the chaos in my body.

This job was not going to be easy if I was walking around with a semi half the fucking time.

Rolling my neck, I turned my focus away from her, looking around my new home for the foreseeable future.

I’d lucked out that she hadn’t taken her all-white-everything aesthetic out on the guest room.

Sure, the walls were white, but it didn’t seem like anything in the penthouse was painted any other shade. It was probably how it had been when she’d moved in.

But the bed itself was similar to her white tufted one, only this one was black. As was the bedding.

There was a framed TV on the wall across from the bed, a walk-in closet, and a bathroom the size of my entire damn apartment.

Again, the bathroom had white walls, but the floating sink cabinet was black, as were the tiles in the stall shower.

I knew that the all-white thing was popular among influencers, but it all came off like a hospital to me. I was glad for a little darkness in my personal space.

By the time I finished hanging up my suits, and putting my toiletries away in the shower and sink drawers, I could hear the click of heels in the hallway.

I damn sure wasn’t letting this woman sneak out on me again.

I grabbed my phone off of the charger, then made my way into the hall, finding her letting her dog out on the balcony again.

She didn’t seem to have a dog walker or anything like that. But for a dog as minuscule as Hugh, her massive penthouse was like walking a damn football field several times a day.

As for Saige, she was clearly ready to party.

Because that was a fuckuva lot of skin on display.

She’d gone with an emerald green skintight dress that showed off most of her legs, and was cut low in the back.

I hated how I noticed there was no way she could wear a bra in a dress like that.

“That’s my good boy,” she cooed at Hugh as he ran back inside, all proud of himself. “Are you gonna take a nap while I go out?” she asked as Hugh ran toward the couch and made his way up his steps to plop down on a pillow.

It seemed the dog was used to his owner’s out-all-night schedule.

I, on the other hand, was going to need to adjust.

Farm life as a kid and teen, then life in the service, made me a very strictly up-with-the-sun sort of person. Even without an alarm clock set, I was up by five in the morning. Out of the service and off of the farm, that was convenient enough to allow me to get a workout in before the day really got going.

The problem was, being up at five meant I was usually dead on my feet by ten at night.

It was nine-thirty as Saige checked the contents of her wristlet, then attached her phone to it, ready to go out for the night.

“Here,” she said, finally turning to me for the first time, giving me a look at the front of her dress and the way it hugged her soft curves.

I forced myself not to focus on the way that, even without a bra, her tits were sitting high, just aching to have a man close his hands around and squeeze, to tease with his fingers and tongue, to slide his cock between.

No.

Fuck.

I needed to focus.

“What is this?” I asked as she thrust something rectangular at me. As I took it, it was heavy in my hand.

“A battery bank,” she said. “I don’t have anywhere to hold it. You have pockets.”

“And by that you meanDo you mind carrying this for me, right?” I asked as I shoved it into my pocket.

“Whatever,” she said, then turned to her dog again. “You be a good boy and I’ll give you a yummy you-know-what when I get home, okay?” she asked, rubbing his head, and then making her way toward the door without another word to me.

When she passed, I got a whiff of her perfume.

That was good, too.

Unexpected.

Not cloyingly sweet.

But almost smoky. Rich. Intoxicating.

I could barely hold myself back from leaning in closer and taking a deep breath.

Lucky enough for me, we were in an enclosed elevator not long after, and I got as much of it as I could want.

On the way down, Saige pulled out her phone, then held it up high as she threw up a peace sign and did a fake smile so big that her eyes closed.

Then snapped a picture.

I made a mental note to find her social media in my downtime, finding myself interested in what she was saying online, how she was projecting herself.

Because that picture was a complete facade as the smile immediately fell and she tapped away at her phone to, I imagine, type up a caption for the image.

“What?” she asked, making me realize she’d finished and noticed I was looking at her.

“Where are we heading?” I asked, not wanting her to think I’d been eye-fucking her.

“A bunch of places,” she said with a shrug, then moved out of the elevator car and through the lobby of her building. “Don’t wait up for me,” she called to the doorman, a different one from the morning. “Where is… oh, hey,” she said, giving a small smile to the man standing beside the town car parked a few yards away from the door.

“Miss Channing,” he greeted her with a much more genuine smile.

He was an old man to be pulling a night shift like this. But he seemed unbothered by the situation as he waited there in his black slacks, white shirt, and black suit jacket—I was almost surprised he didn’t have to wear the stereotypical little hat—and waited for Saige to slip inside.

She did so with a grace I hadn’t expected, her wristlet pressed to her chest, so she didn’t show too much tit, her ass hitting the seat first, then swinging her legs in, knees pressed together tight.

No up-skirt pantyless paparazzo shots like I’d assumed, then.

Or, perhaps, she’d simply learned from past mistakes.

“No,” she snapped at me as I approached the door. “You sit up front.”

Her driver, whose name I knew was Elton from the paperwork Martinus had provided me, gave me an apologetic smile as he slammed her door.

You sit up front.

That phrase had so much snobbery in it, I was actually frozen there on the sidewalk for a second, looking at the car, staring daggers at her through the heavily tinted window. I couldn’t see her. But I knew she was looking. And some part of me needed her to know she was dangerously close to overstepping a line.

“Best be getting a move on,” Elton called, clamping a hand on my shoulder as he passed. “It is going to be a long night.

With that, I climbed into the front passenger seat, having to move one of those airport neck pillows out of my way before I sat down.

I guess that was how he survived the long nights on the town. By sleeping in the car while Saige was clubbing.

Suddenly, I kind of wish I’d gotten the job as her driver instead of her bodyguard.

There was a partition up between us and the backseat, but I could hear Saige’s muffled voice as she, I presumed, called a friend. Or maybe she was posting videos on her socials. Who the fuck knew.

“So, you’re the new one, eh?” Elton asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“Julius,” I said, nodding at him.

“Elton, but you already knew that.”

“How long have you been with Saige?” I asked.

“Me? Oh, since she was about… thirteen,” he said. “Just after her mama passed. Mr. Channing needed someone to drive her and the nanny around. Been driving her around ever since.”

That was, what? Ten years or so?

“How many guards has she gone through in that time?” I asked.

His lips tipped up slightly at that.

“I stopped counting,” he admitted. “But between me and you, those others… she was right to drive them off.”

Curiosity piqued, I tried to school my voice, so it didn’t come across too eager when I spoke again.

“Were they not good at their jobs?”

“They were not goodmen,” was all Elton would tell me, and I felt like he wasn’t giving me an opening to ask more than that.

An old-timer like Elton, though, that really only meant one thing. That he felt their interests weren’t what they should have been.

Had they been inappropriate with Saige?

Was that why she’d made them so miserable? Because she knew she couldn’t fire them or report them, else she’d lose her income, so she did the only thing she could? Acted like a complete spoiled brat to make them leave of their own volition.

“Got a good feeling about you, though,” Elton said.

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because you looked like you wanted to take her over your knee to teach her some manners when she was rude to you back there.”

“I did,” I admitted.

He didn’t need to know that it wasn’t in a parental way. That if I was going to have Saige over my knee, she was going to have her skirt hiked up, and her bare ass right there for me to give a good spanking to, watching her skin go pink as the slaps kept landing, feeling her pussy get wet as…

Fuck.

No.

I had to stop letting my mind go there.

This was a job.

And I was going to keep my damn hands to myself.

“You know where we’re going?” I asked, since Saige hadn’t actually spoken to him.

“Miss Channing texts me her plans. She and her friends are going to Click to start their evening.”

“On average, how many places does she go to on a night out?”

“Two or three, typically. Sometimes less if it is a new club. But two or three seems average.”

“Let me guess, we will be out until three or later.”

“That sounds about right,” he agreed, sounding apologetic. Then, at my silence, he added, “You’ll get used to it.”

I didn’t want to get used to it.

But it seemed as though there would be no choice in the matter as the town car pulled up to the curb in front of Click.

The line wrapped down around the corner of the block. Men in suits. Girls in barely-there dresses and no coats or sweaters to fight the early spring chill.

None of this looked appealing to me.

Elton was out of the car before I could think to move, rushing around the car to open the door for Saige as I finally climbed out myself.

I peeked in the backseat to find Saige staring forward, gaze seeming far away, face blank.

“Saige!” a voice called.

And just like that, I watched a transformation take over her.

A big, fake smile plastered on her face as she climbed out of the car. She flashed that smile to a trio of women waiting on the sidewalk.

There I found a tall, thin blonde in a tight red dress that let her hipbones stick out. Beside her was a shorter Black woman with long braids, and a bright orange dress that would have looked absurd on anyone else. And, finally, a pixie-cut brunette wearing wide leg trousers and an oversized blazer completed the trio. Like she was coming from work… and didn’t know what size she actually wore.

“There she is!” the blonde cheered, arms out toward Saige, then grabbed her wrists and forced air kisses to her cheeks.

“Fashionably late, as always,” the pixie-cut chick said, and I couldn’t help but think there was a hint of disdain in her voice.

Saige didn’t respond to that. Instead, she turned to the woman in orange, telling her how ‘on-trend’ her outfit was.

If I wasn’t mistaken, judging by Saige’s tone and the way the pixie-chick’s jaw hardened, this was somehow a dig to the trousers and blazer outfit.

“Are we ready?” she asked as the blonde linked her arm through Saige’s.

It seemed to me that Saige was the leader of this crew somehow, that she had more social weight than the others. She might have been why they were stuck out on the street in the cool early spring air, waiting for her.

As soon as she arrived, they walked right up to the bouncer, who immediately let them in.

“Ugh, he’s with me,” Saige grumbled when the bouncer tried to stop me from following.

“Right. Sorry,” the man said, looking worried that he might get in trouble for delaying me for even a second, for inconveniencing Saige Channing in any way.

Once I had some free time, likely after some much-needed sleep, I decided I needed to look into not only Saige’s social media, but that of all of her friends as well.

In the grand scheme of things, I guess it didn’t matter who they were and what their connection was to her. But I found myself too curious not to do a little research.

The inside of the club was dark and loud, the crowd a major crush that the girls fought their way through to get to a table in the raised VIP section.

“So, who’s the new guy? He’s cute!” the blonde whisper-yelled to Saige.

“Bodyguard,” Saige said, accepting a round of shots from a scantily-clad server.

“Does he have a name?” the blonde pressed.