Fearless: (McIntyre Security Bodyguard Series - Book 2) Read online

  Fearless

  McIntyre Security, Inc. Bodyguard Series

  Book 2

  by

  April Wilson

  Copyright © 2016 by April E. Barnswell

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design © 2016 by April E. Barnswell

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author. The only exception is brief quotations to be used in book reviews.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All places and locations are used fictitiously. The names of characters and places are figments of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real people or real places is purely a coincidence.

  To my darling daughter, Chloe.

  To my sister and BFF, Lori.

  And to all the wonderful people around the world who read my first novel, Vulnerable. You made my dream come true.

  Books by April Wilson

  Vulnerable

  McIntyre Security Book 1

  Fearless

  McIntyre Security Book 2

  Broken (fall 2016)

  McIntyre Security Book 3

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Thank You!

  Upcoming New Releases

  Praise for Vulnerable

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I am so not a morning person. But still, I can’t help rousing from a deep sleep when I feel a warm finger skimming up and down my naked spine. The finger morphs into a warm hand that slips down and cups my butt cheek, giving it a light squeeze. The pleasure is so intense I moan and snuggle deeper into my pillow.

  It’s way too early for coherent thought. I know this because it’s still pitch black outside our bedroom window. As usual, someone’s up awfully early. He’s like a furnace, and the delicious heat of his big body radiates outward, sinking into my bones. I press back against him, soaking in his warmth and loving the feel of his bare skin against mine.

  For crying out loud, it’s not even dawn yet, and I’m still sleepy. I groan in objection. “Shane, it’s too early. Go back to sleep.”

  He chuckles at the plaintive tone of my voice. I think he takes sadistic pleasure in waking me up early.

  “I can’t,” he says, moving my hair off my shoulder so he can press tiny, nibbling kisses there. “I have to work, sweetheart.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re the boss.” He’s not just the boss, he’s the CEO. Surely that gives him some leeway.

  “I just wanted to say good morning properly,” he whispers, his warm breath washing over the shell of my ear, ruffling my hair and sending a shiver down my spine. “Before I head to the office.”

  The office he’s referring to is the one here at the house. For the past two months, since I was released from the hospital after suffering a horrible beating by one of the students at the medical school library where I worked, Shane’s been working mostly from his satellite office here at his Kenilworth estate, instead of from his downtown office high rise.

  “No,” I groan, burrowing closer. “Don’t go.”

  I can feel the vibration of his quiet laugh. His lips are in my hair and he whispers to me – something he knows I find arousing. “I have to. I have a conference call in twenty minutes with the director of the UK office.”

  I turn to face him, gazing up into his beautiful blue eyes. His short brown hair is sticking up in tufts, and I reach up to smooth one down. “But it’s so early.”

  “Not in the UK, it isn’t. It’s mid-morning their time. How about lunch today? Can you fit me into your busy schedule?”

  I laugh because I don’t have any sort of schedule these days. Since getting out of the hospital, I haven’t gone back to work yet. I’ve been in recuperation mode, giving my bruised ribs time to heal, the bruises on my face time to fade, my broken left arm time to mend. I’m fine now for the most part, and I really do need to get back to some sort of schedule. We’ve had this discussion before, and it’s never gone well. But since he’s in such a good mood, I think I’ll try again. “It’s time for me to go back to work.”

  A shadow dims his expression, and I know he’s thinking of the assault. Just two months ago, I was attacked in my office and nearly killed. I haven’t been back to the campus since. And Shane’s made it perfectly clear that he doesn’t want me to go back at all.

  With the tip of his index finger, he gently traces the shadowed remnant of a bruise on the edge of my cheek. “Your bruises are nearly gone.” His hand comes up and brushes my hair back from my face, tucking the tousled strands behind my ear. “You don’t need to go back to work, sweetheart. I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “I can’t sit around here all day, being waited on hand and foot. It’s driving me crazy. I have to do something productive.” Besides, my car payment and student loan aren’t going to pay themselves. Shane deposited a large sum of money into my bank account to cover my bills while I’m out on medical leave, but I can’t just keep taking his money.

  He strokes my cheek. “Honey, if it’s about money – ”

  “It’s not just the money.”

  Shane’s got millions tucked away in cash, real estate, and technology patents. And his security services company – McIntyre Security, Inc. – is a privately held company worth several billion dollars. For him, money is no object. But for me, it is. I need to know I’m earning my own way.

  I’ve been living in the lap of luxury for two months now, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’m the daughter of a retired kindergarten teacher – essentially raised by a single parent, since my dad died in the line of duty as a police officer when I was an infant. Mom and I were comfortable enough, but we didn’t live a lavish lifestyle. Now, I live in a house that has its own staff, including a housekeeper, a groundskeeper, and full-time security.

  Shane’s housekeeper, Elly, manages all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry with a small staff. She treats me like I’m the lady of the house. She’s a wonderful woman, and I absolutely adore her, but she won’t let me lift a finger around here.

  It’s just not my style. I want to be out in the world, doing something to pay my own way. If I’m not going to go back to my job at the library, then I need to find something else.

  What I really want to do is become involved in running Clancy’s. I still can’t believe Shane bought me a bookstore – and not just any bookstore, but one of the largest independent bookstores in the country! He bought me my happy place, and it must have cost him a small fortune. The building is located in the heart of downtown Chicago, on N. Michigan Avenue, the global tourist m
agnet of the Midwest.

  I decide to test the waters. “I’ve been thinking about getting involved in running the bookstore.”

  “Good idea.”

  I know he likes this option better than me returning to work at the medical school library. He has greater control over security at the bookstore than he does at a sprawling college campus.

  Shane rolls me to my back and leans down to kiss me, his lips warm and soft, languid, as he teases me awake. His hand comes up to frame the side of my face, his thumb stroking my throat. His touch is careful, gentle, as if he’s afraid I might break into pieces. And that’s the problem. He’s been treating me like I’m made of spun glass ever since the assault.

  I know it’s partly because he blames himself for what happened. I appreciate the gallantry – I really do – but I wish he’d stop being quite so gallant. I want to feel his heat and his strength again. I want to feel him surging hotly inside me. It’s been so long.

  When I open my mouth under his lazy assault, he moans and moves in for a deeper kiss. His tongue strokes mine gently, teasing me, and immediately I feel the blood heading south to pool between my legs, making me throb with need. What is it about this man? He can arouse me with just a simple touch.

  I sigh as Shane pushes the bedding down to my waist, exposing my breasts to the cool morning air. I shiver, but whether it’s from the cool air or from anticipation, I’m not sure. The nightlight on the bedside table next to me casts a dim, golden light on us.

  I’m twenty-four years old and I sleep with a nightlight. I have for eighteen years, since the day I was abducted in my own front yard and spent twelve hours trussed up naked in a cold, dark cellar. The light helps keep the night terrors at bay.

  The majority of my life has been colored by that horrendous night. I never saw the face of the man who grabbed me – his name is Howard Kline, and he’s now a free man. Kline grabbed me from behind and threw me in the back of his work van, blindfolding me and taping my wrists and ankles so I couldn’t move. I never saw anything. I only remember the sounds and the smells. I remember the sound of his voice, like crushed gravel. The smell of his foul breath and his unwashed body. The smell of clothes that hadn’t been washed in a long time.

  I learned later that he’d driven me out to the farm that he shared with his mother. He’d carried me down into a pitch black cellar and left me there, after cutting off my clothes. I remember the cold – my body was wracked with cold. I remember the smell of the damp earth, musty and moldy. I remember having to pee so badly it hurt, and I cried until I finally couldn’t hold it any longer. I lay there all night it seemed, alone and afraid, crying for my mom, for my brother.

  Sometime in the night, long after I’d run out of tears, the metal door to the cellar flung open and I heard the sound of boots thudding down the rickety wooden steps. Police officers stormed the little cellar, blinding me with their flashlights as they swept the room until they came to land on me.

  My big brother, Tyler, was there first, pulling me into his strong arms. I remember him rocking me as another police officer cut the painful tape from my wrists and ankles. As I shuddered from the cold on my bare skin, Tyler removed his police jacket and wrapped me in it before carrying me out to a waiting ambulance. Those memories still haunt me. I hear that gravelly voice, and I smell his body odor and the musty earth. Sometimes I wake up screaming.

  Shane looks up suddenly, his eyes on my face. “What is it?”

  I smile and shake my head. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  He frowns, and I know he’s not fooled.

  The faint glow from the nightlight is enough for him to make out my breasts in the early morning darkness. His big hand comes up to cup one of them, and he molds the small mound in his hand. He leans down and tongues the tip, causing my nipple to pucker instantly. When he flutters his tongue over the tight little bud, I feel an electrical charge course through my body, heading straight to my sex. I moan loudly as he draws my stiff, sensitive nipple into his mouth and sucks gently. With each warm, wet pull of his mouth on my nipple, I feel a corresponding softening between my legs. He’s a master at seduction.

  After paying rapt attention to my breast, Shane raises his head to look at me, a hopeful expression on his handsome face. His hand slips down to the hot, aching place between my legs, and his finger slips between my folds and rims my wet opening, teasing me mercilessly. “Yes?”

  Already my insides are melting and my clitoris is throbbing. Of course he has to finish what he started, or I’ll be a wreck all day, achy and needy and unable to think about anything else but his hot mouth on me. “You started this, so yeah, you’d better finish it.”

  That’s all the invitation he needs. Shane comes up over me on all fours, caging me in – careful to keep his weight off me. I panic easily when I’m pinned down. He’s learned just how much I can handle and when.

  He bends down to kiss me, and I run my fingers through his hair, gripping the short strands and pulling him closer. I move my hands to cup his face, loving the feel of his short beard against my palms. We make slow love with our mouths, touching and licking and tasting each other until we’re both breathing hard.

  Eventually, he pulls his mouth away from mine and trails his lips along my jawline to the back of my ear, where he knows I’m extremely sensitive. At the feel of his lips teasing that tender spot, I clench my sex tightly around his finger, aching for a deeper, thicker penetration. I swear, he could make me come just by kissing me.

  When he kisses and nibbles on a particularly tender spot, a shiver ripples through me. He knows exactly what he’s doing, the fiend. He’s made it his life’s goal to learn all the ways to drive me wild.

  His mouth skims down my throat, and he pauses to kiss my pulse point – another sensitive spot – just before slipping down to my left breast. He draws my nipple into his mouth and sucks on it until my hips are moving and I’m restless with aching need.

  “Shane....” His name is little more than a breathy plea as I’m reduced to begging.

  “Shh.”

  I’m pretty sure Shane lives to torment me. I run my hands across his firm shoulders and down his arms, tracing the well-defined contours of his biceps. He trains hard at all sorts of physical activity, including several forms of martial arts, and his body shows it. There’s not an ounce of fat on him, and where my body is soft and yielding, his is unfailingly hard. I run my fingers along one of the scars on his chest – a souvenir bullet wound from his days in the Marine Corps – and down his ridged abdomen. As my fingers skate lightly past his belly, following his dark, narrow happy trail, I’m rewarded when he shudders.

  “Patience, sweetheart,” he says. His expression is tight, and I know he’s far from unaffected.

  I know exactly where he’s headed when he starts to scoot down the bed. And although I’d prefer he let me shower first, I know he won’t wait for that – he’s far too single-minded once he’s aroused.

  He kisses his way down to my belly button, where he lingers for a moment, teasing the small indent with the tip of his tongue. I’m ticklish there, and he knows it. After trailing a smattering of kisses over the soft rise of my lower belly, he finally arrives at his destination. He glances up at me then, his nostrils flaring as he undoubtedly detects the warm, earthy scent of my arousal. I’m wet already and, by the knowing expression on his face, I’m sure he can tell.

  When he keeps going, my hands automatically go to his shoulders, resting there a little nervously. I’m still not used to such intense intimacy, and when his warm breath washes over the blonde curls between my legs, my thighs start shaking. My hands flex nervously on his shoulders, and I’m not sure if I want to draw him closer or push him away.

  He nudges my legs wide apart with gentle, yet firm hands until he can wedge his shoulders between them, pinning them open. I feel so exposed, so vulnerable, when I’m spread open to him like this.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. Relax,” he says, as if reading my mind.


  I suck in a breath as he pries open the lips of my sex. He flicks my clitoris with the stiff tip of his tongue, and I jump, crying out loudly. My body bows off the mattress, and his arms sweep underneath my thighs to hold me open for his scrutiny.

  Outside, the sun is just starting to rise over the towering trees, filling our bedroom with the pale glow of early morning light. Shane’s oblivious to anything except what he’s doing between my legs. He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry.

  I gasp when he sucks gently on my clit. “I thought you have to work!”

  He chuckles. “They’ll wait for me.”

  I laugh. Of course they’ll wait. He’s the boss. “Shane, please.” He’s teasing me, building up my desire, and I can’t stand the suspense. I know what’s coming – a mind-numbing, toe-curling orgasm that will leave me breathless – but waiting for it is driving me crazy.

  His tongue is hot and wet as he strokes the length of my slit, licking slowly and sensuously, like a big cat, from my opening to my clit. My thighs are trembling uncontrollably and, out of desperation, I latch onto his hair. He’s a master at this – a diabolically talented master – and I’m at his mercy.

  I feel a finger push inside my opening, stroking me inside as his tongue gets serious. Slick with my arousal, his finger glides easily inside me as he touches and teases me. He brings some of that silky wetness up to bathe my clit, which tickles, and then he sinks that finger back inside me, curling it as he searches for the tender spot that makes me fall apart every single time.

  I’m not sure which pleasure is greater – the feel of his strong tongue lashing my clit in tight little movements or his finger tormenting me deep inside. Either sensation is capable of setting off a stunning orgasm. Together, they are enough to make me lose my mind.

  I grip his hair hard as I feel my orgasm ratcheting up with a vengeance, and a moment later, it detonates like a bomb inside me. The pleasure is so acutely intense I cry out loudly, unable to censor myself. My body bows off the mattress, but he holds my hips tethered to the bed as his tongue torments me through concentric waves of sensation. The pleasure is so exquisite, I’m reduced to whimpering. My God, I’m glad these walls are thick, because otherwise, half the household would be able to hear me.