The Infatuation (Josh and Kat #1 , The Club #5) (4 page)

“Seriously?” I say. I take a beat to study my
brother’s face. But, yeah, he’s dead serious. “Did
you
join
The Club looking for love?” I ask. I swear to God, if he says yes,
then I know for sure this adorkable Sarah Cruz girl has cast a
fucking spell on him. Either that, or he’s truly had a psychotic
break.

Jonas looks at Sarah like he’s asking his master for
permission to speak, and Sarah nods. Well, that answers that
question—she’s cast a spell on him. He kisses the back of her hand.
“No, I didn’t,” Jonas says.

“Well, neither did I,” I say, trying to ignore how
pussy-whipped my brother’s acting right now. “I can’t imagine
anyone ever would. That’s pretty far-fetched—even if someone’s
normal
.” I shoot an apologetic look at Sarah. Even if my
brother’s acting like a flop-dick right now, that’s no reason for
me to be disrespectful to Sarah. Obviously, she’s passionate about
this ridiculously naïve notion of hers. “Sorry, Sarah,” I say.

Sarah nods and shoots me a half smile.

“I’m pretty sure I joined The Club because I was
having some kind of mental breakdown,” Jonas says softly.
“
Again
.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I shake my head with whiplash.
No.
Those are the exact words I didn’t want to hear coming
out of Jonas’ mouth tonight. I’m not equipped to babysit Jonas
through another mental breakdown. No fucking way. I’ve been doing
it my whole fucking life and I don’t wanna do it anymore. Shit. And
he seemed to be doing so well lately. What have I been missing?

“Though I didn’t realize it at the time, of course,”
Jonas continues. He looks at Sarah. “I joined The Club because I
didn’t understand what was really going on with me, what I really
wanted—or what I needed. I was spiraling, man.”

My heart is thumping out of my chest. Shit, shit,
shit. I don’t know what the hell to say. I thought Jonas was
kicking ass and taking names lately, I really did. Work has been
better than ever—the whole company is a fucking behemoth right now,
thanks primarily to Jonas and his incredible instincts for deals.
And he’s in the best shape of his life, too.

True, the guy’s been kind of a weird hermit for a
while now—obsessed with nothing but climbing and working out and
finding new investment opportunities—and, true, I’ve often thought
Jonas should get out more, maybe go to a fucking party now and
again, fuck some random woman he meets in a fucking bar, for
Chrissakes. But that’s just not Jonas. He’s always been the
sensitive one, attaching a deeper meaning to everything, including
sex.

Actually, I suggested Jonas join The Club for a
month in the first place because I figured a little meaningless sex
might do the guy a world of good, exactly the way it did for me
(and he’s clearly not capable of getting random pussy for himself,
that’s for sure, though God only knows why, given what he looks
like). And now I’m finding out my poetic brother viewed joining The
Club as some sort of “surrender to insanity”? Well, shit.

I run my hand through my hair, desperation
descending upon me. I feel like I could cry like a baby right now,
even though I haven’t cried since I was ten years old. I seriously
cannot do this again. I’ve carried my brother’s sanity on my back
my whole fucking life, even when I’ve barely been able to hold the
weight of my own. And I’m tired. I cover my face with my hands for
a moment, trying to pull myself together.

There’s a long silence in the room.

“Well, all righty, then,” Kat finally says.

I glance up at her and she smiles warmly at me.

And just like that, I regain my footing. “Holy shit,
Jonas,” I mumble, rubbing my hands over my face. “I’m all in when
it comes to protecting Sarah and Kat, okay? Whatever it takes—you
know that, right?”

“I know.” Jonas exhales. “Thanks.”

“I just think maybe you’re overreacting about—”

“Fuck, Josh!” Jonas leaps up from the couch and
glowers over me like he’s about to strangle me—but I don’t flinch.
The dude wouldn’t hurt a fucking fly and we both know it. “These
motherfuckers threatened my girl and her best friend. Do you
understand? They crossed the fucking line!”

I stand and open my mouth to speak, but Jonas cuts
me off.

“I’m not letting them near her.” He pulls Sarah up
off the couch and into him. “I’m gonna protect her—which means
decimating the fuck out of them. Do you understand me?
Decimating them
.”

“Whoa,” I say. “Calm down.” Every hair on my body is
standing on end. What the fuck is happening right now? He’s
spiraling into some sort of panic attack and I don’t fully
understand why.

“I’m not gonna let it happen again, Josh,” he
blurts. “I couldn’t survive it this time—I know I couldn’t. I
barely survived it before. You didn’t see what I saw... the
blood... it was everywhere. You weren’t there.” He shuts his eyes
tight. “You didn’t see her. I’m not gonna let it happen again. I
can’t do it again.”

I feel like he just punched me in the teeth. Why the
fuck is he saying this to me, especially in front of Sarah and Kat?
I’m well aware I was sitting at a fucking football game, cheering
happily, while Jonas watched our mother being fileted like a fish.
No one needs to remind me of that fact.

“Jonas... Oh my God,” I say.

“I thought
you’d
understand, of all people.”
Jonas’ voice is thick with emotion. “I don’t want to do this alone,
but I will. I’ll do whatever I have to do, don’t you understand? I
can’t let anything happen to her. Not again. Never again.”

This is insane. I can’t believe Jonas is comparing
this situation to what happened to our mom. Motherfucker. He’s
crossed a line here. He’s fucking crossed a motherfucking line.
“Ladies, could you give us a minute?” I say, gritting my teeth.
“
Please
.”

Jonas juts his chin at me and squeezes Sarah like
he’s worried I might fucking attack her or something.

“Jonas,” Sarah whispers, brushing her lips against
his jawline. “Talk to your brother, baby. He’s on your team.” She
touches his face. “Your brother’s on your side. Just listen to him.
He dropped everything to come here for you. Listen to him.”

Jonas lets go of Sarah’s hand, grabs her face with
both hands, and kisses the hell out of her. Clearly, his kiss is a
giant “fuck you” to me, but I don’t understand what I’ve done to
deserve it.

When Jonas pulls away from kissing Sarah, he looks
fiercely at me, his nostrils flaring, glaring at me like he’s
daring me to say a fucking word. But I’m not even tempted to speak.
There’s nothing I could possibly say that wouldn’t involve the
words “crazy” and “fuck” and “you.”

“One can easily forgive a child who’s afraid of the
dark,” Jonas says, visibly trembling. “The real tragedy of life is
when men are afraid of the light.”

I roll my eyes. Fan-fucking-tastic. Another Plato
quote from my crazy-ass brother. Fuck me. This is gonna be a long
fucking night.

Kat

As Derek kisses my lips, he runs his fingertips
along my thigh underneath my pencil skirt. I return his kiss with
equal enthusiasm and run my fingers through his hair. Heck yeah, I
do. Derek the ex-SEAL-bodyguard is way,
way
hotter than
Kevin Costner ever was (and Kevin Costner was pretty freaking hot
back in the day). I lean back onto the arm of my couch, pulling
Derek’s lips with me as I go and coaxing Derek’s body on top of
mine. Holy shitballs, this man’s clearly got a hard body beneath
that Men’s Wearhouse suit. And that’s not all that’s hard about
Derek, either—the bulge behind his slacks feels like it was forged
in a steel factory. Good lord.

It’s all I can do not to bust out singing Whitney
Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”—not because I will always love
Derek Insert-Last-Name-Here, obviously. I only met the guy less
than twenty-four hours ago, and, as far as I can tell, he’s got the
personality of a baseball bat. No, that iconic song is on the tip
of my (extremely busy) tongue right now because
oh my effing
God
I’m about to fulfill a fantasy I’ve had since I first
witnessed a certain juggernaut of cinematic artistry at the tender
age of nine
.

My mom rented
The Bodyguard
from Blockbuster
Video on a Friday night (plus video games for my dad and four
brothers to keep them distracted while we two girls watched our
movie), and by Sunday afternoon, I’d watched that damned movie at
least six times from start to finish (and that was a full year
before we got our first DVD player, which means I actually had to
rewind
that freaking thing every time I wanted to re-watch
it, so that tells you how committed I was to Whitney and Kevin’s
once-in-a-lifetime love).

And all through the years since that first
Bodyguard
marathon, through puberty and high school and
college, whenever I’ve been dumped or no one asked me to a dance or
I’ve had PMS or gotten a crappy-ass grade in a class (that last one
being a fairly common occurrence), I’ve watched Kevin and Whitney
as a sort of therapy, I guess, kind of like digging into a
cinematic pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

So it’s no wonder that now, as a
twenty-four-year-old woman with an unapologetic sex drive and an
unwavering dedication to you-only-live-once, having hot sex with my
very own real-life bodyguard is right at the top of my sexual
bucket list. I mean, come on. Not all sex has to be about some kind
of deep soul connection—sometimes, it can simply be about making a
lifelong sexual fantasy come true.

“Katherine Morgan?” Derek the Bodyguard asked
yesterday when I opened the front door of my apartment and beheld
his no-nonsense hotness for the first time. I leaned against the
doorjamb and smiled broadly, pleasantly surprised about the gift
the universe had just plopped into my lap (or, more accurately, the
surprise Sarah’s new boyfriend, Jonas, had just plopped into my
lap).

“Yes, I’m Katherine Morgan,” I replied to Derek
yesterday, extending my hand and flashing him my most flirtatious
smile. “But please, call me Kat.” I knew a bodyguard would be
coming to my house, of course—Jonas had already said as much
earlier that morning—but only in my wildest dreams did I imagine
he’d look like Derek.

“Miss Morgan,” Derek said, seemingly impervious to
my charms. “My name is Derek Something-or-Other, and I’ve been
assigned to protect you.” He looked at his phone. “By a Jonas P.
Faraday?”

“Yeah. Jonas mentioned he’d be sending someone.
Thanks for coming.”

“I’ll be watching over you during the daytime,”
Derek continued matter-of-factly. “And my partner, Rodney, will
take the night shift.” He motioned across the street. “That’s
Rodney over there, just so you know what he looks like.”

I walked out of my apartment and peered across the
street in the direction Derek was pointing—and there, sitting in a
nondescript sedan, was Father Time. When Rodney saw me looking at
him, he curtly waved, started his engine, and drove away, and I
suppressed the urge to laugh with glee that Derek had been the one
to show up on my doorstep to take the first shift.

“Come in,” I purred to Derek, brushing past him into
my apartment.

“Sure. Just to do a sweep of your surroundings and
give you a safety de-briefing. After that, I’ll keep watch from
across the street to give you privacy.” His tone was strictly
professional—very
Kevin-Costner-at-the-beginning-of-
The-Bodyguard.
Not the
least bit flirtatious.

Things looked grim for my chances of singing
Whitney’s tune right about then—and honestly I might have dropped
the whole thing if it weren’t for what happened next: Derek’s eyes
unmistakably darted down to the curve of my breasts in my
tight-fitting blouse and then down to my hips in my slim-fitting
business skirt and then back up to my lips—
at which point
they
flickered with unmistakable desire.
And that’s when
I knew Mr. Professional Bodyguard maybe wasn’t quite as
all-business underneath that dark suit as he seemed—and that maybe,
just maybe, it was only a matter of time before Derek the Bodyguard
would be whispering things like, “No, Kat, I can’t protect you like
this” and “Not on my shift” and “I was hired to protect you, not to
help you shop” into my ear.

“Come in, Derek,” I said, waltzing back into my
apartment from the walkway. “You wanna cup of coffee?” I asked
breezily, even though coffee wasn’t at all what I was thinking
about.

Derek grinds his hard-on into me and kisses me,
jolting me back to the delicious present on my couch. His hand
skims my thigh under my skirt and I widen my legs to let him know
I’m not at all shy here, big fella, that this isn’t my first time
at the sexy-times-rodeo and he need not be quite so respectful of
my
vagina
(which I’ve noticed he hasn’t even attempted to
touch).

Derek reacts to my implicit invitation by floating
his hand up toward the increasingly wet crotch of my panties.
Yes. That’s right. Go for it, Bodyguard. Do it. I’ve got the
chorus of Whitney’s song all cued up for you, baby.
But, damn,
his hand stops at the inside of my thigh and then trails across my
hipbone and around to my ass.

Damn.

I press into him with increased enthusiasm, and—

My cell phone buzzes on the coffee table,
repeatedly, with an incoming call.

Crap. I’m supposed to be at work right now,
actually. I had an early breakfast meeting with a client (the owner
of a new boutique) about the social media campaign I’m planning for
her—and afterwards, I swung by my apartment on my way back to the
office “to grab an umbrella.” Or so I said. Yes, it had started to
pour—this is Seattle, after all—but we have plenty of extra
umbrellas and plastic ponchos at the office. What I was actually
doing with the whole “I gotta grab an umbrella” ruse was creating
an excuse to lure my new bodyguard (who’d been shadowing my every
move all morning long) into my apartment to see if I could seduce
him into seducing me.