Page 32 of How To Tempt A Bodyguard

Or she could push.

"You didn't sleep last night," she said. "You've been awake for nearly two days. You're no good to me exhausted."

"I'll manage."

"You keep saying that. It's not as reassuring as you think." She sat on the edge of the bed, her hands braced on her knees. Watched his eyes track the movement, watched him look away. "We're adults. It's a bed. We can share it without…"

She stopped. The word consequences stuck in her throat.

Without consequences. As if anything between them could be without consequences. As if she wasn't already in too deep, already wanting things she'd sworn off years ago.

"Nothing has to happen," she said instead.

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point?"

He didn't answer. Couldn't, probably. She knew what he wanted to say. The point is I want you, and I don't trust myself. Numerous men had uttered those words before, or versions of them. Men who didn't mean them. Men who did.

Matthew meant them. That was the difference. That was why she was pushing.

"Your job is to protect me," she said. "You said so yourself. You can't do that if you're falling asleep on your feet." She shifted, making room on the mattress. A deliberate movement. An invitation. "Sleep in the bed. I'll stay on my side. You stay on yours. Professional distance maintained."

"You think a few inches of mattress counts as distance?"

"I think it's more distance than you'll get on that floor."

She met his eyes. Held them. Let him see that she knew exactly what she was doing, and that she was doing it anyway.

"Please," she said. The word came out softer than she intended. Almost honest. "I need you sharp tomorrow. I need you able to react if something goes wrong."

And I need to know what it feels like. To lie next to someone I chose. To want something and reach for it. To think about my pleasure for one night.

He was going to say no. She could see it in his face, the refusal forming.

"Fine." The word came out rough, almost angry. "But I sleep on the outside. Between you and the door."

"Of course."

"And if I say move, you move. No questions."

"Agreed."

She watched him struggle with it for another moment. Watched him accept defeat, or what he thought was defeat. He didn't understand yet that she'd won something much larger than the argument about the bed.

He sat on the edge of the mattress, his back to her, and pulled off his boots. She watched the movement of his shoulders, the controlled efficiency of his hands. Everything about him was controlled. Disciplined. Contained.

She wondered what it would take to crack that control.

Patience, she told herself. You have three weeks.

But as she settled back against the pillows, as she felt the mattress dip with his weight, as the warmth of his body seeped across the narrow distance between them, she wasn't sure she had three weeks' worth of patience left.

The fire crackled. The rain whispered.

Matthew lay rigid beside her, staring at the ceiling, his breathing too controlled to be natural.

"Goodnight, Mr Collins," she said softly.