Shieldmaiden 4

They smoked in silence. Lexa tried to put the memory of Clarke’s body out of her mind. Long legs, hips that seemed designed for someone’s hands to wrap around, panties that left mystery only about how it would actually feel to have fingers up inside her cunt while it convulsed with pleasure… Lexa could not have that on her mind or this job would be pure hell.

If she’d been wearing a bra, it would’ve been D-cup, for sure. And Lexa had to say, guys had it right about tits like that. They were great. Kissing all over them until your lips hit a nipple and it could take such a nice, long time. If you took your time, managed some patience, then when you found them, those nipples could cut glass.

Costia had done her like that. Lexa’s weren’t as big as Clarke’s, but Costia was more patient than her, so that when Costia finally gave in and treated her nipples, her whole body seemed to crush in on itself, like an oyster making pearls from bits of sand. Everything so tight and pressurized like it was vacuum-sealed, and then relief. No wonder Lexa liked to be choked. That little binary of not being able to breathe and finally being able to breathe—it was synonymous with orgasm for her.

Lexa took her cigarette out to check how much of it she’d smoked. Plenty of ash fell away when she raked her fingers against the post of Clarke’s porch. She took another drag. This was a bad habit to get into, but she’d smoke two packs a day if it kept her from nostalgia for Costia. Or some sick crush on Clarke.

Murphy snorted a laugh around his coffin nail. “Hello Kitty…”

“A gentleman wouldn’t have noticed that.”

“A lady wouldn’t know I was talking about her panties.”

Lexa blew smoke in his face. Not that he cared much when he was smoking himself. She took a few steps from the porch to get some air, paradoxical as that was when her lungs were full of car exhaust. The ground squished moistly around her slingbacks. Yeah, this was definitely an army boots kinda job.

Army. Ha. That reminded her of the great truism. Militaries were true-or-false, spies were multiple choice. She’d been worried about being too close to her asset or too distant. Wanting to fuck her was an entirely new and different way of covering her life in shit.

Lexa’s cigarette was ten percent butt, the rest ash. She dropped it to the ground. Didn’t even have to stub it out. A little toe and it was buried in accepting silt.

She went back to porch. Oh great: Murphy was leaning.

“She lost track of time again,” Lexa announced, knocking on the door.

Murphy very-helpfully pressed the doorbell. But it was obvious he didn’t expect Clarke to answer, or at least to answer any time soon, by the conversation he launched into.

“I heard about what you did in London.”

“What happened in London,” Lexa corrected impulsively. She hadn’t done anything. She’d reacted. Like she’d been trained to.

Murphy tilted his head from one side to the other, like his left shoulder was six and his right shoulder was half a dozen. “That’s some pretty badass shit, right there. Can’t believe you’re on VIP duty after that. I mean, if anything should get you into the C-suite…”

“I’m not a pantsuit kinda girl.”

“What are you wearing now then?”

“Job interview shit.” Lexa compulsively straightened her tie. “I should’ve worn a blazer. I’d hate to give the girl great expectations.”

“I don’t know, I heard it was a good read.”

The door swept open again. Clarke had tied her robe shut. Her legs still looked bare, but she could’ve had shorts or a skirt on. Lexa tried to stop her brain from speculating. There were warm embers in her sex that didn’t need to become a flash… and then there was the oil drum with the unsecured lid, right in front of her.

Clarke also had a chain holding the door shut, with that pretty, nasty face peeking out between the slab of the door and the slab of the doorframe, like a target in a carnival game. Use the kohl pencil on the hottie who doesn’t know how to frame her face and win a prize. Mr. Beast probably already had that one patented.

“Listen,” Clarke said, slurring her words a little because she was literally baring her teeth as she spoke. “I don’t want a babysitter, I don’t need a babysitter. I’m fine. Tell whoever signed your check ‘thanks,’ but I have pepper spray already, I think that’ll do me.”

Lexa clamped down on any retort about doing Clarke and signaled with her eyes for Murphy to put a lid on it too. She didn’t trust herself to be a quick-witted quipster at the moment, which meant she damn sure didn’t trust Murphy to be either.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Clarke asked Lexa, squinting at her, then started closing the door anyway.

“Not to contradict you,” she said, riding hard on the urge to put some snideness in there. But get through boot camp and you find a very tight leash on that impulse. Drill sergeants and sass didn’t mix. “But you did say you wanted a babysitter. Lexa Heda. Hi. I’m here. Nice to meet you.”

Clarke frowned—not so much at Lexa but at whatever misfiring neutron had not brought up the proper memory. “Lexa Heda,” she repeated, mispronouncing Lexa’s surname, but that wasn’t a pressing issue. “Yeah. Time magazine cover. I have it around here somewhere… I didn’t recognize you without all the eyeshadow.”

“I’m not used to being photographed. Overdid it a little.”

“I’ll say, Rocket Raccoon.”

Murphy barked a laugh.

“Oh wow, I’m being funny,” Clarke gasped. “Usually I’m not funny—this is great.”

“Don’t be too proud. He’s an idiot.”

“Explains the mustache.”

Lexa tried not to laugh herself. One of them had to be professional.

Clarke made no move to take the chain off. She leaned against the casing like it was perfectly normal for her to have coffee talk through a chained door. “Okay, this is awkward—I would know, right? But when I said ‘get me Lexa Heda’ or whatever I said… I was being ironic. No. Facetious. Like when you say ‘I would go to dentist school if it was taught by Hayley Atwell.’ You don’t actually mean… like… that’s the life journey you want to be on. Right? Dentistry? It’s just you were in the news and we were talking bodyguards and you did that thing in London—”

“Thing in London happened,” Murphy corrected.

Clarke nodded as though taking his grammar under serious advisement. “Was I right about ‘facetious’ though? Or was it ironic after all?”

Lexa leaned against the door with all her weight, just in case Clarke tried to close it again. “Listen. It’s Seattle. It’s probably going to rain in the next five minutes. Can you let us in and I’ll sign all the autographs you want with a roof over the wedge cut my hairdresser convinced me was ‘faintly feminine without speaking butch too fluently’?”

“This is one of those times when you don’t want me to say anything,” Murphy said, rightly.

Clarke tried on a few facial expressions, running the gamut from cool to sympathetic, before settling on a casually sardonic look. “You know, I've done some reading about bodyguards.”

“I'll bet.” That was one of Lena's big thoughts against taking the job. Aside from architect and Greek billionaire, bodyguard seemed to be the biggest fantasy for book clubbers. 

“I know they probably aren't rigorously researched or anything, but most of them start with the bodyguard breaking into the girl's house to show her she needs better security.”

“That would be unprofessional,” Lexa said.

“And illegal,” Murphy added, sounding like he spoke from experience.

“Hey, if you can't do it, you can't do it,” Clarke said reasonably. “But I spend all my time at home, I live in a gated community, and I always remember to lock my doors. I don't need a bodyguard. Go find another white lady. I'm sure she'll believe she's one second away from attempted murder.”

And she forced the door shut, despite Lexa’s best efforts to keep it open.

“She has some muscle,” Lexa conceded as the bolt was thrown.

“I would too if I were carrying those tetons around everywhere I went,” Murphy reasoned.

Lexa gestured at the door. “You mind?”

“I thought I'd wait until she got out of range. It'll be hard to protect her when she's under a door.”

“I could manage.” Lexa drew a collapsible baton from her pocket and flicked it out to full extension.

Murphy shrugged and directed a side kick into the door. His boot hammered in next to the knob, ripping the door free of the lock and sending it flying away from the doorframe. Only the chain and hinges held onto it. Lexa swept in with her baton to smash the chain clean out of the wood it was mounted on. The door was left distended, like a broken neck, and Lexa passed through it as easily as a spider's web.

Clarke stood there, shocked, her bathrobe falling open a little, which Lexa refused to notice. She compacted her baton down to the size of a perfume bottle. Her thumb shot back to indicate Murphy.

“Yeah, he only looks like an idiot. I was shocked too.”

Clarke held up something the size of a perfume bottle. Lexa thought it might be a collapsible baton for a second before she realized it was pepper spray.

“You fucked up now!” Clarke declared before pressing down the button.

She was holding the pepper spray backwards.

“Murph, get some milk for her eyes,” Lexa said.

“Oh, you know she's got milk.”