Page 38 of The Prince and the Bodyguard
What followed was probably the most therapeutic twenty minutes of my adult life. Eddie’s hands were gentle but sure as he worked out the knots of tension in my back, using the perfect amount of pressure to help without causing additional pain. It was intimate in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with allowing him to take care of me. I sucked at accepting help, but I was giving in to that need now.
“Better?” he asked eventually, his hands stilling against my back.
“Much better. Where did you learn to do that?”
He moved back into a lying position. “I had a lot of physical therapy for my joint issues, so I used some of the techniques therapists applied.”
I turned over carefully, mindful of my back, and found Eddie lying beside me in the dim light filtering through our curtains. He was closer than I’d expected, close enough that I could see the concern in his green eyes, the way his hair was mussed from the pillow. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” Eddie replied, but there was something soft in his expression that suggested my gratitude mattered to him. “That’s what… That’s what people do for each other.”
He’d been about to say something else. Something more specific thanpeople. But whatever it was, he’d caught himself, and now we were looking at each other in the half-darkness, both aware that something had shifted between us today. What Eddie had shown me today—the care, the concern, the willingness to put my comfort ahead of his own plans—spoke to something deeper and more complicated.
“Eddie…”
“Go to sleep, Bash,” he said gently, settling back onto his pillow. “We can talk tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”
He was right. My back was already feeling more manageable, the combination of rest, ice, painkillers, and of course his gentle massage having worked wonders. Now was not the time to raise difficult topics. “Sleep well.”
“You too.”
Eddie’s breathing gradually evened out beside me, but for me, sleep didn’t come so easily. My body was at peace now, but my mind was anything but. Alarm bells were going off. Loud ones, red ones, glaring ones that wouldn’t be ignored much longer.
But for tonight, I would try.
14
EDDIE
I woke up slowly, awareness creeping in by degrees—the unfamiliar weight of another body in the bed, the sound of steady breathing that wasn’t my own, the warmth radiating from the person lying beside me. For a moment, I felt disoriented, caught between sleep and waking, before memory reasserted itself.
Bash. We’d shared the bed because of his back injury.
I turned my head carefully, not wanting to wake him, and studied his sleeping face in the pale morning light filtering through our curtains. He looked younger like this, the usual tension gone from his features, dark lashes resting against his cheeks. His hair was mussed from the pillow, sticking up in directions that would probably mortify his military sensibilities if he could see himself.
There was something almost unbearably intimate about watching him sleep, about being this close to him when his guard was completely down. The steady rise and fall of his chest, the way his hand was curled loosely against the pillow, the small scar on his temple that I’d never noticed before—all of it felt like secrets I was being trusted with.
My insides warmed as I lay there studying him, a flutter that had nothing to do with physical attraction and everything to do with how right this felt. Waking up beside him, sharing this quiet morning moment, felt more natural than anything I’d experienced in my entire carefully orchestrated life.
Which was dangerous territory, because it reinforced all these soft feelings I had for him, this tenderness in my chest. Something far beyond the physical attraction we’d been exploring or the friendship that had developed so naturally. Something deeper and infinitely more complicated that made my pulse quicken from watching him breathe.
The realization should’ve sent me into a panic. This was supposed to be exploration, experimentation, a safe way to discover this part of myself without being forced to come out or explain my sexuality to people who might not understand.
It wasn’t supposed to involve feelings.
But lying here, hyperaware of every point where our bodies were almost touching under the covers, I couldn’t deny what was happening. I was falling for Bash Puller, for his competence and kindness, his dry humor and unexpected gentleness, the way he made me feel like I could be completely myself without judgment or expectation.
But that was probably normal, wasn’t it? He was the first man I’d ever been intimate with, the first person I’d been able to explore this side of myself with. It made perfect sense that I’d develop strong feelings for him. It was the novelty of it all, the thrill of finally being able to acknowledge my attraction to men combined with the intensity of discovering physical pleasure with someone I genuinely liked. Like a duckling would imprint on the first adult animal it saw, thinking it was its mother.
That was all this was. First relationship excitement, amplified by the forbidden nature of our situation and the fact that we were living together in such close quarters. Once I had more experience and had some basis for comparison, these feelings would disappear or morph into something more manageable.
Bash stirred beside me, his breathing changing as he drifted toward consciousness, and I quickly closed my eyes and tried to look like I was still asleep. I wasn’t ready to face his knowing looks or answer questions about why I’d been watching him sleep like some sort of lovesick teenager.
“Mornin’,” he said softly, his voice rough with sleep and that hint of Southern drawl that was always more pronounced first thing in the morning.
I opened my eyes and found him looking at me with a small smile, brown eyes warm and alert despite having just woken up. “Good morning. How’s your back?”
“Much better, actually.” He shifted experimentally, testing his range of motion. “That massage worked better than I expected. Think I might actually be functional today.”
