Maybe he’s not as controlled as I always have thought and it secretly makes me want to reach my hand out, the way Sleeping Beauty reached for the spindle. She got punished for it though. Question is, would Dom punish me too?
2
Dominic
“Fanny and I will be taking the red eye to Iowa tonight,” Mr. Michaels says,leaning back in the chair in his office and he moves a hand through his coiffed hair that can rival any beauty pageant contestant.
Standing in the doorway with my hands clasped before me, I give a professional nod.
“Understood.” There’s been a change of plans then and naturally I prefer updates earlier on but in this kind of job you have to learn to roll with the punches.
I frown when Michaels to my surprise says,
“You won’t be coming. We’ll only take Harris with us.”
Harris is Mrs. Michaels bodyguard and my jaw clenches. I will be staying here then. Alone with the young and deeply troubled Miss. Michaels. My eyes sharply go to my boss because he shouldn’t leave a man like me with his daughter.
Not when she knows exactly how to make my blood boil, until I fear that one day she’s going to force me to explode and make me unleash everything I’ve suppressed right at her. From the moment she saw me, she instantly disliked me.
Because I don’t act like the world revolves around her.
A girl like Meadow is used to people sucking up to her, following her every craze and I can tell that she hates how stand-offish I am but she should be grateful, that I only let her see this side of me.
All she knows is the façade I choose to portray but truth is that I am nothing like these people with their fine dining, their politically correct jokes and stiff smiles and their Rolex’s and Ferrari’s.
I’m a man of the wild, grew up in the woods with my now deceased father, learned to hunt at the age of five and drank water from fresh streams with my bare hands. My body learned how to handle a strong sun without getting burned and how to handle cold weather without getting hypothermia.
Growing up, I fought wild animals and survived. Nothing scared me, and when I made my way into civilization, getting work as a bodyguard for several different politicians, my unblinking fearlessness became highly sought after.
It led to me being hired by Mr. Michaels and it led me to meeting his daughter. The same daughter who screws her nose up at the sight of me, the one who acts as if her biggest nightmare is to touch me or be forced to endure my hands touching her.
She’s a spoiled girl with her expensive clothes that always hang just loose enough to be elegant and tight enough to be sexual. But spoiled or not, she is still the most perfect thing I have ever seen. Shiny, chestnut hair that barely grazes her shoulders and gutsy, grey eyes with curved lashes.
Her sharp gaze always makes me feel like I’m balancing on the edge of a cliff and her mouth...hell, don’t get me started on that mouth of hers with that slightly hostile streak...
As if that wasn’t enough, she is all tight limbs with a naturally bouncy backside and perky breasts. But there’s some steel in her spine and a girl like her would probably fit right in with the wild, once she got stripped of her expensive garments and snotty ways.
Not that I ever plan on taking her there. Meadow and I are not friendly and she would probably ratherdieeethan spend a couple of minutes alone with me. But as much as I’m trying to come across as a proper, formal suit it sometimes feels like Meadow can see right through me.
See that there is something else there, but she doesn’t know what. And I guess she never will.
“Good, then it is settled,” Mr. Michaels says and I nod, “you’ll get a couple of well-deserved days off.”
He doesn’t ask me to look after Meadow while they’re gone but it doesn’t surprise me. Mr. Michaels doesn’t care about his family, that much has been clear from day one. His wife acts like an aging Barbie, existing only to repeat her husband’s opinions back to him and it’s obvious that Meadow parties and does her best to upkeep her party girl reputation to rile him up.
She shouldn’t be doing that because I remember how roughly he sometimes treated his other daughter, Melody. If Michaels ever lays his hands on Meadow, he won’t have any hands left to use anymore.
“I appreciate it, sir,” I reply and Mrs. Michaels rises in her chair, lifting her hand as if she’s at an audience with the king. Her husband nods, allowing her to speak and she clears her throat because she’s a heavy smoker.
“While we’re gone, make sure that Meadow doesn’t bring home any young men. The last thing we want is an out of wedlock pregnancy to ruin my husband’s campaign.”
“No men,” I repeat in agreement because that is not happening on my watch. The thought of Meadow pregnant with some faceless man’s kid is enough to make me want to do murder.
“And...” she continues, her surgically enhanced face, tinting, “make sure that Meadow is measured in her eating. Lately she hasn’t been model thin, have you noticed?”
I have. And she’s been filling her clothes out nicely.
“Dammit, Fanny,” Michaels says with animated eyes, “it is not Slade’s job to monitor the child’s eating habits.”