I just moaned in response, feeling aftershocks of pleasure consume me as he carried on.

My favourite part was watching him fall apart. I felt so powerful, and at the same time humble for being that person that got to see his face crack with emotion. Right before he reached his orgasm, his lips would go gentle. He’d tenderly stroke my tongue, kissing the corner of my mouth as his blue eyes warmed. He looked at me like I meant so much to him, like I was the fucking sun and he was a planet orbiting it. That look put a lump in my throat every time. I wanted to shake him, tell him no, I wasn’t the sun, he was! And I was just the helpless little rock, getting closer, getting hotter, as I spiralled out of course and into him.

He incinerated me. He made me feel alive, and I knew it was the same for him. I could feel it. I wanted him to vocalise it; to reach that limit some people reach right before they’re about to explode, when they throw caution to the wind and say shit without thinking. I wanted him to tell me he loved me; that the tenderness in his eyes wasn’t all in my head. That it was true and tangible, a fantasy made real. But he never did it. He never got pushed far enough; he was still so well in control of himself, no matter how far off the edge he was.

I hated it.

After he set me down, he kissed me softly on the lips and went back to being normal Borden: hard, sarcastic, serious, but still with that lustful eye when he looked at me. It left me frustrated, and it left me panting. It made me want to question his feelings, and it made me terrified to know the answers.

Things were a bit of a clusterfuck.

Tonight he’d been off. Minutes after the shower, he changed into a pair of sexy faded jeans and a heavy black sweater. He didn’t fix his unruly hair, didn’t decorate his wrist with a watch. I had a feeling that shit was going down, and I wondered what he was up to.

“Get dressed,” he told me, his demeanour relaxed. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

My jaw dropped at the sudden demand. My hair was still dripping from the shower, my skin flushed red, and there was a dampness between my legs I hadn’t found time to properly clean up.

“Can’t I just stay?” I replied, wearily.

He rubbed at his cheek, which was loaded with stubble and about a few days away from a full beard, and turned to me.

“No,” he simply said. “You can’t.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, fuming. “I’m really exhausted, Borden. We had a long day at the office.”

“It wouldn’t have been so long if you hadn’t looked at me like a little hussy,” he replied, smirking at my unimpressed expression. “Next time keep your sex eyes directed to your computer, hmm? Then I wouldn’t have to fuck you so much.”

I pretended to be angry at him and glared. It only made him laugh as he left the room, but even I had to smile at that.

God, I really loved this man.

Still. I was so tired, and the last thing I’d wanted to do was get dragged back to the club, which had practically become my second home. To make matters worse, the office wasn’t particularly soundproof. Now I could hear rowdy screams and shit getting smashed. It wasn’t a normal sound. Whoever was out there was fucking shit up bad.

I kept glancing up at Moustache Man – or Graeme I finally relented to calling him – who was sitting on a chair next to the door with a grip on his gun, and he was tentatively doing whatever he could to avoid making eye contact with me. He didn’t want to talk about why Borden was being a possessive asshole, forcing me to follow him wherever he went. The lead around my puppy dog neck was getting shorter every day and I was slowly losing my sanity.

“I know all about the text,” I muttered to Graeme after I lost against the asshole in New Zealand. “You don’t need to go all weird, you know. You’re a bad actor. You wouldn’t even get the Golden Raspberry award, you’re so bad.”

“I’m just not allowed to discuss it with you, Emma,” he replied, exasperated. We’d gone over this at least a dozen times tonight.

“Why? Because you don’t want to tell me you’re planning on gutting the guy that’s threatening my life and decorating the streets with his guts as warning?”

I was talking out of jest, but the look Graeme shot me was enough to make me shut my trap. He was pissed. Yeah, well, so was I. There was only so much of this being coddled like a baby I could take. It was only natural to get mouthy with the people you were forced to be around 24/7.

“Your humour is too dark for me,” he remarked, shaking his head.

“Well, we all know where I got that from.”

“You’re meant to be a lady.”

“You can remove the girl out of the ghetto, but you can’t remove the ghetto out of the girl. Isn’t that the saying these days?”

“I don’t know what the saying is these days, Emma.”

“Guess you’re just not hip, Graeme. Haven’t endured much hard times to appreciate some dark humour, huh?”

He rolled his eyes, and it was funny to see a grown ass, big framed man nearing fifty with a bushy moustache, rolling his eyes like a petulant schoolgirl.

“You have absolutely zero comprehension of the hard times I have endured, Emma, and I hope you never have to,” he replied, solemnly. “And that’s why I’m here. That is my job.”

I sighed. “You’re such a party pooper.”

“Why am I a ‘party pooper’?” He said that with air quotes and all, looking offended.

“Because you don’t know how to just relax and have fun.”

“I’m not paid to relax and have fun. I’m paid to protect you, and the situation we’re in demands a certain level of seriousness that forces me to be a so-called ‘party pooper’.” More air quotes.

“Boring.”

It was his turn to sigh.

In all seriousness, I understood the situation warranted caution. The text had visibly rattled Borden, and while I didn’t actually read it, I knew it was bad and the threat was real. I was doing as I was told because I didn’t want to be those dumb girls that defied orders and went out on their own, pretending there wasn’t a real danger in doing so. I watched enough horror movies to know they always died, and they died in the most awful way too. Like being cooked alive in a spa booth, or hacked to pieces by a chainsaw. Real fucked up shit like that, which led me to questioning why on earth I would watch movies like that in the first place.