Chapter One

 

Kendall was in a bad mood. Which was not unusual for her. She was a girl who was often unsatisfied with her life and many of the elements and people within it. The expression about not suffering fools gladly could have been coined about her. Except Kendall suffered almost nothing gladly.

As she strode angrily down the street, her long, coppery hair hung down over her shoulders in the cool and still September air. She wore a black T-shirt with a gray picture of wolves under a loose red, green, and black checked woolen overshirt that hung to her thighs. She had a fake gold Aztek choker around the base of her throat, from which dangled a peace medallion and a Wiccan emblem.

She'd had another argument with her airhead roommate, who she hated, and then a second argument with the university housing officer about changing dorm rooms immediately. There were no empty dorm rooms. Rooms could be changed, but only when, after time passed, another bed came open in another female dorm room.

Nor had her suggestion that the man "go and suck a dead dog's dick" endeared her to him.

She was going to have to go off-campus. And it was more than slightly late to look for accommodation now that this year's students had flooded into the city and taken up occupancy. That meant she'd have to pay a premium. That in turn, meant she'd have to call home and convince her father to fork over the money.

Which was infuriating! Why should she have to beg for money? He was old and practically dead anyway. He had lots! And what did he ever use it for?! The man just worked all the time and had no fun. Fool! No wonder her mother had divorced him. Of course, then she'd had the bad luck to be on an airliner that went down.

Bad luck for Kendall too, of course.

Fucking world!

Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her pocket and glanced at it.

"Oh, fuck off, Sean," she said, stuffing it back into her pocket.

Sean had been her boyfriend last term at college. She had tired of him, though. He was boring. Kendall considered herself a true rebel. Sean was just a poseur. But in keeping with her self-image, she was very... active... in bed. She had left a series of boyfriends and lovers in her dazed and gratified past, all eager for more of the same and all disappointed.

Just like she'd been in them. Useless fuckers.

Men, in general, wanted women for status and sex. She had no interest in them using her as arm candy or bragging about fucking her. And the sex, from her perspective, tended to be bland, boring, and far too short. Maybe, she thought, she could find an attractive guy and train him. But that just wouldn't be the same. She didn't want a guy good at following orders.

She'd had no clear idea of where she was going as she had stalked down the streets. But she'd walked fast enough, far enough, her concentration inward, that she'd wandered into a very bad neighborhood. That was to say, it was the neighborhood where the wealthy lived in their high, glass towers.

She'd often thought of them all falling down in a tremendous rumble of glass and steel. That'd teach the rich bastards to lord their filthy wealth over everyone else! There ought to be a revolution!

And up ahead of her was a prime example of the species. A long, sleek black limousine had pulled over to a stop. A big, mean-looking guy in a suit walked out of the door of a building as the chauffeur jumped out and ran around to the rear to pull open the door.

Imagine being so fucking arrogant and rich you can't even open your own door and step out; she thought in contempt.

The mean-looking man eyed her, but not with any evident concern. He looked away, his eyes flicking around. There was another mean-looking guy toward the front of the car looking in the other direction. The chauffeur bent and obsequiously reached in to help a fake blonde with a lot of makeup out of the car.

Oh fuck me dead, Kendall thought in disgust.

The woman's dress had probably cost thousands of dollars as it spilled sequins down her body to her ankles, and Kendall snorted in disdain. She tried to walk past but the mean guy held his arm out.

"Wait for a few moments, please," he said.

"Why the fuck should I?" she demanded. "It's a public sidewalk!"

"Because I told you to," he said blandly. "Or you could just go around."

"Out into the street? So that princess doesn't have to worry about me getting in her way?"

He shrugged and smiled, but not in a friendly way.

She scowled back and then moved out onto the street to walk past the limo. The chauffeur had hurried to the rear of the car, opened it took out a suitcase, then closed it and hurried after the blonde.

His keys were still in the car.

"You're free to walk past now," the mean guy said mockingly.

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on," she called over the top of the car.

Then she opened the driver's door and climbed in.

"Hey!"

She hummed to herself and shifted into gear as the two mean guys ran around to the driver's door and yanked on it.

She turned and smiled up at them, then gave them her middle finger and drove a half block up the street and stopped. They hesitated, then ran after her. She let them get as far as the bumper then started forward again, snickering. She stopped again, then pressed the button to lower the driver's window.

"Hey, guys! Want your car back?" she called.

They started to stride angrily up the road and she let her foot off the brake so it slowly began to roll away from them again.

"Come on! A little faster! I know you can do it!" she called.

One of them went back toward the building. The other one stood there, arms folded across his chest, staring darkly at her.

Kendall grinned in delight, put the car in reverse, and backed up slowly, though not close enough that when he abruptly sprinted forward, she couldn't roll the window up again.

"Open the door," he demanded, his voice deep and accented.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because you don't want to go to jail for stealing a car."

She laughed at him in delight. "Are you kidding? Even if the police arrested me the DA would drop the charges!"

"Okay, so what do you intend to do with it?"

He sounded British, she thought, though not the British of those snooty aristocrats in the movies.

"I don't know. Maybe I'll drive it over to Queens and park it where the homeless can use it to sleep. I bet the seats in the back are really comfortable."

She held her fist up.

"Power to the people!"

"Listen, you little bitch - ."

She drove up the street a dozen yards, then watched him in the side mirror. He glowered at her, then walked slowly forward until he was standing next to the driver's window and looking down.

"Ask nicely," she said.

He just glared at her.

"Say pretty please."

He continued to glare at her.

"Oh well." She gave a dramatic shrug and turned away from the window, then leaned over and turned on the radio.

A moment later the driver's side window was smashed in and she yelped in shock as she was showered by fragments of safety glass. A moment later a powerful hand grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and dragged her out the window.

He held her up in the air, her feet dangling a foot or so off the ground, then abruptly dumped her. Kendall landed nimbly, then tried to dart sideways and be off but he caught her by the collar and yanked her back, then pushed her back against the side of the car.

"You're going to pay for that window," he growled.

"Yeah!? Eat me!"

He looked down, then casually reached in and flipped aside the oversized wool shirt to reveal what was underneath.

"Deal," he said. "Here? Or did you have somewhere else you wanted that to happen?"

She scowled at him, and he cocked his head to one side and then smiled down at her.

"Although, since it's you who has to make restitution, it should be you eating me, don't you think?"

"That'll be the fucking day!"

"I mean, why should you get the glorious delights and multiple orgasms of my incredible oral skills as a reward for all the trouble you've caused?"

He leaned in suddenly, his face an inch or so from hers, scowling. "Just how much do you think being a hot redhead buys you anyway?" he demanded in a low, almost menacing voice.

He straightened up almost at once.

"A lot!" she snapped.

He laughed as if surprised.

"Now let me go!"

"I can legally hold you for the police," he said. "My employer would expect that."

"Oh, and we can't disappoint your employer, now can we?" she said in a sarcastic tone. "Do you wipe her ass for her too?"

"That's someone else's job. I'm just a bodyguard."

She ventured a kick at him, but he simply spun her around pushing her against the side of the big car. She yelped as he pulled back on her hair, her hands instinctively thrusting up and back behind her head to free her hair. He captured them neatly, pinning both in place by crossing her wrists and holding them in one large, strong - very strong hand.

Then he swept aside the big shirt and stuck a couple of fingers into her back pocket, drawing out a handful of plastic cards.

"Hey! You don't have any right to do that!"

"Yeah? Sue me. Ah, a college girl. Why am I not surprised? You do seem to be the entitled brat type. Do you know that a criminal conviction could get you expelled?"

"Good luck getting the DA to prosecute on this, moron!"

"You forget, my employer is quite wealthy, and influential. And while the DA might indeed be a useless progressive pussy, he needs money to get re-elected. And you, my sweet, are not a member of any identifiable group that he feels is in need of protection. So, he'll let you be prosecuted as a favor to my boss."

He turned her back around and she glared angrily up at him. He smirked down, and then his eyes moved lower than her face. With her arms back the way they were the open shirt had pulled apart and her back was slightly arched.

And Kendall had been generously gifted by nature. The sight of her bare breasts had never failed to make the guys' eyes widen. One had even written a poem about them - the pansy.

At the moment, she was not wearing a bra because she'd stormed out of her room without bothering to put one on. She hadn't intended going far anyway and the thick woolen lumberjack shirt covered her from staring eyes.

Though not at that moment his.

"Maybe we can work something out in trade," he said, that smirk still present.

Kendall glared up at him, but in that moment felt a stab of something... dark... and hot. There was no doubting this guy was big, strong, athletic, powerful, and good-looking. There was also something faintly dangerous and menacing about him. And he was very unlikely to be 'boring' in bed.

A bodyguard? He wasn't rich, almost a member of the working class, in fact. Even if he was working for the wrong side.

The way he had lifted her bodily out of the car with such ease was also quite impressive. She'd been impressed at the time. In retrospect, she was more than impressed.

"I can beat you up," she said.

He snorted in amusement at the ridiculous threat.

"One way or another you're gonna pay for the damage to the car."

"You made it!"

"Getting it back from a thief."

"If I was a thief, I'd have driven off in it!"

"The law doesn't specify how far you have to go when you steal a car, Red."

"Don't call me that!"

"Why not? You sure look like a Red. And you called Mrs. Williams a Blonde. Fair's fair."

She twisted to one side, then the other, but he simply held her firmly, grinning.

"You wriggle around very attractively," he said. "I wonder how much you'll wriggle around in bed."

She felt a sudden rush of something hot but ignored it.

"I'll probably have to fight off falling asleep!"

Her T-shirt had slid up to bare a few inches of her stomach and he gripped the bottom and tugged it up a little more.

"You don't have any weapons on you, do you?"

"Don't touch me!"

He grinned and released it.

"Except for those, of course," he said, eyeing her breasts straining against the shirt, nipples now poking tiny indentations in the thin material.

She flushed, squirming on the inside. There was something about this guy that was making her body thrum with a sense of dark, sexual energy. And much to her dismay and fury, she felt her nipples tingling and hardening under the T-shirt. She was sure he was going to notice it too the way she was posed!