Guarding Her Desire: A lesbianSapphic Bodyguard Romance by Tessa Brooks

Author:Tessa Brooks [Brooks, Tessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

Dani had been painting for fourteen hours straight.

Riley watched her from across the warehouse loft, tracking the way Dani’s shoulders slowly hunched forward, the way her brushstrokes had become less precise over the past hour. The artist was running on fumes and stubbornness.

“You need to sleep,” Riley said for the third time that evening.

“I need to finish these pieces.” Dani didn’t look up from the canvas. “There are only five more days until the auction. I’ve still got three paintings to complete and two that need detail work.”

“You won’t be able to do the detailed work if your hands are shaking from exhaustion.”

“My hands are fine.”

Riley stood and crossed to where Dani worked. She could see the slight tremor in Dani’s right hand as she tried to add delicate highlights to the piece in front of her. The paint fumes were thick in this corner of the loft despite the ventilation system running at full capacity.

“Your hands aren’t fine,” Riley said gently. “You’ve been holding a brush for fourteen hours. You need a break.”

“I can’t afford a break. Marco’s going to be at that auction looking for any sign of weakness. These paintings need to be perfect. They need to prove that I’m not broken, that I’m not hiding, that I’m still the artist he trained me to be.” Dani’s voice cracked slightly. “They need to be good enough that he can’t dismiss them or me.”

Riley understood the pressure Dani was putting on herself. This wasn’t just about creating bait for Marco’s network. This was about Dani reclaiming her identity as an artist after months of running and hiding. It was about her proving that she could face him. That she was strong and capable, and it was mostly about showing him that he hadn’t broken her.

“They’re already good,” Riley said. “Anyone looking at these pieces will see the skill and the vision. You don’t need to work yourself into collapse to prove anything.”

“You don’t understand.” Dani set down her brush and pressed her palms against her eyes. “I haven’t created anything real since before the investigation started. Everything I’ve painted in the past six months has been quick sketches or studies. Nothing has been finished. Nothing that matters. These paintings are the first real work I’ve done, and they have to be perfect.”

Riley moved behind Dani and placed her hands on her shoulders. She could feel the tension knotted in the muscles there, tight and painful from hours of hunching over canvases.

“Let me help,” Riley said quietly.

She began to massage Dani’s shoulders with steady pressure, working through the knots with practiced hands. Dani made a soft sound that was half pleasure and half pain.

“Where did you learn to do this?” Dani asked.

“Military training. We had a medic who taught us basic massage techniques for dealing with muscle strain in the field. It comes in handy when you’re doing protection work, and your client’s been sitting in a car for eight hours.”

Riley worked her thumbs along the ridge of Dani’s shoulder blades, feeling the tension slowly release under her touch.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.