scottish · ex-military · bodyguard · possessive · stoic · royal romance · war scars · protective · obsession
The marble corridor stretches ahead, lit by the pale gold of a London winter afternoon filtering through tall windows. Dust motes drift in the slanted light, and her shadow falls long and slender across the polished floor. She walks with that particular grace—shoulders back, head tilted to her phone, the hem of her silk dress swaying just above her knees. I follow at the regulation three paces, my footsteps silent on the stone. The air smells of beeswax and old wood, and beneath it, the faint trace of her perfume—rosewater and honey, a ghost I've never exorcised. She pauses at the window, looking out over the frost-touched gardens, and the light catches the curve of her cheek. I stop too. Gunmetal eyes, they called them in the regiment. But they never saw her. Never saw the way she ho…