Celebrity Bodyguard

Chapter 1: The Prima Donna

Backstage smelled like burnt coffee and fear. Kael Thorne breathed it in and hated it.

He’d worked warzones. He’d worked embassies under threat of gunfire. None of that had prepared him for this. The bass from the soundcheck thumped through the concrete floor, up through his boots, into his chest, like a second heartbeat that wasn’t his own.

He straightened his cuffs and watched the crew run past him, clipboards in hand, panic on their faces. Nobody looked at him twice. Good. That was the job. Blend in, watch everything, stay invisible until you’re needed.

Apex Security had sent their best for this one. Which was exactly why Kael was standing outside VIP Dressing Room A, wondering how his career had led him here — to guarding a twenty-two-year-old pop star with the temper of a spoiled king.

Julian Vance. Three platinum albums. A sold-out world tour. A face on every billboard from LA to Tokyo. And, according to his terrified management team, the target of a stalker who had gone from love letters to death threats in under a month. The last photo they’d found had been taken close enough to see the sweat on Julian’s neck.

That was why Kael was here.

Before he reached the door, a voice cracked through the wood like a whip.

“I said oat milk, not almond! Do I look like someone who drinks almonds, Brenda?”

Kael let out a slow breath through his nose and pushed the door open.

The room looked like it had survived a small war. Clothes were thrown over every chair. A fruit platter sat untouched next to a flower arrangement that had been knocked sideways. And in the middle of it all sat Julian Vance, glaring at a shaking assistant who held an iced coffee like it might explode.

Julian was sharp-jawed, dark-haired, dressed in tight black leather and a shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest. The open collar showed the sharp line of his collarbones and a thin silver chain that rested against smooth skin. He looked like he belonged on a magazine cover. Right now, he looked like a child who’d been told no.

“I’m so sorry, I’ll fix it right now!” Brenda squeaked, and bolted for the door so fast she nearly slammed into Kael.

He stepped aside and let her go.

Julian threw his head back and groaned at the ceiling, as if asking God why he was cursed with idiots. Then he lowered his chin and caught Kael’s reflection in the mirror.

He didn’t jump. He turned the chair slowly, eyes moving over Kael’s shoulders, down his arms, lingering on the way the black shirt stretched across his chest, then back up to his face. The look was open, assessing, and just a little too interested. Then he rolled his eyes.

“And who are you?” Julian said. “Another intern here to poison me with dairy? Or did they finally send someone to fix this lighting?”

“Kael Thorne. Apex Security.” Kael’s voice was flat and even. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. The click sounded loud in the sudden quiet. “Your management hired me.”

Julian scoffed and crossed one leg over the other. The movement made the leather of his pants creak softly. “Ah. The bodyguard. Because of the silly letters.”

“Death threats aren’t silly, Mr. Vance.” Kael walked toward him, slow and unhurried. He’d stood in front of sniper fire without blinking. A pop star’s tantrum wasn’t going to touch him. Still, he was aware of the way Julian’s eyes tracked every step. “They’re a real threat to your safety. Starting today, I’m your shadow.”

Julian barked out a laugh. “My shadow. Did you practice that line in the mirror?”

“I don’t practice.” Kael stopped three feet away, hands clasped behind his back. “I don’t go to the studio, don’t step outside, don’t so much as breathe in public before I clear it. We move on my schedule. If I say we cancel a show, we cancel it. Understood?”

The room went cold and quiet.

Julian stood. He was tall, but Kael still had two inches and thirty pounds of muscle on him. It didn’t seem to matter. Julian lifted his chin, smirking, and closed the space between them until Kael could smell his cologne — sharp, expensive, and a little too close. The heat of his body brushed against Kael’s chest.

“Listen to me, *Shadow*.” Julian jabbed a ringed finger into Kael’s chest. The contact was deliberate, lingering longer than it needed to. “I sign your paycheck. I didn’t ask for you. I don’t want you here. I have a world tour to run, and I don’t need a paranoid rent-a-cop ruining my image.”

He pressed harder, the pad of his finger warm through the fabric of Kael’s shirt. “I give you three days before you’re begging my manager to reassign you.”

Kael didn’t move. He looked down at the finger on his chest, then back up into Julian’s eyes. Neither of them blinked. Up close, Julian’s eyes were darker than they looked on stage — brown shot through with gold, sharp and restless. Kael could feel the faint rise and fall of the younger man’s breath.

“I don’t beg.” His voice dropped lower. “And I don’t quit. Sit down. Let your team finish. We leave for the arena floor in ten minutes. Oat milk or not.”

Julian’s mouth fell open. For a second, nobody in the room breathed. Directors flinched when Julian raised his voice. Producers apologized before he even finished a sentence. Nobody talked to him like that.

His jaw tightened. A flush of anger rose in his cheeks. Kael waited for the explosion.

It didn’t come.

Instead, something shifted in Julian’s eyes — the anger burning down into something sharper, hungrier. His gaze flicked down to Kael’s mouth for half a second, then back up. A slow smile pulled at his lips, the kind that looked like trouble.

“Game on, bodyguard.” He spun back to the mirror in a swirl of silk and dropped into his chair. “Someone get makeup in here! My shadow’s on a schedule.”

Kael stepped back to the door and pressed two fingers to his earpiece, checking in with the perimeter team. His face gave nothing away.

But underneath it, he already knew. Julian Vance was going to be a nightmare in designer clothes.

And something about the way the man had looked at him — like he’d just found a new game worth playing — made Kael’s pulse tick a little harder than it should have.

It was going to be a very long tour.