by Kris Delake
Then he did collapse on her.
She could feel his heart racing. Or maybe that was her heart. Or both of theirs.
Either way, she was spent, and overly sensitive, and satisfied. For the moment, anyway.
“I didn’t think I could do that,” he said.
Be sincere? she almost joked, but she didn’t. That was a precious statement, a statement she didn’t want to make into anything funny.
His hand cupped her breast, his touch warm and soft. “I thought only young men could come that many times in a row.”
“You’re not young?” she asked in that light tone she heard in her head. “Could’ve fooled me.”
He lifted his head and grinned at her. He really did look young now. And handsome. And perfect.
And God, she wanted him again. Or at least, she knew she would want him.
Right now, she was too tired.
And her back hurt.
Something was digging into her spine.
“I think we have to move,” she said.
He shifted his hips. He was still inside her, even though he wasn’t hard.
She grinned. “I was going to say ‘Not that kind of move,’ but you can continue as long as you like.”
“If only I could,” he said and slipped all the way out.
She felt a loss, as if he had taken something important with him. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself reaching for him, so that he would stay with her like that forever.
And she immediately crushed that mental image: too needy, too vulnerable. She wasn’t ever any of those things.
Although she had been this afternoon.
With this man whose mother had killed her father.
But even that no longer had the talismanic power it had had just a few hours earlier. She didn’t hate him for that.
Especially since she could now acknowledge that she wanted her father dead—that Misha’s mother had done her a favor that night, and Misha knew it.
Rikki knew it.
“Something’s gouging my back,” she said.
He levered himself off her. A flush still colored his pale skin. His body was amazing. She was impressed at the strength he had shown. Holding her up while having an orgasm, without leaning against anything.
She looked at those legs, the muscles in them, the muscles in his torso and arms and back.
She sat up, cupped his face, and kissed him. She didn’t want to let him go, and that terrified her.
She had never felt like that about anyone before.
He put his arms around her and helped her off the counter. Then he looked at her back.
“There’s a dent in the skin,” he said. “You were on one of the forks, but tongs didn’t break the surface. You’ll probably be bruised.”
She had been bruised from the last time they had made love, and she hadn’t cared then. She didn’t care now.
“I’ll be all right,” she said.
“I don’t like hurting you,” he said, and that sounded sincere too.
“You didn’t hurt me,” she said. “Believe me.”
She touched that skin of his, so smooth and hard, over those amazing muscles. “How come I can’t get enough of you?”
“It’s not touch drops,” he said, and there was a bit of irritation in his tone.
She looked at him. “I know.”
He nodded, looked down, as if his own words had surprised him. “I think that offended me more than anything.”
“That a man like you would need touch drops?”
He shook his head. He still wasn’t looking at her. “That what we had that night could even be considered something artificial.”
She swallowed. “What do we have?”
He lifted his head. “I don’t know.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Then he kissed her, a light kiss, almost a benediction.
“But whatever it is,” he said. “It’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Powerful and out of control and addicting. Maybe that was why she had compared it to touch drops. She could get used to this man. Only that was the wrong way to put it.
She wanted to explore this man. She wanted to know every inch of him, everything he liked, everything that made him as wild as he had made her.
She could dedicate months to studying him, to figuring out what made his eyes that amazing blue, what could make him moan like he had, make him lose complete control.
She wanted to love him for days.
She kissed him, and then she stopped, frozen again. That word she had used. Over and over again—fortunately only inside her own mind.
Love.
She had made love with him. That was what she had thought. Twice, she’d had that thought. And now, she wanted to love him for days.
She never used that word. She didn’t believe in that word.
She screwed men. She had sex with them. She had even fucked one or two.
But she had never made love before.
And if she had to guess what that felt like, she would have guessed that it felt like this.
He stuck a finger under her chin, and brought her head up so that she looked at him.
“You all right?” he asked.
Was she falling in love with him? Was she even capable of that? And, more importantly, could she stop it?
Because she couldn’t love anyone. Any more than she could need anyone.
She was okay with craving him, okay with wanting him. Maybe even okay with obsessing about him.
But she couldn’t tie herself to him in any way.
“I’m okay,” she said, even though it might have been a lie. “Are you?”
“The best I’ve ever been,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling. “Quite honestly—No. Make that quite sincerely, Rikki—this is the best I’ve ever been.”
Chapter 38
Somewhere in the middle of that incredible afternoon, Misha had decided he was going to be completely honest with her. He wasn’t going to lie, he wasn’t going to forget to tell her something. He was going to be as much of himself as he was capable of being.
He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was going to try.
Could this feeling, this desire for her that was so intense it almost hurt, be something he could get out of his system?
He wasn’t sure.
And he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.
They ended up in her bathroom, showering together, playing with each other’s bodies, but both clearly too tired to do much more. He dried her off, then dried himself off, and led her to bed.
The bedroom was as bright as the rest of the apartment, with floor-to-ceiling windows. It wasn’t until he went in there, naked, holding her hand, that he realized they both were visible to the entire city—and had been throughout that incredible sexual marathon.
And what really surprised him was that he didn’t care.
She hit some kind of button and the windows darkened. The bed was the only thing in the room besides the windows and two occasional tables. She pulled the covers down, and then got in bed, bringing him in.
For a moment, he thought she was going to start again. But she didn’t. She just wrapped herself around him, nestled her head against his chest, and closed her eyes.
After a moment, he closed his eyes too.
***
He woke up hours later, hungrier than he ever remembered being. Rikki was still cradled in his arms, and he was hard against her. But his body ached, and even though the desire was there as strong as it had been earlier, he knew he might actually hurt them both if he started something so soon.
They needed to eat, not act like teenagers on a honeymoon. After they ate, they could resume their teenage-honeymoon behavior.
He smiled and stroked Rikki’s hair. It was so soft. It cascaded around her, covering her. He loved the color—the real color. He kissed the crown of her head, then eased himself out. Gently. Slowly.
He didn’t want to wake her. She
had awakened him, twice, twitching and crying out with what had clearly been bad dreams. He wondered if her sleep was haunted by the death of her father, or if she was dreaming of other unpleasant things.
Still, he knew enough about brain science as it pertained to post-traumatic stress to know that sleep would help repair the emotional damage. It would link the connections, make the newly revived memories firmer, keep them easy to access.
And that was important, because she had to stop questioning herself.
He tucked her hair away from him, so that he wouldn’t roll on it as he slid out of bed.
He was physically exhausted. He could only imagine how she felt—physically and emotionally exhausted.
Only really, he didn’t have to imagine it.
He had gone through something similar at the Guild, back when they were testing him. They wanted to make certain he was becoming an assassin for the right reasons.
If revenge lurked in his past, in his trapped memories, then he could have lost control of his present—of himself—the way that Rikki had lost control when she found out who he was. When they had the discussion about that night, here in the apartment.
He hadn’t gone through that—not outside of a supervised setting, not in the middle of a job—but that was only because the Guild had insisted on the psychological work up front. Probably because of some kind of experience that he knew nothing about.
He ran a hand through his hair, which was still damp from that shower. He had to find his clothes. And then he had to find a message board in the apartment. Because he knew there was no food here. He didn’t want to risk delivery, not since he had compromised her security network. So he needed to bring back groceries. He had found a good place between his hideout and hers. He would come back and cook her something delicious, and then he would wake her up.
Most of his clothes were in the kitchen. His boots had gotten into the hallway, and he didn’t remember that. In fact, the last thing he remembered about his boots was taking the knife out of its hiding place. He had been concentrating a lot more on her and their encounter than he had been on himself.
He also picked up the weapons, stopping for a moment to look at that small thing Rikki had taken from the seam of her pants. The thing wasn’t much bigger than his thumb and it seemed to have a multipurpose. If he pressed it, a small sharp blade came out. But there was another button that he recognized. The small thing had a small laser as well.
It was an ingenious little weapon. He would have to ask her about it.
He left her weapons on the counter and took his, along with his clothes, into the bathroom. Once there, he dressed, and replaced the weapons. Then he found the message board built into the mirror, and recorded his plans. As he froze the frame in the entire mirror, so she would notice the message, he noted that he looked a little more flushed than usual, his lips as bruised as hers had been.
He smiled at the memory.
Then he finger-combed his hair, double-checked the weapons to make sure he hadn’t done something stupid, and let himself out of the bathroom. He felt a bit muzzy-headed, not from any chemical, but from the complete shift in his perspective.
He had been furious with Rikki, and then he had felt compassion for her, and then that lust returned, even more powerful than before. And now that he was up and moving, the lust was there, in the background, but so was a tenderness he wasn’t sure he had ever felt before.
He slipped silently down the hallway. The apartment looked different from the inside. It was pretty clear that those bearing walls were a bit longer than they needed to be, just a bit wider. The illusion only existed for someone looking into the apartment through the windows, not for someone walking past them.
As he got to the entrance, he stopped. Another door was open. It was probably the door leading to the steps that took Rikki to the apartments she owned on the lower level.
He was half-smiling as he peered inside, wanting to check his theory.
The view of the interior was so different from what he expected that he actually made a soft sound.
Usually he didn’t go into places without having seen the schematics. He usually didn’t have to guess what was behind one door because he knew.
He hadn’t known here.
What he thought was a small staircase enclosure leading down a few flights was actually a workspace. Weapons covered the walls like decorations. There was a counter that went all the way around, drawers and cabinets, and, yes, an extra space toward the back that might indeed lead down to the lower apartments or might provide an excellent second hiding space.
In the center of the room was a large, soft couch-like thing that someone could stretch out on.
It was clear that Rikki had been doing just that when her food got delivered, hours ago. It seemed like it had been days ago, though, the way that he had changed, the way that she had changed. What they had discussed, what they had been through.
What they had done.
He smiled softly.
He was about to turn away from the room when he noticed five tablets on the couch-thing. They all had images on them, probably future targets.
And one of the images looked familiar.
He frowned, and walked inside. His heart was actually pounding. He knew this was a violation of the trust he wanted to build with Rikki, but he couldn’t stop himself.
He would just double-check, make sure everything was fine, and then he would go get food.
His hand hovered over the tablet. His breath caught.
That face was familiar.
It belonged to Kerani Ammons, the director of the Assassins Guild.
Chapter 39
Misha’s head was spinning. That couldn’t be right. He couldn’t be looking at Kerani Ammons’s face. Because if he was looking at Kerani’s face, then maybe Liora had been right. Maybe Rikki was with the Rovers.
His stomach twisted.
He picked up the tablet and it immediately shut off at the touch of his fingers. He cursed silently, then heard a slight sound behind him.
He turned to see the door closing.
He leapt for it, tablet still in hand, and managed to stop the door from sealing. He didn’t want to have it close while he still had the tablet. He needed to re-jigger something so that he could put the tablet back down where he had found it, without getting trapped.
Dammit. What was this all about? Had Rikki been using him all along? Was she trying to get into the Guild by playing hard to get?
Because, after all, only a nonaffiliated assassin would have an excuse—a reason—to get into the Guild like this. And a nonaffiliated assassin would have to meet with Kerani before the final acceptance into the Guild.
Misha closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the door. Dammit, dammit, dammit. He didn’t want to think like that. He didn’t want to make that kind of assumption.
Dammit.
There was no proof that this tablet was anything other than an informational device. He was the one who had assumed he was holding a target image.
He needed to get the tablet working.
He needed to fix the door, put the tablet back, and get breakfast.
He needed to trust.
That was what he had vowed to do. That was what he would do.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Rikki’s voice. Low, menacing. He had never heard her sound like that.
He opened his eyes, raised his head, and looked into the hallway. She was standing near him, feet splayed, laser pistol pointed at him. Her hair was messed, her eyes shadowed, but she wasn’t shaking. She looked strong.
She was also naked.
The way she had her arms, her hands holding that braced pistol, pushed up her spectacular breasts. He could see every muscle, every part of her, and dammit, he could feel himself growing hard.
“Okay,” he said, trying to sound calm. “I know this looks bad.”
Hell, it looked terrible. He was wedged between the door and the jam, the d
oor vibrating as it continued its quest to shut. In his right hand—the hand in the hallway—he held her tablet.
“It doesn’t look bad,” she said, her voice still low and ferocious. “It just proves that I should have listened to my doubts. You’re a hell of a con man, Misha. I actually believed everything you said.”
“I wasn’t conning you,” he said, but stopped himself before saying I can explain this. He could explain it, but he’d heard that sentence so many times from clearly guilty people or people whose guilt no longer mattered, who were going to die anyway, that he couldn’t, in good conscience, say it himself.
“Then you want to tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you?” she asked. Her face was impassive. He would have been happier if she had been angry.
He wondered if this was her professional face, the one countless people had last seen before they died.
“You’ll damage your door,” he said.
She shrugged, moving her breasts ever so slightly, which then made his breath catch. She was beautiful. Hair down, splendidly naked, gun in hand. He wasn’t sure he had ever seen a more beautiful woman.
“You’re already damaging my door,” she said.
“I’d stop,” he said, “but I can’t move.”
She looked at the door, then looked at his face, then looked at the exterior control panel. At least, he assumed that was the exterior control panel.
“Tell me what you were doing in there,” she said. “And don’t lie.”
He licked his lips. “Did you see my message in the bathroom?”
“No,” she said. “I heard the alarm, I grabbed my gun, I came here. I didn’t have time to pee. And you know what? I would really like to pee. So get to the point.”
He would have smiled at the irritation in her voice if it had been appropriate. But it wasn’t. His heart started beating harder, and it wasn’t just because the woman holding that gun on him was hot.
He was starting to get the feeling that she would pull that trigger if he gave her the slightest excuse.
“I was going to get us breakfast,” he said. “I left you a message to that effect. Go check if you want. I’m not going anywhere.”
