Moving Target

by Rosalie Stanton

  “Why me?” she whispered, her hips beginning a rhythmic sway, seemingly holding the entire bar captive. She looked surprised at first, as though the question hadn’t intended to leave the confines of her mind, but her expression hardened with conviction, furthering the need for an answer.

  “Why not you?” He slipped an arm around her waist to anchor her into him. He needed her to feel his hard cock against her center.

  He also needed to stop being a jackass and get a grip. Anna was off limits. Nothing could change that. She could be considered many things: a job, the target, untouchable and his meal ticket. Wolf didn’t fuck with his food.

  But damn it, she wasn’t the girl he was supposed to snuff. She seemed innocence personified, and that sort of purity came with naiveté, which put her in even deeper danger. If someone wanted her dead, the man behind the hit sure as fuck wouldn’t stop because Wolf had a conscience.

  “Guys just don’t do what you just did.” A pretty blush spread across her cheeks. She glanced down and smothered a grin. “I mean, I’m not a leper, but in places like this, my friend tends to get most of the attention.”

  Yeah, Wolf had noticed, and perhaps, once upon a time, the same might have been true for him. Her friend had a feminine wisdom in the way she moved. She likewise bore all the marks of a woman long jaded with the dance, even if the dance was all she knew. Charity reminded him of Prudence in many ways, and he reckoned he’d trust her like he trusted Pru now: a zebra to a lion.

  She had nothing on Anna.

  “Most,” Wolf agreed softly. “Not all. Not my attention, at least.”

  “I noticed. I just don’t get it.”

  “Nothing to get, kitten. You’re a pretty girl, I’m a guy with eyes and I’ve been watching you.”

  Slightly closer to the truth than he intended, but God, he couldn’t help himself.

  Thankfully, Anna didn’t know the depth of his honesty, for the next thing he knew, he fell under her smile. “Yeah? ‘Cause, um…”

  Her moves became more confident even if her words faltered, the sways of her hips growing pronounced and sexual, the moves of someone who, though perhaps off the market for a few years, still remembered what to do, what signs and motions got a guy hot. She might be an innocent but she wasn’t a skittish virgin—rather, a highly sensual woman.

  He nudged her with his hard cock to see where he could take the dance, and when she answered with a sharp thrust of her hips, he had what he required. He knew he how far he could go.

  She wanted more, and he needed more.

  “Speaking my language, kitten.” His hands grew bolder, which he accredited to being drunk on her. The way she felt, the way she moved against him, grinding against his erection with the strokes of one who knew how to handle him all the while bearing a soft, naive look. She didn’t protest when his hands skimmed her breasts, rather smiled and motivated him to do it again, therein leading himself further down a path of thorns.

  “Naughty hands,” Anna murmured, grinning.

  “You mind?”

  “I should, shouldn’t I? This isn’t like me.”

  He smirked. “Let’s see what else I can get you to do that isn’t like you, yeah?” His erection nudged the apex of her thighs. His mouth found her throat before he could help himself, peppering her sweet flesh with soft kisses and maneuvering her toward a darker corner before he did something to embarrass her and draw unwanted attention upon himself.

  One taste. He just wanted one taste.

  “You’ve done something to me.” Her legs fell open the second he tugged up her skirt. “I’m not a slut.”

  “I know, kitten.”

  She seemed to warm under the pet name, but insisted again, “I’m really not.”

  Wolf’s teeth skimmed along the column of her throat, landing her back against the wall. His fingers plucked at the elastic of her panties. Wrong. This was wrong—they were out where anyone could see, out in a multitude of rampaging hormones but he’d pulled his dick to thoughts of doing exactly this too many nights to stop. She was the target, and he didn’t care, wouldn’t care. He needed to feel her while he could.

  “Mmm.” He slipped his hand into her panties. “Someone’s enjoying herself.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “So wet, baby.”

  “Please. I need… Please…”

  His cock throbbed. In two seconds, he would rip those panties off and sink inside her, sealing his fate and hers.

  Yet he couldn’t, no matter how badly he wanted it. He’d already crossed the line and he wouldn’t risk going any further. Anna was too high-profile a hit, and someone would get to her if he packed up his stuff and decided to leave her be. If he allowed himself to get caught up in this, it could damage his reputation among clients, or worse, bring him out of the shadows and into the light.

  Too fucking late.

  His fingers found her slippery clit and rubbed her softly. “That what you need?”

  “Oh God…” Anna panted and arched against him, sweat rolling into her eyes. “More, more. More of that.”

  “Like this?”

  “Oh…”

  “So sweet. Love the sounds you make.” Wolf wedged a knee between her legs, his fingers abandoning her clit just long enough to sink inside her fiery pussy. A long moan rode off his lips. “Christ, can’t wait to feel you around my prick.”

  “There’s something…”

  “Mmm, Anna.”

  “Wrong.” Anna sucked in a deep breath, wedging an eye open and the spell vanished. Arousal met anger, anger met fear and everything came crashing around them. “H-how did you know my name?”

  A gunshot exploded into the room before he had time to worry with a lie.

  Chapter 2

  The club’s heavy pulse dissolved in screams. Blurs of people scattered and fled. Another gunshot, and another. They grew louder, getting closer, and Anna could only hope she had her skirt on straight. Her mind couldn’t process the gunman, even if her racing heart betrayed fear colder than anything she’d ever felt. Everything slowed and sped up at the same time. Time itself felt like an oddity, a sore on the face of reality.

  “Charity!” she screamed over the crowd. “Charity!”

  “No time.” Her dance partner snatched her by the arm and dragged her toward a door she had never seen before. Anna tripped over her feet to follow him, her pulse buzzing and mind spiraling down a corridor lined with questions. He’d known her name. Oh God, he’d known her name. Now he led her under the stairs and through a sea of panicked arms and legs, people screaming for friends. Lightning fired from a gun no one saw.

  At last, Anna sensed the effects of fight or flight bursting under her veins, and her instincts always chose fight. Ten years of kickboxing flooded to the surface, and before she allowed time for another thought, her leg bent upward and connected swiftly with her captor’s gut, giving her the chance to wrench her arm free and bolt hard in the other direction. “Charity!”

  “Anna!”

  The voice didn’t belong to Charity. Anna’s heart jumped but she didn’t turn around. God, she thought she’d learned her lesson. Every time she allowed her defenses down, something terrible happened. If it wasn’t getting tossed out of her first boyfriend’s dorm after giving him her virginity, only to suffer the humiliating consequences of having been a conquest of a fraternity pledge, it was this: animal magnetism shared with a stranger. A stranger who knew her name, who had touched her in ways she hadn’t allowed herself to be touched in years with nothing more than a wink and a smile. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, only knew she would have let him do anything.

  The thought truly terrified her.

  Anna kept moving, fighting against the stream of people, eyes frantically searching for Charity. It took hearing her name in another voice to freeze her tracks. It didn’t sound like her stranger. It sounded like someone else altogether. A new stranger with a shiny gun she suddenly found aimed between her eyes.

  Flight or fi
ght kicked in again, but this time both responses stirred, clashed, cancelled each other out and rendered her motionless. “Oh God,” she whispered.

  “Anna!” That was her stranger screaming. She looked over her shoulder in time to see his dangerous eyes and a gun in his hand, and the night’s weirdness took a nosedive into the downright bizarre.

  Oh God. This had to be a nightmare.

  “Hit the ground!”

  The ground. Yes. In case bullets started flying. The ground seemed the place to be. Anna dropped to the floor, flattening herself against cold, dusty concrete, the air above her exploding. She had no idea how long the gunfire blasted, but at the first reprieve she wasted no time leaping to her feet again. A cold male gasp met the silence, and she knew, somehow, its owner was not her stranger, rather the other gun-wielding maniac. Good. In these instances, she always preferred the devil she knew.

  Even if she didn’t know him at all.

  Her stranger found her immediately, jerking her hand with his. She didn’t want to consider how her skin sizzled at the touch. Chalk that up to the non-reality. She usually didn’t feel too big on guys who carried guns or ones who knew her name without needing to be told.

  Anna couldn’t stop shaking, but somehow she managed to find her voice. “Is this the part where you say, ‘come with me if you want to live’?”

  He offered a flat grin. “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  Nevertheless, when he dragged her toward the exit again, she didn’t fight him. Her insides shook with terror, her mind flooding with questions to which she didn’t know if she wanted the answers. Still, she didn’t fight.

  He’d saved her life. For the moment, in this state, it earned him a few points.

  * * * *

  Another assassin. Another fucking assassin. Wolf hadn’t gotten a good look at him, but it didn’t matter. Nor did it matter he felt convinced he hadn’t managed a killing blow. He remained one step ahead for the time being and he intended to maintain the pace.

  Getting Anna far away from Springfield seemed the only important thing.

  “Get in.” He shoved her roughly against the Lexus’s passenger door. Sirens blared and the sky blazed with flashes of red and blue. Bystanders gathered along the street, clutching each other, some sobbing, others demanding questions with no answer.

  “I have to find Charity.”

  “No time, kitten. In the car.”

  She seemed to awaken then, the numb look on her face melting into fury. It was an expression he knew well, the same that had enchanted him the second he’d first laid eyes on her. His Anna, spilling a coffee on her new blouse and letting loose a slew of profanity he was surprised she knew. He’d laughed and bowed his head, pretending to be absorbed in the latest Greg Iles novel, but he’d been thoroughly enamored, even if he hadn’t known it.

  She beamed with light and he’d been in the dark so long.

  “Look, Mr. Happy Hands.” She waved a finger in his face. “I don’t know who you think you are—”

  Wolf snickered and kicked the car door open. “We’re not having this chat here, sweetheart.”

  “Charity’s my friend.”

  “And I’m sure she’ll appreciate it more if I can keep you alive.” His brows perked. “In the car, Anna.”

  “No. And stop calling me that!”

  “Why? It’s your name, isn’t it?”

  She frowned. “Yes, but you aren’t supposed to know it.”

  “I’m also not supposed to rescue your ungrateful ass, but I didn’t let that stop me, did I?” Wolf sighed and tossed a glance over his shoulder. Once the cops arrived, they’d want all the witnesses to stay put, and Wolf couldn’t afford to let that happen. “Look, you can check on your chum later. Right now we gotta run.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Wolf’s jaw tightened and he took a heated step forward. “I’m the man who was offered a hundred fifty thousand to put you in the ground. And if our friend back there was any indication, I’m not the only one. Now get in the fucking car before I shove you in there.”

  He found the look conquering her face downright devastating, even if he’d seen it on his targets a thousand times before. The disbelief, the shock, the horror, the identification, the acceptance and, his least favorite, the what the hell do I do now? expression. They hadn’t time, however, to mull things over or delve into explanations. Instead, he gestured to the car. “Getting in?”

  A long pause. Anna nodded numbly and slipped out of sight.

  They were gone before the sirens reached the club.

  * * * *

  “I can’t believe you got in the car.”

  “What do you mean?” Anna asked absently.

  They were the first words to leave the stranger’s mouth since the club, and possibly the only thing that could have stirred her to life. The vehicle twisted through familiar back roads toward her apartment. He knew where she lived. Of course he did. He knew everything—her name, her address, the fact she was a lonely twenty-something willing to give a hot guy a happy at a dance club. As it stood, she had other things to worry about right now, like the fact that guns had fired and she’d been the target.

  Then again, obsessing over her wisdom in getting into the stranger’s car seemed better than the alternative. The fingers of dread gripping her insides were second only to the fear clutching her by the throat. A hit. Monroe had put a hit on her.

  The mystery man gave a shrug, jarring her back to the present. “What I mean is I just told you I’d been offered loads of cash for your head. Figure that would warrant at least a second or two of debate before hopping in with me.”

  Her eyes widened and she sent him a horrified look. Oh God, how moronic could she be? It had to be shock. Shock, fatigue, adrenaline from her brush with death, his killer cheekbones, a million things. A million explainable things.

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry?” she squawked. “How can you expect me not to worry? You just said—”

  “Think nothing of it.” He made another sharp turn. “I just figured you’d put up more of a fight, is all.”

  “You son of a bitch. I—” Anna turned her eyes back to the road for only a second, but it gave her enough time to identify her apartment building. They turned into the parking lot of the Honeymoon Inn sitting across the street. “Where the hell are we going?”

  The gunman huffed as the car slowed to a park, shuffling and producing a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. She did her best not to wrinkle her nose in disgust. She hated cancer sticks. “Gotta pick me up some supplies.” He wedged a smoke between his lips.

  She swallowed hard. “You’re staying here?”

  He nodded and lit up. “Anyone ever tell you it’s a bad idea to rent a room next to dives like this? You never know who might sneak a peek.”

  The dread pooling in her stomach gave way to nausea. He’d been watching her. It was how he knew her name. She’d gotten into a car with her own personal stalker, a stalker with a gun. Sure, he had saved her life, but that didn’t mean anything. “You…” Anna swallowed hard. “You… I… I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Hold that thought.” He nodded at the motel. “We’re headed up.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  He took a deep drag off his cigarette. “Look, sweetheart, I know this is a lot to process, but—”

  “A lot to process?” Anna all but shrieked. She couldn’t take it any longer. Without warning, the pressure in her chest detonated, singeing her nerves and fueling the fire burning in her belly with real ammunition. “I was just shot at and I don’t know if Charity is all right and you grabbed me and I have a bounty on my head and you’re stalking me and why the hell did I get in the car?”

  His expression softened, but she couldn’t handle sympathy any more than she could his smirk. She didn’t feel in the market for pity right now. At any rate, it would mean he felt for her and it seemed easier to demonize him than believe he wanted to help
. “Listen—”

  “No, you listen. I have a life, you understand? And tonight ends right now. I’m going home.”

  “You can’t go home.”

  “Wanna watch me?”

  A growl tumbled through his throat, his free hand snatching hers. “Let’s try again, shall we? Save the rant. Willing or not, you’re coming with me.”

  “Who the hell—”

  “I meant what I said back there.” His eyes sparked. “Trust me when I tell you I’m the best friend you’ve got right now, so shut your hole and start listening to me.” They glared at each other for a long minute before he glanced down and sighed. “Do you have any idea who would want you dead?”

  “Why? Don’t you know who hired you?”

  A muscle in his jaw ticked, pillars of cigarette smoke blowing out his nostrils. “Know much about assassins, kitten?”

  “They’re assholes.”

  “We don’t get our leads from the source, unless they’ve got muck for brains. It’s very filtered, the process. Especially high-class hits like you.”

  “I’m high class?”

  “The client is. Government type, from what I gather. The higher up the client, the higher up the hit. That’s you, sweetheart.” He looked up, meeting her eyes again. “Can be as simple as putting an ad online. For others, though, guys like me, we have contacts. We have private numbers. And it’s first come, first serve. Our friend back at the club is just the beginning. Now there’s blood in the water, the others will start coming in. They always do.”

  His words left her numb.

  “I made the first move,” he continued. “The others have to play their hands now.”

  “So I’ve been…”

  “Followed. Stalked. Observed.”

  “By you?”

  He inclined his head. “And others.”

  “Then why am I alive at all?”

  “‘Cause I was the one watching you the closest.” A small, dry smile tickled his lips. “I make the first move.”

  “Always?”

  “Always.”

  “And what if you don’t?”

  The stranger shrugged. “Then someone loses something valuable. I don’t take this job lightly, and they know it. Helps that I’m the best.”