RELEASE: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance

by Naomi West

  I stare Jones right in the face. “He wants me.”

  He shifts in his chair, his eyes scanning over my body, hitching on all the good parts.

  “The last time I saw him,” I continue. “Was in Milan. We were searching a site in Italy. With no luck. He came to check our progress. He told me-” I break off, but can’t control the shudder that runs through me. “That I belong to him. That he owns me. Because of the money he paid my father. That he owns me. And that someday, he’s going to do whatever he wants to me. You came here to take me to that someday.”

  I look up at Jones and see the raw fury in his expression. I expect him to temper it, go neutral, the way he has every other time. But he doesn’t. The temper grows. He stands and without looking back. He’s gone from the room in a flash and I hear him enter my room. There’s silence, and then the door to my father’s room comes open.

  I’m disoriented for a second when I realize that it’s my father coming through the door, not Jones. He sees me. His eyes widening and his hand going to the pistol at his belt.

  “Rowena-” he cuts off and falls in a heap in the doorway. Jones steps over him, pocketing the syringe he just injected into my father’s neck. He drags my father inside, the way he did with the man next door. Slamming the door, he turns to me. His eyes crackle with hard fury.

  But it’s nothing compared to the fury in my own eyes. This motherfucker thinks he can tranq my father? Kidnap and deliver us to the most reprehensible man on earth? I take back everything I said about Jones. I fucking hate this guy. I can’t tear my eyes away from my father’s prone body. Rage boils inside me.

  “Your father is going to be fine,” he says, stalking toward me.

  Come on. Just a little bit closer. One more step.

  The second he’s close enough to me I jam my heel into his stomach. I hit more hip than organs but I have the pleasure of seeing him bend forward in pain. In the next second, two things happen. One-I realize that one of my wrists is slipping out of the rope. And two-he grabs at my feet, trying to hold me down.

  I slide my wrist free, even though it takes off about twelve layers of skin in the process, and clock him on the side of his head. He whips around, a look of surprise and… interest? on his face. He shifts his weight onto the bed and grabs my hand now too. His knee presses my legs down and his hand is pinning my arm to the bed.

  But that doesn’t mean this is over. I struggle against him. For some reason he’s trying not to hurt me. Which gives me the advantage here. Because I don’t give a fuck if I hurt him. I kick my legs and throw my weight around as much as I can. I can’t dislodge him, but I do get one of my legs free. I use it to try and kick him in the kidney, but he grabs it with one hand, pins it to his side.

  “Row!” he shouts. “I know about your father’s heart condition.”

  I freeze instantly. Nothing he could have said would have stopped me faster. He crouches over me, pinning my hands to the bed and my leg around him. His face is six inches from my mine. I can smell him. I can feel that considerable heat kicking off from him.

  “I know about his heart attacks. I did my research. I found a sedative that wouldn’t hurt him, ok? Now stop fucking fighting me before you hurt yourself.” His eyes bore into mine for a moment, before they fall to my mouth, open and panting, to my chest, violently rising and falling with each breath. His eyes are heating, cautiously, as he watches to see what I’m going to do next. But for now, he’s obviously enjoying our position.

  I’m suddenly aware of the weight of him on top of me. Of the bead of sweat traveling down his neck. Of his scent. He smells like a man. Like a man who just beat the shit out of two bad guys, tranqed my father, and wrestled me down. Oh and who tied me to a bed. I like the smell. And I really don’t know how I feel about that.

  “You smell,” I tell him.

  Something like humor flashes through his eyes, but it doesn’t subdue the heat there. He shifts slightly and I take the opportunity to struggle again. My arms come up off the bed a scant inch before he’s pinning me down, even harder than before.

  “You’re a little wildcat, professor,” he says, grinning down at me. I don’t grin back. My mind races with ways to get me and my father the fuck out of this situation. “Look, Row.”

  “It’s Dr. Rourke, you son of a bitch,” I growl at him and he grins even more, I can feel his eyes travel my body like a physical touch. Insanely, I want to curl into it like the wildcat he just accused me of being. The feeling makes me want to simultaneously scratch his eyes out and cuddle him. God. What the fuck is this night?

  “He’s going to be asleep for about a day,” he says to me. And I can see an idea cooking in his head. “And I have-oh would you look at that-exactly a day before I have to report back to Esposito on my progress.”

  He leans back on his heels, letting my hands free and looming over me. The change in position makes him press against me, so that if we were naked, he’d be inside me. I can feel him there. Hard, insistent, dominant. I bite back some small sound that threatens to come out of my mouth. He’s shadowed, making it hard for me to read his face, but one of his hands traces back over my leg, still pressed against his hip. I can’t help but shiver. His eyes drop to my chest, where I can feel my nipples spearing up against the thin fabric of my dress. “Which would give you about 24 hours to show me exactly why I shouldn’t drag you back to Esposito.”

  Interesting.

  My blood simultaneously freezes and heats. A deal. Which means he’s willing to bargain. Which means there’s a chance to get out of this.

  But I know exactly what he’s offering. He’s not proposing I fold his laundry for him. He’s proposing almost exactly the same thing that Esposito had. That he does what he wants to me. But somehow, it feels totally different to me. I consider him. His scent is all around me. He’s pressing against me. I imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to take him up on this deal. A sweaty, dominant flash lances through me. A moan, a bite of delicious pain. He would not be gentle. I can already tell. I try not to wiggle or press against him. My mind races, trying to come up with any other option. But then there’s just him, cock like a hammer through his jeans. And there’s me, panting and trying not to wiggle under him.

  “Anything,” I say, trying not to glance at my father, lying so still on the ground. “I’ll give you anything you want.”

  “Yeah,” he says, eyeing me like a leopard from a tree. “You will.”

  Chapter Six

  Kennedy

  What the fuck am I doing? What the royal fuck am I doing? I never toy with the skips. Once I find them, I never kill time or fuck around. That only makes room for error. And here I am, creating a whole day of error. This chick has my brains scrambled.

  I glance back at her as she climbs the stairs behind me. To the third floor. Where my hotel room is. We left her father and the goons locked in their rooms.

  I unlock my hotel room door and do a cursory glance to make sure nothing has been disturbed. And then the door clicks shut. We’re alone.

  I flick on a lamp and the light washes over her. Her nipples are beaded against her purple dress and one of her hands trembles. Hair springs out of her ponytail. She is so goddamn hot.

  “So. What do you want me to do for you?” she asks, her voice cool. I can tell she thinks I’m just as bad as Esposito. But she came with me to get away from him. So she must prefer me a little bit.

  I walk across the room to the bathroom and wash my hands, eyeing her in the bathroom mirror. She doesn’t move an inch. I come back, sitting in the desk chair and stretching my legs out in front of me. “What do you want to do for me?”

  She eyes me like she can sense the trick in the question.

  “I want to walk out of here, load my father into a cab and go to the airport,” she says. “I want to disappear into the world where you and Esposito will never find me.”

  Impossible. There is nowhere on Earth I couldn’t find her. But I don’t say it out loud. She’s scared. As
soon as we came into my room, the lust I’d been sensing from her dried up. I can literally see her heartbeat through the thin fabric of her dress. I’m not a monster. I don’t want to traumatize the girl.

  But as my eyes drop down her body I realize that I’m not a saint either. I inwardly shrug. I’m not a hasty man. We have an entire day to see if we can reignite that moment at the bar, and in the hallway, and on the bed. If we can’t, well… For some reason I can’t finish that sentence.

  I’m on my feet and walking over to her. I can see that she wants to step back from me but doesn’t. It’s like she’s trying to look tough. Her cherry-red hair spills everywhere, her plump bottom lip caught between her teeth.

  I take her by the hand and lead her to the bed. “I’m gonna tie you to the bed again.”

  She nods, like she thought it was an inevitability.

  “You’re a smart lady, Row Rourke Ph.D. Do you know what kind of knot this is?”

  She looks up and studies the complicated weaving my hands are doing over her wrist.

  She nods again, a resigned understanding comes over her face.

  I say it out loud, just so there’s no confusion. “If you tug on this knot, it’s going to tighten against your wrist. Very fast. And seeing as I’m going to take a shower in a second, you could lose the circulation in your hand for a full fifteen minutes.”

  She nods and for some reason I wish she would speak. I stare her in the eye until she gets the picture.

  “I won’t pull,” she says, her voice low.

  I rise, two steps toward the bathroom when she speaks again. “I’m smarter than you, Jones.” A smile flashes through me at her defiance, but I don’t turn around and show it to her. “I won’t tug on this rope, but I am going to figure a way out of this.”

  I step into the bathroom and shut the door, stripping off my clothes. I crank the shower on and step in. I wish she would figure a way out of this. Something brilliant and undeniable. Something that would fool me, completely incapacitate me.

  The thought is like ice water down my back, even though the shower water is steamy hot. I can’t believe I’m even thinking something like that. Esposito would skin me alive if he knew I was having thoughts like that. Thoughts that would deprive him of what he wants.

  My stomach tightens and roils. Row. He wants Row. I don’t blame him. She’s exquisite. And so hot I’d knock out my own teeth to touch her again. But I think of Esposito, his inky eyes and perfectly oiled hair. I picture one of his ringed hands sliding down her back.

  I taste the rage before I even feel it. Metallic and burning in my throat. I rip my hands through my hair and try to take a calming breath. Mechanically, I wash my body and hair. Maybe I just need to reset. Cool down. Take a walk around the block. This is crazy. What I’m feeling is crazy.

  You don’t just cross a warlord because you’ve got the hots for some girl. But a whirl of images pass through my head. Row studying an object at her dig site, her eyes so concentrated it was like a tornado could pass by without her noticing. Row’s bare feet as she walked past her bed last night. Row standing in that dress in the bar. The weight of Row’s leg over mine. Row’s voice when she called me her husband. Her mouth on mine.

  I lean my forehead against the cool tile of the shower. My life crumbling at my feet.

  Fuck. Even if my brain still has to come to terms with it, something within me has already decided.

  Fuck. Shit. Goddamn it.

  I’m not taking her to Esposito.

  Chapter Seven

  Row

  My mind is moving both too fast and too slow. I do a couple yoga breaths to start thinking clearly. There is a way out of this for me and my father. I just need to calm down and find it.

  My fear subsides with the deep breaths. I really don’t think I’m in imminent danger. But my thoughts are still cloudy. I realize the feeling that’s turning my brain to soup isn’t fear or confusion.

  It’s lust.

  God. What the heck. I stopped trying to mold myself into normality a long time ago. I was always different. The girl with the weirdo father. Smart in all the wrong ways. Always at the museum or library, wrapped up in some ancient riddle.

  But this seems beyond abnormal. This man has me tied up and at his complete whim. And I still want him. I can still taste his mouth from our kiss at the bar. I can feel his hands on me. So strong and rough. He’s graceful, but not gentle. The thought strikes through me like lightning. I don’t think I like gentle.

  I tug the tiniest little bit on the rope on my wrist. I can feel it tighten just a bit, its rough texture bites against my skin. I let out a gasp. I can feel the roughness everywhere. Like its sending electric currents all along my skin.

  I think about Jones in the shower. I refuse to call him Dwight. I know that’s not his first name. Nothing about this man says Dwight to me. His last name probably isn’t Jones either. But what else am I supposed to call him when I’m thinking about hot streams of water sluicing down his cut body?

  I can feel the lust clouding my thoughts again and I realize I have to do something about this. I have to get out from under how turned on I am. Then I’ll be able to think more clearly. I know what I have to do.

  I lift one of my legs and let my dress fall away. I drag my free hand up my thigh and immediately find my center. Wow. I’m really turned on. I’m ridiculously wet and ready. I can be really quick about this. And then afterwards, I’ll be clearer. I’ll be able to figure out how to get the hell out of here.

  I press my fingers into myself and it’s almost like I’ve flipped a switch. I’m back in the bar, one leg thrown over his lap. His hand is tight on my neck as his blue eyes bore into mine.

  On the bed, my hips are rising of their own accord, and I can hear my quiet breaths come out in pants.

  In my head, he’s shoving me face down on the leather of the booth. His lips are at my ear as his weight constricts me.

  “Stay quiet,” he tells me, one hand still on my neck. “If you make anyone turn around, you’re gonna get punished.”

  I glance around at the bar and see the other patrons are talking with one another, drinking their drinks, gazing at nothing. I realize that he means that he’s gonna fuck me right here, with no one noticing.

  I nod to tell him I understand and the next thing I know, my dress is being shoved up my legs. I feel his warmth, the scratch of his clothes followed by his warm skin. Something hard is pressing against my wet opening. And then he’s inside.

  In reality, my own hand is flinging me toward ecstasy, but it’s not quite enough. What I need is the real thing. But I can’t have it. I have to take what I can get.

  So I force my mind back to the bar, where he’s got me facedown, and he’s pumping into me, one hand over my mouth to keep me quiet.

  I’m close. I’m so close. I can feel the leather of the booth on my cheek, the weight of him over top of me. His breath at my ear. His hand over my mouth.

  “Did I say you could touch yourself?”

  My eyes fly open and I freeze. I’m back to reality. And he’s there. Standing in the bathroom doorway, the towel around his waist. Water drips down over his chest. And he’s staring at me. His eyes heat me up, pull me toward him. Even from across the room, it’s like I’m falling into them.

  “Answer me.” His deep voice cracks like a whip.

  I shake my head no. He didn’t tell me that I could do that. And for some reason, it makes a flood of wetness seep out onto my fingers, still firmly in place at my core.

  He leans against the door jam, deceptively relaxed. He surveys me like a jungle cat as my hips rise a tiny bit, of their own accord. My blood is still pumping through me. My heart racing. Images of him holding me down at the bar slide over top of images of him in real life, damp from the shower and watching me.

  “Take your hand away,” he growls and I can’t help but whimper as I follow directions. I need release so badly, and his orders only turn me on more.

  He chuckles humorle
ssly. “Poor baby,” he says. “You need to come, don’t you?”

  At this point, I am beyond caring that I’m completely at his whim. I’m adrift in a sea of uncertainties right now, my life has been completely tossed out to sea. And in a weird way, he’s the only thing tethering me to land. He’s my only lifeline.

  “I need to come,” I whisper and his eyes go darker, the sky at midnight. One of his hands opens and closes at his side. At this point, it’s very clear that I’m not going to be allowed to come unless he says it’s ok. So I go for broke. “I need you.”

  It’s like something snaps. His eyes flare at my words, and he’s done reclining against the wall. He’s standing, his arms crossed aggressively over his chest. His biceps bulge and I’m struck again at how big he is. He’s lithe and trim, but he’s also fucking built. The towel is draped over his hips and reveals above it the perfect V of muscles at the bottom of his stomach. A light dusting of hair covers his chest and trails downwards. And his shoulders. Good sweet Cleopatra, his shoulders. I feel another wave of wetness gush through me.