I turned to look at him. “Were you going to…”
He raised his eyebrows.
I gulped. “Were you going to fuck me?” Why was it so hard to say that out loud if we weren’t already in the throes of passion?
“The thought had crossed my mind. I guess you don’t want that?”
“No, I do, it’s only that we keep… without protection, and last night you said… And I said… And we…” I turned back to the wall. I was blushing again. I really didn’t know how to talk about that.
I felt him settle against me with a sigh. He nuzzled my neck. “We weren’t thinking clearly,” he muttered.
“No,” I said.
“It’s hard to think clearly when you’re naked.” There was a touch of amusement in his voice. “You make me crazy.”
I turned in his arms. I liked hearing that. I liked that he was affected by me as well.
He kissed me.
I wrapped my arms around him. I ran my hands over his slippery, firm back, down to cup his backside.
He gazed at me with half-lidded eyes. “I thought you wanted us to stop.”
“I never said that,” I said. “I just thought… but I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“No?”
“I mean, you’ve already come inside me so many times that the damage is probably done.”
He groaned. His hands smoothed over my hips.
I kissed his chin. “I like it when you come inside me,” I said in a throaty voice. “I like being filled with you, feeling what you leave behind.”
His fingers dug into my skin. He lifted me, bracing me against the wall, wrapping my legs around his body. And he guided me down onto his erection.
I moaned. I was still sensitive there from what we’d done the night before. I began to clench against his cock right away.
“Uh uh, love,” he whispered. “Wait until I tell you.”
I sighed, seeking his lips.
He kissed me and began to thrust.
Damn, he splintered into me in the sweetest of ways. I tightened my thighs around him.
He touched my nipples with one hand, made them stiff even in the steamy shower.
And every time his cock drove into me, it teased the very center of me, waking up my pleasure.
He stroked into me over and over while I heaved and moaned against him.
I clutched his ass, urging him deeper inside me.
He pressed his palm against my stomach and wedged his fingers between our bodies until he found my clit.
I cried out.
“Ready to come for me, love?” he murmured in my ear.
“Yes, yes,” I said, tensing for it, wanting it.
“Ask me nicely.” He rubbed my clit with one finger, sending thrills through me.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please, let me come, Cade.”
“Call me Ripper.” He was fierce.
“Ripper,” I agreed, breathless. “Make me come, Ripper, please.”
His fingers were frenzied against my sex, and he pounded into me, out of control. “Come,” he ordered, his voice harsh and dark. “Come now.”
I obeyed, the orgasm flowing through me as he came as well, exploding inside me, filling me up. Oh, God, I really was going to get pregnant, wasn’t I?
And the thought made my pleasure multiply, my climax going for another level of pleasure, and I twitched and bucked and flailed in his arms, lost in delight.
* * *
Cade
I was surprised at how much I liked having her there.
Maybe it was only that she took such delight in all the aspects of my house that I never bothered to use much. I had a big entertainment center in the living room, complete with an enormous screen and booming speakers and chairs that tilted back so that you had a perfect view. But I tended to just watch TV in my bedroom, sprawled out on my bed, so I never came in here.
However, once she saw it, she was just so intrigued by it that we had to watch movies in there, and that was how we spent the afternoon.
For dinner, I made pizza—the whole nine yards, crust from scratch and everything. I cooked for myself all the time, but it was usually just easy stuff. Maybe I steamed some veggies and sauteed a little chicken and had it with rice. It never seemed worth it to go to such effort.
But it was fun to cook for Shell. She even tried to help, but she was essentially hopeless in the kitchen, I was realizing.
I teased her about it, and she admitted that she didn’t do much cooking at home. Mostly, she heated up frozen meals. She said she could make spaghetti.
“Who can’t make spaghetti?” I said. “Besides, the carbs.”
“Oh, whatever,” she said. “In Italy, people aren’t fat. It’s all about portion size.”
I grinned at her. “You seem to have it figured out.”
She blushed. “Me? I’m not anywhere near as fit as you are.”
“You’re perfect.” I kissed her on the nose.
After dinner, we ended up in my hot tub, because I never used it, and I’d had it specially made when I designed the house. We sipped wine out of these fluted glasses that I bought but never used and relaxed naked, the jets of hot water hugging our bodies.
“Your house is awesome,” she said, resting her head back, submerged in the water up to her chin. “I don’t understand how you ever leave.”
“Well, I don’t use this stuff that much.” I took a drink of wine, peering out into the dark woods, the night sky overhead, full of stars. It was beautiful out here. “I mean, usually I just crash here. I exercise. Sometimes I play games online.”
“Why don’t you use it?”
“Because…” I laughed a little. “I guess it’s only fun to share this stuff with someone. When I designed this house, I didn’t think about how much less exciting a hot tub is when you’re alone.”
She was quiet.
Had I said something wrong? Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that I enjoyed her company so much. I didn’t know what the hell was going on with us. I mean, we were having really hot sex, and I was glad about that, but… I didn’t even know if I wanted anything more. I didn’t allow myself to think about things like that. It wasn’t something that I could really have.
“But you do bring people here,” she said. “You bring women here. You have the robe and the toothbrushes and the lady at Nordstrom said you had a woman you bought dresses for like ten times.”
I turned to her, grinning from ear to ear. “You’re jealous,” I said, really happy about that for some reason.
She splashed me. “I am not. I’m just pointing out that it’s not as if you’re here all alone all the time.”
My smile faded. Actually, I was alone most of the time. “I don’t really bring people here that often.”
“But you do bring people here. Women.”
“You don’t need to be jealous.” I gulped at my wine.
“I’m not jealous.” And now, her voice was sharp. “Someone like you doesn’t have any problem getting women to fall into bed with him. I bet you just walk into a bar and buy girls drinks and order them to have orgasms, and they just fall to pieces for you, practically ripping their clothes off. I know, because I know what you do to me. Don’t act as if it’s so sad for you. I see through you. You don’t need to garner my sympathy or whatever. It’s unnecessary. I’m already totally at your mercy. You can do whatever you want with me.”
I sat up straight. “Whatever I want?”
She sighed. “Never mind.”
I refilled my wine glass and sipped it thoughtfully. “Look, sometimes I do go out and pick up women. I’m not going to lie. It’s not as if I was sitting around saving myself for you.”
“I never said anything to make—”
“But I almost never bring them here,” I said. “And I don’t have sex with them more than once, and I certainly don’t…” I shook my head. “I don’t know what it is about you, but I haven’t been in control of myself since the minute I touched you.”
She swallowed.
“As for the girl that I bought dresses for, she was… Her name was Angie. We dated for maybe six months. But she didn’t know about me. Didn’t know how I made my money. I was vague. Said things about an office. She made assumptions. Anyway, I liked her. She seemed to like me. And, utterly accidentally, she got pregnant. Before you ask, we were careful. It was nothing like what keeps happening between you and me. I swear to you that I’m generally more responsible than that. Anyway, I thought that if she and I were going to have a child together, she should know the truth, and so I told her how I made my money. She couldn’t handle it.”
“Oh my God,” Shell breathed. “You killed her, didn’t you? And now you’re going to kill me.”
“No!” I glared at her. “Do you really think I would do something like that?”
“Well, she knew you were a contract killer, and she knew where you lived. She could have gone to the police, turned you in—”
“She didn’t know anything,” I said. “She didn’t know who I killed or where, and there’s no evidence at any crime scene linking me to it, so even if she did turn me in… Besides, half the time, I work for the U.S. government, and there’s a layer of protection in that.”
“Oh, right, you did say that.”
“I would never hurt you.” It was important that she know that. “Never. It’s not like that. What I do.”
“What’s it like then?” Her voice was soft. “You like doing it.”
“It’s like…” I sighed. “The way I figure it, there’s got to be a reason that I was born this way. That I was given this desire, this skill. I think that back in prehistoric times, when we traveled in tribes, having someone bloodthirsty like me was helpful to the survival of the group. But we don’t have tribes anymore. We don’t have those kinds of threats. I guess I figured that I could give in to my selfish desires, kill for myself, or I could try to use what I’ve been given to take out threats to society. Even if I don’t have a specific tribe, I try to stop bad people from killing anyone else.”
She was quiet.
“I guess maybe that’s bullshit justification.” I drank more wine.
“No,” she whispered. “I’ve given in to my selfish desires before. I’ve hurt people. Not killed anyone, but… there’s darkness in me too.”
“No, you don’t have to do that,” I said. “You don’t have to try to make us the same. We’re not. I know that I’m not… I know that there’s something wrong with me.”
And then we were both quiet.
Finally, she came through the dark, warm water and got the wine bottle. She poured herself more wine. “So, what happened to Angie, then?”
“She had an abortion,” I said. “She left. She said that she didn’t want something half-monster growing inside her. I didn’t blame her for that.”
Shell furrowed her brow. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
I shrugged. “It’s what she felt. It was her body. I couldn’t force her to have a baby she didn’t want, could I?”
Shell came closer to me, floating next to me in the water. She ran her knuckles over my jaw. “You’re not a monster.”
I touched her bottom lip. “Aren’t I?”
In the distance, the crickets chirped and the breeze whistled through the trees.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cade
I woke up with my body wrapped around Shell’s. The two of us were naked and spooning in my bed. There hadn’t been anymore sex after the hot tub last night, but we’d fallen into bed together, and we’d held each other in the night, which was even more confusing.
But I couldn’t think about that because my phone was ringing.
That was what had woken me up.
Shell stirred next to me. “What’s going on?”
I rolled over and snagged my phone from the bedside table. I answered it. “What?”
“Ripper, this is De Luca,” said a heavily accented Italian voice on the other end. “I got something for you.”
I sat up. “Thing is, I’m sort of not really in a place to be taking on new business right now. Sorry about that.”
“What?” De Luca did not sound happy. “You said that any time I needed you, you’d be there. You said that it was a pleasure doing business with me.”
“And it is,” I said. “But right now…” I looked down at Shell, who was squinting at me. I didn’t want to talk about this in front of her. Pushing aside the covers, I got out of bed and wandered over to the door that led out onto the porch that wrapped around my house. Stepping outside, I shut myself out. “I’m just unusually busy at the moment.”
“Should I up my standing offer? This your way of shaking me down for more cash?”
“No,” I said. I was naked outside, and I had to admit I liked the way the breeze felt on my balls. I should come outside naked more often. “I’m busy, that’s all.”
“This is an easy job. I’ll tell you where the guy’s going to be. You just walk in, get it done, leave. You don’t even need to be fancy about it. Everyone will suspect it’s an internal job.”
“Why isn’t it an internal job?” I said. “Surely you got guys who could deal with this.”
“Not someone in my family I’m talking about.”
“Who then?”
“Rafael Gallo.”
“Gallo?” I whistled low under my breath. “That’s not an easy job, De Luca.” Rafael Gallo was the head of the Gallo crime family.
“He’s losing popularity right now. Got deals going with the Irish,” said De Luca. “We want to do this, now is the time. It’ll look like someone in the Gallo family was upset. No one fingers us. And I can’t use my own guys for this. They could get recognized.”
“I’m just saying, the guy doesn’t go anywhere without about five bodyguards.”
“Not when he goes to the pizzeria his nephew owns, which he does every Monday.”
“That’s today.”
“Right. So, today, you do this job for me.”
“Jesus Christ, how about a little notice, De Luca?”
“You’re gonna do it, aren’t you?”
“No,” I said.
But ten minutes later, I’d negotiated an outrageous amount of money out of him, and I came back into the bedroom and went into my closet.
“Who was on the phone?” said Shell from the bed.
I pulled on a pair of sweats and a tank top. “No one,” I said. “Just…” I ducked back out of the closet. “Look, later today, I’m going to have to leave for a little while. You can stay here. It’ll be no big deal.”
“Stay here?” She shot straight up on the bed. “Oh, no, I don’t fucking think so. You leave me alone, I’m going to get killed. Ice will show up.”
“Ice would never come to my home. He knows that’s out of bounds.”
“Wait, you mean he knows where you live?”
“Kind of,” I said, grimacing.
“Kind of? Has he been here?”
“Only a couple times.”
“I’m not staying here alone. I’m coming with you.”
“No way,” I said. I started down the steps. “I’m going for a run.”
* * *
Shell
I seized the robe and ran after him. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not going on a run. He’ll kill me while you’re gone.”
“Don’t be paranoid. He won’t come here. It’s out of bounds.”
I ran down the steps. “I don’t trust him. I don’t think you should either.”
He headed for the front door. “I always go for a run.”
I hurled myself after him, and leaped, wedging myself between him and the door. “Don’t leave me.” I looked up at him, my heart pounding. I still remembered what it had been like to be dragged up the hallway in my apartment by Ice. I knew that if Cade hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have survived.
He sighed. “I have to go on a run. I have to get cardio.”
“Skip a day.” I glared at
him.
He shook his head. “You run with me.”
I made a face. “I don’t really… run.” I did jog. At a very slow pace. Three days a week. I didn’t really like exercise so much as simply do it because you were supposed to.
“So, you’re worried about being killed, you’ll keep up.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I didn’t bring a sports bra.”
He grinned. “Even better, love.”
“Cade.”
He was still grinning. “I’ll wait five minutes, and then I’m going on a run. If you’re coming along, you better get ready.”
I could have punched him. Instead, I ran to find my clothes. I did have a t-shirt and shorts that I could exercise in. I had brought them just in case. I shrugged into them and a pair of tennis shoes that weren’t really meant for exercise, but would have to do. Then I hurried back to find him waiting for me.
He looked me up and down. “Cute.”
I tugged my hair into a ponytail. “Can’t we just stay here?”
He opened the door.
Obviously not.
“You’ve got to take me on the job with you too,” I said.
“I can’t do that.” He started running.
I ran after him. Jesus, he was fast. “I could be your associate. I could help you out.”
“No, you couldn’t,” he threw over his shoulder.
I pumped my legs, trying to catch up. “I swear you can’t leave me here.”
He slowed his pace, fell into step with me. “You don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want you to.”
“Give me a gun,” I said. “It can’t be that hard. Point and shoot.”
He glanced at me sidelong. “You’re joking, right?”
“No.” I was starting to get out of breath. “You just don’t want me to hold your gun, do you?”
He chuckled. “You want to hold my gun?”
* * *
Shell
Cade’s firm, bare body pressed against me from behind. We were fresh from the shower, both of us naked on the porch outside his bedroom. I was holding a pistol, and his hands were on my hands.
“You’ve got to hold it steady,” he whispered in my ear.
“It’s heavy,” I said softly. “I didn’t know it would be so heavy.” The gun felt cold and smooth in my hands. I liked the power of it.
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