He upped the pace, watching as her pupils dilated, swallowing the pretty hazel of her iris, her breathing coming in short gasps as he shifted the angle, so his cock hit her clit every time he shoved himself into her.
She gave a little sob, but he didn’t stop.
The bad guy he was, the bad guy he’d always been, had chased her down, had marked her, and now he was going in for the kill. Now he was going to take her so hard she’d never forget who’d done this to her. Never forget him.
Rhys slammed himself home, fueled by the intense possessiveness that gripped him as tightly as her pussy gripped his cock, squeezing him and not letting go. Pleasure was lighting him up from the inside, a bright, sharp, impossible pleasure.
Vivi. His Vivi. Only his Vivi.
He was going to have this, have her, and maybe he wouldn’t let her go afterwards.
Maybe he’d keep her all to himself.
Barely conscious of what he was doing, Rhys put out a hand and wrapped his fingers around her throat in a firm, possessive hold. And he stared right into her eyes as he drove himself into her, again and again, hard enough that the bed banged against the wall and the sounds of their flesh coming together was loud in the air.
“I’m keeping this,” he ground out roughly, flexing his hips for emphasis, so she knew exactly what he was talking about. So she understood. “I’m keeping you.”
She stared back, panting, her pulse wild beneath his palm, the gleam of perspiration on her lovely skin. But he didn’t wait for her to answer, he lowered his head and he covered her mouth. And he fucked her harder, faster. So she was sobbing against his lips and the orgasm building at the base of his spine was a pressure he could barely contain.
But he did contain it, keeping it all under control until she was bucking against him, crying out in desperation. “Touch yourself,” he whispered savagely. “Touch yourself, Vivi.”
And he felt her hand move instantly between them, her fingers stroking her clit and he thrust in time with them, helping her along. Then her whole body tensed and she was sobbing, her pussy convulsing around his cock agonizingly tight.
Rhys turned his head into her neck, his mouth opening against her skin and biting down as the pressure released, and the climax broke over him, smashing him into the ground like a hammer with a nail, grinding him into dust.
The last thing he was conscious of was the echo of her name around them, as if someone had screamed it.
Then he went under.
Vivi woke feeling groggy and like she hadn’t slept at all the previous night. She lay there for a while with her eyes closed, trying to get up the energy to open them, and when she did, she was marginally relieved to find that she was alone in the bed.
Rhys was nowhere to be seen.
She sighed and stretched out, aware of a lot of subtle and not so subtle aches, not to mention a few raw places that she hadn’t had the previous day. Interesting that, but not unsurprising.
Turned out Rhys was an insatiable bastard who liked it hard and rough, and preferred making her scream to snuggling up and letting her sleep, and it was a good thing he wasn’t here, because she still didn’t know how she felt about that.
Oh, not so much about the sex. No, she definitely knew how she felt about the sex and well, she kind of didn’t have any words for it. Intense. Exciting. Consuming. Thrilling.
Scary.
Who knew that her seemingly cool, contained friend had beast inside him? A beast made of nothing but fire?
God, she’d never been to bed with a man like Rhys before. Never had all her control taken from her the way he’d taken hers. Not giving her a choice about it either, forcing her to admit to herself that part of her had liked that very much. Because there had been a freedom in it she’d never realized before.
She’d always felt like she’d had to work hard to prove herself and she also liked to please because it made people happy. The combination could, at times, be exhausting.
But last night she hadn’t had to do either. All she’d had to do was lie back and let Rhys do whatever he wanted to her, and there had been something wonderful about it, like a pressure being lifted. Yet it had also been scary in a way she couldn’t quite understand.
Maybe it was the whole friend thing getting in the way. Or maybe it was the consuming possession in his eyes when he'd looked at her. “I’m keeping this… I’m keeping you…”
Vivi swallowed. The lost kid she’d once been, the one who’d been given up by her birth mother, had liked his blatant declaration. She wanted to be claimed and kept by him. She wanted to be someone’s. Which was weird, because it wasn’t really her. At all.
She wasn’t some needy woman who wanted to be kept by a man. She was very successful in her own right and had a great life, and sure, she wanted a family, but she didn’t need some guy to make herself whole or anything.
Where she and Rhys went from here though, she had no idea.
He’d wanted her since he’d been sixteen… God, that was a long time. She could understand him not saying anything back when they’d been teenagers – they’d both been too young – but what did puzzle her was why he hadn’t said anything when he’d come back to Austin after the military. He’d said he didn’t want anything to threaten their friendship, yet there was something deeper going on, she was sure of it.
Something about what had happened the night before.
Vivi let out a breath, staring up at the ceiling, a cold thread of foreboding weaving its way through the warm, post-coital haze. No, she didn’t want to find out what it was that Rhys was hiding – and it was pretty clear he was hiding something – but the time for pretending it wasn’t there was over. Which meant she had to have another conversation about it with Rhys. But if that was going to happen, she sure as hell needed coffee first.
As she got out of bed, Vivi winced as chafed skin pulled. She glanced down at herself, noting the faint bruises and red patches on her breasts and her thighs, and no doubt on her neck and throat as well.
Maybe she should have been horrified by them, yet she wasn’t. They were physical signs of the pleasure Rhys had given her, reminders of how badly he’d wanted her, of how possessed by him she’d been. She had no idea of where they went from here, but if nothing else, she had these marks to remember him by.
The thought made her feel sad all of a sudden so she pushed it away, not wanting to think about why that might be right now. Instead, she went into the bathroom to where she’d left her pajamas, picking them up between her finger and thumb and wrinkling her nose. She’d been wearing them for over twenty four hours and she didn’t want to put them on now.
Carrying them back out of the bathroom, she put them on the bed then went over to the dresser in the corner and pulled open a few drawers, hoping that Rhys might have some spare clothes lying around. Sure enough, in the bottom drawer were a couple of T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants. They smelled a bit musty, like they’d been stored there too long, but that didn’t matter. They were cleaner than her pajamas at least.
She had no bra or underwear, so she just pulled on the T-shirt. It was too big for her, hanging loose down to her thighs, but that was okay. It made her feel marginally dressed at least. The sweatpants, too, were big but they had a drawstring that held them onto her hips, and she could roll the bottoms of them up. She wouldn’t win any fashion awards, but at least she wasn’t naked.
Going over to the kitchen area, she sniffed at the coffeepot and sure enough, there was more ready to drink. Rhys must have made a fresh pot before he’d gone…wherever it was that he’d gone. She pulled out a mug, poured herself some coffee and put some milk in it, then leaned back against the counter, sipping the hot liquid, wondering where Rhys had got to.
Despite all the aches, she could feel the pressure of desire already building again, even after last night when they’d made love more times in the space of hours than she had in the past year.
Now that’s a depressing thought.
She glar
ed out the windows opposite, at the late morning sun already burning down on the rocky desert landscape outside. She was kind of hungry, which wasn’t surprising given all she’d had for dinner the previous night was the snacks Rhys had bought on the way from Austin, and which they’d both devoured after their sex marathon.
Perhaps that’s where he’d gone? To get more food?
She hoped so because she could really use some breakfast.
To distract herself, Vivi took another look around the room, zeroing in on the unmade bed. She wasn’t a particularly tidy person by nature, but when there wasn’t anything else to do, she could tidy with the best of them.
Putting down her coffee, she went over to the bed, bending to pull up the tangled sheets. And as she did so, her bare toe stubbed against something cold and very hard under the bed.
A bolt of pain went through her and she cursed, bending down further to peer underneath the bed, wondering what the hell she’d knocked her foot on.
And for a second she couldn’t understand what she was looking at because it was long and dark and very distinctly gun-shaped. Her heat gave a curious, fast beat and she put out her hand to touch it, feeling hard, cold metal.
Oh. Shit. It was a gun.
Her instinct was to snatch her hand back and walk away, pretend it wasn’t there, so she didn’t know why she slid it very carefully out from beneath the bed so she could get a good look at it. Perhaps she only wanted to check that it was definitely a gun and not a prop or something.
But it wasn’t a prop. There was oil on it and it was heavy and it looked like a serious weapon, something that a military sniper might use, for example. It was definitely not something a bounty hunter would casually carry around.
She swallowed, foreboding pulling taut inside her. Because she knew, she just knew, that this gun was somehow the key to what Rhys had told her the night before. About the ‘things’ he’d done.
Whatever they were, if they involved a gun like this one, they were not going to be good.
Right then she heard the sound of a car and she felt again that very real urge to shove the gun back under the bed again and pretend she hadn’t seen it. But she couldn’t go on not knowing. She had to tell him.
Moving away from the bed, she came to the door just as it opened, and then he was there, right in front of her. Tall and dark and so freaking gorgeous her heart about stopped. There was heat in his deep brown eyes and he didn’t pause, not even for a second, reaching out and hauling her to him, covering her mouth in a hard, possessive kiss.
And for a moment all she wanted was to put her arms around his neck and forget about the gun, forget about friendship, forget about everything but the fact he was holding her, touching her. Kissing her.
Yet she couldn’t.
Obviously sensing that all wasn’t right, Rhys lifted his head, his gaze intense. “Sorry, I had to go out to do a few things. You okay?”
“Uh…no, not really.”
“What?” His eyes narrowed, zeroing in on her in a way that was unnerving. “What’s wrong?”
She took a breath. “I found something.”
“What something?”
“Under the bed.” She put her hands on the hard wall of his chest, feeling those strong muscles beneath the cotton of his shirt tense. “A…gun.”
He didn’t move, going absolutely still, the look in his eyes glittering.
“It’s a very serious looking gun, Rhys,” she went on, the foreboding inside her getting stronger and stronger. “I think we need to have that conversation now.”
Rhys let her go, so suddenly she nearly stumbled, turning away from her and walking over to look out the windows. He said nothing, his broad shoulders tense, his back straight and stiff.
A kernel of ice collected inside her. She couldn’t imagine what it was that he thought he had to hide from her, because she knew almost everything about him. Even the things he kept secret from people, such as how his little brother had died.
He’d always been an intensely private guy, right from when he’d been a teenager and she’d started aggressively friending him. But there had been times, very infrequently, when she’d had the sense that the wounds from his childhood went deeper than even she had suspected. That there was an anger inside him, wild and hot, and simmering just beneath the surface.
Except when he’d come back to Austin two years ago, that anger had gone. He’d been completely cold. And she’d put that down to his military service, but...had something terrible happened while he was on one of his tours? Or was it something more?
Vivi swallowed, fear crawling up her spine and despite the fact that it was starting to get hot outside, she wrapped her arms around herself as if she was cold. “What’s going on, Rhys?” she asked, trying not to sound as afraid as she felt. “I think it’s time you told me the truth.”
9
Rhys stared out the windows, the heat outside already making the air shimmer, hot and thick and full of dust. He’d come back from Terlingua with a few important supplies, having spoken to his contact and received some texts.
Rush had gotten back to him, telling him he was going to ask around, see if anything turned up. Duchess, too, had texted him back to say all was fine and that if he needed any help, he was to contact her. Typical boss lady, in other words. She was too fucking generous for her own good.
No news in other words. But he was okay with that. No news meant he had to stay here and he was more than fine with staying here, especially now he had Vivi in his bed. In fact, he’d have been quite happy to stay indefinitely out here in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to distract him from her beautiful body, reveling in the passion he’d always known was inside her. Making up for all the years of wanting and not having.
Looked like that wasn’t going to happen now, though.
He pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, excruciatingly aware of the woman standing behind him and the predator inside him, the killer that wanted to turn around and pull her to the floor, stake its claim on her once more. She was wearing some of the old clothes he kept here for emergencies and the sight of her wearing them…
“Rhys?” she said again, sounding small and uncertain.
When he'd woken up that morning and found her lying next to him, her head snuggled into his chest, one leg thrown over his, her arm around his waist, a little piece of hope had crept into his heart. That she was still here with him — shit, that she'd even let him touch her after he'd shot Cruz — after he'd marked her, even goaded him into taking her hard and rough, made him think that perhaps it wasn't such a lost cause between them after all.
But this – literally – was the moment of truth, wasn't it?
Fear had never been part of his lexicon. It was just another emotion he refused to let himself feel. But he felt it now, snaking through him like a hairline crack in a fine piece of china.
Fuck, it was pathetic how badly he wanted this to be okay.
Come on, this is Vivi. When has she ever not accepted you?
It was true, even when he'd been that wounded teenager, angry at all the world and completely rebuffing her first attempts at friendship, she'd simply ignored that and had become his friend anyway. And when he'd told her what had happened to Scotty, she hadn't pulled away. She'd simply taken his hand and held it.
This was different, though. He'd lied to her, kept secrets from her. For years. And that wasn't even counting the fact that he couldn't remember the number of contracts he'd taken on. So many people he'd killed…
How could she ever forgive that?
His hands curled into fists in his pockets, the urge to turn around and grab her, take her to the ground getting stronger and stronger. Just one last time…
His hearing was excellent and he was always sharp to sounds, so it was strange that the first he realized she'd crossed the distance between them wasn't hearing her footsteps, but feeling the warmth of her hand settling in between his shoulder blades.
"I trusted y
ou last night," she said quietly. "Now it's your turn to trust me."
Yeah, she was right. It was time.
For a moment he let himself enjoy the feel of her hand on him, because he didn’t know when that would come again. Then, slowly, he turned around. He wasn’t a fucking coward and he was going to look her in the eye when he told her the truth. “The gun is for killing people, Vivi.”
She looked so young in his big T-shirt and rolled up sweatpants, with her hair down her back and her eyes wide underneath her bangs, like a little girl. And he had the oddest urge to pick her up, hold her in his arms.
“For what?” she repeated, blinking.
He didn’t look away. “I think you heard me.”
Her face lost some color. “Who do you need to kill?”
“This will be easier if I start at the beginning.”
“Okay then.” She folded her arms as if she was bracing herself. “Go on.”
He kept his gaze on hers, trying to resist the urge to touch her, hating himself for how badly he wanted that reassurance. “I wasn’t in the army for as long I told you. I got into a lot of fights, was insubordinate, was generally belligerent, and eventually my CO requested a psych eval. It wasn’t good and they told me that if I wanted to be considered for active duty, I had to have treatment. I refused and so I was discharged.”
Her eyes went wide, a shocked look on her face. “What? But you never said—”
“I spent a week drunk in a fucking bar, pissed off at everything and wondering what the hell to do with my life, since the army was all I was good for. Then I was contacted by a guy on the lookout for ex-soldiers. He was after people with military training to undertake certain jobs and would I be interested.”
Vivi blinked. “What jobs?”
“Hits. He wanted a contract killer.”
She paled. “A contract killer?” she echoed, saying the words like they were in a foreign language and she didn’t know what they meant.
The Hitman Next Door Page 13
