I shut my eyes. “Wake me up in an hour.” But I don’t sleep. I listen to sound of the engine, shadows floating in and out of my mind until I suddenly realize the cat is on top of me.
I lift my head to find it curled on my lap and then look at Amanda. “Am I supposed to be able to sleep like this?”
“You’ve been asleep like that for three hours.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“No. I am not fucking kidding you and I didn’t even kill you while you slept. Imagine that. But I am about to pull into a Starbucks and get a caffeine boost before I run us into a ditch.”
I lift my seat, the throb in my arm dull and isolated now as I watch her turn us into a driveway. I consider moving the cat, but the damn thing is so comfortable, I just leave it there, and reach into my pocket to check my messages, to find I have none. “We’re still on track for a flight out of Vegas.” She pulls us into a parking spot outside the coffee shop, and I add, “I’ll drive when we get out of here.”
“Works for me,” she says, picking up Julie, kissing her and then setting her in the bed in the back seat. “And just to be clear. If you ever try to hold my cat hostage, you won’t like the results.” She exits the vehicle.
I’d laugh, but people like Amanda and myself don’t make statements like that lightly. I glance over my shoulder to watch Julie curl up in her bed. Amanda might not have ever loved me, but she loves that damn cat. And that tells me that she isn’t the cold-hearted bitch I’ve considered her for the past three years. What that means is yet to be determined.
After cracking the window a little for Julie, I exit the car, I lock up and meet Amanda at the entrance to Starbucks, holding the door for her. “I’ll meet you at the counter,” she says, heading toward the bathroom.
Deciding that’s not a bad idea, I follow her down the hallway toward the men’s room, and watch as she disappears into the ladies’ room, thinking about that moment three years ago when I’d done the same. And when I exit the men’s room and she’s not in the hallway or at the counter, I consider the idea that she might disappear again, checking the parking lot to ensure the SUV is there. And since I locked it up, and the cat is inside, I’m pretty damn sure Amanda is still here.
Thank you, little Julie.
I return to the counter, order our drinks and pastries, knowing, of course, what Amanda likes, and I’m just about to hunt her down when she appears in front of me. “Did you get that lemon bread I like?”
“Yes,” I say. “I got the lemon bread you like.”
“And a White Chocolate—”
“—Mocha, add hazelnut, with an extra shot,” I supply. “Yes. I got that, too.”
The barista calls out my name and we pick up our drinks. Amanda and I end up standing there at the end of the bar, staring at each other, that push and pull from the gas station bathroom back center stage. We want each other. We hate each other. But where is the love we once claimed for each other? As if she’s heard me ask the question, Amanda cuts her gaze and we walk to the door, exiting and returning to the SUV. I set my coffee down and reach for the ignition, pausing as Amanda says, “That was a familiar façade in there, right? Good practice to catch Franklin. I mean, we did that thing we did in there well three years ago, and we do it well now.”
“A façade of what, Amanda?”
“Us,” she says. “The ultimate lie.”
The ultimate lie.
There it is.
Three years of fuck me and fuck me all over again summarized in three little words that grind through me like that bullet did my arm.
I don’t reply. Not now. But once we’re on that plane, thirty-thousand feet in the air, the façade is over, and the ultimate lie ends, once and for all.
* * *
Amanda and I don’t speak for the next few hours. I drive. She sleeps. We stop once at a gas station. It’s midnight exactly when we arrive at the small airstrip just outside of Vegas where the private plane waits for us, the pilot alerted in advance that we were nearby and that I want to be in the air now, not later.
I park us in the hangar and kill the engine. “Is the plan to kill me when we get in the air?” she asks.
“No. It is not.”
“Unless the agency changes its mind and orders you to.”
“I’m contracted by the agency, but I don’t work for the agency.”
She rotates to look at me. “What? Since when?”
I remain facing forward, my eyes on the stairs leading to the door of the plane. “Three years ago.”
“Why, Seth?”
“The short answer,” I say, looking at her. “Because of you.” I don’t offer anything more. I exit the vehicle, retrieve her mobile lab and the cat’s bag, because why the hell wouldn’t I, and I meet Amanda at the stairs leading to the plane.
“Stay here until I clear the plane,” I say, and I don’t wait for an answer. I head up the stairs and am greeted by the captain as I enter the cabin, the jet identical to the one Amanda and I had traveled in the night we met three years ago.
“We’re good to go?” I ask.
“We can be airborne in fifteen.”
I give him a nod and he heads back to the cockpit, while I turn to find Amanda already standing at the top of the stairs, the cat and her medical bag in tow. Backing up, I give her space to enter, and she does exactly as I expect. She walks down the aisle and doesn’t stop until she’s at the back of the plane, where she buckles Julie’s carrier into a seat and then starts checking for bugs.
I aid her effort and halfway through the process, the engines roar. By the time we complete our search, we’re in a fast taxi and Amanda and I both quickly buckle in, sitting in the lounge area across from each other. Just as we had that first night together. Neither of us look away. We stare at each other through the rough ride down the runway, through the lift-off and shudders of the plane, a new explosion brewing between us, three years coming.
Finally, the engines gear down, softening, and I unbuckle at the same time she does, but we both keep our seats. “The lies stop here.”
“Says the Assassin who didn’t want me to know he was the Assassin.”
“That name has no impact on us.”
Anger roils from her and she leans forward. “I know, Seth.”
“What is it you think you know?”
She laughs without humor and shakes her head. “That call from my mother revealed everything you are.”
I arch a brow. “Everything I am?”
She reaches under her hoodie, and from the location of her hand, seemingly into her bra and pulls out a small silver recording device. “This ends your lies.” She sets it on her armrest and punches the “play” button.
Amanda, a woman’s calm voice says. Listen carefully. There’s a death order on our heads. Mine. Your father’s and yours. Someone in the agency is behind it. We’re going underground and you need to do the same. Ghost protocol. And sweetheart. Seth Cage, the man you’re on assignment with. They call him “the Assassin” in the agency.
The recording ends and I inhale on that damning last sentence that I didn’t expect.
Amanda’s eyes meet mine, accusation in her eyes. “That call you got the night I left, Seth. What were your orders?”
To be continued . . .
Teaser
Keep reading for an excerpt from
POISON KISSES: PART 2
Coming soon from SMP Swerve!
Excerpt: Poison Kisses Part 2
Her hand closes down on the butt of my gun and my hand immediately covers hers. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Don’t I? Because I’m really thinking I do. When did you accept my kill order? Before or after you fucked me night and day for three straight months?”
Anger ripples through me and I shackle her wrists and not gently, pulling them between us, and pulling her to me. “If you believed we were a lie, then that’s about guilt and a crime. That’s not me. That’s not who we were.”
&nb
sp; “My mother named you, Seth Cage. You. No one else. Just the man in my bed.”
“Someone inside the CIA leaked my identity as the intended contract holder before I ever got the call. That means nothing.”
“But you taking the order means everything and we both know you took it.”
“If I didn’t take that order someone else would have. And I would have told you I held it. You should have come to me.”
“So that you could kiss me, and make me believe you loved me, long enough to kill me?”
“I would have kissed you and proven that I loved you.”
“Love,” she says dryly. “Right. You said you loved me and that makes it all better.” She doesn’t give me time to respond. “Why did the agency tell you to fuck me? What did they want?”
“You were never my assignment. Ming was, just like he was yours.”
“You keep forgetting that I now know that you were always the Assassin. You can’t tell me that I wasn’t paired with you without the intent of you killing me.”
“Exactly my thought when I got that call. Why did the agency turn on you? And what happened to make them do it when we had Ming within a hair’s reach?”
“I have no idea. I did nothing but serve my country from the day I was born.”
“And yet, when you were in trouble, you ran from me.”
“You held my kill order. ”
“And I seem to remember you once telling me you’d trust me with your life.”
“You, Seth. Not the secret assassin I didn’t know you to be.”
“If you really believed I betrayed you, you would have come at me.”
“You had months to plan my murder. I had moments to digest the fact that you not only betrayed me, and fucked me over and over, quite literally, but you also held the kill order for me and my parents.”
“I told you, I took that order so no one else would get it. And they didn’t offer me your parents’ order. I called in after I dealt with Ming, and tried to get it, but they said they were already dead.”
“Wait. You’re telling me that my parents died the night I left you?”
“Yes. They did.”
“Then no. They are not dead. My mother left me another message seventy-two hours after that order was issued. I have the recording.”
“Have you talked to her since?”
“No, but I expected that. Ghost protocol means we fake our deaths.”
“But you didn’t fake yours,” I point out.
Her chin lifts, her gaze colliding with mine. “Maybe I wanted my would-be assassin to show up so I could face him. So he had to face me.”
Something sharp and hard cuts through me. “I would have been here sooner, sweetheart,” I say, my hand sliding under her hair, to cup her neck and drag her mouth to mine, “if you wouldn’t have hidden so damn well.”
“Maybe I wasn’t ready for you. Maybe I am now and I sent you an invitation.”
“Invitation accepted, Poison Princess. I’m right here. What are you going to do with me now?”
“Nothing until Franklin’s dealt with. Then, we face off. Then we conclude our story.”
“Until then?”
“Until then, we tolerate each other.”
My mouth lowers, lingering a breath from hers. “And how do you suggest we do that? By fucking?”
Her fingers curls around my shirt. “As long as you know your kisses will never make me trust you again.”
I kiss her, a deep stroke of tongue against tongue before I say, “And your kisses will never make me trust you again.”
I kiss her again, the same deep stroke of tongue before I pull back, letting the taste of her linger on my lips, our breaths mingling. “Did we ever trust each other?” she whispers.
I pull back, my gaze meeting hers. “Yes. We did.”
“And now there is none. Now we’re enemies. And you—”
“Loved you,” I say, my lips brushing hers. “I loved you, Amanda.” And with that gut-wrenching confession, my mouth closes over hers once more, and while I don’t normally allow myself the dangerous luxury of anger, or hate, I feel those things now. I kiss her with those things in my mind, and on my tongue. I let them bleed into her mouth, bitter and harsh. She betrayed me. She betrayed Danny. She may well have betrayed her country and still, I fucking love her as much as I hate her.
And what I taste on her lips is accusation. She kisses me like I’m the man who betrayed her. Like I’m the man who would have killed her, and it just pisses me off all the more. I tangle fingers roughly in her hair, pulling her head back, forcing her gaze to mine. “It didn’t have to be this way. I didn’t say I loved you. I did. And you loved me.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “I did and that kind of emotion is dangerous. I realized that when I heard your name on that recording and didn’t know what was real or fake. And if it was real, if I was wrong to leave, then you are asking the same thing. There’s no coming back. We will never trust each other again.”
“You’re right. There isn’t. So we focus on the one thing neither of us can fake. Pleasure. Fucking.” I lean back, my legs shackling hers, and reach for my holsters, unhooking them. Shrugging out of both, I set them on the seat around the corner to the left. “No guns. Just us.”
“Fucking,” she says. “Not fucking each other?”
“I’m damn sure going to fuck you, sweetheart. And I’m perfectly fine with you fucking me as long as you do it naked.” I snag the hem of her silk tank she’d hidden under a hoodie earlier. “Just remember. Poison me too soon, and my tongue will never get to all the places you like it.”
“I’m not going to poison you,” she says. “At least, not yet.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed Inside Out series. Suzanne Todd (producer of Alice in Wonderland) says, on the Inside Out series: “Lisa has created a beautiful, complicated, and sensual world that is filled with intrigue and suspense. Sara’s character is strong, flawed, complex, and sexy—a modern girl we all can identify with.”.
In addition to the success of Lisa’s Inside Out series, she has published many successful titles. The Tall, Dark, and Deadly series and The Secret Life of Amy Bensen series both spent several months on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.
Prior to publishing books, Lisa owned a multistate staffing agency that was recognized many times by Austin Business Journal and also praised by Dallas Woman magazine. In 1998, Lisa’s agency was listed as the #7 growing women-owned business in Entrepreneur magazine.
Lisa loves to hear from her readers. You can reach her at www.lisareneejones.com, and she is active on Twitter and Facebook daily. Or can sign up for email updates here.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Poison Kisses : Part 1. Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Renee Jones. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover photographs: man © Viorel Sima/Shutterstock.com; chess pieces © Domin Domin/Getty Images
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Jones, Lisa Renee, author.
Title: Posion Kisses: Part 1 / Lisa Renee Jones.
Description: First edition.|New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017036195|ISBN 978-1-250-08385-2 (trade pbk.)|ISBN 978-1-250-08389-0 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3610.O627 E53 2018|DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017036195
eISBN 978-1-250-08390-6
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarke
[email protected].
First Edition: February 2018
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Teaser
Excerpt: Poison Kisses Part 2
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About the Author
Contents
Copyright Page
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