After a pause, I add, “But don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I’m not going to draw out every shred of pleasure from you that I can.”
She giggles, her cheeks blooming red. “So we’re going to be doing it for the first time together.”
“Yes,” I say, smirking, almost outright smiling. She looks so damn hopeful excited for our future. It’s infectious. “Everything we do now, we’ll do together. I can’t wait to see you grow and flourish. I can’t wait to see you become even more the woman our children are going to love looking up to.”
She lets her head fall back with a wry smile. “Jett, I think I can safely say this has been the craziest night of my life.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, I’m with you on that one.”
I move over to the couch and wrap my arm around her shoulder, pulling her toward me, wondering if I can stave off the roaring lust inside of me just to sit with her.
Her little dog makes things easier, whining and climbing into my lap, putting her tiny forepaws on my abs, and making a yip-yip noise.
“She’s such a little princess,” Juliana giggles. “That usually means she wants a tickle.”
“Want a tickle, girl?” I laugh, stroking her under the chin with my forefinger.
She’s so small. My finger’s almost the size of her head.
She makes a cooing noise.
“I think you were right,” I say.
Juliana makes a contended sighing noise, snuggling close to me.
“Down here, I can almost forget that there are people trying to kill us.”
“I can’t,” I tell her honestly.
I promised that I’d never lie to her.
And I meant it.
“I can never forget it. And I never will, not until I know you’re safe. But let’s not talk about that right now. I want to talk about you.”
“There isn’t much to say,” she murmurs.
“Why do I find that hard to believe?” I say, risking a kiss to her sweat-dappled forehead, hoping that the heat of her skin doesn’t send me into carnal overdrive.
She smiles sweetly when my lips make contact with her skin, radiant and beautiful, and everything I could’ve dreamed of in my life partner.
I’m stunned by how quickly she can take me from white-knuckling lust to wanting to kiss her, hold her, just be with her.
She’s casting a spell on me and I wouldn’t dispel it for the world.
“Well, I’m an orphan. My parents—”
From the floor, a buzzing noise sounds.
I’m on my feet immediately, scanning the room, listening for any other noises.
A cellphone.
“It’s mine,” Juliana says, gesturing to a ruined half of her trousers.
“You didn’t turn it off?”
“Should I have?”
I shake my head, waving a hand. It’s not her fault. It’s mine. I should’ve warned her to turn it off when we first came back here.
“What should I do?” she asks.
“See who it is,” I tell her, ready to throttle any bastard who’d dare to interrupt this moment.
She reaches down – Rebel harrumphs and flees to the other side of the couch – and then picks up her cellphone.
“It’s Patricia, my boss. Should I answer it?”
A dark feeling creeps through me.
“Does she usually call you this late?”
“No.”
The feeling gets deeper, tinged with violence.
My instincts tell me that this is bad.
And my instincts are never wrong.
“Is she just your boss, or does she mean more to you?” I ask.
“More, way more,” Patricia says. “She’s been my best friend for the last three years, my only real friend ever, really.”
Something drops inside of me.
That means we can’t ignore this.
That means we have to deal with the consequences.
Fuck, I should’ve thought of this.
“Answer it,” I tell her.
“Patricia?” Juliana says, bringing the phone to her ear.
I watch as her face inevitably changes, moving from confusion to terror as her features contract, all but her eyebrows, shooting up with lightning shock.
“Wait, wait, slow down. There are men in your apartment. And they want … me? They’re going to—oh, God. I will. Okay.”
Juliana lowers the phone, staring at me with wide pits for eyes.
“They’ve got Patricia,” she says. “They’re going to kill her unless I go to her apartment—now, alone.”
Fuck.
CHAPTER TEN
Juliana
I walk down the hallway toward Patricia’s apartment as I have dozens or hundreds of times before, only now there’s a knot in my gut the size of my fist.
No—the size of Jett’s fist, a big nasty knot that twists and burns when I think about all the ways this could go wrong.
It would be so unfair if fate snatched away what we have just when I learned how special it is.
Jett is a virgin, like me.
Jett wants to claim me as badly as I need to be claimed by him.
My wildest dreams are coming true.
It just so happens they’re coming true at the same time as my worst nightmares.
I guess life is a bitch that way.
“You need to trust me,” Jett said back at the underground apartment.
It was as if he’d turned into a different man, his smirk disappearing, his blue eyes becoming flinty and focused.
He became Jett the Hitman, not Jett the Lover, Jett the One-Day Father.
I stop outside the door, drawing in shaky breaths, my shirt sticky from the party, Jett’s pants hanging loosely from my hips, tied with a belt constructed hastily from his T-shirt. At least I still have my shoes and my bra.
Maybe I’d feel ridiculous if the stakes weren’t so high.
My heart hammers in my chest as I think of Rebel, of Jett, of a bullet between my eyes ending everything we’ve built.
I knock and knock and knock, and then somebody grumbles from deep within the apartment, “Fucking hell, it’s open. Just come in.”
“No,” I say, going with sassy like Jett instructed me.
“These men,” he told me, “they despise when a woman talks back to them. You need to make them angry.”
That’s easier said than done when there are a thousand arrows of anxiety being fired at me every single moment.
“No?” the man chuckles, and then says something to someone else, making them laugh.
I glance down the hallway to where Jett is crouched, next to the door of one of Patricia’s neighbors. He’s dressed all in black with a silenced pistol in his hand, a black hood pulled low over his eyes, leather gloves on his hands.
My belly twists again when I think about Rebel back in the car, curled up under a pile of blankets.
I despise these men for making me leave her.
I need to get this done as quickly as possible.
“I said no, you fucking loser,” I spit, slamming my fist against the door. “You wanted me. I’m here. Now, why don’t you take your limp dick out of your hand and open this fucking door. I’m carrying something.”
“Oh yeah? What’re you carrying?”
“My life savings, you asshole,” I yell. “I brought my life savings because maybe that will end whatever this is. So open the fucking door.”
“Got some fire in you, ain’t ya?” the man chuckles darkly. “Maybe we’ll have a couple of go’s at you before we turn in your scalp. You’re not my type, frankly. But I’ll take a swing at anything these days.”
Footsteps move toward the door.
I draw in shaky breaths, my throat feeling raw, my chest tight with the nonstop drumbeat of my heart.
What if he just shoots me through the door?
I step slightly to the side, wincing with every creaking of the floorboards, thinking about how crazy it is that a few hours ago I was on t
he other side of the door.
What with everything that’s happened with Jett, it feels so much longer.
“Wait,” another man says.
“Wait, what?” the first man snaps.
He’s closer now, right on the other side of the door.
I can see his shadow.
There’s a click.
His hand is on the door handle.
He’s standing right there.
“If her hands are so full she can’t open the door, how did she knock on it—”
Some crazy impulse rises up in me.
All I can think about is Rebel in the car all by herself, probably whining because she doesn’t know what’s going on. I think of Patricia in there, maybe tied to a chair, maybe bloody from where these evil bastards have tortured and toyed with her.
I snatch my hand forward and grab the door handle, pushing it down and shoving it hard.
The door flies open and the man shouts something, leaping backward, a black-clad figure going for his gun.
And then Jett is at my side, driving his shoulder into the door which the man is trying to close. He flurries into the apartment, smashing the hilt of his gun against the man’s throat. The man chokes and stumbles, and Jett shoves him roughly aside and springs deeper into the apartment, gun raised, searching.
Hardly aware of what I’m doing – it’s like I’m watching myself – I run into the apartment and grab the man’s gun from his hip.
I aim it at his prone form.
“Stay there, asshole,” I snap, intending the words to come out full of confidence.
But instead, they sound like a child playing dress-up, unconvincing, a quaver beneath them.
I glance up briefly.
Patricia’s apartment is a mess, her stylish wall hangings in crumpled piles on the floor, her sleek white-leather couch dappled with red and upturned, her coffee table shattered, the glass winking in her hipster naked-bulb lights.
From her bedroom, men shout and there’s a crash and a bang, but not a gunshot.
“You really got the stones to pull that trigger, girl?” the man on the floor sneers, blood spewing from his shattered nose.
Its Markus, I realize, the man from my apartment earlier tonight.
“Just try me,” I snap.
He shrugs and leans back on his elbows, as though he’s making himself comfortable.
Time seems to slow, torturing me.
My mind returns to the day Patricia found me sitting outside the railway station with Rebel in my arms and a deep burning in my chest.
I’d been caught riding without a ticket, unceremoniously thrown out. Rebel was all I had in the world, a gorgeous baby Chihuahua I got from a rescue shelter when I had a waitressing job and a studio apartment.
But then I lost the job and the apartment, and I was destitute, on the edge of ruin.
Sitting outside that railway station was truly rock-bottom.
And then Patricia appeared like a guardian angel.
“Why so glum?” she smiled, striding over to me in her hipster blocky boots.
She was so stylish, this regal, supremely cool woman kneeling down to pet Rebel and then smile at me. My first thought was that maybe she thought I was homeless and was going to give me change, but instead, she stood back up and smiled.
“This is going to sound completely insane,” she said. “But would you like to interview for a job?”
She advanced my pay so I could get another apartment.
She awoke a love of event-planning inside of me that I never knew was there.
She nurtured me, cared for me, and this man – Markus – he would’ve killed her without another thought.
I think about moving my finger onto the trigger.
But then Jett appears from the bedroom, Patricia walking beside him.
I look her over for injuries – the blood on the couch is like shredded rose petals – but she seems unharmed, wearing her Victorian-style pajamas she assures me are ironic. But really I just think she likes them.
Jett’s hood has fallen down, revealing his shining silver hair, his focused eyes widening for a moment when he sees me holding the gun.
“We’re going,” he growls.
“Are they …”
“Alive,” he snaps. “Not that they deserve it. Come on.”
“What should I do with this?”
I gesture with the gun.
“Whatever you want. Let’s move.”
I hold onto the gun, pointing it down at the ground at my side.
The three of us bustle into the hallway and Jett doesn’t give us any time to talk, just keeps us walking down the stairwell and out onto the street. Patricia moves quickly, not looking at me, one hand hugged across her middle to grip her opposite arm as though she’s protecting herself. I still can’t see any blood or cuts on her.
Rebel is yapping by the time we get to the car, up on her hind legs and leaping up and down on the backseat, trying to reach the window.
I open the door and grab her with my non-gun hand, and then turn and gesture at Jett.
He nods and takes the gun, and then climbs into the car.
“Come on,” he says. “In, both of you.”
I get into the back seat, Rebel on my lap, only now realizing that my breathing is coming even quicker than before. Big shocked intakes and long wavering exhalations, my chest expanding and compressing.
“Patricia,” I murmur, turning to her in the opposite seat.
Jett starts the car and pulls out, his eyes constantly moving, one-hundred percent Jett the Hitman still.
She turns to me. Her bob of hair is spiky in places and matted in others, and her cheeks look even sharper than usual. Her eyes are big black pits.
“Are you hurt?” I ask. “Did they …”
“It wasn’t my blood,” she murmurs.
She sounds really spaced-out. I can’t say I blame her.
“When they broke in, I scratched one of them. I fought. But they fought harder.”
“There were three of them and one of you,” Jett says from the front seat. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
My heart soars when he says those comforting words to my best friend, a sign that maybe the two of them will get along. I imagine Patricia attending a family barbecue one day in the future, a bright sunny day, with no men trying to kill us, with no haunted look in her eyes. Maybe she would’ve even found a woman to settle down with by then, instead of flitting from fling to fling.
“He’s right,” I say, reaching across and giving her hand a squeeze. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“It’s my fault,” she croaks. “Oh, God, it’s all my fault.”
“What? No. Patricia, look at me. It’s not your fault.”
“It is,” she says, firmer now. She looks at me oddly. “I know why they’re trying to kill you, Julia. I’ve known for years.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jett
I have to focus hard to keep the car on a straight path when Patricia drops a bombshell.
My assassin’s mind goes into overdrive trying to parse possible connections, but without any research, I’m clueless.
I feel like roaring and hammering my chest.
Why couldn’t those motherfuckers just leave us be in that underground haven?
We could’ve stayed down there, just me and Juliana, given into our lust in a conflagration of closeness and heat.
“What?” Juliana murmurs, as I take the bridge that will lead us to the suburbs.
I never use the same safe house twice in a row.
It’s too risky.
But then all of this is damned risky.
“I don’t understand,” she goes on. “What do you mean? How could you possibly know?”
In the rearview, I see Patricia turn and gaze out of the window. It’s like she can’t look at Juliana.
Anger flares in me when I think she’s going to stop talking now.
She owes my woman some answers.
Juliana meets my gaze in the rearview mirror, her eyes telling me to let her handle this, despite the evident pain streaking across her expression.
I nod grimly and turn back to the road, dead-quiet at this time of night.
“That day we met outside the railway station, that wasn’t by chance,” she says. “I was following you. I’d been following you for a long time.”
I fight the urge to get involved.
I don’t like the idea of my woman being followed by anybody except me.
“Why?” Juliana demands.
Rebel must sense her anger because she gives a short yip.
“I … Oh, God, this is so hard. I’m so sorry.”
Juliana reaches across and places her hand atop her friend’s.
“It’s okay,” she says. “Just take your time.”
Seeing her like this just makes me even more certain that she’s going to make an incredible mother, so caring, so patient, so ready to move toward understanding where anybody else might move toward rage.
Patricia falls silent for a long time. The whole car does, the only noise the rumbling of the tires on the road, the wind whispering against the window. I’ve got the heater turned up against the cold, and for a moment it’s like we’re on some pleasant nighttime drive, going to the airport for a holiday, maybe.
With no killers on our tail.
Finally, Patricia starts to talk, her voice low, pushing the words out quickly as though if she doesn’t trust herself to finish.
“I was friends with your parents, Juliana,” she says. “I knew them from when we were kids together. We were so close, the three of us. Your mother and I were best friends since we were babies. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know her. Your father came along in middle school, and we were inseparable. They were good people. You need to understand that. They were the best people.”
I can sense how stunned Juliana is, as though her scent has changed. In the rearview, I see that her lips are a flat line, her face composed, but her eyes are glinting with the suggestion of tears.
She’s keeping herself together so that Patricia can finish.
She’s so damn brave.
“But somewhere along the way, they got mixed up with some bad people. Your father started running packages for criminals. Russians. Have you ever heard of the Bratva?”
Saved By The Hitman: An Instalove Possessive Age Gap Romance Page 6