“That’s just it,” she murmurs. “That’s what I was going to say. It sounds crazy, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both our parents died in fires. I know I’ll sound like a melodramatic silly girl, maybe, but I don’t care. I think—”
“Fate led us together,” I growl, pushing my body up against hers, causing her to step back to the balcony windowed doors.
I push her up against the glass, my manhood driving through my pants and lying solidly against her belly, as though my seed is directing it to her womb, trying desperately to fire my life essence inside of her.
“I feel the same,” I tell her. “It’s not silly. It’s not naïve. It’s a fact. We’re bound by fire, by fate, by our bodies. By everything.”
I lean down and take her lips, claim them for my own like I will every day for the rest of our lives. She whimpers through the kiss, but I push brutally on, plunging my tongue into her mouth and tasting her nervous tongue.
I grab her hips and pull her even closer to me, growling through the kiss.
Then I feel her falter, our teeth clicking together.
“Something’s wrong,” I rumble, breaking off the kiss, our noses touching as I stare intensely into her eyes.
“No—yes,” she sighs. “I’m sorry. But I don’t think I can. Not tonight. You know.”
“Sex,” I smirk. “It’s okay. You can say it.”
She giggles. “Okay, yes. Fine. Sex. I want to, but … I can help you if you want? If you show me how? In other ways.”
“No,” I snarl, taking a step backward.
“Are you angry?”
I laugh. “Angry? Only sad pathetic losers sulk if their woman wants to take a break – a short break, mind you – from the inexorable lust of their bodies. I don’t want to explode all over you now because I want to wait. Soon, very soon, I’m going to fuck you until your pussy is raw and aching from the pommeling. But tonight, if you ask me politely like a good girl, I might be willing to just hold you.”
“And how’s that, hmm?” she says, her sass causing my balls to swell, my seed making them heavy. “How do I ask like a good girl?”
“On your knees, with your hands behind your back, softly like the prey you are like you’re getting ready for me to fuck your throat. That’s how you ask like a good girl.”
I almost erupt when she does, slowly lowering herself to her knees, putting her hands behind her back, and sticking her chest out so that her breasts bulge.
“Pretty please, big scary hitman, will you hold me tonight?”
I take a deep breath, summoning every ounce of self-control I have.
“Y-yes,” I growl.
“Did you just stutter?” she teases, climbing to her feet.
I turn my head away, hiding my smirk.
“Nope. You must’ve misheard.”
“I don’t think so,” she teases, making to prod my abs.
I let out the kind of laugh I never dreamed a man like me would offer a woman, carefree and full-bellied, the sort of laugh I can imagine us filling our home with one day when all this madness is done when the Bratva and the past are just distant memories.
I snatch her hand and tackle-dance her over to the bed, both of us laughing like loons as we fall onto the bed. I pull her into my arms and kiss her again, but then I have to break it off, a volcanic rumble moving through me at the taste of her.
“I swear your womb sends me secret messages through that fine body of yours,” I snarl.
She giggles sweetly, musically, the best goddamn sound in the universe.
“You know, that’s the sort of crazy thing that should make me question your sanity, right?” she says, laying her cheek against my chest. I bet she can hear how heavily my heart is pounding. “But I don’t, because I feel the same. I think the same sort of crazy thoughts. I think you’re right, Jett. I think our bodies know we’re destined for each other. Though, I have to say …”
“What?” I growl when she trails off.
I find myself making patterns in her hair with my fingertips, enjoying the way she moves her head toward the movement like she can’t stand to be apart from me even for a few moments.
“That feels so good,” she whispers. “It’s making me all sleepy.”
Could she sound any cuter when she says sleepy like that?
Could she sound any more mine?
“Don’t change the subject,” I tell her. “What were you going to say?”
“Huh?” she says, playing innocent. “What, when?”
“Just now, Juliana,” I say, stifling laughter. “Don’t play games with me.”
“Not even sexual games?”
“Be careful with that sort of banter,” I warn her. “I might decide to take you seriously and fuck you ragged, bend you over right now, and slam into that pink pussy of yours. Watch those gorgeously big ass cheeks bounce and shimmer for me. Fuck, I’m getting hard just thinking of it.”
She leans up, placing her forearms on my chest.
“That’s what I mean.”
“What?” I say. “Why the fuck are you speaking in riddles? You better start making some sense with that mouth or I’ll find another use for it.”
Her eyes snap open wide, telling me how badly she’d want that, just as badly as I do.
But we agreed to wait, even if it’s killing me.
“I guess I’m just surprised that somebody like you, you know, muscular, not an ounce of fat on you, big thick arms and handsome as hell … I guess I’m surprised you’d want a girl like me.”
“Start making sense,” I tell her, staring down into those glinting forest green eyes of hers.
“Do you really not know what I’m getting at?”
“No. So why don’t you tell me?”
“Well—ah—I’m not exactly thin, am I, Jett?”
I can’t help it. I throw my head back and laugh, the sound coming from deep within my belly, as though my seed and the primal beast inside me are laughing along at the same time.
“Don’t laugh.”
She pouts, though her lips twitch into a smile too.
“I can’t help it,” I smirk. “Is that what you’re concerned about? Your body? Jesus Christ, Juliana, the idea that you’d be worried about your body is insane to me. It’s the most beautiful damn thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. You’ve got big magnificent tits made for fucking and drenching in come and, when the time comes, for feeding our children. You’ve got a juicy ass perfect for bouncing. You’ve got thick thighs made for grabbing. I love how full your figure is, you silly girl, so stop complaining about it. Understand?”
She laughs. “Okay, well you could’ve phrased it a little nicer. But yes, thank you. That means a lot to me. Will you rub my head again?”
“Ask nicely,” I smirk.
“Please, Mr. Big Bad Hitman, will you rub my head again?”
I let my head fall back onto the pillow, hardly believing that this morning when I woke up, I didn’t know this woman, didn’t know how much she meant to me.
My future seems so much brighter now.
If that is, I can deal with the Bratva.
“Juliana,” I say.
“Yes?”
“I told you I’d never lie to you, and I meant it.”
“Okay …”
“When I go out to buy supplies tomorrow, I’m going to contact an associate and arrange a meeting with the leader of the Bratva. I’m going to try and pay him off to leave you alone. And if that doesn’t work, I’m going to kill him and anybody else who threatens our family.”
She stiffens against me, clutching my shirt in an anxious fist.
“But what if you get hurt?”
“I won’t,” I promise her. “I’d never let anything stop me from returning to you. And this way, we get to be together. Forever. Like we’re fated to be.”
“Okay, Jett,” she murmurs. “I trust you. Where will we be when you’re buying supplies tomorrow? Are we coming with you?”
“No,” I tell her. �
��I’ve got a plan for that. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Juliana
We eat a breakfast of canned beans that I scarf down because I’m hungry, not because it’s pleasant in any way. I’m still wearing the outfit from last night, making me feel like I need a shower … with Jett, preferable.
If I don’t lose my nerve.
As I look around the table – the three of us sitting in the curtained semidarkness – I can tell that Patricia and Jett are also trying to convince themselves that yesterday was real.
So much has happened.
So much has changed.
I feel as if months or even years of my life have been squashed and condensed into this small space of time, as though fate knew that it needed to pick up its speed what with the killers on the loose.
Patricia glances at me furtively, under her eyelashes, and then looks back down at her breakfast.
I reach across the table and touch her hand.
“I meant what I said yesterday,” I murmur. “I’m grateful. You saved me.”
“Right,” Jett says once we’re done, knocking back his glass of water. “It’s time I took you to the safe room. This won’t take long. Don’t worry.”
“The safe room,” Patricia mutters. “I’m sorry, um, Jett …”
“Jett Jackman,” Jett says gruffly.
“Jett Jackman, but I don’t know you. And now you want to lock me in a safe room—”
“With all due respect,” Jett says, grinding his teeth for a moment before I give him a behave look.
“With all due respect,” he goes on, making an effort to be calm, “I don’t care one way or the other if you go into the safe room. I just want to make sure that Juliana and Rebel stay safe until I return.”
“So I can leave?”
“If you want to risk it with the Bratva,” Jett grunts. “But I wouldn’t advise it.”
“Patricia,” I say. “We can trust Jett. I promise. He’s saved my life. Hell, he saved yours. He won’t abandon us.”
“I’d never abandon you,” he says passionately, reaching across the table and taking my hand in his giant paw.
He squeezes it and I feel shivers moving through me, dancing up and down my body and then swirling around my face, making my smile as firework-flooded as the rest of me.
Patricia looks between us, some of her usual spark returning to her eyes.
“Okay, if Julia trusts you, I trust you. Let’s go to the safe room.”
I pick up Rebel from the floor – she’s finished her improvised breakfast of canned meat, which she seemed to love – and cradle her to my chest as Jett leads us through the empty house. He takes us down to the basement, an ultra-clean room apart from the layer of dust over everything.
Again, my mind fills in the blank spaces, a washer-dryer here, maybe a workout area for Jett, maybe a little nook for painting and drawing if that’s what one of our children wants to pursue.
My body aches for that life.
Jett walks across the bare basement to the rear, to what looks like a wooden wall. But then he slides his hand down toward the floor.
He must trigger something, because a moment later there’s a mechanical click noise and the wooden wall slides to the left, revealing a shiny silver metal door.
It looks exactly how I’ve always imagined a safe room, thick, and imposing.
He turns to us.
“There’s a toilet and some canned food in there, so you’ll be okay until I get back. I shouldn’t be more than an hour. But the reason I mention the food is that I’m going to set the release to twelve hours. That means if I’m not back by then, the door will open and you’ll be on your own. Listen to me.”
He’s staring at me now, his eyes burning into me like hot blue flames.
“I will not let that happen. I will not leave you here.”
“Why set it to twelve hours?” Patricia says, her voice catching.
“Because if something does happen – if they find out where you are – I need time to deal with it and get back here before it opens up for them.”
“We should go to the police,” Patricia says.
Jett grinds his teeth again, glancing at me, his impatience written across his tight square jaw. I give him an imploring look, and he nods, understanding.
Patricia means a lot to me so he’ll make the effort.
She doesn’t have the same connection he and I do.
She doesn’t understand.
“The man who tried to kill Juliana in her apartment – the man who held you hostage, Patricia – his name was Markus. Remember?”
“Yes,” I say when Patricia shakes her head.
“That’s Markus Vitrel. He’s been a detective in the city’s precinct for the past sixteen years. And he’s been working as a goon for hire for just as long. We can’t go to the police. The phrase criminal underworld is a damn lie. It’s everywhere. We’re on our own. The Russians have paid off the entire network. Every hired gun in a fifty-mile radius is going to be looking for us. And that includes a lot that are on the side of law enforcement.”
“Unless you can get the Bratva to call them off,” I whisper.
He nods grimly. “Exactly.”
I stride forward, Rebel giving a yap as though she agrees with my decision.
“I’m with you, Jett,” I say.
Patricia walks up beside me, nodding as though hyping herself up. “I’m with you if Julia is.”
Jett presses a few buttons on the keypad and then swipes his thumb. The door cranks loudly, the way I imagine a bank vault does, and then with a screech of metal, it opens inward.
Lights automatic flutter on, illuming a simple room with bunkbeds lining one wall and shelves of canned goods lining the opposite room, with two doors at the end for what I assume is the bathroom and storage.
Jett turns, walking right up to me, leaning down to bring his lips to mine in a brief searing contact of affection.
“I’ll never stop coming back for you,” he whispers.
I peck him at the edge of the mouth, loving the way he growls, like a beast that can barely hold himself back.
My man, my beast, who can’t hold himself back from me.
“I trust you,” I tell him. “I always will.”
“Fate would be pretty angry if you didn’t, eh?” he says with a just-Jett smirk. “Now get that fine ass in there.”
Patricia and I walk into the bunker, into the bright electronic lights. I turn, staring at Jett over the top of Rebel’s head. He stares back, his face tight, his eyes searing into me as though it’s costing him a great deal to leave us here.
“Always remember,” he snarls. “I’ll never abandon you. You’re everything to me, Juliana.”
He presses a few buttons on the keypad and the door starts to close, slowly, shutting us into the relatively small space. I wander over to one of the bunk beds and sit down with a sigh, stunned at how badly I miss him already, my heart pounding in my chest when I think about the possibility of him not returning.
But I know that would never happen.
I believe him with all my heart.
Rebel climbs from my lap onto the bed, sniffing around the edges of it, and then curling into a ball atop the pillow and letting out a yawn that goes straight to my heart.
I can’t wait to hear our children yawn for the first time.
“So are you going to tell me what’s going on with you two?” Patricia murmurs, standing a few feet away with her hands clasped in front of her, worrying at each other. She glances at the closed door and then back to me. “I would say I’m angry at you for going behind my back, but I haven’t exactly got the moral high ground here, have I?”
“I didn’t go behind your back,” I say.
“Huh?”
“We met last night.”
“Last night?” she gasps. “But the way you—you two—last night?”
I laugh, nodding. “Yeah, I know. It’s crazy.”
<
br /> “Is this one of your weird millennial jokes, like the time you tried to get me to fall off that balcony?”
I give her a mock-glare. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
“I was trying to take a selfie on the balcony, but you kept bumping into the selfie-stick.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. It’s like we’re drifting back into the old banter, the way things were before all this craziness started.
“But you two seem so close,” she says, walking over to the bed and then raising an eyebrow.
It takes me a moment to realize what she’s doing. She’s asking if she can sit next to me.
“Patricia,” I snap, lashing my hand out and curling it around her wrist. I yank her down onto the bed. “How many times do I have to tell you? I forgive you. You saved me.”
“I guess I just thought you’d need more time to process it,” she says with a shrug.
“Things seem to be moving quickly lately in all departments,” I tell her.
“How is this possible?” she asks, looking like Auntie Patricia for a moment.
It’s a nickname I gave her at the event planning agency when she got particularly bossy. It was all in good fun, and she even started referring to herself as it sometimes, when she was particularly focused on getting a job done.
“Don’t make me go all Auntie Patricia on your ass,” she’d say.
Eyebrow raised, supremely skeptical, she says, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m following my heart,” I tell her firmly. “I know how that sounds. I know it makes me sound naïve and silly and—and fine, fine. Let me sound that way. But I don’t care. I can’t explain how I feel what I feel for Jett so quickly. I just know that it’s true. We’re destined to be together. We’re going to create a family together. If this … If he doesn’t … Oh, God, what if the Bratva kills him?”
The tears come as if from nowhere, flooding out of me and streaming down my cheeks. I cough them back and then collapse against Patricia when another wave thunders through me.
She rubs my back softly, whispering soothing words I can barely hear over the sound of my own tears.
“I’m sorry,” I croak. “He just means so much to me. I know it won’t make sense to you.”
“It does,” she flares. “Maybe I can’t fully empathize. I’ve never felt what you clearly do. But I know you, Julia. I can tell how much you care about him. I can tell how much you want – need – to be with him.”
Saved By The Hitman: An Instalove Possessive Age Gap Romance Page 8