“You don’t think it’s crazy?” I murmur, wiping away my tears and looking at her face, made blurry with my tears.
Her smile twitches kindly.
“Oh, it’s crazy,” she says. “But I don’t think that makes it any less real. The only question I have is, do you think he’s going to treat you right? Do you trust him to give you the life you deserve?”
“Yes,” I say at once.
“Then I’m jealous,” she says. “Hold onto it, Julia. Never let it go.”
I nod fiercely.
I have no intention of ever doing that.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jett
The trip to the store goes by without any hiccups.
I call my contact from a payphone, telling him there’s fifty grand in it for him if he arranges a meeting for me with Igor Zhirkov, the leader of the Bratva. He agrees though he can’t help but add, “He’s going to kill you, Jett, the second you step foot into that meeting. The best you can do is run.”
“And have him always chasing me?” I growl.
I mean us.
Before I met Juliana, the idea of living a life on the run would’ve meant nothing to me. Alone, I can slink through the shadows like a predator of the night, ignored, unseen.
But I’m not going to raise a family that way.
This has to end.
I tell my contact something else, too, but there’s no way to know if he’ll act on it.
It’s the longest of long shots in this world—trusting a dishonest man to do the right thing.
I’m quick in the store, grabbing the food we’ll need for the next couple of days.
The meeting with Igor is in two days’ time.
I can’t help but grab a few other items while I’m there—special items for Juliana, my body groaning and swelling at the prospect.
I return to the house by the back passage, moving through the woods that border the property. My senses are alive to any slight noise or change in the atmosphere, anything that tells me I need to snap into hitman mode.
But I get to the safe room without a hitch, a mere hour and fifteen minutes after I left.
I type in the code on the keypad, my chest feeling tight, my body thrumming at the prospect of seeing my woman again.
Every second I was away from her, my body was pulsing for her, my muscles strained and bulging with the need to be with her.
At the checkout, the cashier tried to flirt with me.
She had dyed pink hair and big stretcher earrings in her ears, and she basically stated that she’d take me to the back office and do whatever I wanted. I was fucking sickened at the idea.
I’m a stranger, and she’d do that?
This is why I’ll never be ashamed about waiting for my Juliana.
I need to own the woman I fuck.
Own her for life.
The door finally swings open and Rebel comes bounding out, wagging her tiny tail and leaping up onto my shin, smiling broadly. I can’t help but chuckle as I kneel down and offer my hand to the tiny dog. She yaps and rubs her head against the back of my hand, so small, so fragile.
“I think she likes you,” Juliana says, standing over me with red rimmed eyes.
I give Rebel one more stroke and then climb to my feet, looping my arms around my woman’s shoulders, squeezing her close, and laying a kiss on her forehead.
“What is it?” I murmur. “You’ve been crying.”
“We were discussing how much she cares about you,” Patricia says from the edge of our embrace, with a bite in her voice. “And I was telling her that if you ever hurt her, you’d have me to answer to.”
I nod, taking her words seriously.
“I’d never hurt her,” I say. “You have my word on that. And I’m glad she has a person like you in her life, Patricia, another protector.”
“So you two are going to get along now?” Juliana says, looking up at me, her verdant eyes brimming under her eyelashes. “No more nasty looks when the other one talks, hmm?”
I smirk. “Nasty looks? I’m not capable of such a thing. I’m the happiest bastard there is.”
“Yeah,” Patricia agrees, chuckling. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uh oh,” Juliana giggles. Her chest vibrates against me, her breasts jiggling, temptingly. I have to grit my teeth to fight the urge to squeeze them. “I think I might have started a bit of a double act here. But seriously, even if it involves some teasing, I want you two to get along.”
“Of course,” I tell her, kissing her reddened cheek. “For you, Juliana, I’d be friends with the devil himself. Not that I’m saying your friend here is a devil.”
Juliana giggles. I reach down and take her hand, nodding toward the stairs.
“Come on. I got you both some simple clothes. But I also got you a little surprise, Juliana.”
She stands at the edge of the bed, staring down at the dress I selected for her.
It’s black but also bright, the inlaid jewels making it glitter where it lays like something scaled and alive. The hem is cut short, which means I’ll get a delicious look at her thighs when she pulls it on.
There’s a tasteful amount of cleavage, too, but not too much. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to resist yanking the dress down and revealing her big bouncy tits.
“You want me to wear this?” she says.
I move up behind her – we’re alone, Patricia and Rebel elsewhere in the house – and drive my rock hard manhood against her ass cheeks.
I reach around and hug my arms across her middle, trapping her against me.
She shivers when I bring my lips close to her ear.
“You’ll wear whatever the fuck I want,” I growl.
“I’ll look ridiculous—”
“Quiet,” I snap. “You’ll look incredible. You’ll look heavenly. You’ll look like my personal fuck toy. You’ll look however I want you to look. So stop your pouting. Otherwise, I might change my mind.”
She swivels in my grip – I relax the tension in my arms just enough to let her, but still, keep her pushed up close against me – and throws a tilted-head sassy look up at me.
“Change your mind about what?” she says.
“About dinner,” I snarl. “We can’t go to a restaurant, for obvious reasons. But that balcony out there is heated. I’ve done a little recon and there are no lines of sight onto the balcony. I’m going to cook us some steaks and watch as the heated flooring moves up through that body of yours, making every part of you red and hot, ready to be devoured by me. Now, are you going to wear the dress or not?”
“Well, when you put it like that,” she laughs, “I don’t really feel like I can say no.”
I smooth my hand down her body and then give her a short, soft spank on the ass, watching as lust makes her eyes all hazy.
She lets out a moan and wriggles against me.
“You dirty thing,” I smirk. “You liked that, didn’t you? You like being this killer’s personal little slut, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she moans. “Oh, God, yes.”
“Save it for later,” I growl with an effort, stepping back.
“L-later?” she says.
“After dinner,” I tell her, “I’m taking that cunt. I’m tired of waiting. Understand, Juliana? I’m pounding that pussy and putting my seed in you. Or you can tell me you don’t want it – you can lie – and I’ll try my best to resist you. But it’s getting too hard already.”
I walk through the bedroom toward the balcony, the steaming plates in my hands.
Rebel and Patricia are elsewhere in the house. Juliana’s friend agreed to take care of the dog so that we could have some alone time together.
My cock is pulsating at the prospect of it.
I walk onto the balcony, the heat of the floor and the tactically-placed heaters blasting away the winter cold the moment I step out. I’m wearing one of my suits, wanting to make the occasion as special as I can despite the warped circumstances.
/> Juliana looks as incredible in the dress as I knew she would. It hugs intimately to her body, outlining her every curve, her body glittering and sparkling with something like starlight. She’s let her hair down, cascading to her shoulders. She’s not wearing any makeup, making her look natural and gorgeous, her cheeks flushed red from the heat of the balcony.
I have to focus hard to stop my hands from trembling with lust as I put the plates on the table.
“Here’s your steak, madam,” I joke. “Crispy and borderline inedible, just how you like it.”
She giggles, throwing me a look that makes my chest tighten.
“Oh, I’m sorry I don’t want mine basically raw like a savage.”
I grin at her across the table, or maybe it’s more that I bare my teeth like a wolf.
“I am a savage, Juliana. You’ll find that out soon enough.”
Her cheeks bloom an even deeper shade of red. She turns her gaze to the backyard, long and wide, purposefully so. I chose this place because the geography of the backyard made it relatively private. When you’re close to the house – or right at the end – it’s impossible for the other houses to see you.
I checked.
“It’s such a beautiful night,” she murmurs.
She’s not wrong.
The sky is clear, a million stars gazing down at us, winking and illuming. The balcony is lit with soft orange lamps, but we hardly need it with all the natural night-time luminescence pouring down.
We turn to our food, eating in comfortable silence for a few moments.
I’m stunned by how at ease I feel.
I don’t have that on-alert feeling, which is bad.
It means I’m probably letting myself slip too deeply into the intimate heat of the dinner.
But at the same time, the alarms are set, the gate is locked and the walls are high. I’ll know the second anybody tries to step foot on the property—our property, not just mine, because I’m already thinking of everything as shared.
“So, you want to be a successful event planner?” I ask her.
She nods, her blush spreading down her neck and across her chest.
Fuck, I wonder if other parts of her are getting red, too.
I can’t wait to check.
“I never had this crazy passion when I was a kid,” she says. “I know some people do. They know exactly what they want to do the moment they realize they’ll have to work someday. But I never did. I guess I just sort of flitted through my childhood. I read a lot of books. I imagined a lot. But mostly I felt like I was missing out.”
She pauses, looking down at the table. I reach over and take her hand, squeezing it in what I hope is a comforting way. She smiles briefly, just a flash of happiness through the remembered heartache, and then lets out a short breath.
“Missing out,” she murmurs. “It’s hard to quantify just how painful that can be. You’re sitting there, head buried in a book – and you’re enjoying it, of course, you are – but there’s this small part of you that’s thinking, What are the other girls from my class doing right now? Then I found event planning. I never miss out again. As strange as it is, I find it so fulfilling planning parties and functions, to see the faces of the guests light up when they arrive, and find that we’ve actually put the effort in. We’ve made it …”
“Special?” I offer when she trails off.
“Yeah,” she says, nodding. “Special. I know it sounds silly.”
“It doesn’t,” I growl passionately. “And I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
She flinches, looking at me under her dark eyelashes.
“Do what?”
“Downplay your passion,” I tell her. “There’s nothing wrong with having a fire in your belly, no matter what that fire is fueled by. You don’t have to be ashamed.”
“What about you?” she flares, giving my hand a squeeze.
“What about me?”
She tilts her head, suddenly sassy. The base of my cock gets tight and hungry.
My seed riots, urging me to be done with dinner.
“What sort of a kid were you?” she asks.
“Oh, much the same as you,” I tell her. “I spent a lot of my time alone. Only, I was in the woods. I was learning how to navigate, strengthening my body, learning how to trap and hunt and fish. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning the skills that would help me when I became a SEAL—and after.”
“Why alone?” she murmurs. “Were you nervous, like me?”
I laugh grimly. “I don’t know if nervous is the word. I was small and short when I was younger and the kids bullied me because of it. But then I grew taller, bigger, stronger. I hated how that changed them, how suddenly everybody started treating me nicely, started wanting to be my friend. It was pathetic. It was fear making them behave that way. So I thought, Fuck them.”
“So we’re the same in that way,” she murmurs.
“Two loners who’ve finally found the person they want to spend their life with,” I say, nodding.
She smiles at me, her cheeks glowing in the yellow lamplight. I find myself near-smiling back, not a smirk but not a fully-fledged smile either. I can’t remember the last time I actually smiled, without self-consciousness.
Maybe when I was a kid.
“This really is delicious,” she says after another mouthful of steak.
“I still can’t believe you take it well done,” I chuckle. “That really is sacrilege as far as I’m concerned.”
She giggles.
I’ll never get tired of hearing that sound, the soft sweetness of it.
“I keep waiting to wake up,” she says. “Any second now, I’ll snap awake in my apartment, with Rebel licking my face. All of this will have just drift away. I’ll be alone again.”
“Do you want to wake up?”
Her mouth falls open for a moment.
“Are you joking? Of course, I don’t. Finding you …”
She trails off, biting her lip.
So I finish it for her.
“Finding you,” I growl, “was the best thing that ever happened to me, Juliana.”
She makes a small whimpering noise, anxiety nestled inside it.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I just hope I don’t disappoint you,” she murmurs. “I hope I can, you know, take it—take you.”
Is she trying to turn me into a beast?
Her words conjure up an image of my throbbing, thick length pushing stubbornly into her tight soaked hole. I see her hole expanding around my cock, my cock that won’t take no for an answer. I feel her squirming and hear her whimpering as I drive deeper, and deeper until I’m buried up to the hilt and she’s stuck on the end of me.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs.
“Why are you sorry?” I growl, having to force the words out.
“You look really angry.”
“Angry?” I smirk. “Not quite. More like I’m thinking about bending you over that balcony railing and showing you how wrong you are right now. Your body wants this, Juliana. Your womb needs my seed. We were made for each other. There’s a reason I’ve never had sex with anyone. There’s a reason I waited for you.”
“I still can hardly believe that,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “A man like you could have had hundreds of women.”
“Yes, I could have,” I tell her flatly. “But why? I knew the moment I saw you that you were the only woman I’d ever want. I knew the moment I saw you that all these years of living like a damned monk had paid off. Because now I can finally let the beast inside of me free.”
“Will you be angry if you don’t, um, fit?” she says, staring down at the table, her fork clicking metallically against her plate.
My cock gives another urgent pulse.
All this talk of tight she might be is making my head foggy, making it hard to think beyond the image of her tangy soaked slit.
“It will,” I tell her. “One way or the fucking other, it will. If I have to ease myself into
you over the course of several hours until you’re ready to take everything I have to give, I’ll do it. Now stop worrying. Because it’s happening. We were made for each other and it’s time you let me take the lead on this.”
She lets out a breathy sigh, so much like the way she moaned back at the underground apartment.
“Okay, Jett,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
I take a big mouthful of steak, enjoying the way the blood spreads around my mouth. It makes it easy to imagine that I’m a caveman and this is meat I caught for me and my woman, dragging it back to the cave, protecting us from the threats of the wild and being rewarded with a meal, and then her naked willing body.
“Jett,” she murmurs a minute later. “What’s your favorite color?”
I chuckle. “What?”
“You heard me,” she says, mock-glaring. “We’ve been getting so serious. Let’s lighten it up a bit.”
“Okay, let’s lighten it up. My favorite color is red, blood-red, the color of blood.”
“Ha, ha,” she says, going for sarcastic even as her eyes glimmer with real pleasure. “Seriously, though.”
I shrug. “I don’t think I have one. Most of my clothing is either black or gray if that helps.”
Black like my heart was before Juliana came along.
Gray like my morality will always be when it comes to protecting what’s mine.
“What about you, eh? What’s your favorite color?”
I can hardly believe that we’re talking about this, but my naïve young virgin’s face lights up at the question. She looks so damn young, so fertile and fresh, an untouched jewel who’s waited her whole life to be plucked up and treasured by me.
“It’s red,” she says. “I’ve got this photograph of my mom and dad, the only one I have, and my mom is wearing this red sweater. It’s not a fancy sweater or anything like that. But it looks lived-in, you know like it was her favorite thing to wear around the house. I’ve always loved it.”
I pull my chair around the table and wrap my arm around her when the sob cracks and the tears begin.
Saved By The Hitman: An Instalove Possessive Age Gap Romance Page 9