Honey and the Hitman

by Hannah Murray

  “I would never humor you,” she proclaimed, then tucked her tongue firmly in her cheek. “I’m patronizing you.”

  She let out a laugh when he growled, her heart beating wildly as she backed toward the stairs. He’d fairly vibrated with sexual energy all night. He’d reined it in, but it had been there, simmering just below the surface, visible in his crystal blue eyes whenever he looked at her. She’d been on the edge of arousal for hours, and now that they were behind closed doors, he wasn’t bothering to hide it any longer.

  Thank God.

  “Now, Ethan,” she began, holding the panda in front of her like a shield as he began stalking her across the floor. “It’s just for fun. Where’s your sense of sportsmanship?”

  “Sportsmanship?” he answered, his voice a low growl that sent shivers down her spine. “I’m a bad boy, remember? We don’t do sportsmanship.”

  Her breath came short as all the moisture in her mouth dried up. “No?”

  He shook his head slowly as he continued to advance, forcing her backward until her heels hit the bottom step. She stumbled a little bit, then managed to pull herself up one step, then two.

  “What do bad boys do?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Anything we want,” he told her and made his move.

  She barely had time to shriek before he was there, scooping her up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The panda went tumbling to the floor as she flailed, finally grabbing at his belt and holding on for dear life as he took the stairs two at a time. She was a little dizzy from all the bouncing around when she found herself flat on her back on the bed, her mouth under his.

  “Hurry,” she panted when his mouth slid to her neck. She dragged at his collar, suddenly ravenous to see his skin, feel it. Taste it. “Hurry.”

  He dragged at her blouse, the wide elastic neckline making it easy for him to yank it down to her waist in one swift pull. Her breasts bounced free, nipples already flushed and peaked. Then his hands were there, kneading and tugging so she arched hard into his hands.

  “These tits have been taunting me all night,” he growled and used his mouth.

  Her heart hammered in her chest, pleasure pounding through her in a rapid beat that brought the sheen of sweat to her skin and his name to her lips. Her hands slid into his hair, holding him to her breast even as she arched up in an unconscious plea for more. His hands dragged at her jeans, fumbling with the waistband.

  “Let me, let me,” she panted, her hands leaving his hair to go to her waist.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered and solved the problem by grabbing the waistband and yanking them down to her knees.

  Her breath snagged in her throat as she glanced down at herself. Her blouse was bunched around her waist, her jeans around her knees. Her breasts glistened from his mouth, and below, where she’d deliberately foregone underwear, she glistened with arousal.

  A growl ripped from his throat as he stared down at her bare pussy, his hands gripping her hips. “No panties?”

  She shook her head, her heart hammering in her ears as she looked at him. His cheeks were flushed, his breath rushing in and out of his lungs as though he’d been running. The muscles in his arms stood out sharply, as though he was holding himself on a very tight leash.

  “I didn’t want to slow you down,” she breathed.

  Before she could blink, he was rolling her onto her stomach, dragging her to her hands and knees. His knuckles scraped against her bare bottom, his movements frantic and uncoordinated. The sound of his button fly popping free echoed in the room, accompanied by her panting breaths and his rasping ones. His hands grasped her hips, dragging her closer to the edge of the bed. His cock brushed against her hip, the heat of it nearly searing, and her hips rolled in an involuntary invitation.

  Then her breath burst out of her in a sharp cry as his cock drove deep in one hard, piercing thrust.

  “Fuck, Honey.” He swiveled his hips, grinding against her upturned ass. “Feel how wet that pussy is.”

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  “You’ve been thinking about this.” He pulled his cock halfway out, then shoved it home again. “Thinking about it, turning yourself on. All goddamn night.”

  “Oh God, Ethan.”

  “What?” He leaned over her back, pressing his body into hers as his breath teased her ear. “Tell me. Tell me what you want, what you need. Say the words, Honey, and I’ll give it to you.”

  Her fingers dug into the bedspread, holding on desperately as he licked her ear, scraped it with his teeth. His cock was seated deep inside, so deep she could feel it pulse along with the beat of her own heart. Her knees were still bound by her jeans, preventing her from spreading her legs, and she couldn’t believe how huge he felt inside her.

  “Tell me.”

  “Fuck me.” The words burst free on a breath so harsh, it was nearly a sob. “Fuck your cock into my pussy hard. I want to feel you for hours. Days. God, just fuck me.”

  “Yes,” he snarled in her ear, and setting his teeth in her shoulder, gave her what she asked for.

  Her body shook under the force of his thrusts, a cry forced from her lips every time he drove deep. She heard herself babbling, pleading for less, for more, for something, anything to ease the terrible tension growing inside her. Pleasure so sharp it was almost pain bloomed deep inside, clouding her vision and her mind until she knew nothing but the drag of his cock in her cunt, the slap of his balls against her swollen clit, the scrape of the open fly of his jeans against the tender skin of her buttocks.

  Sensation piled on top of sensation until she was one giant nerve, pulsing and straining for more.

  He draped himself heavily across her back, his hands coming down to curl around hers where they fisted in the bedspread. He continued to pound into her as he began to whisper in her ear.

  “That’s it, baby. Take my cock.” He punctuated the words with a grind of his hips against her ass, digging in as deep as he could before pulling out to do it again. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what you need. My cock buried so deep inside, filling you so full you’ll forget what it’s like to be empty.”

  Sparks went off behind her tightly closed eyelids, his words making her cunt clamp down on him. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Take it, Honey. Take every.” Thrust. “Fucking.” Thrust. “Inch.” Thrust.

  “I’m going to come,” she panted, the tension coiling so tight, she knew it was about to break. Unbearable pleasure beckoned. She could feel it in the little flutters beginning deep inside her cunt, in the pulse that throbbed in her clit. Just a little more, a little more friction, a little more pressure...

  A sharp, keening cry fell from her lips as the orgasm overtook her, her body spasming and jerking under his. He answered her with a shout and stabbed into her hard once, twice more, then he held himself deep as his own orgasm hit, and somehow the strong pulses of his cock inside her set her off all over again.

  Then suddenly, he was gone.

  She blinked and swung around, falling into the bed as her arms gave out beneath her, and her legs kicked uselessly inside the jeans still wrapped around her knees. She shoved her hair out of her face with a shaking hand and struggled to clear her vision. She could still feel the aftershocks of pleasure singing through her blood. “Ethan?”

  “Stay here,” he told her, and when she finally managed to blink her eyes clear, they widened in alarm.

  He stood by the bed, still wearing his shirt, his pants hastily pulled up but not buttoned, and he was pulling a pistol from her nightstand.

  Wait. What? “What are you doing?”

  “I heard something downstairs.” She watched, flabbergasted, as he drew back the slide to ratchet a bullet into the chamber. His face was blank, his eyes cool. Cold. He looked so cold. “Stay here.”

  She lay still, her shirt bunched around her waist and her pants at her knees, her body still humming with the aftershocks of pleasure as he slid out the door on silent feet.

  * * *<
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  Ethan forced himself to do a thorough check of the downstairs, even though he was now fairly certain what’d he’d heard was the lilac bush outside the kitchen window scraping against the glass. The wind had picked up, the air smelling like rain through the open dining room windows. He didn’t bother to curse; he knew Honey very rarely, if ever, closed the windows on the lower level. The screens were undisturbed, leading him to believe she’d been the one to leave them open. More than that, though, was Milo’s sleepy demeanor. If anyone had come in through a window, the dog wouldn’t be snoozing in the kitchen.

  He went around shutting and locking windows, double-checking all the downstairs rooms before making his way back upstairs. He stepped into the bedroom, a lecture on open windows and basic safety dying on his lips as he saw Honey sitting in the middle of the bed, knees drawn up to her chest. She’d shed her blouse and jeans and had dragged the duvet up around her shoulders. She sat huddled in it as though desperate for warmth, and her eyes were blank with shock.

  Shit.

  Walking softly, he approached the bed, kept his voice low. “Honey.” He laid a hand on her knee and waited until she looked at him. “It’s okay. It was just the lilac bush scraping against the window. The wind’s picking up.”

  She glanced up at him, then down to the hand that still held the pistol. He swallowed a curse and shifted slightly to tuck it behind his leg, but it was too late.

  “What was that thing doing in my nightstand?”

  He winced at the colorless tone of her voice. “I put it there.”

  “Why?”

  “In case I needed it.”

  Now a slight frown marred her forehead, and he could see the shock was starting to fade. “Why would you need a pistol?”

  He opened his mouth to lie—burglars, serial killers, little green men from outer space—then shut it again at the look in her eye. She was waiting for it, he realized. Waiting for him to lie. And he knew if he did, she’d walk away without a backward glance.

  “Because I’ve got trouble.”

  She blinked, clearly nonplussed, then her eyes narrowed. “What kind of trouble?”

  Now he sighed as he lowered himself to sit on the side of the bed. “The kind I’d rather not involve you in.”

  She let out a harsh, humorless laugh, and he flinched. “You just went on an armed patrol in my house five seconds after coming inside me. I’m damn well involved, Ethan.”

  “Shit.” He dragged a hand through his hair.

  “Tell me why you put a pistol in my nightstand.”

  He raised his head to look her in the eye, drew a deep breath, and hoped she was telling the truth when she said the past didn’t matter. “Because of Anthony Damico.”

  Her gaze stayed steady on his. “Who is Anthony Damico?”

  “He’s a member of the Giordano crime family in New York. He holds me responsible for his uncle’s death, and he’s coming after me.”

  Her gaze never flinched. “Are you responsible for his uncle’s death?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? Why?”

  He kept his eyes on hers as his stomach roiled. “Because I killed him. I was paid to.”

  Her eyes flared with shock, her cheeks paling. “That’s what you meant that day on the beach when you said you’d done things you weren’t proud of.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was this the only time?”

  There was a hole opening up inside him, deep and fathomless. “No.”

  She sucked in a breath, her eyes going shiny with tears. “Did you lie to me when you said you weren’t doing it any longer?”

  “No.” He stared into her eyes, willing her to believe him. “No. This happened a long time ago. It’s...complicated.”

  “Complicated,” she repeated with another humorless laugh and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  He ached to reach out, to pull her into his arms and hold her tight but knew he couldn’t. Not now. Maybe not ever again, and the idea of that put a hole in his gut he knew would never heal if she walked away from him.

  She let her hand fall away as she stared up at him again. “I want a shower,” she told him. “Then I want to go downstairs and make some coffee, and then you can tell me all about Anthony Damico.”

  He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  She jerked her head at the door. “You can use the guest shower if you want.”

  He swallowed the pain and nodded, knowing it was the least of what he deserved. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

  He left the room without looking back, feeling her eyes on his back as he went.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, when he made his way to the kitchen, the scent of coffee hung in the air. Honey already sat at the breakfast bar in a fluffy blue bathrobe, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug. Her hair was wet, dripping down to soak the back of the robe. Her face was scrubbed clean of the dramatic makeup she’d donned for Sybil, making her look almost painfully young.

  She glanced up as he walked in. “I poured you a cup.”

  He slid onto the stool beside her and picked up the mug. There was a funny little catch in his chest as he saw she’d doctored it with the cream and sugar he preferred. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She set her cup down carefully, then turned so she could look him in the eye. “Talk.”

  “Anthony Damico,” he began, “is a low-level thug with the Giordano family. He handles collections mostly, does some leg-breaking when it’s called for. They don’t use him often, because he has a tendency to reach for violence too quickly and too often, but that’s one of the reasons he’s effective.”

  He sipped his coffee, letting the heat soak into him. He felt so cold.

  “His uncle was the reason he was with the family. He’s not blood, but Carmine Caputo was a cousin by marriage, and he brought Anthony in, took him under his wing and taught him the business.”

  “Carmine’s the dead one?” Honey asked quietly. “The one you killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Carmine had problems with impulse control. He couldn’t see the big picture. The Giordanos were trying to form an alliance with another New York family. The Palmieris had some assets the Giordanos wanted, but nobody wanted an old school turf war. They were negotiating.”

  Ethan shifted on his stool and felt unbearably tired. “The head of the Palmieri family had brought his son into the negotiations. He was teaching him the ropes, grooming him to take over when the old man stepped down. Jason was smart, and he was eager, but he was green, and he was young. He and Carmine got into it one day, and Jason said something that Carmine found unforgivable.”

  He shrugged at the question in her eyes. “I don’t know what it was. They didn’t tell me, and I didn’t need to know.”

  “Okay.”

  He took another sip of coffee. “Carmine went after the kid, took him out. From what I understand, it was brutal, and it was painful.”

  “And now,” she said softly, “the war’s not about turf.”

  “Exactly.” He sent her a faint smile. “Everybody knew Carmine had done it, and everybody knew he’d overstepped. Old man Palmieri wasn’t going to let the death of his only son pass unavenged, but a full-blown war between the two families would cost too much. They’d lose money, people would go to jail. People would die. Nobody wanted that.”

  “And that’s where you came in?”

  He nodded. “The heads of the families agreed. Carmine Caputo had to die—that was a given—but the Palmieris would let the Giordanos determine the method. It was a hell of a concession, considering an eye for an eye is generally how these guys operate. But Old man Palmieri wanted to avoid further casualties, and he knew if he took out Caputo, there would be some backlash.”

  He looked into her eyes. “They decided it would be handled by a third party. Me.”

  “How did they know you?”

  “They didn’t.” He focused on t
he coffee gently steaming in front of him. He couldn’t look at her now. “They used an intermediary, a fixer. I’d worked with him before, and I specialized in the kind of thing they were looking for.”

  “What were they looking for?”

  He couldn’t tell from her voice what she was thinking, what she was feeling. And he couldn’t bring himself to look at her face. “They wanted something that looked like a natural death, or at least couldn’t be proven otherwise. That was sort of my specialty.”

  “You can do that?” she asked, her surprise plain.

  “Sure. You can do just about anything with enough time and money.” He risked a look at her, saw her brow furrowed. At least she hadn’t run screaming from the room, he thought and wished he had some whiskey to put in his coffee.

  “Okay.” She shifted to look into his eyes. “You said this happened a long time ago. Years, right? Why’s this guy coming after you now?”

  “Old man Giordano never liked the deal, never liked offering Caputo up to the Palmieris. He did it to save the family, but he didn’t like it. And I guess he and Anthony had become close since Carmine died. So, when the old man got sick, Anthony was the one who sat with him, helped take care of him.”

  Realization dawned on her face. “He told Anthony what happened?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, shit.” Honey let out a shaky sigh, and Ethan heard the strain in it.

  “I don’t want you to worry,” he told her. He wanted to reach for her hand, but he didn’t dare. “The Giordanos are trying to stop him, and Michael’s here to help in case Damico makes it this far—”

  “Wait.” Honey held up a hand, her eyes wide. “Michael?”

  Ethan winced.

  “He’s your friend,” she continued, talking slowly. “From New York. Oh God, is he...?” He watched her throat work as panic edged into her eyes.

  “He’s one of the good guys,” Ethan said firmly, and now, he did take her hand. He couldn’t help himself. “I promise you, Honey. I wouldn’t have him here if he weren’t.”

  “Okay.” She drew in a breath and let it out in a whoosh. “Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just...this is a lot.”