Assassin's Heart

by Ella Sheridan

  Leah’s smirk told me the panic was loud and clear. “She wants you, big guy.”

  “Yeah, you, Remi. Please?”

  I groaned. Who could resist that face? I was a killer, for fuck’s sake. Why was it so hard to tell this child no? What if I pulled her hair? Would she cry? The thought of those blue eyes filled with tears clenched my gut in a way I’d never have admitted to six months ago.

  I passed the towel to Leah. “Okay, little one, your choice.”

  Leah took the towel. I was a few steps away when she used it to snap my ass. “Start from the bottom.”

  She was laughing at me. Prowling back to her, I corralled her against the sink and gave her a quick, hard kiss. “You’ll regret that later,” I warned her quietly.

  “I doubt it,” she said, laughing out loud this time.

  In the living room I sat on the floor with Brooke between my legs. “Okay, here we go.” Very, very gently I brought the brush to the bottom of her long, wet blonde hair and began to work out the tangles. To my surprise, it wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. Leah had explained the wonders of conditioner to me—something my brothers and I’d had no need of—but I hadn’t quite believed her until now. Soon I was taking long, smooth strokes through Brooke’s semidry hair as she propped her head on her arms on the table in front of her. A few minutes later, when Leah came in from the kitchen, I gathered Brooke’s drooping body in my arms and carried her to her bedroom so Leah could tuck her in.

  By the time Leah rejoined me in the living room, my heart had begun a hard thud that echoed in my ears.

  “Come back here with me?” she asked, holding out her hand. I followed her to the “master suite,” a bedroom not much bigger than Brooke’s but with a full bath attached. My shoes had been kicked off earlier, and now I piled up at the head of Leah’s queen-size bed, pillows at my back, to watch her change.

  After stripping her T-shirt off, she unclipped her bra and slid it down her arms. “I really need to look into getting a bigger bed,” she said, eyeing me.

  “Why?” I asked absently, my focus on her naked skin. I knew why—because my feet hung off the end if I laid down next to her in the bed—but I didn’t want her buying a new bed. I wanted her in mine.

  “Because that one is too small.” Tossing aside her pants, she glanced around. “Not that a king would leave much room to walk in here.”

  She reached for a T-shirt I was pretty sure I’d left here a couple of weeks ago. I held out my hand. “Com’ere.”

  Leah looked at me from under her lashes, a sly smile tugging at her lips. My gut tightened immediately. Planting her hands on the end of the bed, she began a slow crawl toward me that had my mouth going dry and needy. Round breasts dangled from her body, perfect for my hands, and that ass—

  “Get up here, lev sheli,” I demanded hoarsely.

  She paused. “Why?”

  I put a bit more growl into my words. “Get up here or that punishment I promised you will become reality.”

  She sat back on her heels.

  I pounced.

  The shift of Leah’s laughter to soft moans as I flipped her onto her back and sucked a pink nipple into my mouth made the animal in me long to break free, but I forced him back. Just for a few minutes. I was already desperate to lose myself in her body, just as I had been time and again the past few weeks, but there was something else I needed so much more. And I wasn’t about to let myself get distracted.

  I pulled away, gliding my teeth along her nipple as I went. Leah gasped my name.

  “I need to tell you something,” I said, that loud thud returning to my ears. I shifted to my side next to her, intertwined our legs, and stared down, unable to believe this moment was finally here.

  “Yeah?” Leah stroked her thumb along my wet lips. “Me too.”

  What? “What did you need to talk to me about?”

  But she shook her head, eyes full of mysteries. “You first.”

  “All right.” I guessed. Where had all the moisture in my mouth run off to? “I’m taking a job at Hacr as head of security.”

  “Yeah?” She shifted up onto her elbow. “Why?”

  Yeah, why? “Because...” I swallowed back the drumming of my heart in my throat. How the hell did men do this? “Because I want you to move in with me, Leah. You and Brooke. I want to be everything you need me to be.” I took her hand, staring at our entwined fingers, needing something, anything to focus on. “Please say yes.”

  She was quiet so long that I swore the silence would crush my soul. Just as I gathered a scrap of strength to get up, walk away, Leah laid back on the bed and reached up to trace the line of my jaw. Gripped the back of my neck and pulled me to her. Kissed me sweetly but thoroughly on the lips.

  I started to breathe again.

  “You don’t have to be anyone else to be who I need,” she said.

  I met her deep brown eyes, so like her daughter’s. A warm glow waited for me there. “I could never be good enough to deserve you.”

  “Wrong.” She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying it for a moment. “I’m not going to lie and say this hasn’t taken some getting used to, but Remi, I want you for you, not anything else. Is this job what you want?”

  “Yes.” Because it might give me her.

  “Then congratulations.” She kissed me again, lingering this time, seeming to savor the contact as much as I did. Only when we pulled back did my brain kick in and remember something important.

  “Will you move in with me?”

  A blush trailed across her cheeks, sweetly pink and glowing. “About that...”

  I traced a finger across the soft color. “Yeah?”

  “It would probably be a good idea.”

  I frowned at her. “Why is it a good idea? I mean, I know why I think it’s a good idea, but...”

  I stopped as the color in her face got brighter. “Because it’s usually good for two parents to live in one place.”

  My frown got deeper. “What?” I was coming to love Brooke as my own, but I didn’t think Leah was referring to her daughter. “I don’t—”

  A snort of laughter escaped her. Placing a hand on my chest, she pushed me back until she could roll on top of me. My hands went automatically to her breasts, my dick swelling as she settled above me.

  “Jeremiah.”

  “Yeah,” I said, admittedly distracted.

  Leah pressed her breasts harder into my hands, humming her pleasure. “I’m pregnant.”

  I dropped my hands like her breasts were hot coals. A rush of air filled my ears, blocking out everything but the echo of those two words in my mind. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. “What?” I croaked.

  Sitting up, Leah straddled my hips and pulled my hands up to cover her naked breasts again. Hard nipples jutted against my palms. “I’m pregnant, Remi.”

  “Holy shit.” What the hell had happened to my lungs? Why couldn’t I get air?

  I swear I blacked out, something I doubted Leah would ever let me forget. And if my brothers found out? But fucking A, a baby? A— Jesus.

  I wasn’t sure how I got there, but the next thing I knew, I was on all fours over Leah’s body, my gaze riveted on her belly. “Are you sure?”

  Her hands stroked softly over my shoulders, and I had the feeling she was trying to calm me before I had a heart attack. Too fucking late for that.

  “I’m sure.”

  I’m sure. I closed my eyes, letting the word sink deep into my heart, into that place where only Leah had ever entered.

  A baby.

  I opened my eyes. My clothes went flying.

  “Remi!” Leah was giggling, scooting back from the frenzy. I yanked the last sock off my foot, scrambled after her, and was tucking my hard cock into her body before she had time to get away.

  “Oh!”

  She arched back, her legs opening to let me in, her breasts bouncing as I entered her. The most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. The sexiest woman I’d ever known—and
she was carrying my baby.

  “This is going to be fast, lev sheli,” I growled.

  “Yes. Fast.” Leah’s smile could light up the world. “Take me, Jeremiah.”

  I did.

  ∞

  Did you enjoy Assassin’s Heart? If so, you can leave a review at your favorite retailer to tell other readers about the book. And thank you!

  Don’t miss the exciting extras from the ASSASSINS series, available only through my newsletter.

  Sign up here to get exclusive access!

  ∞

  Before you go...

  I’ll step out of the shadows to make her mine.

  ASSASSIN’S GAME

  ASSASSINS 4

  Coming February, 2020

  I’m the genius behind the keyboard, the man at my brothers’ backs when trouble comes calling. Killing might not have been my nature, but I learned to do what I had to, to survive. To keep them alive.

  Now, with everything going right, with my family finally happy, a new threat has risen. A shadow. A menace that could take it all away in a single breath.

  And not just from my family. From hers.

  Nix.

  One glance and I knew I’d walk through fire to make her see me, make her mine. Too bad she’s not willing to see inside of me.

  In a world where might makes right, we’re on different sides of the spectrum, but in this game of cat-and-mouse, it will take both of us to make it out alive.

  ∞

  Chapter One

  Eli —

  Good evening, Assassin.

  I’ve been an admirer of your work for some time. The problem, of course, is exposure—you don’t want it, but I have the means to make it happen. The tie between Hacr Technologies and the Assassin might be well-hidden, but for someone like me, with my connections, they are both easily uncovered and easily exposed.

  Neither of us want that, I’m sure. A partnership would easily solve the issue.

  Your target is Bram Sullivan, CEO of BSGA Holdings International, headquartered in Atlanta. Natural causes are imperative. Contact me within two weeks when the job is done, and the information I have will remain between the two of us.

  I look forward to working with you.

  X

  “Son of a bitch! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  I reread the e-mail one more time, as if the contents might change between one second and the next. I wished they would.

  I wished a lot of things, but apparently they weren’t going to fucking come true.

  I mean, I’m the contact for a well-known—and feared if not respected—killer. I’d had some freaky e-mails in my time. Most crazies aren’t savvy enough to find the site on the dark Web, much less brave enough to actually make contact with the boogeyman of the US criminal world. But this particular crazy, X?

  He’d not only made contact; he’d threatened to expose everything we were if we didn’t work for him.

  Assuming he was a he. He or she, the fucker had signed their own death warrant.

  The bat cave was dark, the thump of old-school Metallica reverberating off the concrete walls. I shoved back from the computer, spinning as the chair moved, and pushed to my feet seconds later. Ignoring the bang of the chair as it hit the edge of the desk, I stalked toward the elevator and access to my brothers. Some things I wrote off on my own, but this required a family meeting.

  The first floor was quiet as I exited. Dark. The mansion our parents had raised us in until their deaths had become a home, the walls drawing me in instead of keeping me out. Sometimes I didn’t think I deserved it. After all, I’d been nine when our uncle murdered our parents in cold blood, right upstairs. I had memories of them, sure, but as the years passed, they became more and more fuzzy. Sometimes I couldn’t remember my mother’s face.

  No, I definitely didn’t deserve to be here. But these walls accepted me anyway, just like they accepted my brothers.

  These days Remi was in bed early, and not only because his woman was now sharing it. Between his new day job at Hacr, preparing to take over security, and the fact that he and Leah were managing an almost seven-year-old still in school and Leah’s nursing position at Fulton County Memorial, late nights weren’t even on their radar. And a new baby in six months. All that shit had my head spinning, and I wasn’t in the middle of it. Remi had gone from stone-cold killer to slavishly devoted family man (with the stone-cold still there, just on the side) the minute the opportunity had presented itself. I couldn’t blame him, either. He and Leah belonged—there was no other word for it.

  I wouldn’t wake them if I didn’t have to. Remi could declare war on the asshole targeting us tomorrow just as well as tonight.

  After scanning the living room and kitchen just in case my oldest brother was skulking around, I took the front stairs two at a time up to the second floor where Levi and Abby lived. They’d talked about trading their floor for Remi’s given that he would soon have four people in his half of the third floor, but Remi had refused. Said they would probably be filling up their floor with kids soon anyway. Levi had actually turned green at the thought, a fact I gave him shit for, for a solid week.

  Levi could be an ass. No matter how much I loved him, I was always looking for something to rag him about.

  Tonight his floor of the house was dark too. Down the hall I saw a flicker of light coming from the living room doorway, and headed that direction. Looked like the TV was on. Bracing myself in case Levi and Abby were gettin’ freaky on the couch—not unlikely, but I’d rather not be exposed to my brother’s hairy ass—I stepped inside.

  The TV hanging on the wall was running some movie with Sandra Bullock on silent. Hot chick. I checked out the rest of the room, but it wasn’t until I gave up and turned to leave that I caught sight of the huddled figure in the wide recliner to one side. Levi’s recliner. I never thought my badass assassin brother would have a favorite recliner, like some creaky gramps who had to steal little blue pills just to get it up, for fuck’s sake. But damn if he hadn’t claimed that thing in a hot second. I tried not to think about what he’d said he’d do with Abby in that chair. There was a reason I was cautious when entering.

  Right now it wasn’t Levi sprawled in the recliner; Abby was curled up in it, the sound of her crying reaching me as I crossed the room.

  What was that line from Stephen King’s It? “Your hair is winter fire, January embers.” I thought of it every time I caught a glimpse of Abby’s auburn hair. Even now, in the dim light of the flickering TV, it shone. It wasn’t just her hair that sparked warmth, though; she wrapped anyone in her vicinity up in that shit the minute she got close. She’d made us a real family instead of a collection of dickheads who didn’t really know how to love. How to settle. We might’ve wanted it, but it was Abby who showed us the way.

  She’d earned my loyalty before my brother had ever gotten his shit together and gone after her, just by loving him. Us.

  My sister. Always.

  Yeah, she tended to make me maudlin. It was embarrassing and I tried to hide it, but really, who gave a fuck?

  “Hey.” I knelt in front of the chair, my heart contracting at the sight of her flushed face and the liquid pain in her eyes. Those eyes flared as they settled on me. “What’s going on? Where’s Levi?”

  Abby’s lips twisted. “Who the hell knows anymore?”

  Shit shit shit. I’d hoped she hadn’t noticed the nightly exits. I didn’t know what was up with my brother, but I knew it was something. And the only way Levi knew how to deal with worry riding his ass was to run from it. Literally. He’d stalk the night until he couldn’t go a step farther, then come home and collapse. Usually after Abby was asleep, or so I’d thought.

  Guess that plan went down the toilet.

  “Abby—”

  “Don’t!” She put up a fragile hand, ignoring me as I plucked it from the air to warm between mine. “Don’t make excuses for the bastard.”

  When Abby cussed, things were bad. Apparently th
ings were bad.

  “He’s my brother; making excuses for each other is what we do.” I ducked my head until I could meet her eyes under the curtain of her hair. Cocked the corner of my mouth up in that way I hoped would draw a smile. Apparently I’ve lost my touch, because Abby closed her eyes and released more tears.

  There was only one thing left to do when words didn’t work and tears wouldn’t stop: avoid all possibility of putting your foot in your mouth.

  “Come here.” I clamped my mouth shut and, with a tug on her hand, led Abby to the couch, then sat beside her as she curled into the arm. She didn’t need words, and I didn’t give any, just held her hand and let her cry it out.

  “I don’t get it,” she finally sniffled. “He has everything. We have everything.” Fisting the sleeve of her pajama top, she swiped it across her nose. I’d have offered her a tissue if I had a clue where one was. “Why does it feel like, with all of this”—she gestured around—“we’re going right back to where we started?”

  How the hell did I know? Levi did what he did; for too many years it could’ve cost me my life to question his commands. He’d kept me safe, trained me, loved me, even if it meant knocking me around a bit to get my head on straight. We’d been on the streets, grown up hard, and that sometimes came out in Levi in ways I didn’t understand. In ways I was sure he didn’t always understand.

  “He’s just trying to clear his head.”

  Abby sighed hard, letting her head fall back onto the couch arm. “Of what? Of me?”

  “No, of course not!”

  Her head jerked up, the glare in her eyes shouting that there was no of course about it. If she could see how much things had changed since Levi had committed to her, she wouldn’t question it any more than I did.

  “Tell me the truth,” she finally said. “Is it me? Really, Eli, is he doing this because of me?”

  “Abby.” I laced our fingers together, tugging her until she turned in her corner to face me. “This is not about you. This is the same dumbass shit he pulled before you came into our lives. Just Levi being Levi, trying to handle some problem the way he always handles things.” I grinned. “He’s got a harder head than most. He hasn’t gotten the message that the way he always handles things doesn’t work anymore.”