Slow Burn: A Bad Boy Romance (Assassins Book 1)

by V. J. Chambers

  I looked away. My dad hadn’t been a very nice guy. At least he’d saved me in the end.

  “Do you realize what this means?” said Knox.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “I’ve got the emails right here,” said Knox. “I finally hacked into the server earlier. And Op Wraith was Bart Caldwell’s brain child. He brought the others in to help. The idea was to train a group of invincible assassins and sell them to the highest bidder.”

  “We weren’t part of the corporation?” said Griffin.

  “No, we were Caldwell’s dirty secret,” said Knox. “He used us to make money. He hired us out to kill whoever he wanted killed. And he did it all without anyone in Dewhurst-McFarland knowing about it.”

  Griffin took a deep breath. “You’re saying that if we kill the people who head up Op Wraith, then we kill everyone who knows about it.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” said Knox. “If we do this, if we kill just three people, we free every single person who’s been forced into being an assassin.”

  “We shut it down,” said Griffin.

  “That’s right.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Does this mean no one would be after you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I leaned against his shoulder. “I’m in.”

  Griffin kissed the top of my head. He turned to Knox. “No one would be after any of us.”

  “Yeah,” said Knox. “I could, um, find my kid. The little girl that Beth had.”

  “You want to do that?” I said.

  He looked at his hands. “I think so.”

  Griffin got up off the bed. “Okay, so what do we do? Who do we go after first?”

  “Jim Bradford still works in a lab for Dewhurst-McFarland,” said Knox. “It’s not like he’s behind bullet-proof glass all day. I’m thinking we get up in a building next door.”

  “Sniper him,” said Griffin.

  “Yeah,” said Knox. “No muss, no fuss.”

  * * *

  Light streamed in between the heavy curtains of the hotel. I opened my eyes to find that I was snuggled tightly against Griffin in bed, his arms crushing me against his chest. When we’d gone to sleep the night before, we’d kept to our own sides of the bed. Both exhausted, we’d been out immediately. But it seemed that our bodies had somehow come together in the night.

  I shifted a little, doing my best not to wake him. In sleep, he looked like a little boy, innocent and vulnerable. I gazed at him, wondering at the fact that he could be so different. The Griffin who’d whispered to me that he wanted things to be perfect for me was the same man who’d engineered that I get shot in my car, the same man who’d called me names last night, the same man who’d apologized and claimed I made him a better person.

  I sighed. I’d taken a class once—a women’s studies class. It was all about the way that early romance stories portrayed women as needing a man to survive. One of the books we read was Emma by Jane Austen, and the teacher had gone on and on about how Emma only stopped doing all the nasty things she did after she fell in love with Mr. Knightley. He fixed her. She couldn’t fix herself. My teacher had said that was the height of sexism, women didn’t need men to change them, and this kind of thing sent a disturbing message to young women.

  According to my teacher, the way to have a healthy relationship was to fix yourself before you fell in love and to expect your partner to have done the same.

  But I wondered. After all, in the book, Mr. Knightley wasn’t precisely perfect. He was jealous of that other guy—the one who was gay in the Clueless movie... (Our teacher had shown us Clueless afterwards, because it was based on Emma.) It didn’t matter. The point was that being with Emma had made Mr. Knightley a better person too.

  Oh, hell. What did it matter? It was a book. And the person who taught my women’s studies class was divorced. What did she know, anyway?

  I gazed down at Griffin. Did I need him to survive?

  And if I did, did that make me pathetic and weak?

  And after all the awful things he’d said to me last night, was I being a complete idiot to climb back into bed with him? Sure, we hadn’t done anything but sleep, but there was a promise that came from sleeping in the same bed. And the way our bodies were entwined right now could only mean that we were together.

  I sighed again. I loved him. That was all there was to it. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe I couldn’t trust him. Maybe I should be fixing myself. Maybe he should be fixing himself. But. Well. That wasn’t the way things were going.

  Griffin stirred against me, pulling me even closer, and I could feel that he was hard.

  But it was morning. That happened to guys every morning, right?

  He grunted, plunging his hips against my skin, pressing his erection into me.

  I giggled softly. What was he dreaming about?

  His eyes snapped open, and he pushed me away. He sat up in bed, glancing around the room, wild terror on his face.

  “Griffin?” I said.

  He turned to me, taking a deep breath. “Fuck.” He flopped back on the bed.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  “Bad dream.”

  I reached out to touch his shoulder. “You want to talk about it?”

  “No,” he said. Abruptly, he pulled me back into his arms again, his grip on me almost suffocating. He buried his face in my neck. “It’s nice that you’re here. I missed waking up with you.”

  “I missed you too,” I said. “But I can’t breathe.”

  He loosened his grip. “Sorry.” He kissed my forehead. “It’s probably because we were talking about Op Wraith last night. About Jolene French.”

  “Who is that?”

  “The psychologist I told you about,” he said. “She’s a nasty piece of work. She’d tease out all our fears, but she wouldn’t help us work through them. Instead, she’d manipulate us so that the fears became permanent fixtures in our brains. And she knew how to trigger them. Whenever Op Wraith needed to take an assassin and turn him into a quivering ball of fear, she could snap her fingers, and it would happen.”

  I shuddered. “Griffin, do you have any nice stories from your past? That woman gives me the creeps.”

  “Yeah, she’s pretty horrible.” He lay back on his pillow, squeezing his eyes shut.

  I propped myself up on one elbow. “You sure you don’t want to talk about the dream?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I haven’t had one like that in a while. I used to get them all the time when I was working for Op Wraith.”

  I debated whether to let it go or not, and then decided that if I was the only thing that Griffin had to make him better, it was my job to dig. At least a little bit. “Was it about what happened to you when you were in jail?”

  His eyes opened. “Doll.”

  “Was it?”

  “Yes.” His voice cracked. “I get them sometimes, and I wake up, and I’m always...”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “You can tell me,” I said. I lay my hand on his chest. “It’s me. I love you.”

  He grimaced, and his voice was a jagged whisper. “I’m always turned on.”

  “But Griffin—”

  “No, you don’t get it,” he said. “Because it didn’t turn me on. I didn’t like anything they did to me. None of it. But French said that subconsciously, I must have. She said I must have latent homosexual desires and that I should give in to them, and that...” He grasped my wrist, moving it off his chest. “That’s what always scared me. That I’d have to go back to that willingly. That some part of me wanted it.”

  Tears filled my eyes. “No. That’s not true. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Then why do I wake up like that?”

  “Um, I’m a girl and all, so I don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure that guys always wake up with hard-ons. Like... naturally.”

  He shook his head. “It’s different.”

  “Is it different? Or is what that w
oman said to you making you think it’s different?”

  He was quiet for a minute. Then he released my hand, letting it rest on his chest again, and searched my eyes with his own. “You think that’s really all it is?”

  I nodded. “I do.”

  He tugged me close, folding me into his body. His lips murmured over the top of my head , and he spoke into my hair. “This is why I need you.”

  * * *

  “Um, I really can’t remember her name,” I said to the guard at the door. The building next to Dewhurst-McFarland’s lab also belonged to the corporation, but suits and businessmen worked there. The building didn’t have super tight security, but there was a guard at the door. My job was to keep him distracted long enough for Knox and Griffin to get in and get onto the elevator.

  “Look, lady,” said the guard. “I have a list, and if you’re not on it, then I can’t let you inside.”

  “Oh, I totally understand that,” I said. “I’m not trying to make you break any rules or anything. I’m just saying that the woman I’m supposed to meet with... I can’t remember her name.”

  The guard was facing me, holding the door open, gripping a tablet that contained his precious list. I could see that Griffin and Knox were inching their way along the building, heading for the open door. If they were quiet and discreet enough, they’d be able to slip in right behind his back.

  “Maybe,” I said, “if you could show me the list—”

  “I can’t show you the list, ma’am,” he said.

  “Well, not to let me see the names of the people allowed in,” I said. I laughed. “That would be stupid. Because it would tell me my own name, and I already know that.”

  Griffin and Knox were closer still. A few feet away.

  “But so that I could see where my name was, and then I’d see who it was I’m supposed to be seeing, because this is really embarrassing. I’m going to get in there for that meeting, and—”

  “You’re not going to get into any meeting if you don’t give me your name so that I can check my list,” said the guard.

  Griffin and Knox were almost there.

  “My name?” I said. “Oh, gosh I didn’t tell you that?”

  “No, you didn’t.” He narrowed his eyes. “Did you hear something?” And he began to turn around.

  Griffin and Knox were right behind him.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I improvised. I grabbed the man by the shoulder, turning him to face me. “Okay, you got me. I’m not here because I have an appointment.”

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “The truth is,” I said, “I walk past here on my way to work every day, and I always notice you.” I batted my eyelashes. “I think you’re really attractive.”

  Griffin glared at me, but he and Knox slid inside, undetected.

  The guard looked taken aback.

  I did my best to appear embarrassed. “I didn’t know how else to start up a conversation with you. I guess that was really lame.”

  He squared his shoulders. “No, not lame. Not really.” He tried a smile.

  I smiled back. “You don’t think so?” He shook his head. “It was kind of inventive.”

  Griffin and Knox halted at the elevator. Griffin was watching the guard with an annoyed expression on his face. Knox hauled him into the elevator.

  Good. They were safe. They were in. We’d done it.

  “You want to go out for coffee or something sometime?”

  “Huh?” I said. “Oh! Yeah, definitely. Let me give you my number.” He got out his cell phone, and I rattled off a totally fake number.

  “That doesn’t sound local,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, um, I just moved here. And I haven’t changed the number yet.”

  “What’s that area code?” he said.

  “Florida?”

  “What part of Florida?”

  God, why was he harping on this? “Um, Miami.”

  “No, my grandma lives in Miami, and the area code there is—”

  “Well, I’m going to be late for work,” I said, scurrying away.

  “Wait,” he called after me. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

  “Muffy,” I called back, throwing out the first thing that came to my brain. I waved. And then I practically ran to the agreed-upon meeting spot.

  * * *

  “Jim Bradford, employee of Dewhurst-McFarland, was killed in an isolated incident this morning,” droned the television in our hotel room. “He was shot through the head by an unknown gunman who managed to do so from a building across the street from Bradford’s place of work. The weapons used were found abandoned, but there were no clues as to who might have perpetrated the crime. Police—”

  Griffin muted the TV. We were sprawled on the bed together. “I still don’t like that you flirted with that guy to get us in.”

  I rolled onto my back. “When are you going to let this go?”

  He caressed my cheek. “It’s not like that. I just keep thinking about it.”

  “Is this because of the stripping thing?”

  He rubbed his face. “Sort of.”

  I sighed. “You don’t trust me.” And maybe he had good reason not to. Maybe because of my past, because of everything I’d done, it was tough to believe I would be faithful.

  He drew back, offended. “I trust you.”

  “Maybe I don’t deserve your trust.”

  “Doll, come here.” He tugged me into his arms.

  I lay my head on his chest. “I did things in the past that were trashy.”

  “So, that’s the past. I’m sorry I ever said anything about that. I was out of line.”

  “You weren’t. I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “Listen, you are important. And if I make you feel that way, then good. I should never have mocked your feelings. I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone else.” He ran his fingertips over my back. “You know more about me than anyone on earth. I trust you with all my secrets.”

  That was true. “So then, if you’re okay with my past, then why does flirting with the guard bother you? I only did it to help you and Knox.”

  He stroked my hair. “I guess I worry. You say you’re okay with things the way they are between us, but how long will that last? How long before you want more than I can give you, and I see you looking at another man like that for real?”

  “I would never do that.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you did. You’d be well within your rights. We don’t have sex. That’s got to be frustrating for you.”

  Oh. He was talking about that again. I slid one leg over him, writhing close. “Griffin, you are very good at pleasing me.”

  He raised an eyebrow, one hand coming up to caress the thigh I’d draped on his body. “And that’s enough?”

  I shifted, straddling him. “Who says you’re never going to be able to do it anyway?”

  He shut his eyes. “What if I can’t?”

  “You said you wanted to keep trying,” I said. “You said you didn’t want them to be able to steal this from you forever.”

  He nodded, his eyes still shut.

  I ran my hands over his chest, my fingers brushing his defined muscles.

  He grabbed me by the wrists, but he didn’t stop my movement. He held on while I touched him, eyes slammed shut, breath rapid.

  I eased my hands under his shirt. His skin was warm and sleek. I loved the feel of him under my fingertips. I pushed his shirt up, exposing his bare skin.

  He opened his eyes. “I don’t know, doll.”

  “Does it feel good?” I whispered. “When I touch you, does it feel nice?”

  “Yeah, but I keep thinking about—”

  “You’re not there,” I said. “You’re here with me. I love you.” I leaned over him. I kissed him.

  He met my lips eagerly, kissed me with enthusiasm.

  He let me take his shirt off.

  Bare chested, he lay under me, searching my eyes with his gr
ay gaze. He looked so afraid.

  I touched his cheek. “Do you want me to stop?” I didn’t want to push him. I didn’t want to hurt him.

  “Yes,” he said. I started to move off of him. He stopped me. “No.”

  I leaned down to taste his lips again. “Maybe,” I said between kisses, “if you didn’t have to do anything. If you just let me... take care of you.”

  “Maybe,” he said. His voice was faint.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said. “We can stop. We can cuddle. We can just kiss.”

  “No, I want to,” he said. He closed his eyes again.

  I placed my lips on his chest, kissing him as softly and sweetly as I could. Surely my light touches couldn’t make him think of anything rough or ugly. I thought of the way they had used him, they way they had hurt him, and it made me ache for him. I kissed him tenderly, as if I could kiss that pain away for both of us. My mouth made its way over his chest, down his stomach, and all the way to the place where his jeans were fastened.

  He gasped.

  I raised my eyes to see him looking down at me. “It’s okay. It’s only me.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No,” he said, but his voice was insubstantial, barely there.

  Carefully, gently, I unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. I peel them aside, and I could see that he was aroused. He strained against the fabric of his boxers.

  We hadn’t been intimate in this way, not really, and the sight of him that way stirred a longing inside me. I wanted him. I wanted to give him pleasure. I wanted to see him and touch him and taste him.

  My breath quickened as I pulled away the thin fabric, freeing him.

  I’d seen his body before, but not this close, and in so much detail. I smiled at it. I always thought this particular part of the male body was neat on a level that I couldn’t quite explain. I wasn’t drawn to it aesthetically, not exactly, but it fascinated me, and it urged me.

  He was thick and long and beautiful.

  I couldn’t stop myself. I knew I should have asked, but I felt something roused inside me, an impatient longing. And I put my lips to him, tenderly enveloping his length.

  At my touch, he shrunk almost immediately, softening in my mouth.