“… still don’t understand. And now I see you’re fucking that asshole billionaire Jack Phillip. Was it because of money, Andie? I didn’t think you were a gold digger, but for fuck’s sake.”
“Can I answer now?” Andie asked dryly, her eyes hard and defensive. Aaron pushed his lips together into a thin line and nodded. “First, let me start off by telling you that I told you I wanted to break up with you because I needed space. But you couldn’t just accept that. There had to be another reason for you that was my problem and that you couldn’t help like there being another guy or you being too poor. But it wasn’t like that. I wanted to focus on graduating college, something you’ve never done by the way. I just outgrew you, and I fell out of love with you. It was nobody’s fault; it just happened.
“And the thing about Phillip?” she asked, and then took a deep breath. “I love him. With all of my heart.” Jack swallowed as he listened. She couldn’t be telling the truth, could she? She was just lying, wasn’t she? But as she continued to speak, something inside him hoped that her words were more than just words. “And I know how you think, so if you want, go ahead and assume it’s because of his money, or his obvious good looks, go ahead. I don’t care. All I know is that I love him, and I could care less what you or anybody thinks. He treated me better than you and challenged me in a way you never could. He’s protective and smart and charming and funny and—”
“Have you fucked him?” Aaron asked shortly. “Did you fuck him, Andie?”
“No!” she snarled, furrowing her brow. “No, I haven’t fucked him!”
Before she realized it, Aaron quickly got out of his chair, walked over to her, and slapped her across the face. Hard. “Don’t lie to me,” he gritted through his teeth, thrusting his index finger in her face.
When Jack heard the thwack across Andie’s face, any resolve of sneaking up on Aaron went out the window. Before he could stop himself, Jack leapt out of the shadows and tackled the large man to the ground. With ease, Jack straddled Aaron and began to punch him once, twice, three times. Each time, a sharp crack could be heard, causing Andie to wince. Jack, however, didn’t even flinch.
“I think he’s out,” Andie said in a voice just above a whisper.
Her tired voice was the only thing in the world that would persuade Jack to stop, and he did. His jade green eyes looked down at the man who had stolen his love, and it appeared she was right. He did seem to have passed out, his lips bleeding and his face already bruising. He looked like shit. Jack silently sighed and pushed himself off of the man, turning as he did so. Andie watched him with somber eyes. He took a few steps toward her, and then knelt down so they were almost eye level. Though she felt somewhat uncomfortable under his penetrating gaze, Andie forced herself to continue to look at him. His hand reached up and gently curled a strand of hair behind her ear as his eyes searched for any sign of injuries. There was a gash on the side of her head, probably where she hit his marble floor, and her lip was bleeding slightly from where Aaron had recently hit her.
Before Jack could stop himself, he closed the gap between them and gently kissed her on the lips. How he had longed to do such a thing, and now, as Black Wing, he was. Her lips were still soft, and after a moment, he could feel her kiss him back. He didn’t deepen the kiss, however, and forced himself to pull back after a moment. His eyes remerged back into hers and gently cupped both of her cheeks with his hands.
“I will always protect you,” he promised her.
Andie wasn’t quite sure if it was her whole ordeal, if it was the trauma to her head and now her cheek, or if it was that breath-taking kiss she shared with the man she loved, but the next thing she knew, she slipped into a warm unconsciousness.
25
Keirah awoke the next morning due to soft fingertips caressing mindless patterns on the small of her back. It was a rarity for Noir to wake up and stay with Keirah until she, too, was awake due to obsessive planning that always seemed to consume his thoughts. However, on occasions, he would choose to forego a few hours of engaging in planning acts, and instead, decided he wanted nothing more in the entire world than to spend a few peaceful moments with the woman he considered to be the love of his life.
He loved to watch her sleep above anything else. She never looked more serene, more beautiful, than in that moment when she was her most vulnerable. He would memorize her breathing and trace certain fixtures of her body that he was fascinated with. He had counted her freckles numerous times, and occasionally, he would even count the strands of hair in her face. He always checked up on the first scar he had given her, loving the way it looked on her.
Sometimes, his carnal instincts took over, and he would wake her up merely to make love to her. Other times, he would be so frustrated with himself for allowing him to be completely fixated by something as shallow as her beauty, he would take it out on her, and instead of making love, they would fuck. And other, even rarer times, he would wait until she was awake to talk to her about certain things. She was the only person he truly felt safe with, that he could be himself with.
Not, of course, that he would be anything else, but he didn’t need to impress her with intellect or wow her with explosions.
She never called him a freak, nor did she think he was crazy. There were many reasons why he was labeled as a sociopath, but she ignored them, didn’t care, or thought it was just part of his eccentric nature, and oddly enough, she loved him even more for it.
Noir had never been a romantic, but there was no way he possibly could have expected someone like her to be a constant in his life. And somewhere, deep down inside of him, he was grateful for her presence.
Her eyelashes fluttered slightly before she opened her eyes. When she saw Noir, she smiled blissfully. “Good morning,” she said in a tired voice.
He gave her a smile, but didn’t greet her back. Instead, he repositioned his eyes back on the small of her back, currently fascinated by the two tiny dimples resting on the lower area just above her backside. The sensation he stirred in her caused the young woman to close her eyes and sigh through her nose as goose bumps littered the immediate area surrounding Noir’s fingertips.
“We’re going to do something special today, darling,” he told her in his silky tone, his fingers still dancing on her skin, but his eyes locking onto hers.
“Really?” Keirah asked, her voice laced with warmth rather than curiosity. “And what, exactly, would that be?”
He grinned. She always knew that asking questions about his thoughts pleased him. It was always flattering to know that she was genuinely interested in what he had to say. Not that he would ever admit that he cared.
But with her, it would seem he cared about everything.
And though he hated it, he wasn’t going to get upset with her about it. At least not now.
“We are going to rob another, well, another bank,” Noir murmured, leaning in toward her so his lips were just grazing her right shoulder blade. “Since you did such a good job of it yesterday and all …” He smacked his lips together before narrowing his golden eyes at her. “You never told me you were a, hum … good shot.”
Keirah furrowed her brow, perking her head on top of her palm, resting her elbow on the bed. “Before my parents divorced, my dad would take me hunting,” she told him. “Andie always refused to go, but I loved it. I loved spending time with him, just the two of us. He taught me how to shoot. It was how we bonded.”
“Well, lucky me,” Noir drawled. Anyone else might have interpreted his tone of voice as sarcastic, but Keirah knew better.
“So tell me about this bank,” she inquired. “After all the money we managed to come by, why is it necessary to rob another one so soon?”
“Well, why is it necessary to do anything, princess?” Noir asked her, moving his head so he could look into her eyes much better. “To send, uh, a message, of course. We don’t rob banks for the money.” He said the last sentence as though the mere notion of it was ridiculous, but his tone was chidi
ng. “We do it to make a point.”
“And our point is?” Keirah asked, still unable to read through Noir’s coded message.
“To introduce you to the worrrld,” he stated. “People need to know ya, to fear ya. Your name should invoke something in the people of Onyx the way mine does. When they see your picture, people should, well, they should recognize your pretty face. And what better way to do that, my dear, than to rob a few banks?”
“And what if something happens?” Keirah asked, her tone dry. “What if it doesn’t go according to plan?”
“Don’t you see, doll?” Noir asked, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “That’s what makes it more fun! Plans can be made in three seconds. There’s no reason to worry.”
Something inside Keirah clenched, not necessarily agreeing with Noir, despite how much she wanted to, despite how sure he sounded.
“Okay,” Keirah said after a moment, choosing to ignore her stomach’s fluttering. “You know how much I like fun.”
Noir grinned darkly upon hearing this. “I do,” he told her in a low voice. “I do.”
Within two hours, Noir, Keirah—as Bombshell—and a variety of henchmen were pulling up to Bank of Onyx. It was a slightly smaller location, with fewer staff but the same amount of customers. The bank didn’t attract as many high profile clientele, but for the recession, it was still doing relatively well. One of his henchmen had mentioned that he had an uncle who worked as a teller and could guarantee that between 10:25am to 10:31am, the security guards would be checking offices, staying away from the vaults and the lobbies. Noir decided it was the perfect vicinity in which to introduce the world to Keirah a second time.
Keirah was much more nervous this time because she was required to be the center of attention. Unbeknownst to the henchmen, Noir would be entering from the roof doorway, joining them after he gauged the public’s reaction at seeing Keirah there by herself. The henchmen would be following her lead, not his.
It was another one of his well-thought out social experiments.
Keirah grazed the inside of her thigh to check that the Glock was in place before looking at Noir and nodding her head a couple of times. He smiled in return, utterly delighted to see how this would play out, and exited the vehicle. It was easy for him to disappear, and in less than a minute, he was gone.
“Let’s go,” she announced in a shaky voice.
Though she wasn’t their leader, the henchmen knew better than to argue with her. They all slid their magazines of hollow points into their guns and followed her outside.
Upon entering, Keirah felt her stomach stir, and she was sure it was merely anticipation so she quickly pushed it aside. She was never one for the theatrical—that was Noir’s department—so she let Right Hand announce their entrance in the federal building. Of course, he did this by raising his Thompson machine gun and shooting up at the ceiling.
“This is a stickup!” he announced, causing women and children to scream and men to stare in fright. “Nobody moves and nobody gets hurt. Now on the ground, and don’t you even think about hitting that silent alarm!”
It was a perfect plan. Everything should have gone the way it was supposed to. However, in all of Noir’s figuring, he hadn’t anticipated that his arrogance would play a key factor in this particular downfall.
He quickly made it on the roof, entered from the doorway where he heard a gun go off, and then silently made his way inside where he could see the action fully take place, but no one could see him in return. At least not yet. Not until he was ready.
Cops were everywhere. They had shot two of his henchmen, but Noir could honestly care less. His golden orbs were solely fixated on his woman being arrested. Her hands were pulled behind her back and her wrists were ensnared with handcuffs.
He hadn’t planned on being double-crossed.
He hadn’t planned on losing Keirah so soon after he had gotten her back in his life.
This, most certainly, was not the idea of fun he had had in mind.
It took a lot to surprise Noir.
To catch him off-guard was rare, and usually, the one person who had the potential to do so had just been arrested before his very eyes.
He wasn’t exactly sure how he was feeling. He couldn’t pick the correct word to discern his feelings. In fact, the whole analytical process that he was currently putting himself in was something he never partook in. He always knew exactly what he was feeling at every moment of every day. The one exception to that particular rule was after the first time he had made love to Keirah. He wasn’t sure if he really loved her or if his body was just responding to the physical act of intimacy. Of course, he had figured it out once he realized she had been taken from him from what he thought was the safety of the apartment where he had brought her.
But now he couldn’t figure it out.
He was upset, angry at himself for letting her go in without him, at her for getting caught, furious with whoever had double-crossed him, worried about how they would treat her, if he would see her again, frustrated to lose her after just getting her back into his life, and determined to get her back.
He had to get her back. Noir had no weaknesses, except, of course, for her. He had come to terms with that long ago. And he wanted nothing more than to take her back.
As he walked back to the parked van, he clenched his gloved fingers into fists and snapped his teeth together as his eyes narrowed at no one in particular. He intended to kill every single one of his henchmen, had any of them escaped from the police officers that had no doubt surrounded the building. When he saw the white van parked in a grocery store lot, his right hand reached into his coat pocket and allowed his fingers to coil around the gun housed in the material.
Pedestrians saw him and clearly parted ways with whatever they were doing to get out of his line of sight. Most of them were too scared to reach for their cell phones and call up the cops. The man killed when he was completely content with life; there was no reason for him to be provoked. Now he looked angry, upset, as though he was just waiting for someone to breathe the wrong way for an excuse to shoot something. So no one alerted the authorities, and no one talked to anyone else. In fact, some people tried not to breathe around him.
But Noir wasn’t paying attention to anyone. His eyes were focused on the van ahead of him, and his index finger kept spazzing inside his coat pocket, needing some sort of release for his pent-up emotions. He wouldn’t blow a hole in his coat pocket, of course, but soon, soon …
When he reached the van, he walked around and threw the driver side door open. Before any of the two men could react, Noir grabbed the man in the driver’s seat, tossed him on the street, and shot him dead center in the head. The second man still in the car tried to scramble out the passenger side door. Since Noir didn’t want to clean blood stained in the floors of the car, he waited until the man thought he had escaped. Then, walking as though there was nothing pressing concerning him, he strolled over to the second henchman’s running form, extended his arm holding the gun, aimed, and then shot. The sickening pop echoed throughout the grocery store parking lot. A few people screamed, all were dashing to their cars, completely forgetting their just-bought groceries. Noir paid them no mind; he wasn’t concerned with the ordinary people of Onyx, at least not now. The only thing he cared about was watching the second man fall, and to ensure that he was dead, strolling up to him.
Well, he sure looked as though he was dead. Maybe two more shots—one in the back, one in the back of the head—would just guarantee the assumption.
Now the man was dead. Yup.
Noir cocked his head in his dramatic, usual way, tilting his whole upper body at a forty-five degree angle, studying the body, before pressing his tongue against his teeth to make a squeaking noise. Then, as though nothing out of the ordinary happened, began to head to his van. He slid in the driver’s seat, and for a minute, just sat there.
His hands gripped the steering wheel, and his whole façade of indi
fference faded. It didn’t last long, but it had happened.
The satisfaction of shooting people had done little to reassure him of Keirah’s safety. But the rational voice in his head reminded him that he could do nothing about his current situation just sitting there, feeling sorry for himself.
He forced himself to focus.
He turned the keys, starting the ignition, and without looking to see if he would hit anyone or anything, backed out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.
Already his sharp mind was thinking of some way to release Keirah from her confines. Already, he was thinking of some sort of plan to get her back with him. Again.
Keirah wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting in the dreary interrogation room, staring at nothing but a grey wall, but it had to have been for a while. She had been deprived of food and water and even the use of going to the restroom. At least she didn’t have to go. Yet. The only noise in the silent room was her rumbling stomach that complained of its emptiness every other minute.
But Keirah would not beg. Keirah would not give in to their demands.
After being escorted into this room, nobody had come in to check in on her. Nobody had even tried interrogating her. At least not yet.
Maybe this was some kind of psychology shit, trying to mentally wear her down so she would be begging for some kind of human contact, even if that meant confessing to her crime and pinpointing Noir as her accomplice. Giving him up, his whereabouts, that’s what they wanted.
They didn’t know Keirah.
For her short stint at Underwood Mental Institution, she worked eight hours without speaking to anybody. She could go on for a long time without human contact. It was his contact she craved.
And there would be no way in hell she would ever give up her lover, even if that meant going to prison for a long, long time.
Catalyst: Book 2 of The Dark Paradise Trilogy Page 20