Rough: A Hitman Romance

by Chambers, V. J.

  He was there, dark and immense.

  Outside, the sun began to gradually sink over the horizon, and it got darker outside. It was late fall, and the dark came earlier and earlier each night, the hint that winter was coming. The dark seemed suffocating, like it was closing us both in together, and Demetrius was so big that he was using up all the air in the room.

  He was crowding me. His essence was everywhere. I could smell him. I could see him. I could hear him breathing. Everything about him was so… male. And it was having this odd effect on me. Everything felt tight and constricting. Especially my clothes. My pants were hugging my pelvis too tightly, and whenever I moved, the fabric seemed to stimulate my sensitive parts.

  I was getting turned on.

  That made no sense.

  It was that stupid caveman thing again. Had to be. He was all man, and I had gone primal. I imagined what it would be like if I just strode across the room and put my hands on his biceps. I wanted to touch them. They were enormous. He had tree trunks for limbs. I bet they were hard—just like wood.

  Oh. Shit.

  Wood.

  I giggled at the junior-high-school-ness of my mind.

  “What?” said Danger from the doorway.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  We weren’t talking.

  “Are you laughing at me?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  He pressed his lips together. I had never looked at his lips before, but now I realized that they were shaped like a bow, and that they softened his face somehow. They hid behind his stubble—which was really starting to look more like a beard, actually, but that juxtaposition of his almost-pretty feature with his hairy maleness made him even more appealing.

  I liked his facial hair. I liked that it made him look wild and untamed and masculine. I wanted to run my fingers through it.

  I gulped.

  Jesus Christ. It was one thing to have a stupid cavewoman response to this man. It was another thing entirely to keep thinking about touching him every time I looked at him.

  The only thing for it was not to look at him.

  I kept my eyes on the computer screen.

  The phone rang in Nikolai’s office.

  Oh, thank God. Saved by actual work.

  I pulled up the audio on speaker so that both Danger and I could hear it.

  “Angelo’s Pizza,” said a voice.

  I groaned.

  “Yes, I want to place order for delivery,” said Nikolai.

  I turned the audio down. I could still hear it in case something happened, but I didn’t need it so loud. Nikolai’s ordering pizza was not exactly important.

  The call was short, and Nikolai hung up.

  Then Danger and I watched as the pizza was delivered to his office.

  We listened as he ate and watched television.

  Finally, around nine-thirty, he left the office.

  It was quiet.

  I didn’t want to look at Demetrius again, but I knew that I was going to have to, because there was nothing else to distract myself with.

  He spoke from behind me. “We should maybe make this an early night. From what I understand, Nikolai’s in the office early in the morning.”

  I turned, getting out of my chair. “Go to sleep? Now?” It wasn’t just early, it was crazy early.

  He shrugged.

  “Fine,” I said, heading across the room. “Don’t even try to fight me for the couch, because I completely call dibs.”

  “Sure,” he said. “But don’t you think you should sleep in the same room as the equipment? In case he comes in the middle of the night and something happens?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’re just trying to get the couch away from me.”

  “No,” he said. “If you want, we can move the couch in here.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” We went into the other room where the couch was.

  Together, we picked it up. It wasn’t actually that heavy.

  “Turn it sideways,” said Demetrius. “We have to get it through the doorway.”

  “Turn it sideways?” I said. “While I’m holding it?” It wasn’t that heavy, but it was bulky.

  “Set it down,” he said. “I think I can get it on my own. This thing is made of cardboard or something.”

  “I can do it,” I said. “Just give me a second.”

  “Jesus, Kiera, just set down the couch.”

  I set it down, but I wanted to punch him.

  He picked it up like it was nothing, turned it sideways, and stalked through the doorway.

  I followed him, hardly able to believe the man was carrying a couch on his own. My pants felt tight again. And my shirt. It was brushing against my nipples, and I was thinking about what a man who was that strong could do to me…

  I braced myself against the door, shutting my eyes. This was fucking ridiculous.

  “Kiera?” came his voice from the other room. “You want this up against the wall?”

  I hurried into the other room, feeling more turned on with every step. “It really doesn’t matter where you put it.”

  He’d set it down so that it was on the opposite side of the room from my computer display. “This good, then?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll get some blankets.”

  I left the room, found the pile of blankets we’d brought, which I had thought were too many for just one person, but not said anything about. Now I realized they’d been for the both of us.

  I divided them in half.

  I set my half on the couch and thrust the other half at Demetrius. “Here you go.”

  He took them.

  I waited for him to leave. I figured he’d sleep in one of the other rooms.

  But he started to spread one of the blankets out on the floor next to the couch.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Sleeping on the floor,” he said.

  “In here?”

  “Well, if something happens in Nikolai’s office, I want to hear it.”

  “There’s no reason for us to sleep in the same room,” I said.

  “Sure there is. I just said what the reason is.”

  I did not want to be so close to him all night. I would hear it if he moved around, if he snored. It was all far too intimate. It made me nervous. But I couldn’t think of any reason for him to leave, not one that I could say aloud.

  So, I just turned to the couch and began spreading out my own blankets.

  When I was finished, I realized that I had another problem. I had packed some pajamas, because I wasn’t crazy about sleeping in jeans. But now I didn’t want him to see them, because they were a little bit dorky. They were a button-up shirt and pants set. They were covered in pictures of wiggly aliens with big eyes.

  I picked at my jeans. I could not sleep in these things. Way too constricting.

  Damn it.

  I crossed to the door and flicked the light out.

  “Hey,” said Danger.

  “Go to sleep,” I said, heading to the bathroom, stopping to pick up my bag along the way.

  “Where are you going?” He was standing in the doorway, half in the shadows. He seemed like a predator hiding and waiting to pounce.

  I felt lightheaded. I wished he wasn’t there. “I’m brushing my teeth,” I said primly. “Don’t wait up.”

  He shrugged. And then he reached down and yanked his shirt over his head.

  Like it was nothing.

  He bared himself to me, all of his olive skin and rippling muscles. He was big and bulging and hard and angled. Dark accents of hair clung to his chest. The hair traveled down his stomach in a line that disappeared into his pants.

  I turned away from him, shaking a little bit.

  I didn’t think I’d ever been so close to such a gorgeous half-naked man.

  Half-naked.

  My body convulsed. I dove for the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. What the hell was wrong with me? I hated Demetrius with a fiery passion.

>   Okay, hate was a strong word.

  But he drove me crazy. I wanted to slap him silly.

  I had never thought that I would feel so… so sexual around him.

  I didn’t even know what to do with myself. Generally, if I started feeling like this with a guy, I just bolted. But that wasn’t an option right now, and I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  I brushed my teeth, scrubbed my face, and put my hair in two braids. That was how I always slept. I looked at myself in the mirror, and I thought that I looked like a two-year-old. I started to take the braids out. But then I left them in, because I didn’t care what Danger thought of me. I was not changing my routine for him.

  No way.

  Defiantly, I shrugged into my pjs. And then I padded back to the dark room where Danger was waiting for me.

  I stepped into the darkness. He was lying on the floor on his back, facing away from me. He was just a big, shadowy heap.

  Good.

  I went to the couch and climbed under the covers.

  “What the hell have you been doing in there?” he said, his voice soft and deep.

  “Getting ready for bed.”

  I heard him rolling over to face me.

  I yanked the covers up to my chin and stared at the ceiling.

  “You have some kind of beauty routine or something?”

  “No.” I fisted my hands in the blankets. “I wasn’t in there that long.”

  “You were gone forever,” he said. “If I hadn’t been here, you would have missed anything that happened over in Nikolai’s office.”

  “It’s being recorded,” I said. “And besides, if you weren’t here, I would have just changed in here.”

  “In here?” His voice got a little scratchy. “You would have taken off all your clothes in front of that window?”

  “No one can see this far up,” I said, but my own voice was breathy.

  “This is why you need me around,” he said gruffly. “You don’t know how to take care of yourself at all. A pretty girl like you should not be taking off her clothes in full view of the window.”

  “You think I’m pretty?” I released the covers.

  He didn’t answer. He breathed. Finally, annoyed: “Anyone with eyes would think you were pretty.”

  Really?

  “We should go to sleep,” he said flatly.

  “Okay,” I said. I shut my eyes. But when I did, all I could see was Demetrius’s bare chest.

  Christ on a cracker. I was never going to be able to get to sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Demetrius

  The floor was uncomfortable, which made it hard to relax. But what made it even harder to relax was knowing that she was right there, next to me in the dark. I couldn’t help thinking about how I could crawl up on the couch and peel the covers away from her body.

  She’d protest, of course, tell me not to.

  I wouldn’t listen.

  I’d pull away the covers, whispering soothing things to her, telling her it would be okay, and then I’d take off whatever she was wearing.

  I hadn’t been able to see it well in the darkness, but she’d looked like she was covered from neck to ankle.

  Fine.

  I would take it all off of her, get her totally naked on that couch, no matter how she tried to stop me.

  And then when I had her bare there, quivering and exposed and laid out for me, I would touch her body, run my hands over her breasts and belly, dip my fingers between her legs, nudge her there slowly and urgently until she began to relax for me, until she let out little soft cries of pleasure, until she let her legs fall apart.

  And then I’d take her hand and guide it to my hard, aching cock.

  I rolled over onto my side.

  I needed to stop thinking shit like that.

  There was no reason to think shit like that.

  No reason to think about how I’d assure her that I’d do her nice and slow. Just an inch at a time, little one, I’d tell her. I know it’s big, but just relax.

  I rolled onto my back again.

  I really need to stop thinking about this.

  Take my cock, Kiera. That’s it.

  I sat up.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Go to sleep,” I said, my voice thick.

  I threw aside the blankets and stalked out to the bathroom.

  When I flicked on the light in there, the fluorescent lights made everything too bright.

  My cock was making a tent of my pants.

  God damn it.

  I undid my pants and freed it.

  I ran my hands over the length of it.

  And then I gave in. I pumped my own shaft, imagining I was balls deep in her tight little pussy, that I wasn’t taking it slow for her, that I had just jammed myself in, and that her snug passage was massaging me, surrounding me as I fucked her good and hard and just how I liked it.

  Take my cock. Take all of my cock.

  I threw my head back and exploded into my own palm.

  Fuck.

  I cleaned myself up, ran the water, washed my hands.

  Then I got dressed and went back to my blankets. I crawled underneath them.

  There. It was stupid that I had to go and do that, but it was what I had to do. Now, I’d be able to sleep.

  She made a little noise from the couch, a kind of breathy thing, almost a moan.

  My cock stiffened almost immediately.

  I stifled a groan.

  I was never going to be able to get any sleep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Kiera

  I awoke to Demetrius shaking me. I opened my eyes and shoved him off.

  “You were snoring,” he said.

  “I was not.” I looked around at the room. It was early. The sun was barely struggling into the sky. The room was filled with gray light. I shoved aside the covers and went over to my computers, checking to make sure everything was functioning. “We would have heard it if he’d come in last night. I had the volume up loud enough to wake us.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  Shit. I’d forgotten about my alien pajamas. I looked down at them, my face getting hot.

  He stepped closer, grinning. He was still shirtless.

  I gasped at his proximity. All that bare male flesh…

  He picked up one of my braids. “This is cute.”

  I shoved him again. Ooh. Bad idea. My hand had touched him, and he was warm and firm and smooth… Man even with all that hair, he was smooth. And the hair was sort of soft. I wanted—

  Fuck. I yanked my hand away from him. I’d been sort of caressing his chest. I swallowed hard.

  He looked stricken, all the smiles gone from his face. He backed away from me, not saying anything else.

  I went back to the computers.

  Everything was in working order. Just as I verified that, Danger came out of the bathroom. He was fully clothed again, and he’d run a wet comb through his hair.

  I darted past him, grabbed my bag, and went into the bathroom to change.

  When I got out, he was in the kitchenette area, pouring some milk onto a bowl of Cheerios. “Hope you like cereal. That seems to be all that’s here.”

  I shook some Cheerios into a bowl. “Cereal’s fine. Besides, Blaze said he’d bring by some groceries.”

  “I wouldn’t trust Blaze to do anything,” said Danger.

  “Blaze isn’t bad,” I said. “You’re the one who recruited him for this job anyway.”

  “I didn’t say he was bad. I just mean he’s not exactly reliable. He shows up for jobs because he likes to blow shit up. Otherwise, I think he’d skip out on everything.”

  I picked up the milk. “Maybe. He is kind of shit at answering email. You think he’s going to forget to bring us food?”

  Demetrius shrugged.

  “Maybe I should call Cass,” I said.

  He took his cereal and went back into the room.

  I took mine as well.

  We sat in
front of the computers and ate in silence.

  “Man,” he said. “I wish there was coffee.”

  “Oh!” I jumped to my feet. “There is coffee. I saw coffee. And there’s a coffee maker.” I scampered back to the kitchenette.

  He followed me. “If you knew there was coffee, why the hell didn’t you make some?”

  I opened up a cabinet and took out the can of Chock Full O’Nuts. “Well, I woke up and you were all in my space without your shirt and—” I felt my face get hot again. “I’m not awake yet,” I mumbled.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “For being in your space.”

  I couldn’t look at him. I opened the can of coffee and spooned out some grounds. I was about to deposit them… “No filters,” I said.

  “I can fix that,” he said.

  “You can?”

  He pointed. “Paper towels work in a pinch. I’ll make the coffee. You go back and fiddle with your computers, okay?”

  “I can make coffee,” I said, feeling defensive.

  His nostrils flared. “Did I say you couldn’t? You act like I just run around attacking you, saying you’re shit at everything. I don’t think that.”

  I shook myself. “Sorry. I don’t know why I—” I pushed the can of coffee and him and fled from the kitchenette. Why couldn’t he leave? Everything would be better if he wasn’t around.

  I settled down in front of my computer. “Oh, hey! Nikolai’s in his office.”

  His voice floated back to me. “I told you that he’s an early riser.”

  I turned the sound up.

  Nikolai was alone. He sat down at his desk, gripping a coffee mug in one hand. He stared at the computer screen. Then he set down the mug. He typed something on the keyboard. Picked up the mug. Drank.

  I rubbed my eyes. We had woken up early for this?

  At least he already had coffee.

  Of course, I didn’t think we had any cream or sugar, did we? I grimaced.

  Sure enough, Demetrius came back in a few minutes with two cups of black coffee. Well, it was better than nothing. I took a drink of the bitter liquid and then set it down.