Not So Prince Charming
Lauren Landish
Edited by
Valorie Clifton
Edited by
Staci Etheridge
Contents
Also by Lauren Landish
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
Epilogue
Preview: Beauty and the Billionaire
About the Author
Also by Lauren Landish
Dirty Fairy Tales:
Beauty and the Billionaire || Not So Prince Charming
Get Dirty:
Dirty Talk || Dirty Laundry || Dirty Deeds || Dirty Secrets
Bennett Boys Ranch:
Buck Wild || Riding Hard
Irresistible Bachelors:
Anaconda || Mr. Fiance || Heartstopper
Stud Muffin || Mr. Fixit || Matchmaker
Motorhead || Baby Daddy || Untamed
Prologue
Gabriel
The pre-dawn sunlight peeks through the window, and faintly, I can hear the train rolling through town though the tracks are miles away.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my mind whirling and my back to the cause of my breakdown.
Will you, or won’t you?
It’s not that simple, though. When I’d accepted this job, I hadn’t known the possibilities, couldn’t have anticipated what was going to happen.
I hadn’t planned on her beauty, her full lips puffed out as she softly snores, her head turned sideways on the pillow and her face so innocent.
I hadn’t planned on the way her hair spreads out on the pillow, rich chocolate waves that, even in her sleep, flow around her like a messy halo. I curl my hand to stop myself from reaching out to stroke them, feel their silken threads against my rough palm.
Looking over my shoulder, I watch her, hating that I’ve been forced from the warm paradise of her embrace by nightmares of who I am, of what I’ve done. Of what I’m supposed to do.
I’m chased by the monster I’ve become.
If you’re a monster, then why not be a monster? Why not do what you were hired to do? You’ve done it so easily before, time after time.
But I’m not sure if I can do it any longer.
I can’t help myself as I slowly peel the sheet back so as not to disturb her. I need to see her, need to commit every curve and angle to memory. Because one way or another, I will lose her. I know that already.
She’s an angel. A sleeping beauty whose glamour pulls me toward her, regardless of the dangers she represents.
Then why are you continuing to stay here? Why not just walk away?
Because I know if I walk away, then someone else will do the job, and I can’t let that happen.
Unable to wait any longer, I reach out to see if she’s real or just a hallucination caused by my own tortured conscience finally snapping.
She doesn’t stir as I run my fingertips over her shoulders, brushing a stray lock of hair away from her cheek and allowing me to see the graceful swan-like curve of her neck.
My fingers keep going, tracing the light knobs of her spine as I descend, my own arousal growing with every inch of flawless skin I touch.
Somehow, despite all the years of hard work and struggle she’s faced, her skin’s still silky soft and flawless.
It’s lightly tanned just enough to tease at the naughty side of my mind because I want to trace those tan lines with my tongue, revel in being the only one to see the natural creamy paleness of her breasts and ass.
I find the tiny dimples at the base of her spine and the tattoo she’s got there. She calls it her tramp stamp, but she couldn’t be anything further from that.
She has this daintiness and dignity that can only come from a well of great inner strength. A strength I admire, a well I wish I could tap into to find some fortitude of my own.
I leave the sheet over her hip, tracing back up her body as my cock rages in my boxers, but she doesn’t move, doesn’t stir as I feast on her curves with my touch, holding back on my desire to roughly take her.
That’s the other side of me. The ugly side that wants to be purged, to violate her purity with my darkness.
To do your damn job.
But despite my nature, I want to treat her the way she deserves to be treated, like a queen.
Perhaps that alone shows that this ugliness is not my nature, but rather a depravity I’ve nurtured and let bloom inside my soul.
But this is no pretty flower, more like a weed that refuses to die and instead grows mightier each day, changing me, weighing me down, and strangling any attempts I might make to be better or do differently.
She hums, and a small smile forms on the pink bow of her lips. “Lower.”
She doesn’t open her eyes as my hand strokes lower, pulling away to slide under the sheet by her ankles and run up the outside of her legs. I find the swell of her hip, and she sighs softly, a breeze on the air that tells me that she’s enjoying this.
I run my fingers inward and am rewarded by the warmth of her cleft, already wet and waiting for me. “Were you having a good dream?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she whispers, gasping lightly as I slide a finger into her. Warm, slick velvet envelops me, and I slide deep inside her, pulling out just enough to find the nubby ridge of her inner spot and massage it.
She loves it, lifting herself and arching her back, all the while keeping her eyes closed as she playfully pretends to still just be waking up.
That stops, though, when my thumb finds her clit and her dark brown eyes fly open, already alight with arousal as she gasps.
“Oh, my God.”
“Shh . . . just let me,” I whisper, my fingers and thumb rubbing all the right places inside her.
But she can’t seem to stay quiet now. “Yes . . . oh, fuck, yes. Right there, Gabe,” she says.
She’s moaning my name over and over, her hips pushing back to meet my plunging fingers as I fill her deeper and deeper.
“Do you want to come?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
She knows what she wants, and she lies flat on the bed, arching her back to lift her ass tantalizingly in the air, trusting me to give it to her.
But I don’t deserve it, even if she does trust me. I shouldn’t be this attached to her.
Somehow, in the weird alchemy of the universe, I’ve found the one I’m meant to protect and keep safe for the rest of her life.
But how am I supposed to protect her . . . when I’m the one who was hired to kill her?
The question floats away as I hover over her, holding my weight off her. Lining up my rock-ha
rd cock with her slit, I push into her, slow and easy.
Letting her heat envelop me.
Letting her honey anoint me.
Letting her pussy absolve me.
But I can’t be saved, not even by her. As she clenches around me, I wonder if the reverse is true. Can I save her, even from myself?
Chapter 1
Gabriel - Weeks Earlier
You know why you’re doing this.
It’s not about the girl.
There is no girl.
There is only a target.
I repeat the mantra in my mind as I get out of the shower, my body freshly scrubbed and my skin tingling with the exfoliating scrub I always use in preparation for a situation like this.
It doesn’t totally eliminate shedding skin cells, but I don’t get paid to take chances, so I take all the precautions I can.
Looking in the mirror of the cheap motel room I’m currently renting, I get dressed on auto-pilot.
Remember . . . in, out, and don’t think. Just do.
First is a cotton T-shirt, black, Hanes. You can get these at any discount store, and that’s why I wear them. I don’t need some hotshot CSI finding a scrap of cloth and somehow tracking me down based on my clothing purchasing habits.
On top of my undershirt is my long-sleeved blue hoodie pullover. It’s fashionable enough that I won’t stick out here in Roseboro, with its working-class population, while at the same time, it’s dark enough that I will blend into the shadows.
It’s just like they taught you in the Boy Scouts. Be prepared.
Black jeans, a basic pair of bootcut Wranglers, and underneath, a pair of common, run-of-the-mill black leather workboots.
Everything I’m wearing is commonly available at ten thousand stores around the country, and nothing is over fifty dollars. Considering I’m burning all of this after tonight, there’s a good reason why.
On the bed are my main tools for tonight. First, a pocket knife. I’ve used this Leatherman for a very long time, the multiple tools and attachments being more useful than a lot of people would recognize.
Next, my lock picks. I’m prepared to break a window to get in if I have to, but I’d prefer not to.
The fewer details I leave behind, the greater the chance that I’ll be sipping beer and watching the game before the Roseboro police even know something’s wrong.
Finally, tonight’s weapon of choice, a snub-nosed .38 Special revolver fitted with a silencer. Not the highest power of pistols, but accurate, and no shells will be left behind for forensics.
I finish up, tucking my ski mask into my pocket, knowing I might need it later, and put black leather gloves on before walking out to the plain-Jane Ford truck that I’m using for this job.
Time to go to work.
The house isn’t exactly in the best part of town. It’s maybe one of the oldest in Roseboro.
Once upon a time, it was probably considered rural, but as Roseboro expanded, the plot of land with a short row of near-matching houses is now on the edge of the industrial district. The cheap galvanized chain-link fence that surrounds the tiny two-bedroom ‘mill’ house is a product of a bygone era, back when the biggest employer in this city was Cascade Cider House.
But the national expansion of the big beer chains closed Cascade Cider by the seventies, and now the only things left are a few of these tiny breadbox-style places that used to be filled with people who smelled of fermenting apples nine months out of the year and fresh apples the other three.
It’s a miracle any of these places still survive, but this house is one of the few, and while it’s old, and nowhere near what anyone would call a dream home . . . it’s been loved and cared for.
I see it in the way the trim is painted, not always in the same shade of blue, but carefully done anyway.
Or in the way the little brick flower garden underneath the tiny living room window is still bordered in tightly-fitted bricks, although the flowers are now replaced with hardy herbs that don’t take nearly as much care as petunias.
I park across the street underneath an old, twisted scrub pine that’s shed a thick blanket of needles all over the uncurbed grass that lines the backstreet. It’s the sort of neighborhood where your parking space is the chunk of dying grass next to your mailbox.
I sit in the shadows of my truck, waiting and watching. The first step is to make sure my target’s there, that she’s alone, and that I’ll be uninterrupted.
I know her schedule. She got out of her last class twenty minutes ago. She should be home soon to drop off her books before heading in for a late-night shift at The Gravy Train, where she’ll work until the last of the late-night barflies get their greasy plates eaten.
Then she’ll come home, crack the books until her head drops onto them, and do the whole thing again tomorrow morning.
Whether now or after her job, it ends tonight.
I see her pull up on her scooter, a little 50cc thing that a lot of people around here call a ‘DUI bike’ since you don’t need to insure them.
She has a car, a beat-up twenty-year-old Honda that she inherited from her aunt when she passed away, but insurance and gas mean the scooter’s her vehicle of choice more often than not.
I’m tempted to just take the shot here. It’ll be easier and faster, although riskier and less controlled.
But I do have a few rules to my work, an honor code, even though what I do is less than honorable by anyone’s standards, including my own.
First, be patient, hence my learning her routine and doing my research. I’m good, not because I’m the fastest, or the nastiest, or the strongest. I’m good because I take my time and do it right.
Second, absolutely no bystanders. I won’t take a shot on anyone if there are innocent people who could get hurt if something goes wrong.
The last thing my conscience needs is me accidentally shooting some eight-year-old kid because I didn’t see them or a bullet bounces off a lamp post.
Third, don’t get too close. But I don’t want to think about the third. Because I’m pretty sure I’m breaking the hell out of it with this job.
As I watch her shake out her long brown hair, nearly black in the deepening dusk, I grip my steering wheel a little tighter.
I know she doesn’t try to be, but Isabella Turner is uniquely striking in her beauty.
Her hair falls simply, nearly halfway down her back, waving in the air like a dark curtain that frames her lean face.
Her eyes are large, almond-shaped and framed with thick lashes, like she’s a princess hiding in this working-class setting, just waiting for her chance to be restored back to the throne that’s waiting for her.
Of course, I’m being foolish, maybe a little whimsical. But I do this with every target.
Usually, I’m trying to make them go the other way. Paint them with a brush that pushes them fully into the ‘evil’ category.
So, the drug dealer isn’t just a guy selling drugs but someone who’s stealing kids off the streets, carelessly taking their potential future by hooking them on his poison smack to fund his criminal empire.
The stock broker isn’t just a shady trader but someone who’s laundering billions of dollars of crime money while robbing poor, innocent grandmothers of their retirement savings.
It helps me sleep at night, and quite honestly, isn’t that hard to do. Not with the contracts I’ve accepted.
I’ve killed a lot of bad people. Hunted them down, snuffed out their miserable existence, and not felt much remorse about it.
Occasionally, I even feel like I’m doing something darkly noble, protecting those who can’t do what I do from the evil in every corner of the world.
But no matter how hard I try or how much I look into her past, I can’t make Isabella Turner ‘bad’ in my eyes.
But if I don’t do this, I’ll never get the answers I need. Blackwell hired me for this job, making it very clear that this is a tit-for-tat-only negotiation. I do this, and he gives me what I want . . . a
chance for justice.
Considering carefully if this is the moment, I scan the street, looking for potential witnesses. As my hand reaches for the door handle, I freeze, seeing a man approaching the house from down the street.
His hair’s long and greasy, the two-day-old growth of beard on his gaunt cheeks making him look even scuzzier than the ripped long-sleeved Nirvana T-shirt he’s wearing.
“Hey, Izzy!” he yells, and I shrink deeper into the seat, willing myself to be invisible, my eyes narrowing as I rest my hand on my pistol. Something about this puts me on edge. “Izzy Turner!”
The look on her face tells me everything that Miss Turner feels about the man calling her name, and mentally, I quickly go through my research on this mission to place a name to a face . . . Russell Carraby. Thirty-five, single, currently listed as ‘self-employed’ according to his most recent tax records. And Izzy’s landlord of sorts. He doesn’t own her house, but Russell inherited the land Izzy’s house sits on.
Seems the Carraby family got along quite nicely with the Cascade Cider people and that’s how these houses came to be built out here. Back then, it was probably a sweet deal all the way around. But now, people who own their house, like Miss Turner, still have to pay a small fortune to sharks like Carraby because of where their home sits.
Not So Prince Charming: A Dirty Fairy Tale Page 1