Leopard's Kiss (Shadow Guardians) (Shadows Guardians Book 1)

by Stephanie Rowe

  He swore under his breath, making her smile widen. “See?” she said. “You’re already struggling with the idea of killing me. I can see the conflict on your face.”

  “No.” He met her gaze. “I’m not struggling with that decision. I’ve tabled it for now. What I’m struggling with is the fact that you awaken a burning lust inside me that makes me want to throw you on that couch, rip your clothes off, and bury myself inside you a thousand times until my need for you is sated. That’s what I’m struggling with.”

  She blinked, and heat suddenly ignited between them.

  Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that. What the hell was she doing to him? He was an icon of discipline and focus. He didn’t get uncontrollable hard-ons for women, and he didn’t lust after the females he was supposed to kill.

  Her eyes widened, and her body tensed against his. “You mean that.”

  “Of course I do. I have no time for games.” He didn’t bother to recant. He’d said it. He meant it. It was what it was. He bent his head, angling his face near the crook of her neck. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “Flowers,” he whispered, as a sudden image flashed through his mind, an image from so long ago that it felt rusted and faded as it struggled to surface. “You smell of the flowers that my mother used to grow in front of our cabin in the spring when I was a little kid. They were pale pink, dozens of petals, thorns—” He realized suddenly he’d revealed personal details about himself, and he froze.

  Anya said nothing, but he felt her fingers slip into the hair at the nape of his neck, a light, tender caress. He closed his eyes, shocked at the sensation. He stayed utterly still, tracking every move of her fingers over his skin, memorizing the sensation so he could recall it at will in the future.

  “You were once a child,” she said softly, “just like everyone else in this world. Once, there was a time when you’d never killed anyone.” Her voice was soft, drifting over his flesh like a warm breeze. “That’s why you can see me,” she said, “because that part of you isn’t dead. The part that cares.”

  He ground his jaw and pulled back, glaring at her. “I don’t care.”

  “It makes sense why you’re so closed off.” She nodded, ignoring his statement. “How else could you do your job? Of course you can’t let yourself feel anything. But why do you kill people for money? What took the boy who noticed his mom’s flowers and turned him into someone who defiles the most beautiful thing in the world and uses it to kill people?”

  He stared at her, searching her face. “You think I defile the kiss?” Defile? That was such a brutal word. To defile was to take the beauty out of something that deserved to blossom and thrive. It was a word of judgement and emotion and disdain, and he hated it.

  She was still tracing her fingers along the back of his neck, her fingers moving almost absently, as if she wasn’t even doing it consciously. “Yes.”

  “I don’t defile the kiss.” Outrage poured through him, a need to defend the truth of who he was. “I use the kiss to make death beautiful. People spend every minute of their lives afraid of death and suffering, wondering if they will waste away in a horrific ending to their lives, or die too early from some shitty accident. I turn that hell into peace. I give them the great joy, their most glorious fantasies into their reality. I make death beautiful. If you think that’s defiling a kiss, then that’s your problem, not mine.”

  Her fingers stilled on the base of his neck. “You kill with a kiss. How is that not defiling it?” She searched his face as she asked, as if she truly wanted to understand.

  “I bring peace with a kiss.” He was pissed, so pissed right now. He had such a well-ordered, precise world. It had to be that way. Every emotion, every observation, every thought carefully processed or denied.

  She raised her brows. “The fact you give people peace with your kiss doesn’t atone for what comes one second later. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “No?” He tightened his grip on her neck. “You don’t think so?” He was too furious to think clearly, too angry to hold back. He hated that this woman had the audacity to condemn him, to try to strip away the foundation of what held him together. “You think this doesn’t make it all worth it?”

  She frowned at him, “This what? What are you talking about?”

  “This kiss.” He trapped her head with his grip on her hair and then kissed her. Not his death kiss. His pre-death kiss, the one where he poured everything that was good and worthy into the kiss, everything that made life worth living.

  He kissed her like there was nothing else that mattered except his lips on hers, and the connection between them.

  Chapter 5

  The Black Swan’s kiss was like pouring boiling hot lava into her body, turning Anya into a cauldron of lust and desire so intense that she wanted to crawl up his body and lose herself in him forever. His mouth was hot and demanding, his lips like wildfire, his tongue a penetrating assault of skill and seduction.

  He wasn’t in her mind this time. Her response was entirely her own, falling wildly into the seductive spell he wove through her with only his kiss. She held on tight, her hand tangled in his hair as she leaned into him, kissing him back frantically. He pressed tighter against her, pinning her to the wall, angling his head to kiss her even deeper.

  She needed more of him. She needed to get closer.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, he palmed her hips, and then slid his hands down her thighs. He grasped her knees, then lifted her legs so they were around his hips, still holding her upper body against the wall with his weight.

  Yes. She locked her legs around his hips, shocked by the feeling of his erection pressed against the juncture of her thighs. It had been so long since she’d been in a man’s arms, so long since she’d lost herself to a rush of desire and need, so long since she’d felt safe enough to feel so intensely that she couldn’t think of anything else.

  He was an assassin, but he was also so much more. He was potentially her guardian, and he was a deadly threat to anyone who tried to attack her. He’d saved her multiple times, and she knew that if someone broke into the safe house, the intruder would be dead before they could come close to her. In this moment, in his arms, she was safer than she’d ever been in her whole life.

  He slipped his hand under the hem of her shirt, the heat from his palm searing hot against her side. Hell, Anya. His voice brushed through her mind, not intrusively, but rather as an intimate caress, a private secret just for her. I want to fuck you.

  She jerked back, breaking the kiss. “Fuck me? Is that what you just said? You want to fuck me?”

  His eyes were dark with lust, his hand spanning her ribs. “Yes.”

  She would have laughed at his unabashed confession if she weren’t so offended by it. “I don’t want to be fucked. Didn’t you hear me before? Fucking me puts me in the same nameless, faceless category of a victim you kill.”

  He cupped her breast, making her squirm with need. “What’s the right word? What do you want to hear? Tell me, and I’ll say it.”

  “So, you can give me platitudes like you did when you said you were sorry my mother was murdered?” She pushed at his chest, trying to get him off her, but he didn’t move. “That’s not how it works. Words mean nothing. It’s the intention behind the words that matter. You could have said absolutely nothing when I told you my mother had died, but if you’d silently brushed your finger across my cheek, offering me comfort in the only way you knew how, it would have meant something. Spewing out words you don’t mean is like killing someone with a kiss. It’s a lie, and it’s meaningless. Now get off me!”

  “You want me to care? Is that it?” He still didn’t back off, and he slipped his finger beneath her bra, his thumb brushing over her nipple, sending shards of desire through her.

  “Stop it!” She slapped at his wrist, and his hand stilled. “I’m not a machine, you dumb oaf! My mother is dead, Marjorie is dead, and Julia is missing. I’m barely holding it together, and I don’t need you trying
to feel me up because you need to get off. So stop preying on my emotional state and get off me!” Tears trickled from her eyes, streaming down her cheeks, but she couldn’t stop them. “See what you did? You made me fall apart! I don’t have time to cry! Damn you! Just damn you!” She slammed her fists into his chest, but he still didn’t move away. “What do I have to do to get you away from me?” She let her head fall back against the wall in frustration. “What do I need to do?” she whispered, staring at the ceiling.

  He said nothing.

  For a long time, neither of them moved. She was still pinned against the wall by his body, his hands resting on her hips, her legs still around his waist, not because she wanted them there, but because she had nowhere else to put them. Finally, she looked at him. He was staring at her, his eyes dark and intense. “What?” she asked. “What are you waiting for?”

  “The words.”

  She closed her eyes, too tired to think. “What words? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what words to use that won’t offend you.”

  “It’s not the words,” she said, not bothering to open her eyes. “Didn’t you hear me? It’s the emotion that matters. It doesn’t matter what you say now. The mood for sex is long gone. God, no wonder you can be an assassin.” She opened her eyes, studying him through barely-open lids. “Is there anything left of the boy who noticed flowers? Is there not a shred of humanity inside you? Was I that wrong about you?”

  He still didn’t look away, his gaze boring into her so intensely. “I have never been driven by my physical need for a woman in my life.” His words were slow and clipped, almost awkward, as if he were trying each one out before he said it. “My kisses are entirely one-sided, for the pleasure of the one who receives them. I feel nothing when I do them, other than a sense of responsibility to make death appropriate.”

  “You feel nothing?” she repeated, the implications of his words dawning on her. The intense physical response he’d evoked in her had been one-sided? He’d felt nothing? Embarrassment flooded her cheeks. How could she have been such an idiot? She gritted her teeth and glared at him. “Get. Off. Me.”

  He didn’t even acknowledge her request, and his body was an immovable weight that she could never dislodge on her own. “When I gave you the kiss of death, I was unable to keep myself from feeling. I noticed how your lips tasted. I noticed you smelled like flowers. I noticed the feel of your body against mine. I was aware of your breasts against my chest. And I was not pleased that you were trapped by my mind control and were not in that kiss with me. I wanted you to be kissing me, not the illusionary fantasy man that you were seeing in your mind.”

  Heat rushed over her body at his words, and she stared at him, searching his face. “Really?”

  “Who were you thinking of when I was kissing you?” His fingers tightened on her hips almost imperceptibly. “Who was your fantasy?”

  She shook her head. “I knew I was kissing you. There was no one else in my mind.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I was kissing you. I knew I was.”

  Shock rippled over his handsome face. “But that’s impossible. I had control of your mind. I gave you the man you dreamed of kissing, the one who would make you die in peace knowing you were in his arms.”

  She shrugged. “There’s no one like that in my life. I guess a hot, irritating assassin was the closest thing I could come up with.”

  His gaze searched hers, and then he released one hip long enough to brush his finger over her cheeks. “My parents were murdered,” he said softly. “When you told me about your mother, I felt your grief. I know that pain, because I lived it. I said I was sorry because I thought that was the appropriate thing to say. You want to know what I felt?” His voice turned icy. “If you wanted my truth, what I would have done is ordered you to tell me the name of the bastards responsible. I would have hunted every one of them down and killed them in the same way they killed your mother, every last one of them. It would have been the only deaths I’ve done for free in my life, with the exception of those who killed my parents. I would have killed every last one of them, and walked away without a shred of remorse, guilt, or empathy, and I would have sent you their blackened hearts to burn in your mother’s honor.”

  His words were clipped and cold, his face like steel, but his fingers had tightened on her hips, as if even his supreme self-discipline couldn’t completely mask his emotions. Tears trickled down her cheeks, both for his own pain, and for his offer. “I didn’t know,” she said. “And thank you for that.” She knew he meant every word, and as horrible as his offer was on some levels, it was also beautiful. To offer to carry the burden of murder on his soul so she could avenge her mother’s death was such a powerful statement of who he was.

  “I will hunt them down,” he said. “For you. For her. For me.”

  She nodded, fighting back the sobs threatening to take her. “I don’t know who did it.”

  “I’ll find out.” His hand slid around to the back of her neck, and his fingers tightened in her hair. “And I wanted to fuck you because you make me feel things I don’t want to feel, things I don’t have control over, things that threaten my entire existence. I wanted to fuck you because I don’t do anything halfway, and every last bit of my soul is screaming at me to bury myself in you until all that’s left are two bodies so depleted that there’s no more space for the pain that’s trying to come back and take me down. So, yeah, I want to fuck you. I want to sink my cock into the one woman alive who actually knows I exist, who sees me, who kissed me, who has been through the same shit I live with every day, who is strong, bold, unstoppable, and ridiculously, obliviously outmatched for what life has thrown at her.”

  He cut himself off then, his words echoing in the tiny room, bouncing off the steel walls. She felt breathless, overheated, and utterly lost in the intensity of his words. With that one little speech, he’d reignited a raging physical need in her. She was intensely aware of him not only as a man, but as someone who’d suffered, who’d become a machine of steel in response. Except he wasn’t steel. He was more.

  She realized he was waiting, watching her, his dark eyes inscrutable. She met his gaze. “That was better,” she said honestly. “I still think it’s a little crass to say you want to fuck me, but—”

  He kissed her then, hard, fast, deep, utterly without mercy, utterly without restraint.

  His desperate need for her plunged straight to her heart, awakening all the emotions she’d tried so hard to control for so long. She felt utterly raw and exposed with him, barely able to hang onto her emotional control. She didn’t want to feel like that, and she didn’t want him to tear her apart so ruthlessly, but at the same time… she needed his kiss even more desperately than he needed hers. It was as if he gave her somewhere safe to pour her emotions out. He gave her something safe to feel. With his arms around her and his steel-hard body shielding her against the wall, she was utterly protected and safe.

  Anya. His voice was a raw, rough caress in her mind, a desperate call of isolation and need that filled the emptiness of her soul. With a low moan of capitulation, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close, turning herself over to him.

  She had no time to think about what she was doing, or to wonder if it was right. The moment she surrendered to him, the situation took on a power of its own. He consumed her with his need. The kiss was boiling hot, spinning out of control. This man was deadly, incredibly lethal, with her life in his sights, and yet she was completely sucked into the sheer fierceness of what was between them.

  He dragged her shirt up and took her breast into his mouth, teasing her nipple. Anya grasped his shoulders, her head back against the wall as he gripped her hips, holding her so tightly that she knew there was no chance she’d fall. Desire raced through her, heat so excruciating she felt like she was going to burn up. The lust was intoxicating, because it left no room for the ache in her heart and the constant ter
ror she had for Julia’s safety. With the way he was kissing her, there was no space left for anything but him.

  He slipped his hand between them, unfastening her jeans with deft ease, his fingers brushing over the bare skin of her belly, even as he continued his assault with his mouth. He grabbed her around the hips, pulled back just enough to get her jeans off, then hoisted her up higher against the wall, locking her legs over his massive shoulders.

  His mouth closed on her swollen nub, and she gasped, twisting as he invaded her body with his tongue, his lips, and his fingers. His assault was electric, overwhelming, more than she could handle. She twisted in his grasp, unable to dislodge his iron grip on her as he held her where he wanted her, sweeping across her folds with exact precision, knowing exactly where she wanted to be touched, knowing when to stay, and when to switch.

  She flattened her palms on the ceiling, trying to ground herself as he continued his assault. The orgasm began to build, gaining strength, ready to tear her apart—

  Tell me who you’re with right now. His voice was a ruthless command. Who are you with, Anya?

  She looked down to see him staring up at her, his dark eyes turbulent with desire and something else. Vulnerability. Her heart tightened, and she touched his head. “I’m with you. I’m not thinking of anyone else. I know it’s you.”

  His jaw flexed, and he nodded once. Then he pressed a kiss to her belly, just below her navel, a kiss that wasn’t about sex. It was a kiss of tenderness and intimacy that went way beyond a raw physical connection. She bit her lip, and then gasped as he kissed her again, this time lower, sweeping her damp folds into a kiss that shook her all the way to her core. His assault was relentless, endless, and demanding, mercilessly dragging her over that precipice.

  The orgasm erupted through her, and she screamed, her hips bucking as he continued his relentless assault, drawing the orgasm on and on, until she thought her body was going to shatter. It wasn’t until she was about to collapse that he finally let up, catching her as she fell down into his arms, exhausted and spent, her muscles still shaking.