And with his current state, he didn’t think that would be changing anytime soon.
Exhaling, he shoved damp strands of hair out of his face. Turning to step out, he looked up in surprise when the door opened, though he already had an idea who it would be.
While he hadn’t been in the shower for longer than a few minutes, he had been troubled long before now, and even with his best attempts to hide it, Iris would have noticed.
He could see her blurred outline through the frosted glass and watched as she stripped out of her own clothes piece by piece until the only thing left between them was a layer of glass he could break easily with one punch.
But he kept the impulse in check, taking a step back farther into the water as the door slid open, and Iris finally joined him.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Not the gentle swell of her breasts, or the flare of her hips, or the way she stared at him as if she was … waiting.
Beautiful women were plentiful in his world, but none of them grabbed his attention the way she did. None made him want to risk it all.
“Looking for me?” he asked, repeating a question he had once asked before.
She smiled, probably remembering that day as well, but she still didn’t confess the truth. Yet.
He was already thinking of ways to get her to do so.
“Always,” she answered before stepping into the shower.
He reached behind him to turn down the heat, but she caught his hand before he could. A brief but sharp inhalation the only indication she gave that the water was too hot.
“Iris—”
“It’s part of your process. I get that. Believe me, I’ve had worse.” She was careful this time when she stepped toward him not to flinch as she ran her hands down his chest. “What’s bothering you?”
He wished he had an answer for her, some simple explanation that would explain where his head was at, but there had never been anything simple about what was happening. From the very beginning, he had always done one job—the only thing he could say he was actually good at—but while that was what the Kingmaker needed, it wasn’t what she needed.
On his side of the law, it didn’t matter how confessions were obtained, as long as they were gotten, but for what she wanted … Spader couldn’t look as if a confession had been tortured out of him. No one would believe it.
Never mind the fact that the Kingmaker would never let that happen.
The man was too close to them now. He wasn’t willing to risk the exposure.
“I could have him out in a matter of hours,” he said, brushing a droplet of water from beneath her eye, feeling the weight of her stare on him. “They wouldn’t know he was gone until we had him on a plane out of the country.”
Sing Sing was easy enough breaking into—Celt had done it just for sport a time or two—and if he employed the others and even the Wild Bunch to assist, there was a chance her father’s absence wouldn’t be noticed for a good twenty-four hours.
“No,” she said, voicing the answer he knew she would give. “If we break him out, he’ll have to run, we’ll have to run, and it would never stop. After my father spent years apprehending fugitives, I couldn’t make him into one. Spader took everything from him. I won’t let him have this too.”
Synek closed his eyes as he tilted his head back, letting the water rain down on his face to conceal the expression he didn’t want her to see. This wasn’t a complication he enjoyed.
“It doesn’t have to be right now,” Iris said, her voice softening as if she knew something was wrong even if she didn’t know what exactly. “Not today or tomorrow or the next day. However long it takes. I trust—”
He kissed her. Not just because he wanted to but because he didn’t want her to finish. There was no doubt in his mind that she trusted him—he’d given her every reason to. The Wraiths and Rosalie, in particular, had fed her stories about him—about the things he had done and the impossible jobs he had taken.
And that was before they had finally crossed paths and he made promises he hoped he could keep. So for now, he welcomed the distraction.
He kissed her to quiet his thoughts—to calm the storm brewing.
She didn’t seem to mind.
Her fingers slid down his abdomen before wrapping around his cock and stroking him slowly. A shuddering exhale left him, his need clawing up his spine, but he didn’t give in to it yet.
Instead, he focused on her—getting his hand between her legs, then sucking a damp nipple into his mouth, giving just a hint of his teeth to make her hips arch forward and her pussy clamp down around the fingers he had inside her.
Another time, he might have gotten her off just like this—his fingers inside her, her head tilted back, and his mouth locked around the beaded point of her nipple—but he pulled free of her instead, ignoring the confusion and her questioning gaze.
He pressed her back against the stone wall of the shower, gripping the back of her knee and lifting her leg up and out so he could get between them.
Their mouths came together a moment later. His punishing and hers accepting—the only conundrum he needed.
He gripped his dick in one hand, not thinking about anything other than getting inside her. He was nearly mindless at the thought.
“Please,” she begged, the black of her pupils nearly swallowing the brown. Her nails dug into his shoulder, that blissful agony making his dick throb.
Iris said his name, or tried to, but as he drenched his cock in her wetness and slowly started working the head inside her, she was incapable of speech.
Fuck if he didn’t understand exactly why.
It felt as if he was being robbed of oxygen, as if every bodily function had frozen while he was easing inside her.
He wasn’t even halfway inside her, and it already felt like his control was fraying at the edges.
Gentle had been his plan when he first kissed her—to take her slowly and intimately. To treat her like she was the most precious fucking thing in the world because that was what she was to him.
But it took four words to make him snap. Four words for him to give up any pretense of being a better man.
Iris dug her nails into his back as her heel pressed into his back to draw him deeper.
“Fuck me, Syn. Please.”
As soon as those words penetrated, he gave himself over to it. He snapped his hips forward without warning, plunging in deep, her rippling pussy dragging a guttural groan from him.
He couldn’t give her sweet and romantic or slow and tender, but he could fuck her hard enough that neither of them would remember their names in the morning.
He could make her scream and beg and moan all the while he fucked her up against the wall. His face buried in her throat as he licked the water off her skin, but it wasn’t enough to completely silence the thoughts in his head.
Because she wasn’t just there physically. She was in his thoughts, so finely in tune with him that he didn’t know where he would be without her.
Chapter 12
Celt
The roar of Harley pipes was a welcome sound as Kyrnon Murphy headed away from the compound toward his loft in the outskirts of the city.
With every mile he gained away from the building fading in his rearview mirror, he breathed a little easier. He was tired, his muscles ached, and it was a bloody miracle his eyes were still open, considering he hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours.
But he only had an hour’s drive from home where Amber would be waiting, probably still tucked away in their bed with her wild, curly hair fanned out across his pillows.
They’d only been back from Belfast for two days before he was called in again. Two days of nonstop work, and he already missed her like crazy. Two days that had ultimately turned into a few weeks when he’d hardly been home.
Which annoyed him as much as it probably annoyed her.
It didn’t matter if they were on vacation and his face was buried between her legs. If he got a cal
l and needed to come in, he had no choice but to do so. His contract demanded it.
In the years they had been together, from the very beginning, he’d had to work one job after the next. From New York to Los Angeles, London to Australia, and every-fucking-where in between.
He was nearly inclined to believe he had seen more of her during those first few months together than the past two years combined.
But she was still by his side, despite it all. It didn’t matter if he showed up at three in the morning with stolen artwork and trinkets he thought she would like, or if he came home bruised and battered and slept for eighteen hours without stirring.
She was there.
Despite who he worked for and the things he did for a living, she had always been right where she was.
He knew what he had. He understood the trust and sacrifice she gave to be with him, and he didn’t take it for granted.
Which was why he wasn’t going to wait another fucking second.
No matter what.
She already had the ring, and he’d made the promise. Now, he just needed to follow through with the rest of forever.
The growl of a car engine cut through the silence of the morning, making Kyrnon glance in his side mirror in surprise. He’d long since driven out of the sticks, so the likelihood of encountering another vehicle this soon was entirely possible, but the suddenness of the truck caught him off guard.
It looked to be a pickup truck from what he could make out, the image of it becoming clearer as he eased up on the throttle. It wasn’t always easy to identify whether a car belonged to someone who wanted to kill him, or a civilian who chose to ignore speed limits.
Either way, Kyrnon couldn’t afford the risk since he was on his bike for a change with only his leather jacket and helmet.
Turning his gaze back to the road, Kyrnon slowed down enough to let the truck pass, but as quickly as he’d turned his attention away from the truck still speeding toward him, he was too late to notice the man standing in the middle of the street, dressed in black with a war vest across his chest.
And an AK-47 rifle in his hands.
“Shite.”
The first crack of a gunshot had him jerking the handlebars to the side, narrowly avoiding a bullet to the chest if he hadn’t swerved, but as quickly as the first came, more followed.
It only took a moment, a heartbeat, for him to lose control of his bike—for the wheels to go out from under him, catapulting him into the air.
In his thirty-odd years, Kyrnon had never crashed his bike—he’d never even come close.
But as he felt the wind beneath him as he flew through the air, he knew when he landed, it would hurt like fuck.
A whistling sound shot through his ears before the only thing he saw was asphalt racing up toward him the closer he came to the ground.
He landed with a harsh crunch, pain exploding where he landed wrong on his arm. His breath was knocked out of him as he bounced off the ground, but the force of his momentum didn’t stop him there. It dragged him farther down the highway until he finally rolled to an agonizing stop.
His glasses had fallen off somewhere along the way, pieces of them forming a haphazard line toward him. Almost a mile down the road, his bike was on its side, steam billowing from its engine.
Pain was an old friend, but it took every ounce of focus he had to roll over onto his back with the agony he was in. His arm was broken, in two places if he had to wager a guess, and his left leg was fucked too, but neither mattered.
Not when the man in the mask covering the lower half of his face was walking toward him.
Broken bones wouldn’t matter inside a dead body.
Kyrnon had never faced the Jackal himself, though he had heard plenty of stories about what the man was capable of.
They said he was a ghost, sweeping in and then back out again without ever leaving a trace of his presence. His victims never saw him coming until it was too late. And for the longest time, no one had actually been sure that the man truly existed.
But he, just as his other brothers-in-arms did, had learned the man did exist, and that he was just as formidable as the others claimed him to be.
Kyrnon also knew the man answered to Belladonna.
The same woman currently being held captive in the black site of the Kingmaker’s own creation. A location he could never give up, no matter how he was tortured for the information.
That was the choice he had made all those years ago—to put his life on the line for the safety and security of his handler.
Before Amber had ever smiled at him inside the crowded metro car. Before the life they had built together when he had learned to live for more than just bloodshed and violence.
Now, more than ever, he wanted to live.
He wanted to be free.
Even though he was better with his right, Kyrnon had no choice but to use his left to fumble for the gun holstered at his back, its position making it far too difficult to get out with ease.
Before he could do much of anything, the Jackal was there, his gloved hand already forming a fist before he ever cocked his arm back.
Kyrnon only saw the first hit before stars exploded behind his eyes as his head was knocked to the side.
The second came in quick succession.
A third.
A fourth.
Another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
But with each one, a pattern emerged—one that couldn’t possibly be what he thought it was. The Jackal hadn’t been there when he’d been just a lad forced to fight for profit. He would have remembered.
Just when he expected another hit, the blows stopped, and Kyrnon was able to take a proper breath or, rather, as much as he was capable of as he spat blood onto the road.
“If you’re gonna kill me,” Kyrnon said, gazing up at the man with all the defiance in the world, “you might as well see it done.”
The Jackal didn’t respond nor did he lift his fists or gun again. Instead, he reached into the inner pocket of his vest and pulled out a digital recorder. Once he clicked a button on the side of it, Belladonna’s voice rang out.
“Pain,” she said, loudly and clearly as if she was standing right in front of him, “is the greatest weapon a person can use against another. Pain makes a person listen. Once upon a time, I was in your position, broken and bleeding, and it was only then that I saw the truth staring back at me. Do you see it, Kyrnon? Do you see the truth?”
The tape cut off. The device tucked away again.
He didn’t see whatever the fuck she was talking about. He didn’t see anything other than the booted foot swinging toward him.
But the more he was beaten, the more blackness winked in and out of his vision, he did see.
He understood.
Soon, though, he was no longer sure of anything … except Amber.
Kyrnon saw her in the dark recesses of his mind, conjuring her face as much as his failing mind could manage.
He saw her smile. The way she always tried to tuck her unruly hair behind her ear when she grew shy around him.
How her face lit up when he asked her to marry him.
He had made her a promise that he would always come home to her. That this job would never stand in the way of their future.
As blackness and a truth he had never considered overtook him, Kyrnon knew he wouldn’t be able to keep that promise.
Chapter 13
He was drowning in blackness.
It was all around him—sinking into his skin, bleeding through his eyes. It was everywhere, and Synek’s already broken mind was in shambles. He thought he’d known what hell on earth was.
He’d lived it for years, yet this, this was worse.
Because he couldn’t escape it. It was impossible to escape his own thoughts.
As it always did over the course of the days—weeks?—he’d been trapped in this room, Synek’s mind went back to the past, conjur
ing images and feelings he thought he’d gotten past in the years since he had become a member of the Wraiths.
But it was there all around him. Suffocating. Debilitating.
He needed to get out.
The heavy metal door swung open, shattering the image in front of him as bright light poured in. Seeing his mother across from him, that same look of accusation in her eyes even as he’d known that the pain he inflicted on her was exactly what he’d suffered for years, made him snap.
He had nothing left.
Synek didn’t know who was standing on the other side of that door; he only cared that there was a motherfucker who put him in here, and he wanted to make them pay.
The first snap of bone as he launched his fist into the man’s face closest to him felt like nirvana. The resulting pain nearly made him smile, but the rampage inside him wasn’t culled just yet.
He wanted blood on his hands.
Synek didn’t care who came next. He didn’t heed the protests lobbied around him. Once he let it all out—the pain, the anger, the madness—he could never reel it back in.
He didn’t want to.
Someone made a wet, gurgling noise in the back of their throat, the sound jarring Synek back to the present and to the sight of a man who looked unconscious with one of Synek’s hands wrapped around his throat.
The rest of him was a bloody mess, especially his face, and from the looks of it, he’d been beating the man’s face in.
Large hands clamped down on him, and before Synek even had a chance to register what was happening, those hands dragged him off his victim and shoved him against a wall. Even if he had wanted to resist, the bloke at his back was far too fucking big to go up against.
And with the look in his eye … there was a chance Synek wouldn’t win this one.
As much as he’d been consumed with fury, it was gone now.
The last Synek saw of the man before he was dragged down a hallway was one of the others slapping the man in the face, attempting to rouse him.
Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Page 15