Never Kiss a Bad Boy

by Flite, Nora

  Her shadow followed me. Marina was stepping lightly, she'd gotten better at sneaking around. Was she practicing to be an assassin, or had she improved because we'd been avoiding each other?

  “Uh, alright,” she said. Lifting her purse from a kitchen chair, she slid into her black jacket. “I don't mind helping.”

  “You can help by telling me how much money you need.” My car keys swung on my finger, I dropped them into my pocket and buttoned up my coat. It was very wet and dull outside. The big windows of my apartment displayed the scene like a black and white movie.

  “Twelve hundred should do it,” she said. “Make it out to Sanfred Remar. He's the building owner.”

  As if I'd be stupid enough to write a check. “Stay here,” I said. Maneuvering back to my room, I bent by my headboard. Removing the panel, I reached around my Ruger.

  The stacks of money bumped and grazed over my seeking fingers. Yes, laugh at me. I literally keep money under my mattress.

  I heard movement in the hall. “Stay out there,” I shouted, grabbing up the bills and thumbing them.

  “I am,” Marina assured me, but I kept shooting my eyes up at the door. I didn't want her knowing where I kept my gun.

  Replacing the panel, I brought the thin stack of money into the kitchen. I thought she'd comment, but she just stood by my elbow as I pulled an envelope from the drawer.

  Wrapping the cash in a sheet of paper, I put it inside and hoped no greedy mailmen would try and open it. “Do we need an address on this?”

  “I'll leave it in his drop-box in the office, but just to be safe...” She reached over and put her fingers on the envelope. I let her take it, offering her the pen. Her writing was cramped, worse than mine. It made me smile. “Stamps?” she asked, flicking those glistening brown eyes up at me.

  Retrieving one, I licked it quickly. It tasted awful. The only thing I want to put my tongue on is her delicious pussy, I lamented silently.

  Marina was staring at me, curiosity on her face. She was wondering what I was thinking about. If I told her, would she flare up and blush?

  Shaking myself, I stamped the envelope and offered it back to her. She took it, but I held on—it was as close to touching her as I'd come in days.

  Her lips twitched, a silent secret.

  Tugging the paper away, she put it in her purse. “So,” she said, like the moment was all in my head. “Trip time?”

  “Trip time,” I agreed. I opened the front door, waving her into the hall. She passed close to me, her breeze stirring the tiny hairs on my arms. My eyes fluttered, stomach tightening as I realized I could easily close the gap and kiss her.

  Calm down! I told myself. But she made it so hard—she made every inch of me hard.

  My legs carried me towards the elevator. How quickly I'd stopped caring about the cameras.

  Standing inside the moving box, I felt my oxygen begin to vanish. Marina replaced it, flooding my lungs just by standing nearby.

  Her hands were in her pockets, chin buried behind the collar of her jacket. She was ready for a blizzard. I wanted to be the storm that swept her up.

  I thought about the night I'd met her. We'd stood here, in this very place. Her body against mine, her soft curls of hair grazing my cheek.

  It had been torture then.

  It was torture now.

  The 'ding' was my savior. I shoved through the sliding doors, power walking towards my car. Marina climbed inside seconds after I'd already had the engine growling. My anxiousness was invading her, too. I could tell by how she shot me furtive glances, her knees glued together.

  We'd had many conversations in my car. It was a fucking therapist's office for everyone, I swear. But today, Marina didn't fight to clear the air. She didn't think up a topic or force any conversation.

  This time, as we drove down the slippery, shiny streets of New York, Marina stared silently out the window.

  ****

  I didn't need directions. Twice now, I'd been to her apartment.

  Pulling into the lot, I reached behind my seat. The umbrella was heavy in my hand. Marina eyed it, then me, with a wry smile. “Worried we'll melt?”

  Her casual humor sucker punched me. Helplessly, my lips rose at the corners. “You'll thank me when you don't catch pneumonia.”

  “My hero.” She crinkled her eyes, all slyness and sass. For a long moment that got away from me, I just watched her.

  Breaking the bubble, I opened the door and let the umbrella expand. It kept the worst of the drizzle off of me. Circling to her side of the car, I waited for her. The wrinkles on her brow said, 'Why are you being such a gentleman?'

  She never voiced the thought, so I was freed from having to think of a response.

  Together, our shoulders close to snuggling as we shared the umbrella, we climbed to her apartment door. We were masquerading as a wandering couple. Anyone catching a glimpse of us would have thought we were about to kiss under the canopy, or stumble into the apartment, cheeks flushed and our eyes dazzling as we laughed and got frisky.

  Crushing the umbrella's handle, I stood over her as she bent for her keys. Marina and I were no giggling, cavorting couple. We were not dating or any interpretation of the word. Imagining it was ridiculous and pointless.

  But I imagined anyway.

  “Huh,” she said next to me. Her face was screwed up, tense lines and confusion.

  “What is it?” I asked, noting how she had her hand perched on the door knob like it was a grenade.

  Briefly eyeing me, she completed the turn of the handle and led us inside. “Nothing. Come on, I'll get something hot going.” Stepping over newspapers, she headed right into her kitchen and didn't look back at me.

  I watched her shake her hair, smoothing water from the top. The ends were curling like vines from the weather. It was cold inside. Worse than the last time when I'd been here with Jacob.

  Shaking the umbrella out, I used it to shut the door so I didn't need to touch it. I was still keen to leave no fingerprints. I didn't plan to come here again after today.

  In the kitchen, Marina ran water from the sink. “Your choices are green tea, or this package of lemon that might be full of toxic mold.”

  Standing in the doorway of the kitchen, I folded my arms. “I like to live dangerously, but green tea is fine.”

  She put two mismatched mugs onto the counter. “Good call. I'd hate to worry about explaining your corpse to the cops.” Her smile was brittle.

  We stood together in that tiny room. It was barely enough space for the stove on one side, a cupboard on the other, and her in between. With me blocking the exit, an easy thing to do with my size, Marina couldn't escape.

  “The cops,” I said softly. “You wouldn't call the paramedics first?”

  She leaned on the opposite wall and shrugged. “Would you?”

  Marina poisoning herself would do me no good, even if she thought otherwise. Looking her up and down, I reached over and knocked the lemon tea package into her too-full trash with the back of my hand. “I told you,” I said briskly. “I'll help you find your man. You can't do anything if you're croaking from toxic tea.”

  “That's an easy claim to make.”

  “It's the truth.”

  Crossing her arms, she pushed into the dented wallpaper like she wanted to melt away. “It's the top half of the truth.”

  The tiny kitchen was getting warm. I adjusted my heavy jacket. “How do you mean?”

  There were razors in her smile. “You can't let me die yet, can you?”

  I did everything in my power to keep my face neutral, but she must have seen something or felt something.

  She said, “If I just died right now—right here—it would fuck you and Jacob over. Right?” Her voice was heating up, she'd stopped leaning away and was now hunching towards me. “That's your real fucking truth! If I die before you and him get my letter, you know you're screwed!”

  Looking down my nose at her, I forced my hands to remain still at my sides. “Why
are you bringing this up?”

  She was breathing heavy. It put all the wrong images in my brain. Her beautiful eyes shrank, becoming sharp black diamonds. “Because I didn't think you'd want out of our contract so bad that you'd break into my fucking apartment just to try and find the letter.”

  The bones in my spine became barbed wire. I came close to asking how she could know about that. Hadn't we been careful? We'd put everything back like it was.

  Then it hit me.

  Shit.

  I remembered how she'd reacted when she was opening her front door. Unlike when she'd let me in the first time, it hadn't jammed. It should have jammed. Jacob's lock-picking must have fixed the mechanism.

  “You really are perceptive,” I murmured.

  Next to us, the tea kettle started to whistle. Neither of us looked. “Whatever you did, you fixed my lock. That door turned like silk. Thanks.” She spit the last word out, abandoned it. “By the way, I noticed you skulking around last time, like I was stupid enough to leave the letter sitting out on my table.”

  At least she didn't know I'd crept into her room while she slept and investigated her phone, too. “Why are we having this conversation?” I asked.

  “Because it's been on my mind!” Unfurling her arms, she tugged at her hair. “I need to know what you and Jacob have planned. How do I know you'll really help me find the guy I'm after?”

  The fury in her stare had my heart thumping. I'd been avoiding this girl for three days, and here she was, inches away and filled with a wildness that intrigued me. So little scared her. “Marina, what are you afraid of?”

  Flinching, she leaned over to turn off the stove. The tea kettle's scream was becoming too much. “Lots of things.”

  “No,” I said, curiosity on my tongue. “What are you afraid of?”

  She rubbed her inner wrist. Her silence stretched, so long I thought she wouldn't answer me. When she did, her voice was a whisper. “I'm afraid you'll kill me... before I can kill him.”

  “Failure scares you.”

  She snapped her glare to me, held it there. “I'm getting deja vu,” she muttered.

  I'd moved closer, we both noticed it at the same time. I stood over her, my shadow darkening her toffee skin. Marina's skull tapped the wall, her body arching away from me.

  “You're really not afraid of dying?” I asked.

  She swallowed loudly. “After I avenge my family, what else is left? I don't care what happens to me.”

  She didn't care?

  Staring her down, I realized I didn't believe her.

  From where I was, I could see the indent in her lower lip. “You want to know what we plan to do with you.” The center of my brain was tingling with her nearness. “Tell me what I could say that would soothe your frazzled nerves.”

  Her lashes touched her cheeks, she looked away. “I'm not nervous.”

  My fingers closed on her throat. It was a soft touch, just to feel her blood flutter. Her gasp was small and delicious. “Yes,” I whispered. “You are.”

  Her hands came up, grabbing my forearm through my jacket. Something spiraled in her stare, a passion and pain that fought to escape. Marina studied me with expectation, and I hovered and waited and ached to push forward.

  But I didn't. I don't know why.

  She said, “You seriously want to know what would calm me down?” She clamped down on my wrist, gripping like I'd fade away. “Say... say that before this is all done, you and Jacob won't turn around and murder me. Promise you won't kill me.”

  What the fuck was this situation we were in? I was bent over the angelic face of a woman who walked the line between wrecking me and buckling under my presence.

  “You know what I'm capable of. In your gut, you know what I am.” Cupping her chin, I would have forced her to look at me... but she already was. “What about you? Could you promise that you'll give us the letter before you get yourself killed? If you don't, Jacob and I are screwed.”

  Under my fingers, her plump lips became a wry grin. “The letter really is all you think about, isn't it?”

  I said nothing. How could I admit there was something—someone—that I thought about constantly? Someone who dared to say she wasn't scared of death and refused to back down from me.

  Marina Fidel owned more of my brain every minute.

  Screwing her eyes shut, she let her hands fall from my arm—to my chest. “Yes. I'll promise that. Before anything happens to me, I'll get that letter to you, somehow. I won't let my revenge ruin you both.”

  Her nails dug in, pulling me to her so our foreheads touched. Her warmth and her smell—raindrops and cocoa powder—assaulted me.

  In our tiny corner of this filthy city, Marina swore that she would not abandon me. It was what I needed from her. Yet it left me feeling hollow.

  “Give that bastard to me,” she hissed against my lips. “Get me that man, let me pull that trigger, and I promise... Kite... I swear I'll give you that letter.” Her voice scraped over my heart. “But only if you promise me.”

  Gliding my palms upwards, I held Marina by the nape of her neck and turned her so she could see the intensity in my eyes. I wondered what else she saw there, because she licked her lips and shuddered. “I can't promise you—”

  “No,” she cut me off. “I get it. You won't promise not to kill me. Fine. I can accept that. Honestly, part of me was prepared for that possibility.” A cynical aura slid over her. “I just want you to tell me that you won't put my body in a fucking barrel.” Genuine distress mixed with the fuzzy edges of her growing desire. “Don't do that to me, Kite. Please don't go that far.”

  How strong was this woman that she could admit she was ready to face her own death to get what she wanted? How deep did her scars go and why did they excite me so much?

  Marina was drawing me in, and in doing so, she was losing herself.

  I recognized the rawness in her throaty breathing. The red tinge to her mouth and skin.

  I loved it.

  My answer was an explosion of hands and teeth and one strained groan. Fuck, I'd needed to kiss her for far too long.

  She gasped, trying to taste me and talk simultaneously. “Say you won't! Say it!”

  I removed her coat carelessly. We both heard stitches tearing. “No barrel, no acid. I swear it.”

  Marina's fingers dove for my jacket, ripping it open and letting it fall. “Is this... should we be doing this again? We shouldn't, right?” she asked huskily.

  “No,” I agreed, shoving myself against her. “This is a fucking awful idea.” My cock thickened in my pants. She couldn't avoid the firmness of my raging erection as I rubbed it against her hip.

  She whimpered, a palm slipping across my stomach. “Why do it, then?”

  “Because I'm the king of fucking bad ideas.” Snaking fingers down, grasping her waist, I growled against the dip of her shoulder. “I need to have you. I can't help myself, and I don't want to try.” Her body tensed under me, I pressed her against the wall with my weight. “Tell me to stop. If you really don't think we should do this... tell me to stop.”

  Her nails knotted up in the hem of my shirt. “You'd really stop if I asked?”

  My smirk went ear to ear. I glided it along her trembling jugular. “No. I wouldn't.”

  Spinning her, I pushed her face against the cracked wall. We'd leave new cracks by the time we were finished.

  Marina was shaking, her ass pushing urgently against my hard-on. I loved knowing that she wanted this as badly as I did. We'd tip-toed around each other for days, as if that would fix anything.

  Me, a man who had killed and would certainly kill again. And her, a woman who recognized I was deadly, but here she was, moaning for me.

  We were broken, and we knew it.

  Reaching around, I cupped her breasts, felt the wire in her bra. It came away without looking, the black garment falling to the floor. Through the texture of her shirt, I thumbed her already firm nipples. Her answering purr was glorious.

&nbs
p; My cock pulsed, screaming for air.

  One hand unbuttoned her jeans, the other my own pants. Simultaneously, we were bare from the waist down. I took a single eyeful of her round, plump ass and felt my whole center throb. I dug my fingers in, watching the soft flesh as I kneaded.

  Marina whimpered when I spread her ass cheeks, tugging her panties into the crease. Pushing on her lower back, I forced her to arch. The motion revealed the appetizing sight of her pussy from behind, silken panties clinging to her lips. This woman—she was designed to lull my senses.

  Stroking between her thighs, I felt the soaked cloth. “Ah,” she whispered, breathing so hard I couldn't hear anything else.

  Rocking my hips pushed my erection into the dip of her ass. Grinding, I liked what I felt—but I wanted a better visual. Peeling my boxers down, my cock bounced into view, heavy with its arousal.

  “Kite,” she mewled, bucking into me and ruining my self-control. She dug my stiff length between her plush cheeks. The sight had my heart on the verge of exploding. I ached to feel her tight cunt again.

  “You're ridiculous,” I groaned, ripping her panties until they shredded, becoming useless fragments on the kitchen floor. The elastic snapped, Marina gasped, and I could hear nothing but the blood in my ear drums. “How? How are you so perfect?” I asked, pushing her supple legs apart with my palms.

  Her pussy spread, pink and tempting.

  Sliding my cock along her entrance, I saw strings of her juice clinging to the veined length. Each slow stroke stole more of her, until my whole cock was shining without even going inside.

  Leaning away, I watched the web of stickiness follow me. It tied us together, connected us at our most primal parts.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Marina eyed me with passion bordering on anger. She didn't like how long I was taking. “Stop teasing me, Kite.”

  “I like teasing you.” Gripping her wide hips, I yanked her against me. Pre-come dripped from my swollen cock-head, glistening on her ass cheek. “I like hearing you pant, and moan, and feeling your nerve endings go haywire.” I liked everything about this girl.

  Except for her future.

  Groaning low, she went to push off the wall and turn. Smoothly, I wrapped her hair in one hand and shoved her back on the cool surface. Her tiny squeak had my cock growing harder, impossibly harder.