In all honesty, making the media, the police, and tourists lie awake in their beds at night in one fell swoop gives me a sense of quiet satisfaction. I don’t plan to do the people I check up on any harm, unless their actions demand it. The mere fact of my ability to track these people is usually enough to scare them into silence.
They know I won’t hesitate to take their daughters again.
As I glance up at the apartment again, I catch a whiff of Delaney’s perfume, her scent still on my body after the moments of passion we shared earlier today. I feel a smile come across my features despite myself, and I lower the Kindle a moment, realizing that I’m just glazing over the words while the fresh memory of her occupies my thoughts and makes my cock start to stiffen again, so soon after being spent.
When I first hauled Delaney into the van, I hadn’t expected anything like this to happen, but the more time that spoiled brat spends around me, the more I want to fuck her until she’s exhausted, her tight cunt hugging my cock while she begs for more.
And she will.
She’s an interesting girl. There’s a real power of observation in that head of golden hair, a sharpness I hadn’t anticipated when I took her. She’s either ignored her potential all her life or willingly covered it up under a veneer of cheerleading, parties, and flashy clothes. Maybe I ought to rip those expensive outfits off her while I show her what she can really do under it all.
I give my head a light shake, reminding myself that she’s just another hostage — just another daddy’s princess waiting to be rescued by his money, the only thing it sounds like Delaney’s father knows how to use. I find myself smiling again, pretending to re-read the page I’m on for the fourth time. I would be surprised if I’ll ever find a man quite as pliable and spineless as Delaney’s father. When we first reached out to him, he was nearly incoherent at the thought of his precious little girl being in danger.
And from what Delaney said, it sounds like she picks up on her father’s weakness, too. Small wonder the girl is so bored, with such a pitiful man in her life. It makes me want to follow through with my threat of keeping her for myself all the more.
And what if I do?
That’s a thought that’s crossed my mind a few times. I wonder what the look on her face would be if I told her I’d settled on that? I smile. The way she’s been acting, she might well like the idea.
She’s desperate for me. The feeling of her wet pussy on my cock earlier told me all I needed to know about that, and I’m going to get so much more out of her before I’m done with her.
I find myself wondering what her upbringing must feel like, to be surrounded by people whose only motivation in life is the things money can afford her. No wonder she finds herself surrounding herself with trinkets and idle pastimes — it’s all she’s been taught her whole life. I grunt, frustrated with myself. Why do I find myself sympathizing a little with this spoiled American? She’s basked in the lap of luxury all her life. But that just makes me want to fuck her harder until she begs for something real in her life, a cock that can’t be bought with money.
Before my cock gets harder, I’m snapped out of my thoughts by the sight of the door opening and the father of my old victim heading out, about five minutes late of schedule. I let him get a few paces before I open my car door and start to follow him, silently. The streets of Barcelona are usually bustling with activity, but in this part of town, an upscale neighborhood that rich locals and expats alike envy, it’s rare that anything more than a few passing cars disturb the evening’s peace.
But even as I tail my man, I can’t get the thought of Delaney out of my head. In my mind, I’m grasping her breasts again, shoving my fingers into her sopping cunt and teasing it to do what I please. Maybe I should pay her another visit when I get back, finish the job I started? If she thought that was all I was going to give her, she’d made a terrible mistake.
I’m so wrapped up in my thoughts that I almost make a sound as I gain ground on my target. But I catch myself, and just as he’s about to cross a street, I step up to his side, smiling at him as if he were an old friend I’d just caught up with.
“Good to see you again, Señor Gonzalez,” I greet him in Spanish, and he does a double-take at me, his eyes widening as he realizes who I am. I watch his face pale and his hands start to shake immediately. “Keep your eyes forward, we’re having a friendly conversation,” I say in a low tone, and he complies like an obedient dog, bobbing his head.
“We paid,” he replies quietly, his voice hoarse, but I give him a pained smile and narrow my eyes.
“That doesn’t sound like a friendly conversation, Señor Gonzalez. So tell me,” I say, raising my voice to a normal speaking tone, “how is the family these days?”
He walks with me a few paces before finding his voice, strained to keep it level. “Very well,” he says, “my wife j-just got a promotion. I’m very proud of her.”
“Ah, I can imagine — she must be a sharp woman to be doing as well in this economy as she is!”
“Yes.”
“And I presume your daughter is taking after her swimmingly? I hear she’s joining the journalism club at her university.”
The man looks at me with fear in his eyes, and I smile cordially back at him. My knowledge of his daughter’s movements seems to have spooked him. I can’t blame him — few of my clients think about the fact that I keep track of the whole family after our business is concluded.
“You ought to tell her she should be careful, running with the journalist crowd,” I say meaningfully. “They’re prone to gossip. Friends who talk fast and loose around the media can be dangerous at best. Attract unwanted attention. At least, most concerned fathers would think so.”
He stares at me in disbelief, but I can see that he’s understood my message perfectly, and I grin, patting him on the back as we walk.
“I’m only looking out for you, my friend. You never know what kind of trouble a girl can get into on campus, even from something as simple as chatting with the campus police,” I add, shooting him another look.
The man seems on the verge of tears, and finally, I gently lead him into an alley where we can talk in privacy, and immediately, thinking his life in danger, he breaks down in front of me.
“I swear, we haven’t betrayed our silence, sir,” he whimpers without my even bothering to take out a gun. “But you should know — the police, they have asked questions. We got a call not long ago, someone claiming the department is asking for locals to report ‘suspicious activity’ in the area.”
“Oh?” I say, raising an interested eyebrow. This, I don’t know about. He nods fiercely.
“But when I asked my neighbors about the call, none of them say they’ve received it. I think they called us alone. But I swear to you, we’d never breathe a word — we’re eternally grateful for how well you treated our daughter! She’d be dead if you hadn’t been guiding the whole thing — thank you, sir, thank you!”
“Enough whimpering,” I scold the man, bored by his near-groveling. “Good of you to tell me this, though.”
This is troubling news. If the police are asking questions, then that means there’s been a leak, and they’re on our trail. If it was Sandro, then that problem has already been taken care of, but there’s no way of knowing if he was the only traitor. Suddenly I regret finishing him off without torturing him for information first. How far have they gotten? What other people have they reached out to? I’m going to have to make a lot of visits in a short amount of time, it seems. I cannot risk the police getting involved at this stage of my game. The media will tear it apart, leaving us no breathing room to continue.
“Of course, sir,” he says, bobbing his head again.
“Now take a walk around the block before you get your cigarettes, Señor Gonzalez,” I say, putting on my fake smile again. “You’ll want to clear your head before going back to your family — oh, and tell your wife her new teal dress suits her well,” I add, and he swallows hard, nodding.
“Of course. We’re in your debt, sir.”
“Remember that, Señor Gonzalez,” I say as I start to walk off, looking at him over my shoulder with a kind smile and speaking casually. “If you don’t, I’ll have one of those hands of yours sent to your mother in a shoebox.”
10
Delaney
I suck in a long, deep breath and carefully lie back onto the stony roof terrace, staring up at the silky black sky speckled with constellations. The stars are bright and stunning this evening, and since Darios has been gone for hours and hours, I’ve gotten bored enough to venture out — at great risk. I’ve been trapped in the villa long enough with nothing to distract me that I have taken to memorizing the guards’ routines.
Even without an actual clock to go by, I am learning how to track the passage of time, if only roughly, simply by watching the rising and falling dance of the sun and moon. I know what times the guards come and go, how long each individual man spends at the post outside my door. They very rarely check in on me, choosing to just stand outside. Probably because they know I’m very unlikely to try and escape again after my first spectacular failure.
But one thing I have done is lean as far out the window as I can manage without falling, squinting up at the building. There is an old column near my window which has been whittled away over the course of many decades, and I have been eyeing it for a while now, sizing up the chunks missing out of its circular trunk. I determined that it looked at least somewhat climbable — enough to hoist myself out the window and up the column to pull myself onto the mostly-flat roof of the villa.
It was obviously a very dangerous choice, but it was one I do not regret. In fact, I am finding that I rather enjoy taking big risks lately. In particular, my decision to give up my virginity to Darios was a bit of a leap from my usual prudishness. I’ve guarded my purity for so long, not allowing anyone past the fortress I’ve built around myself. It’s safer to keep the walls up. It’s better to keep people standing on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of your greatness, the shining light behind the curtain. I always believed that once I gave in to what every man wanted from me, I would lose some of that shine. Every book, movie, and television show I encountered only reinforced that belief.
From what I have seen, people — especially men — only want what they can’t have. And once you give them what they ask for, they’re done with you.
I always assumed my first time would be magical and romantic. Flickering candles, soft music, and gentle kisses. Boys tend to put girls like me high up on unreachable pedestals, pouring all their loftiest expectations into us. Brandon looked at me like I was something simultaneously fragile and consumable. He was always asking for permission to kiss me, pressuring me to go further, his hands trembling as he reached to unclasp my bra.
I always stopped him.
“It’s just not the right time,” I would tell him, shrugging apologetically as I pulled my cardigan back on. He would fix me with that doleful stare, the telltale muscle in his jaw twitching as he tried to calm himself down and act nonchalant. But I knew it killed him every time, just a little bit, to have me rip the gift right back out of his hands. And I’m sure he thought I was just doing it to tease him. Perhaps there was a part of me who did it for that reason. But overwhelmingly, it was because I was scared that once he got what he wanted from me… he would leave. I was afraid to give my power to anyone else.
Brandon was insistent. And persistent. He tried everything — sweet talk, bribery, guilt tripping. He begged me and promised me the world some days, and other days he would threaten to leave me for someone who would “give into his love.” Those days generally culminated in a huge fight, at the end of which he would chase me out into the street spouting off a string of insincere apologies. He would then swear to me, “Delaney, I promise I won’t ever try to push you into something you don’t want to do,” only to start the whole cycle over again the next day.
He just couldn’t let it go, no matter how many excuses I gave him. For years, it felt like we were participating in some slow-motion tug of war, with a mattress in the middle. He pulled from one side, trying to rope me into sleeping with him, but I just kept pulling my own weight.
Fighting back. Constantly.
It was incredibly tiring, and it cemented my suspicion that the only thing men would ever value in me is my sexuality. Well, that or my ability to stroke their ego in other ways. My father, for example, spoils me like mad, but only because I bat my eyelashes at him and rush to his arms to tell him about my vapid daily life. I greet him with a big smile when he comes home from work. I bake him cookies to take to the office. I basically play the role of a trophy-wife-in-training, and I do it well. I make him feel like he’s the best father in the world, like everything I do is an effort to make him proud of me. Sure, he does want me to succeed, but just so that he has the bragging rights to tell his pervy old friends at the country club that his daughter is a pretty, popular prom queen. I always suspected that those same old guys would go home to their Georgia mansions and think about me in bed.
In fact, I pretty much assume that every man I meet is just hoping for the opportunity to get me naked and take something away from me. I have to stay vigilant and guard my most precious gift. Keeping up with the chase is exhausting, but I’ve had to do it for all these years.
Until now.
I sigh, blinking up at the glorious night sky above me, feeling a little lost. What kind of woman am I shaping up to be if the first man I give myself to is also my murderous, dangerous captor? What does it say about me that I lost my virginity directly after watching him push a man through a high window? Of course, it does make me feel slightly relieved to remember that Darios did save my life. The man who was trying to take advantage of me… he could have killed me. Easily. Darios stepped in and took my side without a moment’s hesitation. He could have simply let his guard carry on and do what he wanted with me. But he didn’t.
Perhaps it was only fitting that his ultimate act of bravery be rewarded with my near-ultimate act of sacrifice. He saved my life, so I gave him my body.
I shudder to myself, closing my eyes and reliving the hot touch of Darios’s hands grasping at me possessively, maneuvering me around like I was a feather-light doll or something. He handled me like I belonged to him, like he knew exactly what I wanted him to do.
Like he’d thought about it many times before.
I lick my lips, letting my hands wander down my body and between my thighs, slowly pulling up the hem of my black dress. Strangely enough, out here on the roof in the open air, I have the most privacy I’ve enjoyed in a long time. Even when I bathe in the one working bathtub in the little round room down the hall from my cell, two guards stand by to keep watch. Obviously I insist on having them look away… and they don’t listen. As if I could possibly escape while naked in a bathtub.
But now, nobody is around to gawk at me. To look me up and down like hungry animals. I’m finally alone, at least for a little while. I close my eyes and begin to gently, tentatively stroke my dampening slit, feeling every nerve in my body flutter to life under the stars. I begin to move my hips ever so slightly with the rhythm of my fingers, my lips parting to emit a soft gasp.
And then I’m interrupted by the sensation of something — or someone — grabbing hold of my shoulders. My eyes fly open to reveal the shadowy outline of Darios’s face, hovering over me wearing a cruel smirk. Immediately embarrassed, I try to struggle out of his grasp, hastily shoving my dress back down over my thighs. But he catches me in his arms and pulls me close, breathing roughly in my ear.
“I thought you promised not to sneak out again, little girl,” he growls, sending a shiver down my spine. His fingers brush across my neck and I gulp.
“I wasn’t trying to run away or anything,” I explain quickly, my body tensing up with mingled fear and desire. I can feel the smooth, hard shape of his cock against my back as he pulls me into his lap, gazing down at my face. “I-I just wanted
a little privacy.”
“Oh, I can see that,” Darios says, one of his hands trailing down to dip between my thighs. I let out a startled whimper and close my legs tightly, but he only laughs. “Did you really come all the way up here just to be alone?”
I nod. “Y-Yes, I just needed to get some time for myself. The men — they’re always watching me, and I—”
“— and you wanted a place where nobody could see you touch yourself,” he interrupts, clucking his tongue in faux pity. “You filthy little bird. Didn’t I give you more than enough the first time?”
I can’t even manage to choke out a single word in response. I can’t remember the last time I was ever truly speechless, but right now, I definitely am. Darios deftly hoists my dress up to my hips to give himself a better view of my thighs and pussy. I hold my breath involuntarily as he reaches down and starts to softly stroke my clit in a circular design. I arch my back and lean into him limply, feeling every part of my body fall to mush in his arms. The walls I have built so tall and strong around my heart, around my sexuality, are crumbling in heavy piles around me.
It blows my mind that Darios, this hulking, dangerous criminal of a man, can so effortlessly strip away all my best defenses. He can break me down and split me asunder with just a simple touch.
“That’s my good girl,” he whispers in my ear. His warm breath on my neck makes me shiver in ticklish delight and he laughs, starting to quicken his circling of my clit until I’m writhing in his arms, gasping for release. This time he doesn’t pull away just short of the finish line — he ever so gently pinches my clit between his thumb and forefinger at just the right moment and I cry out, my body shuddering with a long-awaited climax.
“Ahh, Darios!” I breathe, my chest heaving. He cups my pulsing mound, holding me through the trembles of my orgasm even as his other hand slides down inside the bustline of my dress, slipping down to caress my breasts. I am nothing more than modeling clay in his hands, my every insecurity and worry retreating into the shadows, to emerge at a later time when I’m alone. For now, I belong to Darios, and nothing can distract me from the sensation of his hands roving down my body.
Hitman - the Series: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Collection (Alexis Abbott's Hitmen #0) Page 82