Assassin's Mark

by Ella Sheridan

  Levi’s lips left mine. He moved to my ear, my neck, my shoulder, a trail of hard, sucking kisses that sent shafts of sensation straight to my core. I held my breath, waiting, wanting, a cry of need at the back of my teeth, and then his rough lips were gliding down my skin to meet my nipple. The tip crinkled up hard beneath his breath, begging where I would not.

  Levi didn’t let it beg for long.

  His mouth surrounding me brought tears of relief and torment to my eyes. The cry I’d held back escaped in a sharp burst of air. My hands went to his head without thought, pulling him harder against me, urging him to take more, always more. And it wasn’t enough. I needed him inside me, filling me. I wrapped my legs around his narrow hips and pulled.

  Levi sat up. Cold shock pierced my lust-fogged brain, jolting me back to conscious thought. “What—”

  A hard palm landed on the flat plain of my stomach and pressed me firmly into the mattress. “I'll give you my cock when I’m ready, not before,” he growled, the words gravel rough, dark…dangerous.

  Exactly who he was. How could I forget?

  I lay there, conflicted, bereft, staring at the ceiling, trying to push away the sense of loss. The need to hide swamped me, and yet I couldn't turn away, not with him between my legs, holding me down. But I could turn my head. Deny him with my words.

  “I don’t want to play games.”

  There was a pause. Weighted silence. And then Levi was leaning over me once more. “Abby, look at me.”

  I didn’t want to—or rather, I didn’t want to want to. But there was something in his command…

  That was it. The words were a command, but the tone…he was asking.

  I turned my head. Met his eyes. In the dark I couldn’t read him well, so I waited for the words, the tone, once more.

  “This isn’t a game,” he said. There was something almost…hesitant in the statement. Tentative. Except this was Levi we were talking about. There was nothing hesitant or tentative about the hardened assassin between my legs.

  One big hand cupped my jaw, his rough thumb running over my skin. “You gave me…something…back there. Let me return the favor.”

  Something? I'd given him not just something; I'd given him a part of myself. And he'd taken it, enjoyed it. So what else was new?

  I frowned beneath his touch.

  He made this sound in his throat, almost like he was clearing it, then, “Let me give you something now.”

  “What kind of something?”

  Instead of answering, he spread his legs in a vee, his knees pushing my legs wide. Cool air hit my overheated folds.

  “Some of us were built to take control,” Levi said, his voice like gravel as he stared down at the most vulnerable part of me.

  I flinched. “And I was built to be controlled; is that what you’re saying?”

  My voice quivered, damn it. I’d spent years honing my skills until every last molecule of emotion was hidden from my father, every uncertainty and fear buried until I was the perfect hostess, the perfect daughter. And yet here, now, with Levi, I revealed far too much—and it felt far more dangerous than it ever had with Derrick.

  Maybe Levi heard it, that note of vulnerability I couldn’t seem to hide. His big body lowered, blocking out all light, and covered mine, his breath whispering over my skin, my breast, my nipple. Sharp teeth grazed the hardened tip.

  I flinched again, this time at the zing of pain along too-sensitive skin. A punishment.

  “You enjoy what I can give you,” he said, his lips rasping my throbbing breast. “That’s not the same thing.”

  It felt like it was, but I didn’t want to argue. “What can you give me?”

  “Escape.”

  My snort had a corner of his mouth curving the tiniest bit before it hardened back into a determined line. "Think about it: how hot can you go, little bird?" He ducked his head and dragged the tip of his nose down the slope of my breast, down my rib cage, my hip, across the line where thigh met torso. When he came to the crisp curls protecting my mound, he nestled deep. "How bright can you burn? How hard can you explode?"

  My fists tightened in frustration, my jaw clenching against my answer. "I don't know." But I wanted to. God, I wanted to.

  Levi’s firm hands gripped the undersides of my thighs and lifted, up and out. "Then let me show you."

  I locked eyes with his across the expanse of my own body. Fire burned like molten metal in his gaze. I don’t remember choosing, but one minute I was locked in the secrets behind his eyes, and the next, my legs relaxed into his hold. Still, when his warm breath hit my naked lower lips, I instinctively tried to close my legs. The fact that I couldn't move an inch in his grip sent a wave of heat straight to my core.

  You like what I do to you.

  God forgive me, but I did.

  And then his tongue was on me, right there on my most intimate place. Lapping, laving. He traced every inch of my vagina, a murmur of pleasure escaping him when he reached the cream spilling from my core.

  He speared inside.

  “Levi!” My head fell back, my body clenching on the slippery invasion. “Levi, please!”

  His tongue retreated, then advanced again. My hands went automatically to my breasts, squeezing down, needing more, now. I panted his name again.

  “That’s it, little bird. Pinch those nipples for me.”

  I did. Levi replaced his tongue with his fingers in reward, his mouth moving up to surround my clit. When he sucked it inside, laving me with heat and wet and the most glorious pressure I’d ever experienced, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I squirmed, writhed, cried out beneath him, my body on fire, my need so high it hurt. I knew in that instant I would give him anything, promise anything, if he would just keep touching me.

  And if a part of me deep down, where I couldn’t even admit it to myself, wanted more?

  It would be disappointed, but my body wouldn’t. That would have to be enough.

  My walls tightened around Levi’s fingers until pain shafted through me with every thrust, and then it was there, the pinnacle, the oblivion I so desperately needed. It shattered me from the inside out, tore me into a thousand pieces. A high wail escaped as I crested the peak, Levi’s hands and mouth throwing me over. Long before I hit the bottom, everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty

  There was something hard underneath my head. Something moving. It took me a moment to figure out that the something was Levi’s chest, and the instant I did, I froze. I was wrapped around my captor like a limpet, head on his pec, arm over him, leg across his hips. And even more weird, he was letting me. Or maybe he was simply too deep in sleep and hadn’t realized what was up yet.

  I could feel something up, though, and it wasn’t Levi waking. At least not all of Levi.

  I didn’t dare move my thigh, but neither could I ignore the slowly firming line beneath it. How the man could want sex, asleep or not, had me baffled. He’d taken me twice more before we’d finally fallen into an exhausted sleep last night, which was probably how I’d ended up on top of him—we’d both been too worn-out to notice. And yet, even while sleep still dragged at me, I couldn’t resist the temptation to scan the landscape of Levi’s body beside and beneath mine. He was living, breathing, brutal power on display; even unconscious, no one would mistake Levi for weak.

  The ache deep inside my body agreed.

  Was this what I’d missed the morning after losing my virginity? What a normal morning-after was like? Two people, sated and sleepy, curled around each other as they came awake in the early morning light. I closed my eyes and held very, very still, absorbing the rise and fall of Levi’s chest, the heat of his skin against mine, the twitch of his penis beneath my thigh. For one crazy moment I let myself imagine that the two of us were normal, that he wasn’t an assassin intent on killing my father and I wasn’t his captive, forced to bend to his will whether I wanted to or not. We were simply lovers, wrapped up in each other. Alone. Satisfied. In love.

  Lost in
the fantasy, I turned my head. My lips brushed the pebbled tip of Levi’s nipple.

  The muscles under me instantly went rigid. Levi’s heartbeat thundered beneath my cheek. Instinctive rejection. Normal had been shattered the moment I kissed him.

  The covers rustled as Levi lifted them oh so carefully, then eased sideways, out of my grip. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, pretending—for him and for me—that I was asleep as he left the bed. I had no desire to see distaste in his expression or, even worse, pity. Nor did I want to look at what I couldn’t, shouldn’t have.

  The door to the bathroom closed. I rolled over and pulled the blanket over my head, blocking out the sun and prying eyes.

  Don’t hurt the innocent, they’d said.

  Right. Then why did more than my body ache? If, by some great stretch of the imagination, I managed to get out of this complicated mess of a situation, I should probably get ready for some massive therapy bills. For the next ten or fifteen years—or more.

  Levi came out of the bathroom. The weight of his stare sizzled through me despite the covers separating us, but I forced myself to breathe normally, pretend I was asleep until the faint click of the bedroom door closing registered in my ears. I threw back the covers, huffing random strands of hair from my face, and glared up at the rectangles of bright morning sky. Only when the tingling behind my eyes finally faded did I get up and dress.

  My mask was firmly in place when I walked into the living room. At first I didn’t realize the broad back visible in the desk chair wasn’t Levi—he and Eli might have different hair colors, but they shared the same build. Remi seemed to as well, though it was harder to tell with him lying on a bed, covered. Hopefully he’d wake soon, for his sake and for Leah’s. Someone deserved to get out of here, and she had a daughter to worry about; all I had was a megalomaniac of a father.

  Eli shot a glare over his shoulder as I moved closer. I’d put up with that look from Levi because a single glance from him could scare the crap out of me, but I wouldn’t let his brother have that advantage.

  “Who pissed in your corn flakes?” As if I couldn’t guess. The brothers shared a bond, that much was obvious, but like most siblings they also seemed to rub each other the wrong way.

  “Your father.”

  Great. “What did he do now?”

  Eli turned back to his screens, ignoring my question. Figures. With a shrug, I headed toward Remi’s room. A quick peek in told me the two occupants of the room were fast asleep—Remi still flat on his back as if he hadn’t moved all night, Leah curled up in the chair, her neck at an angle that made me wince.

  Since Levi was nowhere in sight, I assumed he was getting breakfast. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and went back to bugging Eli.

  “Remi’s still sleeping.”

  Eli snorted. “He’s probably the only one that got a full night’s sleep last night.”

  Considering the way Eli’s feet had hung over the edge of the couch, I figured it hadn’t been the most comfortable place to rest. “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be,” he said sourly. “All that caterwauling kept me up.”

  I choked on the sip of water I’d just taken. Fiery heat doused me, centering in my cheeks. I’d been lied to, lied about, photographed naked and exposed to my father, choked, and scared shitless—and yet somehow, knowing that Eli had heard us last night, had heard me, was more humiliating than all the rest. I stood, frozen, as the silence between us spread, took on weight, choking off my air like rough hands around my throat. Funny how, after the past few days, I knew exactly how that felt, and yet after all my years of social training, I had no idea of the appropriate response to someone’s commentary on how much noise you made during sex. They didn’t cover that in hostess school. My father certainly never—

  I cut that thought off. As long as I didn’t embarrass him, my father didn’t care what people said to me. Or did to me, apparently, if his lack of progress in finding me was any indication.

  The sound of the alarm beeping broke the heavy silence.

  Levi entered a second later, the smell of sausage and biscuits preceding him into the room. A loud growl rumbled through my empty stomach. Ignoring the noise and the humiliation still clinging to me, I hurried to grab the bags in Levi’s hands and take them to the kitchen to plate—anything to give me a few more minutes for my hot cheeks to cool. Leah’s portion went into the microwave. The men grabbed theirs without a thank-you and settled at the table.

  “You’re welcome,” I muttered. Being a hit man didn’t mean you had to lack manners, for goodness’ sake.

  When I turned with my plate in hand, Levi’s steely eyes were on me. I froze.

  An abrupt nod somehow transmitted his appreciation. I ducked my head, scrambled into a seat.

  “What did you find?”

  At first I thought Levi was talking to me, but Eli answered around a mouthful of biscuits and gravy. “The authorities are coming up blank. Hospital security reported an attack and the abduction of one of their nurses, but surveillance couldn’t identify the assailant and he was awake and ghosted out of there before Leah and Remi were reported missing.”

  “And nothing outside—no car, no pickup from someone else, nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Good.”

  What?

  The brothers didn't seem to notice my confusion, their attention on the food and each other.

  “Did you find Ray?”

  The skin around Eli’s eyes went tight. “No. Axe’s men don’t slip up often.”

  Who was Axe?

  “Ray did,” Levi said. “He underestimated his opponent—he thought Remi was alone. Big mistake.”

  They were talking about the man at the hospital. Ray. Who worked for someone named Axe. I looked from Levi to his brother and back again, an inappropriate bubble of laughter rising. Just another day searching for my killer coworkers. Totally normal.

  When had my life become so bizarre?

  When you slept with an assassin.

  The laughter died in my throat.

  “He’s just lucky I didn’t have time to really make him regret that mistake,” Eli grated out, his fist clenching around his fork. “And a witness.”

  No killing in front of witnesses—was that a rule too? If Leah hadn’t been in that room, Eli would’ve killed Ray. And yet, when I pictured the scene on the security cameras, Leah alone, unaware, Remi unconscious and vulnerable, I couldn’t bring myself to condemn that decision.

  I swirled my fork in the generous amount of gravy I’d dolloped onto my flaky biscuits. “Are you saying you know the men Derrick sent after you?”

  Levi glanced at me, his gaze dropping to my plate. A frown curved his lips. “Eat, Abby.”

  “But—”

  Levi’s stare burned into me. “Eat,” he said again.

  Why did he care? Frustration coiled in my stomach, but I couldn’t bring myself to spout the words—which upped the frustration tenfold.

  Across the table, a dark wing of an eyebrow rose on Levi’s granite-carved face. I forked up a bite and shoved it in my mouth, glaring the whole time. A useless rebellion, but a rebellion all the same.

  Totally useless. Levi turned his stare back to Eli. I chewed and swallowed.

  Eli ignored the byplay taking place. “You know he's not gonna stop. And neither will Axe. Ray’s ass is grass, but once Axe gets a contract, it gets finished, one way or another.”

  Levi grunted around his final bite of breakfast.

  My mind grabbed on to Eli’s words and wouldn’t let go. Derrick might’ve made a mistake in the first assassin he’d approached, but this new set wouldn’t stop. Had they taken the original contract, the one Levi had rejected? Had they succeeded?

  “What happened to the man?” I asked.

  Two pairs of narrowed eyes zeroed in on me. “Which man?” Levi asked.

  I took my time answering, trying to sort my own jumbled thoughts in the process—and, okay, also trying to make su
re I didn’t sound like a total idiot. “You said Derrick asked you to kill an innocent man. You researched him, knew who he was, but you couldn’t find any wrongdoing. What was their connection? It was big enough to kill for, if you’re telling the truth. That could be the biggest secret of all, the one that could stop all of this. Hit men expect to get paid, right?”

  Eli widened his eyes dramatically. “No, we do it for the good of humanity.”

  Smart-ass.

  “My point is, if you figured out why Derrick wanted the man dead, and his secrets came out, my…Derrick would be finished. Whatever he’s hiding would be out in the open. He wouldn’t be paying anyone to come after you then.” And hopefully whoever this Axe guy was would accept that.

  Maybe no one else had to die.

  I dared to meet Levi’s steel-gray gaze. “Follow the original trail, and you’ll find the real ammunition against Derrick. That’s what he’s trying to prevent by killing you, isn’t it?”

  “Your girl is smart, Levi.”

  Between one blink and the next, a shutter slammed down on Levi’s expression, his eyes hard on my face. “She’s not my girl.”

  I absorbed the blow with all the grace I’d been taught from childhood, refusing to look away no matter how the knife twisted in my chest. Levi was the one who dismissed me when he turned to his brother. Only the risk of Eli’s seeing how much it hurt kept my face blank.

  “How soon before Axe trails us here?” Levi asked.

  I noticed Eli kept his gaze glued to his brother’s, a small act of kindness I couldn’t help but be grateful for. “Let’s just say we need Remi to wake up sooner than later.”

  “Well, you got your wish,” a sleep-roughened voice said behind us. Leah stood in the door to Remi’s room, rumpled and groggy, her frown a severe slash across a tired face. “He’s coming out of it.”

  The brothers shot out of their chairs so fast they rocked backward; Levi’s actually fell over. I righted it as I rounded the table, then followed them into the sickroom. The men were surrounding Remi’s bed by the time I got there, peppering Leah with questions. I took up a spot at Remi’s feet and surveyed the brother I hadn’t truly met yet. Amber eyes clouded with sleep and pain stared back at me, a vee forming between his dark brows.