“We noticed,” Remi crowed over his shoulder. “Good for you.”
I didn’t like it. She might say she was okay, but I wasn’t sure which would give me more nightmares, reliving the explosion or imagining what had happened to her afterward. I pulled her tighter against me.
Abby clung right back.
She wasn’t afraid, was she? “Nothing’s gonna hurt you, little bird,” I whispered in her ear. “I promise. Nothing.”
Something warm and wet hit my neck. “I know.”
But knowing and believing were two different things. My own mind kept tripping over the fact that she was alive despite her being in my arms. It was going to take a while for both of us to believe she was safe. Home.
When we got to the safe house, one glance at my brothers had them nodding toward me. A silent agreement—they’d take care of everything else; Abby was mine. I whisked her straight through the house to the master bedroom and into the adjoining bath. Abby immediately sank onto the closed toilet lid.
“I feel like I could sleep for a week,” she said, “which makes no sense because I know I slept hard after they drugged me.”
I tugged at the hem of her shirt. “I need you naked.”
“Levi…”
I squatted in front of her, letting a hint of amusement sneak through, no matter how worried I was. “I need to see you, little bird. Feel you. Only then will I know you’re truly home.”
This wasn’t about sex, though it certainly could be if Abby decided that’s what she wanted. This was about absorbing her into me until I couldn’t find where I ended and she began. Keeping her against me until the ragged pieces of my fucked-up soul came back together in some semblance of order. I could wait for the healing, but for now, I needed reality desperately.
Abby lifted her arms without argument. I undressed her almost as if she were a child—shirt off, shoes off, pants, underwear, everything. Her pale skin gleamed in the overhead light. The bruises, though, were black holes sucking the life out of me. “Abby.”
“Hey.” She pulled my chin up till I met her eyes. “I’m here. Bruises can heal. Exploding can’t.”
I knelt on the mat at her feet and brought my hands up to take the weight of her breasts. Not for sex, but because I needed the weight of her in my palms. I eased in close and let my lips brush hers. She opened to me, just like always.
And just like always, I slipped my tongue inside, delved deep, sucked and stroked and reveled in the feel of my woman. For the first time in forever, the raging animal of a killer inside me was silent. The thirst for blood, the addiction to the adrenaline high. What high could be better than the one I’d found with Abby? The one I’d thought I lost, only for it to be found again.
I scooped her into my arms. “I’m getting the stench of them off you, off us.” I could still taste the ashy residue of the flash bangs we’d used, smell the aftermath of Redding’s death on my clothes.
“Levi? Levi, look at me.” Abby waited for me to look up. “I’m okay. I am. I can’t imagine you thinking you’d watched me die.” Her eyes took on a haunted glaze. “It doesn’t matter how many times I have to say it, but I will until it finally sinks down deep, for good. I am okay.”
“I love you.” The words were rocky and rough, but I meant them more than any words that had ever passed my tongue. “I love you. I can’t live without you.”
“I know.” Abby dug her fingers into my hair. “I’ve got you. Don’t worry.” She brought our foreheads together. “I love you, Levi.”
When I closed the shower door behind us, I closed out all the chaos—no more evil men, no brothers, no pasts, no danger and sorrow and agony too deep to be borne. In that small, warm, wet space, it was only Abby and me, and in the quiet beneath the water, I explored every inch of her, imprinting the feel of her on my mind and mouth and hands all over again, drowning myself in the joy of having her back. I showed her everything I knew about making her feel safe, and much later, when I finally lay beside her in the bed, spooned around her body, I knew I couldn’t ask for more than to spend the rest of my life just like this.
With Abby. For fucking always.
Epilogue
One Month Later
Surreal. That was the only word to describe this moment. Standing at the double vanity in the bathroom that had once belonged to my parents, marble and chrome features gleaming. Abby brushing her teeth in her underwear. Me shaving the stubble off my face.
Surreal.
Abby rinsed her mouth, placed her toothbrush in the little caddy right next to mine—surreal—and turned to face me. “You’re telling me you want a bat cave?”
A what? “You mean a man cave? No. I—”
“A bat cave. Like Batman. With his underground cavern of gadgets and deadly stealth car and all that.”
The glint in her eye told me she was teasing. I rolled mine. “I’m no superhero, little bird.”
She eased close, careful not to bump my arm as I scraped the razor over my cheek. “You are to me.”
My chest got tight.
“Plus, you want a bat cave.”
I rinsed the razor, then bent to cup water in my hands and splash it over my face just to cover the stupid grin I could feel trying to break free. I guess technically what I’d asked for as my thirtieth birthday present was pretty damn close—a “headquarters” in the basement of the mansion where my brothers and I could work. Maybe we’d cover the walls in rock and order our own version of Batman’s armored suit. In Kevlar, of course.
When I straightened, I snitched the towel from Abby’s hand and dried my cheeks. Abby ran a thumb down the side of my jaw. “Missed a spot.”
I had to kiss her then; she gave me no choice. Our lips met, parted, our tongues tangled, and heat surged through me, coalescing in my groin. The bite of my zipper as my cock hardened against it brought me back to reality far faster than I wanted it to.
I savored the taste of fresh mint and Abby on my tongue. “There,” I whispered against her lips. “Did I get it that time?”
“You get it every time,” she whispered back.
I rinsed the sink, and when I turned back to her, the mischief had left her eyes.
“You know, you don’t have to work anymore,” she said.
“Neither do you, but you’re still going back to school.” She hadn’t given up her dream of becoming a nurse despite the distractions I’d thrown into her life the past few months. Or maybe because of them. With the three of us around, she needed an escape into a more normal reality. Knowing that didn’t make me doubt our relationship anymore; it was what it was. We couldn’t be without each other, so we made it work, however we needed to. And with the changes in my life, I needed her with me more than ever.
Abby bit her lip, shook her head. “Nursing is… It’s not…”
“Dangerous?” I supplied. Because that was the difference. By nature, my job was deadly, sometimes to the people who did it, sometimes to the target. “Being a nurse isn’t guaranteed safety, you know.” It was a factor in her life that I couldn’t control, but I wouldn’t take her dream from her.
Abby wanted me safe. Wanted to live our lives without fear. She was having to adjust to the reality of me as much as I was having to adjust to the reality of what I’d become since I’d turned thirty. Redding was dead and Chadwick was in jail for his murder, along with Rathlin as co-conspirator in Abby’s abduction. Chadwick’s partner, Manassas, had helped us straighten out the legal issues surrounding my trust and my parents’ estate. As of five days ago on my birthday, the inheritance was completely mine, including the mansion. I was now majority shareholder in Hacr Technologies, and actively helping search for a new CEO. I had more money than I’d ever imagined—far more than I’d ever wanted—a lover I had every intention of making a permanent part of this life, and brothers who loved and needed me. It was all so normal.
So why did this normal man with a company to run and a fortune to oversee and a family to take care of need to take contracts as
a hit man?
Because having a normal life didn’t, in fact, make me normal at all. The killer still lived beneath the surface. He wasn’t going away, and I had come to accept that.
“Being an assassin has a lot less of a guarantee than being a nurse,” Abby was saying.
I hooked her around the waist and dragged her close. “Abby…”
“What?” she mumbled against my T-shirt. My nipple pebbled beneath her lips.
“You want to make the world a better place.” A statement, not a question. Abby would save the world if she could. She’d already helped hundreds of women just like her mother through St. Mary’s.
She nodded. That special Abby fragrance, vanilla and flowers, filled my nose. My cock perked up all over again.
“Me too,” I said into her hair.
Her arms sneaked around me, up my back, to fist in my shirt on either side of my spine. Holding on tight. Not letting go. I squeezed my eyes shut.
I might not be a superhero, but eliminating the bad guys, protecting the innocent—I made the world a better place too. That part of me that others might hate, that killer instinct, served a purpose. And I couldn’t give it up, not even for Abby.
What that meant for our future, how it played out in reality, I wasn’t sure yet. I had Abby to guide me through the minefield of society and the obligations having such a huge fortune entailed. And I had a secret life no one but Abby and my brothers knew about.
Holy shit, I was Bruce Wayne.
I choked back a laugh. Never tell Abby that. Ever. And yet I couldn’t keep a reluctant smile off my lips.
Abby raised her head, saw it, and kissed it away.
Long minutes later, she pulled back. “We need to get downstairs. Your brothers will be back with the food any minute.”
I’d never really celebrated my birthday. My brothers had been too young to remember dates, and the memories of my parents had been too painful to acknowledge the milestones they should’ve been there to see. Abby refused to ignore it. Though we were running a week late after working to get the house ready and us moved in, she’d insisted we celebrate. When asked to choose my favorite meal, of course it had been Miguel’s. Eli and Remi had gone to pick up our order.
The thought of Remi sent tension through my limbs. He’d been scarce since we’d resolved the whole Redding issue. I had a feeling I knew why—or rather, where he was disappearing to. But it wasn’t up to me to confront him, not again. I’d had my head up my ass about Abby for a year and a half, after all. Watching her pull a baby-soft sweater over her lace bra and slide tight jeans up her perfect legs, I had to believe that Remi would get straight just like I had. I just hoped whoever the woman was, she was worth it.
“Go on down,” I told Abby. “I’ll be there in a minute.” To celebrate my birthday.
Mind fucking blown.
After she headed downstairs, I crossed the massive master bedroom to the wall of windows at the opposite end. Though opaque from the outside looking in, the view from inside was achingly beautiful—the park-like backyard with its small patches of flowers scattered in strategic disarray; the thick forest that surrounded the house. If I strained, I could catch the glint of the creek curving through the trees.
All just as my parents had designed it. Their dream home, the place they’d chosen to raise three stair-step little boys.
I turned around, my stare taking in the master bedroom. The room my parents had died in. Redding had gutted it, turning it into an unrecognizable, over-the-top showcase. In the week before we’d moved in, Abby had the rooms stripped and redone in classic lines and warm colors. Though not the same as I remembered growing up, it somehow felt familiar, comfortable. Like the home my parents had built for us in the few years we’d all been together.
I could feel them now. Call it a memory, call it ghosts; I didn’t care. The warmth of their presence welcomed me, a balm I hadn’t known I needed, healing the nightmares I’d never been able to escape. Until now.
I basked in that warmth until the sound of a car horn honking outside pulled me back to reality. Remi and Eli had returned. With a hard clearing of the knot in my throat, I went out the door and down the stairs. To my family. To celebrate.
We were home.
∞
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Before you go…
The one woman I can’t forget. She has nowhere else to turn, except to me.
ASSASSIN’S HEART
Assassins 4
My brother believes he made me a killer. The truth is, I’ve always been different. I can smile while sliding a knife between your ribs—and not feel a moment of regret.
Until Leah.
A man like me shouldn’t have a family. But the minute I opened my eyes from a coma and saw her, I knew I’d forever be tied to her. A nurse who nurtures life. A mother.
I’ve stalked her for two years, unable to stop but refusing to give in to the need to have her. To love her. Until the night her daughter is taken. I’ll light up the world to get Leah’s child back to her.
And then I’ll walk away for good. Not because it’s the right thing to do, but because I know how she’ll look at me after seeing who I truly am.
She’ll see the murderer inside me. And God help me, but she’ll be right.
∞
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∞
Chapter One
Remi —
Brown sugar and butter melted on my tongue, bringing a groan to my lips as I waited in the gloomy garage. Abby’s oatmeal molasses cookies. The vague memories of my mother baking when Levi, Eli, and I were children didn’t include the flavors of finished cookies, but if the memories were heaven, oatmeal molasses cookies would have to be in there somewhere.
I took another bite.
I’d popped the last bit into my mouth when I caught sight of her. Fulton County Memorial needed actual fucking lighting in here to keep their employees safe, but even in the dim light I knew it was Leah coming out of the elevator onto the third floor of the parking garage. My Leah. Everything inside me stood up and took notice, like a live wire buzzing through my veins. Lighting up every nook and cranny of my body. That’s what she did to me every. Damn. Time.
Shifting to ease the suddenly tight stretch of denim across my dick, I picked up another cookie. Leah walked toward an old Toyota Camry with a booster seat in the back. A reliable car for a woman who didn’t make much despite her long hours and compassion. Compassionate people rarely earned what they deserved; it was the bastards like me that got ahead in this world. I waited for her to pull toward the down ramp, just out of sight, then shoved the rest of the cookie in my mouth, cranked my nondescript SUV, and followed.
Atlanta traffic was a bitch any time of day, but trying to get out of town in the evening... She’d have no chance to lose me, even if she knew I was behind her. Gridlock had us inching our way south, and from the way she rode her brakes, I knew she was as impatient as I to escape it. For far different reasons, but still. Her reason had blonde hair identical to hers, shades of yellow, caramel, and brown mingling together to provide a rich depth that made my fingers itch to touch it. Brown eyes just like hers too.
The child was six, I knew that. I knew her name and everything important about her, just like I did her mother. Not that either of them would ever know.
This far back, I couldn’t catch a glimpse of those brown eyes in the rearview mirror. I wished I could. Every time I fucking saw her, I ached to stare into those eyes. They’d mesmerized me from the first moment I looked into them, drugged and disoriented from the coma, but Leah’s dark eyes had stared down at me, grounded me, settled the fear in my gut.
There was nothin
g to settle the fear now, because that fear was reality—I’d never look into those eyes again. I would ache for her until I died, but I wouldn’t give in. Leah and her child deserved a lot more in this life than a man with blood on his hands.
My cell rang as we exited the freeway at Union City. Leah’s car headed west while I debated answering. I knew who was calling, and I knew he wouldn’t be happy with me. He never was lately. Not that I gave a rat’s ass, but I had no desire to waste time arguing.
I finally pressed the button on the console and answered. “Yeah?”
“Did the intel on our target pan out?”
No hi, how are ya? or even how’s it hanging, bro? Levi was all business except on the rare occasions that his girlfriend, Abby, could trick him out of it. He’d raised me since I was ten, so I was used to it.
“It panned out,” I told him. Butch Clarkson was definitely an abusive asshole. I didn’t know who’d put a hit out on him, but he deserved everything he’d had coming his way. His wife was currently in a long-term care facility from a “fall down the stairs” that hadn’t been an accident after all.
“Fine. Eli will start tracking his movements so we can—”
“Don’t bother.”
The silence that followed my words was heavy. Tense. Angry. And didn’t faze me in the slightest.
“Why shouldn’t I bother, Remi?”
“Because I took care of it.” Clarkson would never throw another woman down the stairs. His associates wouldn’t care, but I did.
Curses filtered through the speakers of the SUV. I barely paid attention, more interested in the little red Camry slowing ahead to turn into a neighborhood that was showing its age. The houses were a long commute from her work, smaller, with a bit more yard than new construction, but solid. Leah chose wisely, on a lot of things.
Assassin's Prey (Assassins Book 3) Page 16