The Hitman Next Door: A Texas Bounty Novel

by Jackie Ashenden

  Then faintly he heard the sound of running water.

  Clearly Vivi had found the shower.

  He moved over to the doorway that led to the tiny bathroom and sure enough, the shower was on. The need to pull open the door and walk right in, catch her naked and wet, was so strong he’d nearly put out a hand to the door handle. But he stopped himself at the last minute, his heartbeat like a drum in his head.

  Christ, he wasn’t here to continue what they’d started with that kiss. He was here to kill any possibility of it happening again stone dead.

  The noise of the water shut off and maybe a minute later the door opened, and there she was standing in the doorway in front of him, her hair hanging damply down her back, wrapped only in a voluminous white bath towel. Her hazel eyes went wide, the most beautiful flush sweeping over her already pink skin. “Oh. Uh…hey.”

  He allowed himself one shameless look at her bare skin, then forced himself to meet her shocked gaze. “We need to talk.”

  Her mouth opened. Then shut. Then she said, “You want to talk? Isn’t that my line?”

  He ignored her. “I need to tell you what’s going on. About what happened last night.”

  She blinked. “So, you kissed the hell out of me just before, but suddenly you’d rather talk about last night?”

  “Of course,” he said impatiently. “Kissing you isn’t actually relevant to the situation.”

  “What do you mean not relevant to the situation? Rhys, I—”

  “Do you want to listen to me or not?” He pinned her gaze with his. “What I have to tell you is important.”

  She stared at him, her hands clutching at her towel, the shock beginning to ebb from her expression, leaving behind something that looked a hell of a lot like anger. “You asshole,” she said slowly and very distinctly. “You utter, utter bastard.”

  He frowned, not understanding. Why was she mad when he hadn’t even told her the bad parts yet? “Look,” he began. “There’s something you should know—”

  “No,” Vivi cut him off, reaching for the door, clearly intending to push it closed. “I don’t want to talk to you right now, Rhys Fox. God and they say women can’t make up their goddamn minds.”

  Wait, what? Rhys put his hand on the door and leaned his weight on it so she couldn’t pull it shut. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You told me you’ve wanted me for years then kissed me like you couldn’t get enough. And now you’re saying that wasn’t relevant, and that you have something more important to talk about?”

  “Yes, and?”

  Her chin came up, her hazel eyes glittering. “Do you have any idea, any idea at all of what you’re putting me through? You wouldn’t tell me anything last night and now you can’t wait to get it off your chest, and it's like that kiss meant nothing…” She stopped suddenly, as if she hadn’t meant to say it.

  But it was too late. He’d heard.

  An urgent, hot feeling coiled in his gut, the hunger he’d tried to put a leash on pulling hard against it.

  “What are you saying?” He didn’t know why he was asking, because pushing wouldn’t help matters. Yet something inside him wanted to hear her be clear. To say it. Out loud.

  The flush in her cheeks had deepened. “Nothing,” she said quickly, trying to shove at the door. “I need to get dressed—”

  “Vivienne.” He used her name, hard and flat. “Are you saying you wanted that kiss to mean something?”

  Rhys had one large, long-fingered hand pressed hard to the door and there was no way she could shut it. But that didn't bother her so much as the look in his eyes. Dark, dangerous, intense.

  She should never have opened her silly mouth, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d walked out, dressed in nothing but a towel, straight into the man who’d kissed her senseless earlier, and as she’d met his hungry gaze, even though she'd been desperately trying not to think about it for the whole hour he'd been away, her first thought had been of how much she wanted him to kiss her again.

  Then that hungry look in his eyes had shut down and he’d had the gall to tell her that the kiss that had changed everything for her ‘wasn’t relevant to the situation’.

  He’d been the one to totally explode her whole life and now he was saying that the one part of it that had made any sense at all, ‘wasn’t relevant’. It had made her so mad she could hardly speak.

  Or maybe you just don’t want to hear about the rest.

  There was no ‘maybe’ about it. She didn’t want to hear about the rest. But he couldn’t simply dismiss that kiss. No freaking way.

  She hadn’t meant to be quite so vehement about it, though, and now it was too late to take it back. Now he was staring at her, his gaze locked with hers like she was a target he was aiming at.

  If you tell him you did want it to mean something, then things will change.

  He was her stability. Her constant. Even in the years when he was in the military, she’d kept in contact with him, writing him letters which he would reply to, sometimes with a letter in return, sometimes with only a postcard. The contact with him had made her feel settled when she’d gone to college and everything had been new and strange. And when she’d gotten back home and was having trouble adjusting, his replies had reminded her of what normal life felt like again.

  She never felt like she had to try with Rhys. Never felt like there was a standard she had to live up to. When she’d failed to get into Harvard and she’d felt her parents’ disappointment like a blow, he’d simply given her a rare hug and told her that she didn’t need Harvard, that she was too good for the Ivy League anyway. And when she’d screwed up her first job interview and had written him an unhappy and dramatic letter about it, he’d merely sent her a postcard back with the words ‘I would kill to have someone like you on my team’.

  He never looked at her with unspoken disappointment at her failures the way her parents did. Not that her folks put obvious pressure on her or made it clear they were unhappy, but she felt it all the same. She’d always been conscious of wanting to make them proud of their decision to adopt her, to never give them cause to regret it. She’d worked hard to do well, to be successful and not let them down or disappoint them in any way. It was a treadmill she couldn’t get off of, because the more successful she became, the happier and more proud her parents were.

  Rhys had never needed that from her. He knew what it was like to be a foster kid, though his experiences had not been as happy as hers. He took her failures and her successes and never judged. And that’s what she’d needed from him. That’s why she’d never wanted to screw up what they had.

  But if she told him the truth, things would change, and that terrified her. Then again, she was already terrified by what had happened so far, the safe little life she’d built for herself blown apart. So what was one more scary thing?

  Besides, he’d been the one shattering her world with secrets and shootings, and kidnappings. With telling her he’d wanted her all this time. And he’d been the one scaring her. So why couldn’t she get a little of her own back? Set him on his heels. Surprise him. Shock him.

  He’d wanted her for years, right? Well, perhaps she could use that to give him a taste of his own medicine.

  Adrenaline pulsed through her at the thought. Just before, he’d barely been able to stop kissing her, all his usual cold control hanging by a thread. She knew him, had seen him in all kinds of situations, but nothing had ever got to him the way she had in that moment.

  And that was power. Power she could use right now.

  “Well?” The look in his eyes blazed. “Answer me.”

  Vivi lifted her chin, meeting that look head-on. “Yes,” she said and her voice didn’t shake one iota. “I did want it to mean something.”

  “What?” The metallic glint in his eyes was so sharp it felt like he could cut the towel away from her body with only a glance. “What did you want it to mean?”

  He was always so contained and
in control, but he wasn’t now. She knew it, could sense it. Could see the evidence of it in his intensely focused stare. Right now, the power was with her. So she used it.

  “This." And she opened her fingers, letting the damp fabric of her towel fall onto the rough tiles of the floor.

  There was a sudden and very dense silence.

  Rhys’s gaze never left her face.

  A dark kind of heat swept through her, the sound of her own heartbeat loud in her ears, electricity crackling between them. An electricity that had never been there before.

  She lifted her chin higher, excitement threading through the heat, the urge to push him harder gripping her. Nothing much ever had an effect on Rhys; nothing except apparently her naked body.

  "Well?” she asked in a very conscious imitation of him. “Does that answer your question?”

  He was standing very, very still. "Say it."

  "Say what?”

  "Tell me what you want." The words sounded scraped raw, the look in his eyes absolutely uncompromising.

  If she’d needed any more confirmation of how she affected him, then she had it. She’d never seen him look so desperate, because that’s what he was. Desperate. For her.

  Take this step and nothing will ever be the same again.

  But she’d already taken that step. She’d been the one to change things this time and now, seeing that look on his face, wanting her in a way no one else had ever wanted her… She wasn’t sure she wanted to go back.

  "You.” It was so easy to say, so simple to acknowledge. A truth that had been waiting for her all this time. "I want you."

  There was a second when he didn’t move, heat flaring like a bonfire in his eyes. Then he stepped into the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him. She lifted her hands to shield herself in a purely reflexive movement but he pulled them away, holding her wrists firmly in his fingers, sweeping a long, heated look down her body.

  She shivered, her skin prickling all over as the electricity between them intensified, her nipples hardening, that aching pressure between her thighs returning.

  Slowly he lifted his gaze to hers, his eyes almost black, a stain of red on his high, aristocratic cheekbones. And a burst of bone deep satisfaction went through her, because she hadn’t been wrong. She was the one who’d turned his eyes black and made arousal flush his skin. She was the one who’d blown his usual detachment sky high.

  He didn’t smile as he tugged her wrists toward him, drawing her close, guiding them around his lean waist until her arms were around him. Then he crossed her wrists at the small of his back and locked them in place with one hand, holding them pinned there. So her naked body was pressed up against the hard, hot length of his.

  Her breath was coming faster and faster, her nipples brushing against the cotton of his shirt, the friction making her want to draw away and yet press even closer. She couldn’t get over the heat of him, the hard feel of his body and that earthy, spicy intoxicating scent of his. It was as if she couldn’t get enough oxygen, as if she’d taken a step out of a plane and into thin air. And there was nothing to do but fall.

  His free hand caught her chin, tipping her head back, his gaze pinning her as surely as the strong fingers gripping her wrists at his back. And she realized in a sudden flash of insight that of course there was something to catch her as she fell.

  Rhys would.

  “I shouldn’t do this,” he said, rough heat edging the words. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  It was a strange thing for him to say and it send a shiver snaking down her spine. Rhys had never hurt her and she had no idea why he’d even think it. “What makes you think you will?”

  Uncertainty was in his eyes. It was an emotion she’d never seen there before and it shocked her, because if there was one thing Rhys wasn’t, it was uncertain.

  "You saw what I did to that guy who shot at you." His voice got rougher. "You saw what I can do."

  The hint of bitterness in the words made her chest feel tight. Sometimes she wondered what it was that he got from their friendship and once, she’d asked him. He’d told her it was because she was a good person and he hadn’t had a lot of good people in his life. She’d decided then and there to be all the things he hadn’t had. The person he trusted with his secrets, who gave him support and reassurance when he needed it. Who gave him companionship when he didn't.

  And she had. And that didn't stop just because of what was happening between them.

  “I did see.” She held his gaze. "You told me it was because you were protecting me and I believe you."

  “You don’t know what I am, Vivi.” The look in his eyes turned bleak. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  Her stomach lurched, foreboding threading through her. But she ignored it. Whatever he was, whatever he'd done, it didn't matter. None of what had happened earlier did. Not in this moment.

  "I know who you are," she said quietly. "You're my friend. And I trust you."

  “Christ, Vivi—"

  But she pulled one hand away from his imprisoning fingers and this time it was her turn to put a finger over his beautiful mouth. Stopping his words. “That is not relevant to the situation, Rhys."

  He stared at her, the expression on his face absolutely unreadable. Then it changed and he gave one short nod, as if he'd made a decision,

  Reaching up, he gently took her hand away from his mouth and guided it back to where he still held the other, at the small of his back. "I'm going to tell you what to do, okay?" The rough note in his voice had gotten even more pronounced. "And it's very important that you do it. I can't…do this if you fight me."

  She had no idea what he meant by that, but it wasn’t the time for questions, not given the ache of desire that was getting stronger and stronger inside her, so she gave a small, jerky nod anyway.

  “Good girl,” His gaze dipped to her mouth, his hand sliding from her chin down to her throat, his fingers wrapping around her neck in a gentle but firm hold. “Keep still.” Then he lowered his head, his breath ghosting over her skin, and his mouth pressed against the side of her throat, burning like an ember.

  A shudder swept through her, goose bumps rippling everywhere as his mouth opened and his tongue touched her, licking her. Then his teeth closed around the sensitive tendon at the side of her neck in a soft but very definite bite.

  She made a hoarse sound as a fiery arc of sensation raced through her, then again as he bit her a second time, his hold on her neck shifting, his mouth moving to the base of her throat. Pressing kisses there, and small, precise licks.

  Vivi struggled to get a breath, her awareness narrowing to all the places his big, hard body touched hers, to where his mouth was tasting her skin, to the brush of his fingers as he released his hold on her neck, trailing lower and lower. Finding the curve of her bare breast and following it.

  God, this was so hot. So unbelievably hot. Sex for her had been nice but nothing special, but this… This was something else entirely. And it was Rhys doing this to her. Rhys touching her. Rhys, her friend.

  “Look at me, Vivi,” he ordered.

  She didn’t even think about protesting, staring up into his intense black gaze, mesmerized by the heat she saw there. Then she jerked in his grip as his thumb brushed over her nipple, a gasp escaping her as pleasure jolted the length of her body.

  “Do you like that?” He watched her as he did it again, teasing her nipple in an agonizingly slow back and forth, obviously gauging her responses.

  And she couldn’t help but give them to him, nodding jerkily, unable to speak.

  “Tell me.” Another soft order, his thumb moving in a lazy circle.

  Vivi inhaled and tried to find her voice. “I…l-like it.”

  “What about this?” His gaze was full of dark heat, studying her as his thumb and forefinger closed around her nipple, pinching her.

  She gasped in shock and not because it hurt. Though, it kind of had, and yet it wasn’t the sort of hurt that was actual pain. Mor
e like….God, she had no comparison. It was merely intense sensation, like pain and pleasure in one, making her sex ache and everything draw tight inside her.

  “Well?” he demanded, obviously impatient, pinching her again and sending white hot sparks of pleasure through her. “Do you like this, too?”

  He was still looking at her, studying her like she was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen, and that made everything even more erotic than it already was.

  Had anyone ever looked at her like that? As if her reactions and feelings were of paramount importance? Sure, Rhys had, but this was different. This was about sex, about her pleasure and that’s what he wanted to do: give her pleasure. She could almost feel the need radiating out of him.

  “Y-Yes,” she managed. “I do.”

  The hot light in his eyes intensified. “What about this, Vivi? Do you like this?” And his hand left her breast, sliding down between their bodies and over her stomach, making her heartbeat race even faster as his fingers brushed the curls between her thighs.

  “R-Rhys.” His name escaped helplessly, far too hoarse and pleading for her liking, and a small wave of vulnerability hit her, making her try to loosen her hands from the grip he had on her wrists. Because she was supposed to be the one making him desperate, not the other way around.

  But his fingers were locked around her wrists at the small of his back, keeping her right where she was, held up against him. And his free hand kept right on going, down between her thighs, pushing through her curls to find the slick flesh of her sex, stroking her.

  She made a soft, choked sound at the touch, molten pleasure pouring through her, his hard, black gaze seeming to swallow her whole. His finger stroked her, agonizingly near where she was desperate to be touched and yet not quite there, making her whole body tremble.

  “Answer me, Vivi,” he ordered. “Tell me you like this, too.”