Hitman's Hookup: A Bad Boy Romance (15 page)

But I was the one who’d managed to get his pants off.

What is it Beyoncé said about girls? Oh yeah.

We run the world.

I felt water hit my toes from the overflowing bathtub and I knew I had my moment. I didn’t need to wait for Cruz to come save me. I ran my fingers down the fly of his worn boxers as the water crept up my feet, then my shins, then my knees. The man had slick-bottomed shoes on.

I reached my hand up into my towel and grabbed the nail file. “Almost there, baby,” I whispered, my lips an inch from his hard, trembling cock. He grunted again. I took the nail file and rammed it into his carotid artery as hard as I could, piercing his jeans and his skin. I gave it a hard twist and rolled my body over to the side as he doubled over, his feet slipping on the puddle of water. His head was nearly between his legs as he screamed in agony.

Blood was pouring everywhere and mixing with water in crimson rosettes.

Then he hit the slick marble floor that was now covered in water and oils. A sickening crack echoed around the bathroom.

The guy twitched twice and then was motionless.

I scampered away into the corner of the bathroom, wrapping my knees up by my face. I waited sixty seconds. He still wasn’t moving, his neck and head cocked at an unnatural angle, his nose and mouth submerged in an inch of water that had pooled in a low spot by the tub.

His eyes were open and moving, but none of the rest of his body was.

I waited until I heard the sick gurgle of him aspirating water, his dangerous, dull eyes filling with panic. Blood was pouring out of his body. His neck was broken. He was paralyzed and drowning, his body draining of blood all the while. Drowning and draining. Draining and drowning.

I felt a surge of adrenaline crash over my body.

I watched him die.

And I enjoyed it.

I crawled on all fours to the bathtub, skirting around the man’s enormous frame. I turned off the tap. The only noise now was gently lapping water spilling over the tub. I reached down with two fingers to check the man’s pulse.

There wasn’t one. He was dead.

I crawled toward the bathroom door, grabbing two fresh towels on the way out. I stood up gingerly in the carpeted hallway and wiped the bloody water off my skin. I dropped the towel in the doorjamb, creating a barrier so the creeping water wouldn’t reach and stain the carpet. I took the other towel and wrapped it carefully around my body.

The towel on the floor was wicking up waves of increasingly red liquid. I watched it for a few minutes until the towel reached maximum saturation. Then I took off the towel on my head and pushed it against the wet one as an extra barrier of protection for the carpet.

That would take care of it.

I padded into the living room, my braids now hanging loose around my towel-wrapped body. I sat on the edge of the sofa, my breathing calm, and watched the cars creep past fifty stories below me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CRUZ

“You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find this fucking candy,” I announced as I stepped back into the suite. “Two guys had to go into the back to open up a brand new shipment. Which is good, because that means they’re fresh.” I shut the door behind me and slid the chain lock across it. That was odd. I realized suddenly I hadn’t had to knock to come into the room. “Hey, Lily, I’m going to need you to always lock the door twice behind me when I leave, okay?”

There was no response.

Something was wrong. I could feel it. I paused, smelling the air. It smelled like the oils I’d put in the bath. There was also a light metallic scent perfuming the space.

Blood.

And something else.

Something very, very familiar.

I rushed into the living room. “LILY!” I yelled. I saw her silhouette cast against the window. The lights were all off in the main spaces. A golden glow came from the hallway.

“In the bathroom,” she replied, not turning around.

My heart leapt into my throat as I padded down the hallway. I dropped the pharmacy bag on the floor as I stood in the doorway. I went into action mode but not before I nearly tripped over something in the doorway; I looked down to see a barrier of towels.

I actually smiled. She was containing the evidence.

Who the fuck was this woman?

I walked back into the living room briskly, rushing over to Lily and wrapping my arm around her. “You okay?”

“I’m breathing,” she replied. She licked her lips and finally looked at me. “I killed him.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I saw that. Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. “No,” she replied.

“That’s the guy they send to kill guys like me,” I said slowly, still taking everything in. “But…
you
killed him. How in the fuck did you manage that?”

Lily motioned, her eyes still dead, to her enormous rack hidden under her towel. “Never underestimate the power of the fairer sex.”

“You’re in shock,” I said quietly.

“I’m not in shock. The only thing I’m shocked
by
right now is that I enjoyed that. I liked it. I liked watching him die.”

Her words hit me one at a time. “That’s because he was going to
kill you
, Lily. Anyone would be fine with watching their would-be killer die. That’s just evolution. It’s instinct. It’s a natural goddamn reaction.”

Lily shook her head. “No, it wasn’t just that I was relieved. I
actively enjoyed it
. I liked killing him. That same control and God complex you said that I have in the operating room? You were right.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing for several minutes. Instead I held onto Lily, feeling her breathe in my arms. I finally spoke up. “We need to get out of here. I don’t know how they know where we are, but they do.” I gathered our things together.

Lily didn’t need goading this time. She started getting dressed. “What are we going to do about the body?”

***

An hour later we were driving away from the city in a rental car. I’d placed a call to my guy. My clean-up guy. It would cost me a lot of money, and I knew that. But time was precious. I fucked up by going to my old haunt. I was making reckless choices, just liked I’d feared I would.

But that was over now. My hands spun around the steering wheel heading out into the pitch-black night.

“It’s amazing how quickly it goes from city to just…
nothing
,” Lily marveled quietly from the passenger seat.

“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “Within an hour we’ll be able to star gaze on the roof.”

Lily glanced at me.

I cleared my throat. “Or we
would
stargaze, if this were a fun road trip and not…what it is.”

“You mean two murderers on the run from the police and a merry band of assassins?” Lily offered.

I was happy to see that she had her sense of humor back, even if it was couched in fear and uncertainty. “Yeah, something like that.”

We sat in silence for a while, the cornfields passing us under the velvety night sky. “You know, the first time I killed someone. It shook me up,” I said cautiously.

“On assignment? You knew it was going to happen?” Lily asked.

“Yeah. He was a mafia guy. Bigwig. Week before that he’d had one of his associates’ families killed in cold blood. It was supposed to be a warning to the rest of the crew; you fuck with me, I take your wife. I take your children. I saw the photos of the crime scene.” My voice caught in my throat. I put my hand over my mouth, one hand resting on the steering wheel. “Anybody who could do that? Kill innocent kids? That’s a special kind of monster. I didn’t feel bad when I killed him. I liked it. And that scared me. But only for a second.” I put my hand on Lily’s thigh. She was staring at me intently. “Do not ever hesitate if someone is going to kill you. You do what you need to fucking do.”

“How did you start doing this?” Lily asked me.

I’d been waiting for that for days. But there was no sense in not being honest now. She deserved to know. “My adoptive parents died when I was in high school. I got into a lot of trouble after that. Drugs mostly.” I hit the blinker and switched lanes to pull ahead of a semi-trailer. “I was pretty far into it all. Mostly cocaine. One of my friends was a dealer. His name was Eric. One night we closed this enormous deal and he grabbed a few grams on the way out as a sort of special treat. We went to a hotel and were partying pretty hard. That night I wasn’t using, though. I’d had a long week and I’d never really loved the lack of control. That night – Eric overdosed in front of me. Or at least that’s what we thought.”

Lily was staring at me with wide eyes. “What really happened?”

I bit my lip and stared resolutely ahead at the long road. “It turned out that our boss, the head of the cartel - a guy named Williamson - suspected one of us was taking samples. So he cut the whole goddamn batch with drain cleaner.” I felt a burning behind my eyes. I fought back the tears.

“Jesus,” Lily whispered.

“Yeah. Eric was older than I was. Had a kid – Matthew - and a wife and everything.” The face of a nine-year-old Matthew floated up in front of my eyes. I pushed it away. “Matthew’s mom killed herself after he died and he went to live with his aunt.” I cleared me throat. “I’m his godfather. And his aunt is Corina.”

I waited for the outburst. “Corina? As in the woman who’s trying to kill us both?”

“The very same. After I found out my boss was the one who killed Eric, I was so angry all I could do was obsess over killing him. How I would do it. When I would do it. Which way would be the most satisfying. But I was reckless and impatient. I was young. I crashed a meeting one night with a gun I’d stolen.”

I could feel Lily hanging on every single one of my words. It was a good story. I’d give it that. “I would have done the same thing,” Lily murmured. “I would have killed him myself.”

“On the way up to the meeting I ran into one of the new guys. He saw the gun sticking out of my pocket and stopped me. It turned out he was DEA. He knew what I was going to do. He risked his cover to keep me from going in there. Then he gave me a job.”

Lily let out a low whistle. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I replied. “I left after a few years and went the private contractor route.”

“How did you find that?”

“You make connections like in any business. This way was more lucrative. And every time I kill another drug empire-running son of a bitch I feel like I’m getting repeat vengeance for Matthew’s dad.”

“And it pays well?” Lily asked.

It was such a strange question coming from her. I actually laughed. “Yeah. I could have stopped five years ago and never worked another day in my life. But I keep going because what else do I have, right?”

“If I’d known that, I would have skipped medical school and gone straight to murdering people outside of the hospital,” Lily said drily.

I smiled at her and squeezed her knee. “You’re a strange one, you know that?”

She shrugged. “I’ve had a dark sense of humor since I was a kid.”

“I think I have a few things I could learn from you, actually,” I replied.

“Really?”

“You dropped the best of the best back there. And all things considered: you did it quietly and relatively neatly. I probably would have ended up smashing a mirror.”

Lily gave me a steely look. “Just offer to blow your targets and hope for an overflowing bathtub.”

I nearly veered off the road. “You gave that fuckweasel a blow job?”

Lily sighed. “I know, and all before I gave
you
one. Life isn’t fair.”

I kept turning my head to examine her face. I couldn’t tell whether or not she was serious. Finally, her face cracked and she burst out laughing, tears streaming down her face.

“I said
offer
, not
give
. Ugh, what kind of woman do you think I am?” A few exits later, I pulled off the highway, winding through back country roads. “Tell me seriously,” Lily said. “Is this the part where you kill me and dump my body?”

I laughed. “It’s actually the part where
you
learn how to shoot a gun.”

Her eyes glinted.

“Do I detect excitement?” I asked her.

“Well, I am a homicidal, steely-hearted monster now. I think learning how to shoot a gun just goes with the territory, doesn’t it?”

An hour later, Lily was blowing rusted beer cans off of a tree stump forty feet away. All with a handgun. “You’re a natural,” I announced, suppressing a yawn.

Lily cocked her head and looked at the log. “It’s going to be light soon. I think we better get going.” She handed me the gun after checking to make sure all the rounds were gone.

She looked so fucking sexy standing there in a white t-shirt and jeans with a gun in her hand. I hedged my bets. I certainly wasn’t going to get it if I didn’t put the offer out there first. “If you’re calling off the fun early, I’d at least like a good, thorough fucking first.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

LILY

Shooting a gun made me hornier than tequila ever had.

I hopped on Cruz like he was the last lifeboat on a sinking ship, pulling his shirt over his head and throwing his body onto the hood of the car. He was almost shocked by my eagerness, his face lighting up adorably. I ripped down his jeans and tore into his boxers, his hard cock springing out.

I slid my tongue down it, the palms of my hands on his bare chest. He was already breathing heavily. I took him fully in my mouth, enjoying the salty taste of his skin. I was unhinged. Ravenous. I wanted him more than I wanted air to breathe.

It was only minutes before he was pawing at my hair and I had to dive back into the rental car to fish condoms out of Cruz’s bag. I was back in an instant, Cruz still on his back on the hood of the car. His hands were all over me, pulling off my clothes in a whirlwind tornado of fabric and denim and lace. Soon I was completely naked in the cool night air, owls hooting in the trees, the velvety night sky pinned into place by twinkling stars that dimmed as the sun rose around us.