Driven to the Edge: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance (9 page)

I
can’t deal
with Alicia. Not now. Not the way she keeps looking at me, the way she keeps touching me. The way she’s treating me like an actual person rather than a weapon to be pointed at the nearest target. I storm past her into the bedroom and close the door.

She might try to run. At this stage I’m not sure I care. Tomorrow at noon I’m hitting Augustine’s and nothing else matters.

Stripping down to nothing but my boxers, I peel back the expensive bedcovers and crawl into the bed. The sheets have such a high thread count they feel like satin, a smooth caress on my skin that would normally feel amazing. Right now, I barely notice it.

I curl onto my side and stare at the dark, distant wall. I run through my plan in my head. It’s crazy. It’s suicidal. But I don’t know what else to do.

I’m going to storm Augustine’s and pretend to rob it, then hope it’s Marton Császár that gets dispatched to deal with me. The Császár family won’t want the cops sniffing around, so it’s my hope they send their head of security. Once they find out it’s me, I’m sure Marton will come knocking. While he and I don’t have a lot of history together, he’s undoubtedly heard that I’m the one who torched his CEO in La Jolla.

I contemplate texting Vin to go over security details one last time, but my mind’s racing too fast. It’s all coming together too quickly. I wish I had even an extra day or two to prepare.

But I can’t risk giving them enough time to ship Eloise off.

All my brother would have wanted was for his little girl to be safe. Alain had it so good for a while, so much better than either of us deserved. When his wife finally succumbed to lymphoma, just thirty-one, Eloise became his entire world.

We should have brought her up in a better world than we did.

I ignore the door when I hear it open. It creaks, then footsteps pad gently along the floor to my bed. I can tell it’s Alicia, otherwise I’d flip around, grab the Sig off the nightstand, and put a hole in whoever it was.

Instead, I keep my back turned to her.

When I don’t react, she peels the blankets back and climbs into bed with me.

I did... not see that coming.

I keep my breath steady as she climbs in. She’s stripped down to just a shirt and underwear, the fabric soft against my back as she presses up against me. My dick immediately stirs against my leg. I don’t understand why she’s here, but unfortunately for my cock, it’s probably not for
that.

Alicia is quiet for a long while, but I can tell she’s awake.

Finally, she says something I never expected her to say:

“Let me help you.”

Help me? Why on earth would she want to help me? I kidnapped her, for hell’s sake.

“Help me?” I say gruffly, staring at the wall.

“I didn’t know there was a kid involved. If you told me the truth back there, if you’re really doing this for her, let me help you.”

I shift around in the bed, ‘til I’m looking at her. Why is she so close to me? Why is she acting so intimate? For a while back there I was convinced she was trying to seduce me, but the look on her face now is so naked and sincere.

“Why?”

She wets her lips, then looks me in the eye. The moonlight shining through the bedroom window reflects off the glassy surface of her eyes, turning them an ethereal silver.

She’s beautiful.

I want to kiss her again.

“Because I knew you weren’t some suicidal psycho, as much as you’d have me believe it.”

“You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I know you’re doing all this to help someone else, not to make yourself rich.”

“And that changes everything? That washes the blood right off my hands?”

She stiffens a bit. So close to me on the mattress I can feel it.

“No. But it means I understand now.”

Then she lifts a hand up, brings it to my face. Her soft fingertips run over my stubbly cheek, touching at my jaw. She cradles my face in one of her hands. It’s so warm. It smells like clean lotion. She’s so different from me, my opposite in so many ways. Light where I’m dark, clean where I’m dirty, pure where I’m corrupted.

I
feel
something for her. Deep in my chest. Oh, shit.

“I know what it’s like to lose everything,” she says. “I never had a family, but my ex, he took my world from me. My art, my business, my independence. I can see how much that little girl means to you.”

I clench my jaw. I can’t talk to her about Eloise. I can’t talk to anyone about it.

Fortunately for her, she doesn’t try to make me.

“Just... let me help you. Let’s figure out a way to make this happen that doesn’t end in bloodshed.”

“How would you even be able to help with that?”

“Tell me what you’re going to do tomorrow.”

In the seconds between her climbing into bed with me and now, something inside me has changed. I cave in. I tell her the plan from start to finish. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

And it turns out, Alicia has some damn good ideas.

In hushed voices in the dark, we hash out a different idea. Turns out, she used to be a photographer. And photographers, she tells me, can get into anywhere. Rather than me storming in guns blazing, we’ll use slightly different cover identities.

She’ll be a photographer and I’ll be her model. The venue we booked for a photoshoot turned us away at the last second, so we
need
to shoot on the rooftop gardens at Augustine’s. She has a lot of money she can use to sway their minds.

It sounds like it might actually work. Vin is busy right this second trying to find out which suite is Marton’s, which is the best possible idea we have for where they’re keeping Eloise. Or we can just find Marton himself and torture the location out of him.

I’d rather not do that in front of Alicia, though.

“And after we get her out, you’re free to go,” I say to her, peering into her moonlight-silvery eyes in the dark. She’s still beside me on the bed. It’s strangely intimate, yet we’re not touching each other.

“Let’s worry about the girl before we worry about me,” she says.

And I wonder: is it possible she doesn’t want to leave?

Ha, like that could ever happen. That’s some fucked up action movie shit. People stuck together in moments of terrible crisis don’t ever get happy endings like that. Especially when one was a kidnapper.

I’m overwhelmed. I haven’t felt anything but bitter anger and sadness for my brother for so long that I can’t figure my own emotions out. I’m
grateful
to her, for the fact that she wants to help at all. For her strange moments of weakness, even if it was just a drunken attempt to forget what was happening.

I don’t understand her.

But I want her.

I want her so much.

Swept away in the moment, I reach out for her in the dark. My fingers reach her hair, comb through it gently. I touch her face, my rough hands moving over her soft skin. The contrast between us--our bodies, our lives--is unbearably hot.

When I reach for her, she reaches back. We curl our arms around one another and our mouths meet.

It’s entirely unlike the first two times. This time, it’s like fireworks.

I roll over atop her immediately, delighting in the smallness of her beneath my body. Before, she belonged to me because she was my hostage. Now, she belongs to me willingly. As we frantically kiss, she bucks her hips up against me, her body grinding against mine. I can feel the heat radiating off of her.

She wants me just as badly.

For now, the threats of the next day fall away to nothing. The Császár cartel, the eminent threat of many guns pointed in my direction, it all dissolves.

All that matters is Alicia. Losing myself in the soft, clean scent of her. I grab the hem of her shirt and peel it up over her head. She isn’t wearing a bra underneath, so I go for her breasts immediately. They’re the perfect size, big and round and full, a perfect fit for my hands.

I squeeze her tits, thumbing at the nipples, then sink down and take one into my mouth, suckling greedily and hotly. She moans, a high and tight-throated sound. I shudder with how much I need to hear her make that sound again.

As I explore her body, I go out of my way to seek out the places that cause her to writhe and twitch and gasp and make those excited little sounds. Turns out, she has quite a few. The hollows of her throat, the very edges of her shoulders, especially when bitten. The back of her neck. Her earlobes.

I feast on her body, all the while growing hard as a rock, my cock pressing against her leg.

She reaches for my boxers at the same time I reach for her panties. We scramble out of our underwear, eager to press ourselves together, real skin to skin for the first time.

It’s hot. It’s explosive. It’s everything I didn’t even know I wanted.

Crawling atop her, her body arched up into mine, I trail my fingers down her stomach, passing by her navel and brushing them along her slit. She reacts with a groan, opening her legs for me, and I take the invitation I’m given.

Positioning myself between her legs, I line the hard length of my dick up against her entrance. But not yet. Not yet. I want to enjoy this.

Teasingly, I run the head of my cock up and down along her wet slit, feeling how much she wants me. She squirms, tries to impale herself on me, but I don’t let her. I tease her up and down, then finally press just the very head of myself inside her.

She cries out and I clench my eyes shut, hissing out a hot breath. She’s so hot and tight when she envelops me. I sink down into her, slowly, inch by inch, lost in the heat and friction of our bodies.

When I finally bury myself entirely inside her, the feeling is indescribable. I nudge my hips forward, filling her with me, and she cries out and wraps her legs around my waist, pulling me even deeper.

It takes a breathtaking moment before I can recover myself enough to start moving inside her.

Pulling out deliciously slowly, I thrust into her, filling her with the entirety of me, and I grab her shoulders hard. She rocks against me, tilting up to meet me, welcoming me, and it’s the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve never wanted anyone so badly and I’ve never felt so wanted before.

We rock together, establishing a slow, gentle rhythm. Like there’s no need to rush things. Which is insane, because rushing things is exactly what I want to do. I want to fuck her into the mattress so hard it leaves a fucking dent. But that doesn’t feel right, not for this moment. So I hold myself back, just barely.

Thrusting into her hard and steady, I feel my balls start to tighten. I sink my teeth into her neck, biting gently, licking at the skin of her throat. She tightens around me, crying out, uninhibited, her head thrown back.

It’s not going to be long now. I can feel the urgency building in my stomach. I pick up the pace, the sounds of our bodies slapping together the only sound in the silent room, coupled with the ragged gasps of our breath.

Alicia, pinned beneath me, impaled on my cock, pulls me closer and begs me to come inside her.

That’s all it takes. The second she says the words, I’m driving into her with wild abandon, thrusting erratically, grabbing a handful of her hair.

“You want this,” I growl into her ear, locking my teeth onto her earlobe. My voice is a harsh whisper.

“You want every drop of me inside you, don’t you.”

She whimpers a breathy yes and that sends me crashing over the edge. I thrust into her one more time, forcefully, and feel myself erupt inside the hot, tight wetness of her body. I shoot load after load into her, each coupled with a shallow thrust, and midway through I feel her own orgasm run through her like an electric shock.

Alicia screams, grabbing me tightly, her nails digging into my skin. She rides me through her own orgasm, her body spasming around my dick, and I hold her tight til we both come crashing down from the staggering heights of our pleasure.

We hit the mattress, sweat-slicked, panting hard. I’m still inside her. I don’t ever want to be anywhere else.

Unable to summon enough air to speak, we cling together as if for dear life. I brush my fingers through her sweat-damp hair. She turns and presses a tiny kiss to the inside of my wrist.

I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know what’s going on anymore.

But now, I care if I live or die tomorrow.

D
espite the fact
that so much between us changed, when I wake up in the morning, it’s just like the shitty hotel in Jean: Jake has already rolled out of bed. I can hear him bustling around further into the suite.

Reclined on the incredible mattress, the smooth sheets wound around me, I stare up at the ceiling, which is decoratively molded, a small crystal chandelier dotted in the center of it.

I stare for a long time.

What am I getting myself into?

Or more accurately, what’s gotten into me?

Is it just frustration? I’ve played by the rules my whole life. I’m an honest person. Why am I suddenly breaking bad, so to speak? Is it just because there’s a little girl on the line, or does the prospect of it just... excite me?

My body aches deliciously from last night. I was still a little tipsy, but I remember enough. I remember that I let Jake come inside me and I didn’t even care.

This is
not
the usual Alicia Brennan.

At least I’m still pretty sure my last birth control shot is still active. Pretty sure.

Christ.

I haul myself out of bed, feeling that ache in my thighs, and rise up to my feet.

The entire time I’m showering, I wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake. But even if I have, what’s the option now? I told Jake I’d help him with his scheme to get the little sandy-haired girl back. I can’t go back on my word. I can’t put a child in danger.

And besides, Jake would probably react... poorly if I rescinded my offer.

I don’t want him to die.

But I don’t want to die either.

When I step out of the shower, dripping wet, the blue Oscar De La Renta dress is draped over the back of a chair, waiting for me. Jake helps me into it once I’ve toweled off, zipping up the final few inches until the fabric rests snug against my body. I feel like a movie star.

Which is appropriate, because we’re about to do a lot of acting.

I put the fake engagement ring in my purse, then turn to face Jake. He’s standing very close to me, invading my personal space. He smells like he smoked the rest of his cigar. He puts his hands on my shoulders and my body cries out to kiss him, touch him. But I hold back. There’s too much going on, not right now.

“All right,” Jake says. “I’m going to take you to that camera store. I hope you know what you’re talking about.”

A slight smirk curves up my mouth. My voice is surprisingly playful, almost flirtatious.

“I know a thing or two,” I say.

We head downstairs. I try to calm the shaking in my hands.

Photo Warehouse occupies the greater portion of a city block in one of Vegas’ retail districts. It makes sense, in such a tourist heavy area. We pull up outside and I mentally run through the list of what I’m going to need.

It’s easy to conjure up a mental checklist of photo gear, because I carried so much of it around for so many years. I sold all of it to keep the creditors at bay, but I can still recall packing up my kit every time we were shooting on location.

Erik always offered to carry my bags. I try not to get angry the second he slips into my mind.

I take Jake down the far aisle from the door, toward a big glass display full of various DSLR cameras. The store stocks the usual: Canon and Nikon mostly, with some Olympus and Sony and other brands. Today, I’m going all out. If I’m going to pretend to be the type of photographer who’d storm a casino and demand a shooting location, my gear has to look the part.

“Are you sure your credit card can handle all this?” I ask Jake. He’s eyeballing a Nikon rig in one of the cases, a curious lift to his eyebrows.

“I’m a wealthy man,” is all he says.

We’ll see,
I think. I can spend a lot of money on photography gear.

I start with the basics: the latest Canon 1D X for the camera body. For the lens, I grab a nice 35mm prime and a ridiculously overpriced but quality 24-70mm.
I’ll be able to get more of the architecture in this,
I catch myself thinking. Then I remember I’m not actually going to be taking any photos.

I pick up a bit external flash, not because I’d normally use it for an indoor fashion shoot, but because it makes me look more professional. A big ol’ camera with a giant flash attached to it is what most people think when they think
professional photographer.

Lastly, I grab accessories: memory cards, cases, a tripod, lens hoods, filters I’d never actually use, and lens cap holders.

“All this stuff for a prop photoshoot?” Jake asks, incredulous.

“Why, going to break the bank?”

“No, just... a lot of effort.”

I turn to him, tripod under my arm as we carry our spoils to the front desk, where the cashier already has a sizable pile of boxes waiting for us.

“This gear needs to look used. Lived-in. Just in case we come across someone who has even a slight clue about photography.”

And okay, yes, I’m kind of wondering if Jake will let me keep it all. After we get out of this. If we get out of this. There’s a lot of question marks hovering over the end of my day.

My jaw just about hits the counter when the shop rings it all up. Jake calmly passes over a debit card--not even a credit card, a
debit card
--and now I believe him when he says he’s a wealthy man.

It takes us two plus a sales assistant to carry all the gear out to the Maybach. Which is good. I hope that if I pile myself down with bags and tripods and accessories, I’ll look harried and stressed enough that people will buy our story.

Back at the hotel, while we’re unwrapping everything and charging up the camera, Jake asks me a question that catches me off-guard.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks, hovering over me while I peel lens filters out of their little plastic packets, tucking them into the bag.

I glance up and say yes without a second word.

He stares at me, hovering nearby, alternating between just staring at me and staring at me while pacing back and forth.

I can tell he’s unsettled. I am too. Deep down, I’m nowhere near as confident as I feel. But if Jake’s plan goes right, I won’t really be in any danger. I’ll be taking the elevator back down and bouncing out the second he kicks the dangerous part of the plan into motion.

I want to do something good. I want to help him. Maybe I want the excitement, too. I don’t know.

But I am sure I want to do it.

I’m breaking into this casino with the man who kidnapped me only two and a half days ago.

How quickly things change.