Never Kiss a Bad Boy (15 page)

My answer was so shallow.
Nothing lasts. That's reality.

I'd kissed her because I wanted to. Because we all die eventually. Because I'm a terrible excuse for a human being.

Because I'm selfish.

The tattoos on my knuckles proclaimed 'swim.' Swim in the river of soulless murderers and drown, or cross to the other side and reach freedom. Jacob truly believed that.

And I believed in him.

Marina was an anchor, she'd pull us under. Jacob would never agree to letting her live. Not to mention that, according to our last conversation, he wanted more from her.

Jacob wanted Marina the way
I
wanted Marina.

Sharing her was the logical option. The severity of our rules—the oath of Blood Brothers—was built into my marrow. I refused to fight with Jacob. As long as I could keep suffocating in her existence, I didn't need to be greedy.

Falling on my back, I covered my eyes with an arm. I was a tiger, penned up in a crate and anxious to run free. But outside my cage, Marina waited.

Whenever she spoke to me, I struggled to pay attention, eager to shut her up with a long kiss.

I needed to find a balance between indulging in her heat, and accepting her murder was inevitable.

Rolling on my side, I tried to think of a solution. I'd wasted three days doing nothing but slinking around, avoiding her. I'd excused it by saying I needed to help at the bar. A few times I'd told her I was going for a run, and I'd ended up sitting in my car in the garage instead.

Being in my Mercedes wasn't helpful. It made me recall how I'd driven her down that backstreet, handed her my gun and demanded she shoot the sleeping man at the bus stop.

That night... the sex had left me aching for more of it. More of her.

The reality of how this girl was going to die had spiraled me into a dark pit. She could fire a gun at a paper target.

That wasn't enough.

It had taken me and Jacob years to become who we were. The rough, fucked up shit that made us into
us
couldn't be replicated.

She thought she could put a bullet in someone's head the first time she pointed a gun at them, and then stroll away? Impossible.

Marina was going to fail.

She was going to die.

“Kite?” Her voice was hesitant, soft through my wall.

Sitting up, I stared at my door.
Pretend to be asleep. Ignore her.
Fuck, was I that desperate to avoid contact?

Scratching the back of my head, I approached the brass knob. Opening it, I caught Marina off guard; she startled at my sudden appearance, not expecting me to answer. I was surprised by my actions, too.

“What's up?” I asked. It sounded casual, but I was a vortex, sucking at her luscious figure and eating up the trembling edge of her unsure smile.

In spite of her weak grin, she still managed to glow. “I don't know how busy you are, but uh... look. It's been almost a week. I really should be handing my landlord that rent check—the one you guys promised?”

Blinking, I leaned on the side of the entryway. “Right. That whole situation. Guess your stuff is still there and everything?”

“Yeah. I don't want to be a pain, but could you give me a ride? I can call a moving company and find some storage on my own.”

“No.” Pushing off the wall, I slid past her. Even at that distance, a hint of her sweet scent infiltrated my nose. The familiar urge to shove her against the wall and hear her bones rattle slid through me. My palms were sweating; I kept walking. “I'll handle it. It was part of the agreement.”

Her shadow followed me. Marina was stepping lightly, she'd gotten better at sneaking around. Was she practicing to be an assassin, or had she improved because we'd been avoiding each other?

“Uh, alright,” she said. Lifting her purse from a kitchen chair, she slid into her black jacket. “I don't mind helping.”

“You can help by telling me how much money you need.” My car keys swung on my finger, I dropped them into my pocket and buttoned up my coat. It was very wet and dull outside. The big windows of my apartment displayed the scene like a black and white movie.

“Twelve hundred should do it,” she said. “Make it out to Sanfred Remar. He's the building owner.”

As if I'd be stupid enough to write a check. “Stay here,” I said. Maneuvering back to my room, I bent by my headboard. Removing the panel, I reached around my Ruger.

The stacks of money bumped and grazed over my seeking fingers. Yes, laugh at me. I literally keep money under my mattress.

I heard movement in the hall. “Stay out there,” I shouted, grabbing up the bills and thumbing them.

“I am,” Marina assured me, but I kept shooting my eyes up at the door. I didn't want her knowing where I kept my gun.

Replacing the panel, I brought the thin stack of money into the kitchen. I thought she'd comment, but she just stood by my elbow as I pulled an envelope from the drawer.

Wrapping the cash in a sheet of paper, I put it inside and hoped no greedy mailmen would try and open it. “Do we need an address on this?”

“I'll leave it in his drop-box in the office, but just to be safe...” She reached over and put her fingers on the envelope. I let her take it, offering her the pen. Her writing was cramped, worse than mine. It made me smile. “Stamps?” she asked, flicking those glistening brown eyes up at me.

Retrieving one, I licked it quickly. It tasted awful.
The only thing I want to put my tongue on is her delicious pussy,
I lamented silently.

Marina was staring at me, curiosity on her face. She was wondering what I was thinking about. If I told her, would she flare up and blush?

Shaking myself, I stamped the envelope and offered it back to her. She took it, but I held on—it was as close to touching her as I'd come in days.

Her lips twitched, a silent secret.

Tugging the paper away, she put it in her purse. “So,” she said, like the moment was all in my head. “Trip time?”

“Trip time,” I agreed. I opened the front door, waving her into the hall. She passed close to me, her breeze stirring the tiny hairs on my arms. My eyes fluttered, stomach tightening as I realized I could easily close the gap and kiss her.

Calm down!
I told myself. But she made it so hard—she made every
inch
of me hard.

My legs carried me towards the elevator. How quickly I'd stopped caring about the cameras.

Standing inside the moving box, I felt my oxygen begin to vanish. Marina replaced it, flooding my lungs just by standing nearby.

Her hands were in her pockets, chin buried behind the collar of her jacket. She was ready for a blizzard. I wanted to be the storm that swept her up.

I thought about the night I'd met her. We'd stood here, in this very place. Her body against mine, her soft curls of hair grazing my cheek.

It had been torture then.

It was torture now.

The 'ding' was my savior. I shoved through the sliding doors, power walking towards my car. Marina climbed inside seconds after I'd already had the engine growling. My anxiousness was invading her, too. I could tell by how she shot me furtive glances, her knees glued together.

We'd had many conversations in my car. It was a fucking therapist's office for everyone, I swear. But today, Marina didn't fight to clear the air. She didn't think up a topic or force any conversation.

This time, as we drove down the slippery, shiny streets of New York, Marina stared silently out the window.

****

I
didn't need directions. Twice now, I'd been to her apartment.

Pulling into the lot, I reached behind my seat. The umbrella was heavy in my hand. Marina eyed it, then me, with a wry smile. “Worried we'll melt?”

Her casual humor sucker punched me. Helplessly, my lips rose at the corners. “You'll thank me when you don't catch pneumonia.”

“My hero.” She crinkled her eyes, all slyness and sass. For a long moment that got away from me, I just watched her.

Breaking the bubble, I opened the door and let the umbrella expand. It kept the worst of the drizzle off of me. Circling to her side of the car, I waited for her. The wrinkles on her brow said, 'Why are you being such a gentleman?'

She never voiced the thought, so I was freed from having to think of a response.

Together, our shoulders close to snuggling as we shared the umbrella, we climbed to her apartment door. We were masquerading as a wandering couple. Anyone catching a glimpse of us would have thought we were about to kiss under the canopy, or stumble into the apartment, cheeks flushed and our eyes dazzling as we laughed and got frisky.

Crushing the umbrella's handle, I stood over her as she bent for her keys. Marina and I were no giggling, cavorting couple. We were not dating or any interpretation of the word. Imagining it was ridiculous and pointless.

But I imagined anyway.

“Huh,” she said next to me. Her face was screwed up, tense lines and confusion.

“What is it?” I asked, noting how she had her hand perched on the door knob like it was a grenade.

Briefly eyeing me, she completed the turn of the handle and led us inside. “Nothing. Come on, I'll get something hot going.” Stepping over newspapers, she headed right into her kitchen and didn't look back at me.

I watched her shake her hair, smoothing water from the top. The ends were curling like vines from the weather. It was cold inside. Worse than the last time when I'd been here with Jacob.

Shaking the umbrella out, I used it to shut the door so I didn't need to touch it. I was still keen to leave no fingerprints. I didn't plan to come here again after today.

In the kitchen, Marina ran water from the sink. “Your choices are green tea, or this package of lemon that
might
be full of toxic mold.”

Standing in the doorway of the kitchen, I folded my arms. “I like to live dangerously, but green tea is fine.”

She put two mismatched mugs onto the counter. “Good call. I'd hate to worry about explaining your corpse to the cops.” Her smile was brittle.

We stood together in that tiny room. It was barely enough space for the stove on one side, a cupboard on the other, and her in between. With me blocking the exit, an easy thing to do with my size, Marina couldn't escape.

“The cops,” I said softly. “You wouldn't call the paramedics first?”

She leaned on the opposite wall and shrugged. “Would you?”

Marina poisoning herself would do me no good, even if she thought otherwise. Looking her up and down, I reached over and knocked the lemon tea package into her too-full trash with the back of my hand. “I told you,” I said briskly. “I'll help you find your man. You can't do anything if you're croaking from toxic tea.”

“That's an easy claim to make.”

“It's the truth.”

Crossing her arms, she pushed into the dented wallpaper like she wanted to melt away. “It's the top half of the truth.”

The tiny kitchen was getting warm. I adjusted my heavy jacket. “How do you mean?”

There were razors in her smile. “You can't let me die yet, can you?”

I did everything in my power to keep my face neutral, but she must have seen something or
felt
something.

She said, “If I just died right now—right here—it would fuck you and Jacob over. Right?” Her voice was heating up, she'd stopped leaning away and was now hunching towards me. “
That's
your real fucking truth! If I die before you and him get my letter, you know you're screwed!”

Looking down my nose at her, I forced my hands to remain still at my sides. “Why are you bringing this up?”

She was breathing heavy. It put all the wrong images in my brain. Her beautiful eyes shrank, becoming sharp black diamonds. “Because I didn't think you'd want out of our contract so bad that you'd break into my fucking
apartment
just to try and find the letter.”

The bones in my spine became barbed wire. I came close to asking how she could know about that. Hadn't we been careful? We'd put everything back like it was.

Then it hit me.

Shit.

I remembered how she'd reacted when she was opening her front door. Unlike when she'd let me in the first time, it hadn't jammed. It
should
have jammed. Jacob's lock-picking must have fixed the mechanism.

“You really are perceptive,” I murmured.

Next to us, the tea kettle started to whistle. Neither of us looked. “Whatever you did, you fixed my lock. That door turned like silk. Thanks.” She spit the last word out, abandoned it. “By the way, I noticed you skulking around last time, like I was stupid enough to leave the letter sitting out on my table.”

At least she didn't know I'd crept into her room while she slept and investigated her phone, too. “Why are we having this conversation?” I asked.

“Because it's been on my mind!” Unfurling her arms, she tugged at her hair. “I need to know what you and Jacob have planned. How do I know you'll really help me find the guy I'm after?”

The fury in her stare had my heart thumping. I'd been avoiding this girl for three days, and here she was, inches away and filled with a wildness that intrigued me. So little scared her. “Marina, what are you afraid of?”

Flinching, she leaned over to turn off the stove. The tea kettle's scream was becoming too much. “Lots of things.”

“No,” I said, curiosity on my tongue. “What are you
afraid of?
”

She rubbed her inner wrist. Her silence stretched, so long I thought she wouldn't answer me. When she did, her voice was a whisper. “I'm afraid you'll kill me... before I can kill him.”

“Failure scares you.”

She snapped her glare to me, held it there. “I'm getting deja vu,” she muttered.

I'd moved closer, we both noticed it at the same time. I stood over her, my shadow darkening her toffee skin. Marina's skull tapped the wall, her body arching away from me.

“You're really not afraid of dying?” I asked.

She swallowed loudly. “After I avenge my family, what else is left? I don't care what happens to me.”

She didn't
care?