Hearts Aflame Collection III: 4-Book Bundle (2 page)

“You're late, Kitty.” His voice reached me before he did.

“That's not my name, Liam.” I replied as we fell into step together. I struggled silently to keep my breath as we power-walked through the cold night to our destination. I was starting to regret my fun little encounter.

“What happened to your face?” he demanded, referring, I assumed, to the blood that must have been dripping down it, or the bruising from the man's strong grip.

I glanced at Liam's sharp cheekbones and strong jaw with a smile. “Nothing. What happened to yours?”

“Nothing.”

“Exactly.” We turned our last corner, ending up at a side entrance of the Saudi Embassy.

I stood there for a moment, gazing up at the structure as Liam pulled out his backpack and began to remove all the supplies we would need to scale the building.

“You know, I'm getting really fucking tired of having to climb things all the time,” he muttered, his German drawl becoming more apparent in his agitation.

“I think you're just getting pretty damn lazy,” I scolded as I flexed each of my ankles back and forth in order to limber up more.

“You're one to talk. You never carry the damn supplies.”

I paced back and forth, squeezing my eyes closes, trying to shut out the memory of that man's tongue in my mouth.
My fault. All my fault. Don't complain about it. You could have just given the guy a damn cigarette.
I pushed my own anxieties away and chuckled at Liam's comment. “Man up,” I hissed, slapping his ass for good measure.

He perked up.  “Done.”

“Awesome,” I muttered, pursing my lips and stretching out my neck one last time. As I stood there, he took the liberty of securing the harness around my waist himself, lingering around my hipbone. I huffed as he brushed his hands across my butt. As he reached the last strap across my shoulder, I felt the soft peck of his kiss on my neck. My flesh tingled at his touch.

“What
really
happened to your face?” he asked as we began to climb.

I pursed my lips in concentration, having to expel extra effort because my muscles had been weakened from the fight. “Eh. The usual.”

“Is there such a thing as usual with you?” he demanded in that condescending way.

I tilted my head. “Well, you do have a point there.”

“Did you run into trouble?”

I could sense the real concern in his voice. “No. It wasn't anything real. Some guy tried to rape me.”

Liam guffawed in amusement. “Fat chance.”

“You have the information, right?” I asked, as we had reached about halfway up the building.

My heart skipped a beat at his silence. “What information?”

My fingers began to tremble in anxiety. “Liam, I only got the codes. I thought you had everything else…” I began to climb faster, feeling suddenly vulnerable.

He followed my lead. “I thought you had. I didn't get anything.”

I took a deep breath, but only out of habit. My heart began to beat against my ribcage, begging to be free as my blood boiled within my veins. A cold sweat sprouted on my forehead. My fingers began to slip and fumble on the sides of the walls as we climbed. I could visualize the note in my head, see every piece of information it held as if I were staring at it for the first time. There was no location, no room number, no face, nothing for us to go by. Liam had all of that, or, at least, he was supposed to.

I reached the edge of the roof and propelled myself over, sliding out of the climbing gear as quickly as possible. As I unhooked the rope and straps off of my stealth suit, my eyes darted around me, scanning the roof for anything unusual. There was nothing, and that worried me more than anything else. I braced myself in the silence, irrationally paranoid at how open and quiet everything was. I flipped through every image in my brain, my neurons firing as I tried to come up with a plan in the absence of one, a solution to a problem I had never had to deal with before.

“Wait, but doesn't this mean that—”

“Someone must have intercepted it,” I interrupted with an obvious answer to the obvious question.

I peered through the darkness, trying to make out the shapes I knew lurked in the shadows. My hair stood on end as I stood there, my trembling hand glued to the butt of my handgun. One glance told me that Liam did the same. We had entered the first phase of this situation without a plan and now that we were here, we were trapped.

“Liam...” I demanded in a rough voice.

“I'm thinking,” he snapped.

I blinked, taken aback at a shadow I could have sworn moved in the darkness. I imagined I could have heard footsteps to go along with the moving image.

“Did you hear...” he began.

“Yes,” I replied, glancing around for an easy cover. I turned away from him, straining my neck in order to see around what looked like a doorway from my angle.

“Kitty.” Liam wrapped his fingers around my arm, yanking me behind him, then immediately pulled his gun. Before I knew what was happening, he fired a shot, gunning down a man at pointblank range.

By the time I caught my breath, I could see moving shadows, bodies, slowly surrounding us. “Liam, what the fuck?” I breathed.

“I don't know,” he replied.

There were men everywhere. I could hear guns being loaded and cocked, of knuckles being cracked. At that point, there was no question that we had been intercepted. Liam's chest gently rose and fell with his deep breaths as we stared, each of us concentrating on our own half of the crowd, devising an exit strategy.

I tightened my grip on my gun, determined not to fire a shot unless absolutely necessary. I didn't like using guns and really only carried one because I couldn't punch someone to death from a hundred feet away. Either way, I liked the fist fights. I liked the proximity of it all. In fact, this scenario would have been a dream simulation for me. The only problem was that this was not a simulation, and I was already bogged down by the fact that this was even happening on a routine hit and run.

They closed into us even tighter until I was only a foot away from the nearest man. They were not here to kill us. If that were the plan, they would have done it already. I felt the iron grip of a man around my wrist. I swung with my free hand, hitting him in his temple with the butt of my gun. As he staggered back, another man lunged to grab me. I took two steps back, completely disoriented by the surprise of the situation and still a bit sore from my earlier encounter and the climb all the way up to the roof. I fired the gun twice, hitting him in his abdomen. He tumbled to the ground, contracting in pain. Out of the corner of my eye, I could just catch Liam fighting with three guys.

In my momentary lapse in attention, another man pulled at my hair, I elbowed him from behind and began to run, hoping Liam would take the cue. I could hear angry Arabic shouts and the sound of footsteps rushing behind me. My shaking fingers fiddled with the zipper on my side pocket as I struggled to retrieve the rope and hook I always kept with me. The wild sound of bullets firing added to the chaos. I could feel the heat of them as they ricocheted off the ground at my feet, hear them as they whizzed past my ears and in between my arms and legs. Finally, I had the rope hooked securely onto me. My lungs contracted dramatically as they reached for the air I denied them. My feet had already begun to burn in the heat of the action.

I reached the edge of roof and paused only long enough to bend down in order to hook the other side of the rope onto it. Without thinking about it, I hoisted myself onto the edge and jumped.

Only as I fell, my hair flying wildly in the howling wind, my limbs flailing about me, tears of exertion filling my eyes, did I allow myself to accept the truth: we had been betrayed.

The faucet cut on, releasing rushing water into my sink. I turned it as high as it would go, hoping to fill the silence and drown out the worries in my head. There were voices: mine and my parents, my cousins', my teachers, and my doctor. They converged until I could no longer make out individual words. The sound was incoherent and meaningless, and yet, I couldn't get it out of my head. I sucked in deep breaths through my open mouth, hoping that the sting of dry oxygen on my sore throat would help calm me. It didn't.

The ground seemed to sway underneath me. I rocked back and forth, squeezing my toes together in an attempt to keep them from trembling by force. Sweat arose on my forehead and trickled down my cheeks, stinging as the salty substance reached the cuts on my face. With shaking fingers, I snatched a towel off the wall and dipped it into the sink full of warm water. A moan escaped my lips as I raised the steaming towel to my face. I blinked as blood dripped into the water, turning it a sickly pink color. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I couldn't get the smell of his breath out of my skin, or rid myself of the sensation of his hands grabbing my face.

A heavy knock on the door interrupted my attempts. I sighed, throwing the towel into the sink, and opened the door to find Liam standing on the other side. He seemed relaxed and clean as he stood there in a T-shirt and boxers, his shoulder-length hair still wet from the shower he took just moments earlier. I shot him a weak smile, then stepped aside so that he could come in. He went straight for the cabinet, grabbing his toothbrush and the toothpaste we shared.

With a sigh, I returned to my sink full of water and blood. As he brushed his teeth, he shot me a sideways glance.

“Are you okay?” he asked in between gargling.

I shrugged, taking extra care not to look at him. “Yeah, of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?”

“Someone tried to rape you.” He meant the statement as a scold, as if it were my fault I was attacked.

Well, it was. “It's not like he wasn't provoked...” I murmured, gently covering my face with the towel, breathing in the steam.

I heard him huff before he asked, “What happened?” 

I told myself the concern in his voice was the benign concern of a partner
for a
partner, nothing more. I had to tell myself that. I shrugged. “He wanted a cigarette.”

“And you wouldn't give it to him,” Liam finished, taking the towel from me. He emptied the sink full of dirty water and refilled it.

I raised my shoulders and dropped them, repeating the process in an attempt to stretch out. A chuckle escaped my lips. “Of course not.”

He shook his head as he gently placed the towel on my face. “I honestly don't understand what the issue is,” he murmured.

“What?” I snapped, annoyed at his scrutiny.

“If a man asks for a cigarette, give him a damn cigarette,” he replied.

I snatched the towel from him, turning away. “It wasn't about the cigarette,” I muttered.

He grabbed my shoulder and turned me around, forcing me to look at him. “It's never just about the cigarette.”

I tried to ignore the concern in his eyes. “He practically expected me to give it to him!” I cried. I didn't need anyone judging me.

“So?” Liam demanded.

I dropped the towel and walked away, leaving him in the bathroom on his own. It bothered me when people scrutinized me, when they judged my actions, and especially when they disapproved.  I entered our bedroom and began to rip the warm-up suit I was wearing off. Once naked, I rummaged around in my drawer for my night clothes. I quickly slipped into an oversized purple T-shirt and boy shirts, then made my way back into our living room.

Liam was sitting on our brown leather couch, surfing through the television channels, a scowl on his face. I passed quickly in front of him, ignoring him as I went straight for a cabinet in the back corner. A half-painted canvas stared at me once I had gotten the door open. I carefully grabbed it, then exited the room.

Once I had it securely on a stand and had squeezed a bunch of random colors onto a plate, I began to rip the colors across the canvas. My fingers trembled in the effort, my hands cramped at the exertion, my lips pursed in concentration, but I kept going, completely out of touch with myself. I painted nothing and everything. My thoughts and my dreams leaked out of me through the brush, splattering along the unsuspecting canvas. I tried not to think of home, or of family. I tried not to think of loneliness or hospitals. I threw all of those thoughts away, forcing them onto the canvas in front of me.

I heard the click of the door as Liam opened it and came to join me. I held my breath to keep from groaning at his presence. There was no being alone or away from Liam. Every moment with him was spent under a microscope. I felt examined and vulnerable under the power of his love and concern, love I could never feel for him.

“I don't mean to boss you around,” he began.

“I know.” I cut him off, hoping he would realize I didn't want to talk.

He didn't. “It's just...”

“What?” I snapped. I could hear the carpet giving way to his feet as he stepped closer.

“I just don't think it's really necessary.” He sighed.

“What's necessary?” I asked, gathering my brushes. What little calm I had achieved was completely gone now.

“The way that you risk your life like this. It just isn't... It just doesn't make any sense.”

I brushed past him to the bathroom in order to rinse out the bristles. “What doesn't make any sense?” I called from the bathroom.

“It isn't worth it,” he called back.

I rolled my eyes, wishing he would just get to the point, as I shut off the water and came back to my bedroom. “What's not worth it?” I asked, as I slid the canvas on its stand out of the way.

He threw his arms up, an exasperated sigh escaping him lips.

I chuckled at this, deciding to take the comedic route. Simply trying to avoid the subject was not going to be enough. I had to draw him away from it, distract him somehow. Once I had successfully put all my supplies away, I approached him, a smile on my face.

He wrapped his arms around my waist, resting his chin on my head. “I honestly don't think you care about yourself at all.”

My eyebrows furrowed in confusion. This was exactly why I didn't do relationships, why men were only good for sex. If you gave them anything more, they started to get smart. They started to reach inside of you and unearth things you would rather forget about yourself. I spread my fingers across his back, trailing my hand up and down his spine.

“Did you hear what I said?” he asked. I could already hear his voice growing more serene.

“Hmm?” I replied, reaching up to kiss his neck. He responded by kissing me on my forehead. I strained, making my lips available to his. I gasped as he pressed his lips against mine. It was all so familiar and different at the same time. I couldn't fight the disappointment. I couldn't stop myself from comparing.

As he became rougher, holding my lips in between his, thrusting his tongue into my mouth, I gripped his waist, pressing my body into his, wanting to be as close to him as possible physically, but at the same time, as far away as possible.

I sucked in a deep breath as he began suck my neck. Warmth spread in between my legs as I felt him grow hard against me. I could feel his hands trailing up and down my torso. I winced as his cold fingers reached under my night shirt, a soft moan escaping my lips.

John.

But he wasn't John. He was Liam, and I had to keep telling myself that. I couldn't let my memories seep into our sex. Not this time. I wouldn't.

There was a knock on the door. It was loud and demanding, as if someone meant to beat it down.

We froze. All the anxiety from the last few hours hit me at once. We had run from the roof as quickly as we could, met up and immediately come back here. No one knew we lived here and the apartment was registered under a third party. So who could be knocking?

“Police!” I heard the shout as if it had been produced by my own mind. I squeezed my eyes shut, imagining the gun I knew was in the bottom drawer of my jewelry box in our closet. I could see the fire escape, feel myself grabbing at the railings I ran down it.

Initial reaction.

But everything was going to be fine. We couldn't have been in trouble for anything. The government would sort it out.

“Running won't help,” I murmured into Liam's chest.

“I know,” he whispered in reply.