Killing Game (19 page)

“I really can’t go back there, can I?” she asked him, trying to make sense of everything that was happening, of everything that had happened.

“Afraid not.
I don’t want them linking you to what happened and I don’t want them priming you.”

“Priming... it’s just another way of saying whore isn’t it?” She knelt a little closer so she could see his eyes clearly and see if her assumption was correct.

The more Cain thought about it, the tighter the feeling in his stomach got and a lump formed in his throat. He tried to swallow it down with little success as he stared at his hands, remembering the countless lives he’d ended, the countless times he’d scrubbed blood off them, and it was as though he could still see it all.

He’d killed a man for no real reason. He wasn’t under contract and he didn’t have an order to fulfill. He’d killed him in cold blood on personal grounds, all for the girl nestled in between his knees and looking up at him with innocent eyes.

He shifted his gaze from his hand to her. She was looking at him so tenderly that it felt as though she was twisting a knife in his stomach.

He was living a lie.

She’d never look at him that way if she knew the real him, if she found out what he really did for a living, and exactly how he’d paid for all the things she had in her apartment.

She was right.

She really wasn’t so innocent anymore.

In trying to preserve her innocence, he was actually corrupting her and destroying it.

All the time he spent with her was only serving to expose her to all the evils of the world—drug lords, prostitutes and hit men turned murderers.

Cain stared at his hands, recounting the last few seconds of the life that he’d stolen tonight.
The fear in his eyes, the final desperate gasp for air.
It hit him with the force of a tidal wave.

“Oh God, Lily.”
He dropped the pen and ran his hands around the back of his neck as he curled up, ignoring the pain in his ribs as he brought his elbows together so his face was hidden.

In saving her, he’d ruined every chance of being with her.

“What have I done?” he whispered into his knees.

Lily stared at him for a few moments before wrapping her arms around him. She closed her eyes as she held him, feeling slightly stunned that the man she’d always seen as strong was crying.

“Shh... it’ll be fine, Cain, no one will know,” she whispered as her fingers stroked his back, attempting to soothe him.

“You’ll know.” His tone was subdued. “You’ll know and it will eat away at you. I’m nothing better than a murderer.”

Lily thought about that and was surprised when she didn’t feel how she’d presumed she would. She didn’t hate him, or despise him for what he’d done. She just wanted to comfort him and tell him that it was fine, in her heart she’d already forgiven him.

“No, Cain. I don’t think that. You didn’t intend to kill him. I believe you when you say he left you no choice.”

Cain absorbed her words and the soothing way her fingers were playing on his back. He wrapped his arms about her waist and held her tightly, burying his face in her neck. “I’m sorry, Lily. I wish I could take it all back... all of it.”

“Shh...” Lily stroked his hair and held him to her, cradling him gently even though he was holding her so tight that she was finding it difficult to breathe.

“I didn’t want to—” Cain cut himself off as he slowly regained control of his emotions. He wanted to tell her everything. When he said he didn’t want to, he meant he never had done, but he’d never had a choice in the matter. The instant his boss had discovered his
‘talent’,
he’d been pressed into service.

“I know. Thank you for saving me, for being there to protect me.” Lily dipped her head and kissed his shoulder as her fingers played in his hair.

She could feel the mood between them shifting onto a different course as he pulled away from her.

“Always, Lily, anything for you.”
He blinked slowly as their eyes met.

Lily wiped his tears away and then cupped his cheeks in both her hands, drawing him close to her. She closed her eyes as their lips met again, a sweep of tingles running along every nerve ending in her and her lips buzzing under his.

Cain kissed her gently, almost reverently, savoring what she was offering to him and knowing that this was partly forgiveness. As she shifted closer to him still, his hands came to rest in the small of her back, holding her firmly between his legs.

She sighed as he moved his kisses along her jaw and down her neck. Her head fell the opposite way, exposing her throat to him, and he kissed down to her collarbone.

“Lily.” Cain breathed in her perfume and kissed the hollow in between her collarbones. He wanted to lose himself in her, wanted to forget everything he’d done if only for one night, but at the same time he wanted to stop.

He didn’t want this to be about her comforting him.

He wanted it to be so much more than that.

“Cain?” Lily opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling as he stopped kissing her. Lowering her eyes, she found him looking at her, his eyes reflecting a tempest of feelings for a second before they became clear again, and she wanted to know what he felt about her.

So many times, he’d shown her affection and then stolen it away again in the blink of an eye.
So many times, he’d shifted moods faster than she could make sense of them. He’d risked getting himself killed in order to protect her. He’d kissed her with so much tenderness that she’d felt as though he’d set her heart on fire.

What was this?

“Hmm?”
He looked deep into her eyes.

“What are we doing?” She rested her hands against his chest as she looked at him, her heart beating sickeningly fast as she held her breath and waited for an answer.

He dipped his head towards her until their lips were brushing lightly against each other.

He whispered into her mouth before capturing her lips in a deep kiss.

“Falling in love.”

Cain gave Sarah a little smile as Lily sat him down on the couch next to her. He watched his girl as she moved straight to the door and locked it, clicking and sliding all the latches into place, and then gave her a weak smile as she walked over to the curtains and drew them tightly.

As Lily moved back across the room to sit down in between Cain and her sister, she considered how crazy everything seemed to be tonight.

First, the red haired girl had visited her down at the bar and that had set her nerves on edge for the rest of the night, and then she’d come home to find her sister madder than hell and Cain bleeding to death in the bathroom. Things had only got crazier since then. She’d found out so many things about Cain and this city in so short a space of time that it almost made her head spin. She’d discovered that the man she was falling for was capable of killing, and that she didn’t care as much as she thought she would. She seemed to detach herself from it all, pushing it away and ignoring its existence because she wanted to be with him.

No matter what he
did.

She wanted to be with him, wanted to feel his strong arms holding her and his warm lips against hers. She wanted to look into his eyes and see all the feelings he held for her.

She wanted to drown in them.

Settling herself down on the couch, she mused that this world was turning out to be nothing like she’d always thought it was—it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t all good. There was a hard, dark, place that hid behind the veil of day, one full of dangerous people and one that was starting to seem more like a constant fight for survival rather than living.

When Cain had told her they were falling in love, she hadn’t wanted to believe him, even when her heart was telling her it was true. He’d been honest with her, had admitted that he’d killed a man, and she’d been confronted by just what kind of man he could be.

What was worse, she now suspected that his profession was anything but legal, that there was a reason he worked almost the same hours as she did. He knew people in high places, knew all the right people. He knew the underground that she’d evidently unwittingly become a part of and what frightened her more was the fact that they knew him. She’d seen the recognition in people’s faces. She’d heard the jealous snake in the voice of that Sherry girl.

Everyone knew him.

Even her boss.

She didn’t want to think about exactly what it was that he did, but she knew without question that it wasn’t sales and it certainly wasn’t landscape gardening.

“Hey in there?”
Cain raised his brows as he looked over at Lily. She’d been sitting motionless and staring at the coffee table for a good five minutes, and he was starting to suspect that her thoughts were about him and what he’d done.

“Huh?” She visibly shook herself and looked at him with wide eyes as though she’d been oblivious to the world.

“I just wanted to know what you wanted to watch,” Sarah said from behind Lily as she looked at Cain.

Lily just shrugged, her eyes locked with his.

Sarah rolled her eyes.

Cain brought his hand up and frowned as he cupped her cheek. He could see the conflict in her, could read it in her expression.

“I know it’s not easy to accept—” he started but found Lily cutting him off.

“
It’s
fine, it’s just... confusing? It will take a while to adjust to, I think. Everything is suddenly so different. Some things are clearer, painfully clear, and I don’t know what that means yet... or what that makes me...” She trailed off when he frowned at the last thing she’d said.

He couldn’t blame her for feeling confused. It wasn’t everyday that someone came to your home and told you that they’d killed someone with a pen, and that it was your boss, and that they had done it because you were about to be turned into a prostitute.

She definitely had a right to be confused.

In the bedroom, she’d been incredible. She was so forgiving of him, so understanding. She’d offered him kisses that had spoken volumes about her feelings and what he meant to her, and when he’d found himself fearing that it would turn out to be nothing more than comfort sex that she wanted to offer him, she’d stopped. She’d pulled back, looked into his eyes and said they were going too fast and they would end up hurting him.

It had taken him a few seconds to realize that she’d meant his ribs and not his feelings, but he’d silently thanked her all the same.

Now, he was sitting with his girl, watching her trying to come to terms with what he’d done and feeling justifiably conflicted about how it made her feel, how she felt about him now that she knew he could kill.

“Take your time, baby.” Cain smiled and trailed his fingers off her cheek.

Lily’s eyes followed his hand as it lowered and came to rest on his knee. She smiled slightly as she placed hers over it and curled her fingers around so she was holding it gently. Turning to face her sister, she found Sarah watching her and Cain and just smiled slightly.

Sarah beamed back at her.
“Scary movie, funny movie, romantic movie?”

“Go with your gut.” Lily ran her fingers lightly down Sarah’s long brown hair and smiled.

Not one to give up the chance she had offered her, Sarah immediately knelt in front of the little DVD collection and looked through it. She grinned as she held up her choice.

Lily
grinned
right back at her.

Cain desperately resisted rolling his eyes at the movie and forced a smile as he looked at the cover of
While You Were Sleeping
.

Sarah removed the disc from the case and slipped it into the player, grabbing the remote before she came back to sit next to her sister. Lily noticed her looking at her hand where it was holding Cain’s, her thumb gently caressing him. She wondered what her sister was thinking and when Sarah smiled right into her eyes, she couldn’t help smiling back, showing her how much she liked Cain. Sarah’s smile broadened, telling her clearly that she was happy for her.

Sarah’s smile became a grin when she stood and turned the light off before coming back to sit with them. Lily was thankful for the privacy her sister had given her and Cain. It was nice being with him without losing having her sister around too.

She smiled in the dim light of the room, watching the credits roll on the film and stifling a sigh as Cain’s arm came to rest around her shoulders. She couldn’t lean into his embrace for fear of hurting him, but it felt comforting to be this close to him, as close as she could get.

Cain brushed the hair from her neck, sweeping it around and over her shoulder furthest from him. Leaning forward, he pressed a little kiss to the patch of throat that he’d exposed and smiled against her skin. When Sarah had turned the light off, it had felt as though she had switched something off in him. Thoughts of work that had been crowding his brain and giving him a headache had suddenly drifted away, and all he could think about was how nice it felt to be with the girl he loved.

He’d never felt so happy, at least not in the years since he’d run away and come to New York City.

Before that there had been fleeting moments of happiness, but they didn’t compare to this—how sitting here with Lily made him feel.

He tugged her a little closer, not caring that his ribs protested as he pulled her against him. He just wanted to be near her, wanted this moment to last so he didn’t have to face what was coming soon. He could feel it, see it on the horizon. Russ had been called off the case, leaving him to work the contract alone at last, but that only meant that it was going to happen soon. His boss wouldn’t put up with tailing and recon when he was alone on the case. He’d expect results. He pushed his thoughts away, trying to focus on just being with Lily and not thinking about how the
prospect of having to kill her ex-love made him feel
.

Of how killing anyone made him feel.

Closing his eyes, he leaned his cheek against her shoulder and smiled when she let out a quiet sigh and held his hand tighter.