Kissing My Killer (7 page)

Gabriella

Every breath I took made my breast rise and fall against his hand.

Jesus, he’s going to—

No he’s not.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t form a coherent thought. I just stared up into those icy gray eyes as they decided my fate. The gun was utterly motionless, the end of the barrel pressed right up against my forehead, holding me there like a butterfly stuck with a pin.

I was terrified and that was normal.

But…

No.

As I looked up at him, at those eyes—

No.

The way his chest bulged as he controlled me, the hardness of his body against mine—

No!
This was wrong, utterly, utterly wrong.

It wasn’t that I wanted him to do something. Not like
this.
It was the fact that just being this close to him, in this position, was affecting me. I was getting—

No! No, I’m not!

But it didn’t matter how many times I denied it. My body was reacting and my brain had no say in it. It was pheromones or hormones or
something.
The feel of him, the sight of him, even the clean, masculine scent of him...it was sending hot currents swirling down through my body, joining together to make a dark vortex between my thighs. And his hard cock was right there, pressed against me. A few thin layers of cloth were all that separated him from...
me.

It wasn’t the situation. It was
him,
in spite of the situation. I knew I wouldn’t have reacted like this with any other man.

He shifted his weight infinitesimally and I felt the head of his cock trace along the lips of my sex. I drew in a shuddering breath.

I wanted to scream. I wanted him to shoot me and get it over with.

But part of me just wanted him to lean down and kiss me.

We stared into each other’s eyes, our breathing in sync and getting faster and faster—

There was a knock at the door.

Gabriella

He rolled off of me and sprang to his feet. I couldn’t believe how fast he was, for such a big guy. I saw now how he’d caught me so easily in the hallway.

I lay there panting as he crept across the room, keeping the gun pointing at me the whole time. He put his eye to the door’s spy hole for a second, then crept back to me. He leaned down and put his lips to my ear and, for the first time in what seemed like hours, he spoke.

“Get rid of him,” he said, his accent turning each syllable into a rough-edged slab of steel, “Or I’ll have to kill him.”

I nodded dumbly. He allowed me to get up and walked with me to the door. Then he showed me how he wanted me to stand when I opened it—pressed right up against the edge of it.

I slowly opened the door. He stepped back, hiding behind it and watching through the spy hole. He put his hand on the small of my back, reminding me he was there. The heat of his touch throbbed through my nightshirt.

Standing in the hallway was my neighbor, Mr. Lazzari His white hair was poking out from under a Yankees hat—he must have been watching a game on TV. “You okay? I heard a scream.”

I just stared at him for a second. Rescue was
right there.

But the man with his hand on my back would kill him. Maybe,
maybe
he’d then show me mercy—if that’s what had held him back so far. Maybe, if someone heard the shot and called the cops, I’d live. But Mr. Lazzari would still be dead. He had about sixteen grandchildren and he’d never hurt a person his whole life.

“I switched channels on the TV,” I said. I was shocked at how level my voice sounded. “And I forgot I had the volume cranked way up, and there was a movie on and...wow! I nearly hit the ceiling.” I forced a grin onto my face.

“Oh.” He peered into the apartment behind me, but there was nothing to see, nothing knocked over or out of place. “You sure?”

The hand on my back felt as if it was burning through my nightshirt to touch my skin. “Uh-huh.”

He nodded, a little embarrassed, and backed away. I swung the door slowly closed, turning as I did it. The man stepped forward from behind the door. And then we were staring at each other, our faces no more than a foot apart.

Alexei

God, she was beautiful. Standing there in her apartment, close enough that we could lean forward and kiss, we could have been a couple of lovers. Me in my suit, just home from work and my gorgeous girlfriend greeting me at the door—

And then I felt the weight of the gun in my hand.

I’d screwed up everything and now my life was unraveling. I couldn’t kill her but, if I didn’t, they’d kill
me.
Disloyalty isn’t accepted in the Bratva. And then they’d send someone to kill her, too.

One mistake. If I’d walked into that coffee shop two minutes earlier or later….

What the fuck am I going to do?

She must have seen my expression because she said, “You could just leave. I never saw you. I won’t tell anyone, I won’t go to the cops.”

I shook my head.

She looked around the apartment. “You can take anything you want. Please!”

I shook my head again.

Her voice was rising in fear. “I won’t go
near
Nikolai again. I’ll delete everything I got. You can watch me do it!”

I sighed. I suddenly felt very tired—tired of the whole system I was part of. “It doesn’t work that way,” I told her.

“Tell me! Tell me what I need to do!”

I just shook my head. There was nothing she could do.

She’d started to cry again. “You can’t just kill me!
Please!”

“I don’t want to!” I snapped. “But if I don’t—”

There was another knock at the door. I checked the spy hole.

It was Lev.

I slowly opened the door. Lev had his hand under his jacket, ready to pull out his gun, but he relaxed when he saw it was me. He pushed past me. “What the fuck is going on?” Then he saw the girl. “Who the fuck is this? His girlfriend?”

I closed the door behind him. I thought about saying
yes,
but lying was pointless—unless I could produce a body, he’d figure it out. “She’s the hacker,” I said.

“
Her?!”
He looked her up and down in disbelief.

“Why did you come in?” I asked. Every muscle in my body was groaning and aching with tension. I’d never been so tightly wound in my life.

“Do you know how long you’ve been in here? And Nikolai called me, asking if it was done yet.” He looked at the girl again. “Why haven’t you done it yet?”

The girl and I exchanged a desperate look.

Lev saw. “Oh. You fucked her?” He looked at the girl’s long, bare legs.

“No!” I snapped.

“You want to? Is that it? You want to fuck her before you do it?”

“
No!”

“It’s okay. Jesus, if that’s what you want, just do it so we can get out of here.” He looked at her legs again, then at the peaks her breasts made in the nightshirt. “We can both do her. Let’s take her in the bedroom.”

The girl was looking at me with huge, terrified eyes. I could feel everything sliding out of control. “No! Shut up!” I snapped.

But Lev didn’t care what I wanted, anymore. He put his hands on her shoulders and spun her to face the bedroom. “Come on. I’ll hold her. You can go first.”

“
Don’t touch her!”
I roared.

Everything stopped.

Lev blinked at me. “What...the fuck?”

I shook my head. “Just...go back to the car. I’ll deal with this.”

“You’ll
deal with it?
Like you’ve dealt with it so far?” Lev shook his head. “What the
fuck
has got into you?”

“
Wait in the car!”

“Christ!” He pushed the girl forward, away from him, and she went stumbling. “
I’ll
fucking do it.” He pulled out his gun.

“She could be useful,” I said desperately. “She could work for us. Hack our enemies!”

Lev snorted. “Nikolai was crystal fucking clear. Kill the hacker. He wants us to destroy her computer, too.”

And he raised his gun to fire.

Gabriella

I was staring down the barrel of a gun again, but this guy was different.

I’d known it as soon as I saw him, as soon as he’d leered at me. Meeting the second guy threw the first guy into sharp relief. He was smaller and slighter next to my huge guy. He was angry and jumpy where my guy was cold and controlled...and yet burning hot underneath. And this guy was leering at me with a crude, frat boy’s lust where my guy....my guy seemed to
want
me on a much deeper, more powerful level...but was wrestling with himself, holding himself back.

I caught myself.
When did he become “my” guy?

I looked over to where he was standing, my eyes wide and pleading.