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Nathalie Gray

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The Smiling Assassin

* * *

by Nathalie Gray

To My Reader:

Once in a while, you have to redeem one of them, the anti-hero, the near-villain, the killer with a conscience. And sometimes, all it takes is the love of a good woman. That’s the story of Uriel and Amelia.

The Smiling Assassin: Chapter 1

12 January 2391 Era Vulgaris, 0412 hours

Sector Five, Cartagena Station, pop. 5.1 million

8.2 light-years from Earth

He wasn’t callous enough to kill the man while she still watched. But as soon as the skinny brunette scrambled off the bed to retrieve the rest of her ruined clothes, Uriel fired a single, economical bullet in the would-be rapist’s heart. A small target, yes, but Uriel was a good shot.

The woman gasped in shock and turned her pale face to him. Usually he pumped another round in his target just for good measure—he was careful if nothing else—but this time, Uriel let it be a one-bullet deal. He figured the poor woman had had enough.

Who was she? What had brought her to infamous Foley’s apartment? Not pretty enough to be an escort, she was no prostitute or junkie either, not that it made a stitch of difference. There was something in the way she moved, in the way she yanked her clothes on with her back against the wall and her gaze shifting between him and the dead prick. Nervous, understandably afraid, yet alert. Judging from the red marks over Foley’s nose and temple, she’d placed a few hits too. Good woman.

“Here.” He ripped the sheet off the bed and proffered it. There was blood on one corner. “Wrap that around you. It’ll be windy on the way down.”

She took the offering without glancing into his eyes, for which he was glad. He might be an assassin—the best—who’d just caught his latest target, but the sight of a woman’s pain or fear always tore at his soul. Rage bubbled to the surface. He pushed it down. Nothing came out of anger. Or any other emotion, for that matter.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked in a small, tight voice. Her dark eyes looked too big for her narrow face.

Uriel hated the dead prick even more. What kind of voice did she usually have? What change would her ordeal bring? What else on top of her dignity had this scumbag stolen?

He turned his back on her so she could adjust herself in her clothes and drape the sheet around her.

“Down below,” he replied, surprised his voice came out strangled. What the hell was wrong with him? “You can call station security there.” He’d be long gone by the time they arrived.

She nodded and held the sheet around her shaking frame while he pushed the remnants of the shattered door aside to let her pass. He always made grand entrances, either by busting through something or, if the occasion called for it, by showing up like a ghost ship, slow and silent. Deadly. With his height, either way worked.

For this present contract, he’d have chosen the latter method if he hadn’t heard the woman’s calls for help. He could’ve chosen to wait for a clear shot, and usually did. Waiting for that one split second of perfect clarity was what differentiated him from the rest of the wannabes out there who thought owning a fancy gun and having a good eye entitled them to the title of assassin.

But he hadn’t waited today. Couldn’t have waited.

Uriel threw a leg over the matte black air pressure bike’s seat and extended a hand to the woman. Her fingers were cold and bony but firm. For a split second, their gazes met. He’d never believed in any sort of link, mojo, karma or fate. That crap was for those who didn’t have the guts to ask for what they wanted, or to take it when it was available. But when he looked into her brown eyes, he couldn’t deny what he saw. There was something there. Something special. Strength tempered with wisdom. This was a woman who wouldn’t bend under the weight of life.

She opened her mouth, looked about to say something. He didn’t want to hear it. In case it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. In case it was.

Uriel closed his hand around hers, felt his heat seep into her palm, watched her eyes grow to the size of tokens. He swung her behind him to break the moment. For some inane reason, breaking eye contact with the skinny brunette was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.

She weighed almost nothing. He could tell she wanted to hang onto him for safety but was probably loath to touch him more than she had to. He looked like a killer. He was a killer. She gripped the back of his greatcoat and waited until he’d kicked the stand before she actually wrapped an arm around him. And if the feel of it didn’t make him want to squeeze her hand for comfort….

“Hold on tight,” he threw over his shoulder.

Below the concrete-and-steel ledge of his target’s posh rooftop apartment, Cartagena spread in a semicircle, the station’s interior a couple of miles wide and several long. A little over five million people, some of them barely up to that standard and others definitely not, lived—survived—inside that giant honeycombed steel and thermoplastic toilet paper roll. The irony had always appealed to him.

The manmade breeze from mammoth ventilation units caressed his face. He leaned sideways, put his thumb on the control and gently maneuvered his APB off the thin building’s roof. Behind him, the woman’s other arm encircled his middle. She held him tightly.

From beneath the layers of pain, self-imposed solitude and violence surfaced a surprisingly strong emotional reaction. Like a bubble rising in a muddy pond. It didn’t last long, but for one glorious instant, the lifespan of a spark, Uriel enjoyed the woman’s embrace, even if she only held onto him for fear of plummeting the five hundred feet to the ground. Still, human contact felt good. This human’s contact.

The hydroponics gardens would make for a perfect landing spot, nice and private without being too secluded for his charge’s safety. He could deny it all he wanted, but he genuinely cared for her safety, so he aimed his APB there. As soon as he touched down near a comms booth, she took her arms off him. He felt more bereft now than ever. Cold replaced the warmth of her lithe body against him. No longer held by her wiry arms, he felt loose, disjointed, scattered, and hated himself for it.

The woman dismounted, backing away from him and toward the comms booth, arms crossed and with those big dark eyes riveted to him. Their gazes met and held again. That something was there still. He didn’t know what it was. But it was something.

“What’s your name?” she said. Her voice wasn’t so high-pitched anymore. Tough cookie.

“It’s not important.”

“It is to me.”

He turned his head away and looked at the station’s inner ring rotating on itself. The huge solar panels outside the honeycombed thermoplastic were about to fan out and angle toward the sun to catch its rays and energy. It would be day soon. He pulled the hood of his greatcoat over his head. Hid in the shadows once more. Familiar shadows, like an old pain.

“Uriel.”

He instantly regretted giving her his name. Never make it personal. Others had died for seeing his face, never mind knowing his real name. She was now armed with both.

She took a bold step forward. A gesture that belied the conflicting emotions raging in her dark eyes—fear, healthy curiosity, and that thing he couldn’t put his finger on. “I’m Amelia.”

A tingle spread through his chest. Amelia. Nice and clean, uncomplicated.

“I won’t forget what happened.” Her eyes confirmed it.

Damn. He hoped she would. The fear, the pain, everything. Him most of all.

Uriel twisted the handle hard, which revved the engine into a deep roar before lifting off at an acute angle and swerving high above the hydroponics gardens.

Don’t look back. Don’t look back.

His weakness surprised him—well, damn, he’d have been turned into the proverbial pillar of salt in five seconds flat. Uriel looked back down. Not leisurely, not out of idle curiosity or manly pride, but out of sheer need.

Her pale upturned face was like a tiny moon in a night sky. Receding. Disappearing. Strangely, he felt as if he’d just left a part of himself behind.

But she’d been looking. At him.

The Smiling Assassin: Chapter 2

11 January 2392 Era Vulgaris, 2300 hours

Sector Two, Cartagena Station

Five hours to go. Then it’d be one year to the day. An anniversary she meant to “celebrate” away from here and on an Earth-bound cargo freighter that had cost pretty much all she had. She couldn’t afford to stay. Financially, logistically, emotionally. She had to leave. Away from here and on her way to a new life, all her affairs settled, all the loose ends tied. Except one.

Amelia spent a few seconds looking down at the tiny screen on her portable codex, which glowed a faint acid green and illuminated the rest of her sleeve. A man’s face on the screen returned her stare. Her heart beat faster, harder, as it always did whenever she looked at that face. Again she experienced the pull she’d felt as he towered like a vengeful angel in Foley’s bedroom, the tight set of his lips, the hard judgment in his eyes before he pulled the trigger.

But his mouth and eyes had softened when he turned his attention to her. She’d felt a connection there, a thread both thin and hard to define. What had they in common but that horrible night? Yet it had been there. A silvery spiderweb in the breeze. She’d felt it even more acutely when he heaved her up behind him on his air pressure bike. The heat of his hand….

She shivered. That face. She knew by heart the pale complexion, longish dark hair peppered with silver in spite of his young appearance, and his dark, haunted eyes in the angular face. He’d been very tall, at least six and a half feet, and spare with a predatory mien, especially with the greatcoat and hood he’d pulled low. The tiny portrait of her savior she’d drawn by hand almost a year before had become an anchor in the raging sea of her life. Salvation had a face. Uriel. An assassin with an archangel’s name.

And she hadn’t even thanked him.

Over time, after the initial trauma of the attack, she’d understood the risks he’d taken by letting her live with knowledge of his face and name. Obviously, someone had paid him to kill Foley. Witnesses would have been no part of the deal. He could’ve gotten rid her. She wouldn’t have been able to stop him, any more than she’d been able to fight off that pig. She’d been stupid to follow Foley into his apartment, especially after discovering how much of a crook her newest client was. Despite the consequences to her career—she worked for a firm that expected their employees to put in at least eighty hours a week—she should’ve declined to represent him.

Should have. Could have.

So instead of falling into self-destruction and terror following her attack, she’d given herself one year. One year to sell everything she had to pay for her passage on that ship, one year to put her life back on track, and one year to investigate her client’s murder. She had to know.

Slowly, through other unresolved cases before his, she had pieced things together until she’d found a trail. Byzantine at best, most times cold, other times fresh. A trained forensic accountant, she could dig deep and straight and for a long time. Uriel wasn’t an easy man to track. But not impossible.

Her obsession kept her awake at night. She needed to thank him before she left. She had to see him, at least one last time. It was gnawing at her with the relentless energy of a hungry rat. She wanted that regret off her chest, if only to close the book and move on with her life. Although now she wasn’t sure she still had a life that didn’t involve her search. Her quest. He’d become part of her without his realizing it. Sometimes she wondered what he’d do if she ever caught up to him. Would he rectify the situation and kill her? Did he likewise have regrets?

But she’d picked up the trail recently from a dual murder case up in Sector Two, where resided the richest—and dirtiest—citizens. From the security stills, a tall man in dark clothes could be spotted standing on a nearby roof overlooking the murders. She would’ve recognized that silhouette anywhere. So he’d killed these two, then, both of them embroiled in Earth-based money laundering.

With several face-recognition programs and her access to

security databases and records, she’d been able to isolate about a dozen potential candidates with the name Uriel either in their personal ID or verifiable genealogy. She’d tracked each one, made visual contact and confirmed none of them were “her” Uriel.

Except for one. She hadn’t been able to find him. His accounts revealed regular activity, but not a single visual image existed anywhere on Cartagena. Earth-born, this man, this Uriel Saar had immigrated to the station nine years prior under a work visa and had simply disappeared. Until now.

From the most unlikely source had come a fresh new lead. Opportune, too, for she was running out of time. Her ship would leave in six hours. She had right now and the clothes on her back. If she didn’t find him—

No. She must find him.

So her new lead meant everything. The man owned an APB—or he had, anyway. A mean-looking, matte black affair. Not many people owned these old-fashioned, air pressure bikes, and those who did had to procure fuel cells and parts from a single source on station. Her lead had brought her to this source.

Amelia presently stood across from the garage, watching the last client leave with the owner, who fished a plastic strip from his back pocket and slid it along the access panel. A red light flashed before the panel blinked out. She sighed, raked her hair back. She’d stood there all day, waiting. As she’d done for the past several days. APB fuel cells didn’t last more than a few hours, and owners had to visit this place on a regular basis. She was bound to see him eventually.

If he still owned his bike. If he still lived on Cartagena. If he didn’t have his own shipping channels for fuel cells.

Illegal, true, but he also killed people for a living. She’d grown accustomed to ifs in her line of work. Ifs were her gas, her reason to keep digging. She lived on ifs.

Maybe the shop would open later on. It never had, in all her days watching it. But maybe it’d be different tonight. A spasm tightened her belly. She swallowed hard to keep the lump in her throat from rising. It had to be different tonight. She couldn’t leave without seeing him. Without thanking him.

Her stomach grumbled. APBs needed fuel, and so did humans. She’d accomplish nothing if she fainted from hunger. Amelia left her post, worked her stiff legs, then made her way to a nearby cookshop designed to represent an old twentieth-century sushi bar. The smell of synthetic fish crinkled her nose. A cursory check revealed a free stool by the wall. She claimed it, ordered a plate of maki rolls from the touchscreen, and waited twenty of the thirty seconds picking at dry skin around her fingernails until she made one bleed. After the plastic tray emerged from the tiny chute, she pulled it closer and swung sideways so she could cross her legs under the counter. The taste of blood made her grimace when she sucked on her finger.

That was when she saw, in the reflective surface of the menu screen, a very tall, darkly clad silhouette passing behind her.

Her heart skipped a beat. Not many people stood that tall. In her haste to turn around, she knocked her plate to the ground and nearly stepped in it when she jumped to her feet. The other patrons in the cookshop were preoccupied with their own food. No one was walking around or even standing.

What had she seen, then?

Her heart in her throat, Amelia crouched to pick her food off the floor. She wasn’t hungry anymore. Sweat tickled her spine. She’d have to go down to the spaceports soon or risk missing her ship. Her landlord had already rented her cube, probably for three times the rent he charged her since the grandfather clause had ceased with her. She wouldn’t even be able to afford her own place anymore. She’d been lucky to get transfer documents for a job on Earth. All her stuff was already on the ship. Her entire life, in eleven canary-yellow polymer crates. Ha.

When she rose and saw him, the shock froze her.

In the corner, sitting with his back against the wall, his face downcast as he ate with surprising refinement, was the man who’d occupied such a large part of her life for the past year.

Uriel.

Her throat squeezed painfully. Panic became a physical entity choking her. She fought for breath, gulped a few intakes, then started shaking. Bad. It was him. Unmistakably him.

Whatever had pulled at her the year before, the strange connection she’d felt with the tall stranger, returned a hundredfold. She felt reeled into his shadowy presence once more, into his gaze, which had softened after his deed. There was something in the way he’d looked at her, given her his hand, that had talked to her on a level deeper than words. And watching him leave on his APB had felt the same as missing the last train home. That sinking feeling of having failed an incredibly important test. Amelia ran a shaking hand through her hair, hoping she’d rake out the crazy thoughts from her brain as well.

As if he knew someone was watching him, he took a sip from a water bottle, his dark eyes rolling up and scanning the place as a predator would, furtively yet not missing a thing. Amelia’s first instinct was to avert her gaze. But she’d been looking for him for months. She wanted him to see her. Didn’t she?

She needed—what the hell did she need from this guy? He was a killer! She shouldn’t have come here. It wasn’t safe. But she wouldn’t have another chance. There was the connection. They’d shared something. Hadn’t they? Her ship was due to leave. Just go and thank him.

When his gaze fell on her, everything else dissolved into gray-on-gray pixels. Nothing else mattered, not the sweat tickling down her back, nor the arrhythmic rate of her heartbeat.

She’d gazed at that face so many times over the year, and still she felt as if she’d only now rediscovered him. Although he did look a bit paler and gaunter than she remembered. Under the unforgiving fluorescents, his cheekbones and brow cast his eyes in twin pools of shadows. He angled his chin slightly so he faced her.

What had she imagined his reaction would be, anyway? She’d expected what, recognition, annoyance, shock? She got it all, but what took her aback was the sadness. His eyes flared wide. He slowly put the bottle back on the table, mouth parted, lips glistening, shook his head almost imperceptibly except to her, and returned to his meal. Even from a distance, she saw that his hands were shaking.

Amelia tried to swallow but couldn’t. A headache of cosmic proportions squeezed behind her eyeballs and pinched the optic nerves. Sweat slicked her hands. Now what?

Get off your butt and go thank him.

What if he didn’t recognize her? Liar, he does.

She cleared her throat and stood.

As if he’d caught a jolt, he jumped to his feet, dabbed his mouth with his napkin, laid it on his plate and slid everything into the chute at the end of the table.

Was he coming to her? She took a step, then another. He wasn’t looking at her. She nearly called him by name but fought the urge. He wouldn’t want that, now would he?

Instead of walking by her on his way to the door, he seemed to have changed his mind and aimed for the back instead. She realized she was following him before her brain had registered movement. Too late to turn back now. She’d worked too hard for this. She’d put her life on ice to track him down. She needed to speak to him, thank him, get it off her chest and move on. A new life on Earth awaited her mere hours from now. Hopefully, her phobias and obsessions wouldn’t follow her there.

Two seconds after he strode into the narrow corridor leading to the washrooms and a second-floor pub, Amelia reached the corner. Just in time to see the back door closing. She rushed to it and cringed when she pushed it open, triggering the alarm. Despite the loud robotic chime, she charged on without looking back. How the hell had he managed that one?

Outside, gloom owned the rank-smelling alley. Simulated “wind” from the station’s ventilation system stirred her hair. A long dark shape caught her attention. To her right, crossing the alley. Man, he was fast! Throwing caution to the wind, she started running. Calling his name would’ve been next if she hadn’t feared attracting the wrong kind of attention. Unless one was built like Uriel, walking alone in Sector Two didn’t contribute to longevity.

Amelia reached the corner with her heart beating like a war drum. No one. She’d lost him. Again. Tears tingled her eyelids from the odd notion that she’d lost a part of herself as well.

“Damn.”

“That’s what I said myself.” The voice came from somewhere to her left. A deep, gentle voice.

She whirled around to find the tall man leaning against a decrepit concrete wall covered with graffiti. Blades of bluish light from a faraway streetlamp illuminated the bottom half of his angular face, but his hood pulled low hid everything else. Light and darkness, devoid of color. Like a ghost. Maybe he was.

“Uriel,” she murmured. She wanted to say more, but couldn’t. Her throat squeezed.

“I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“Done what?”

“Tracked me down.”

“I had to. I wanted….”

He straightened, advanced like the hooded predator he was, stopped only when he towered over her. And she was tall for a woman, five-ten. When he leaned into her, light spilled into his hood and all she could do was stare up into black eyes like twin windows into an abyss.

His upper lip curled. “Everyone wants something.”

Sweat pearled at her temples. She felt each itchy droplet. “I wanted to thank you.”

Maybe she dreamed that stark white smile, for it lasted only a second. Uriel shook his head. “You tailed me all that time to thank me? That’s what you wanted?”

The sound of drunken laughter reached them. Amelia glanced sideways into the alley and spotted a few forms moving, staggering. Close by, glass broke, followed by male laughter. Instinctively, she moved closer to Uriel. “Yes. That’s all I wanted.”

“Well?” He seemed amused, for some reason.

She hadn’t expected that. “Thank you, for saving my life, for… for, uh, stopping him.”

He nodded. “You’re welcome.”

And there it was. She’d done it and survived. After a year of obsessive research, of hours poring over microfiches and financial statements, of days on end spent staking out different places in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him, she’d finally done it. She’d thanked her savior.

She forced her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I… er, I—you were hard to find.”

“I’m supposed to be impossible to find.”

“Here, kitty-kitty!” a male voice called from the alley.

She jumped. By the sound, she could tell the drunkards were getting closer. Amelia swallowed hard. Then she saw them, four men obviously in advanced states of drunkenness tottering side to side while singing some sports-related anthem she didn’t know. One of them whistled.

“You’ve thanked me,” Uriel murmured. “I said, ‘you’re welcome.’”

She had. And he had. Then why couldn’t she leave? Why couldn’t she bring herself to turn back and just walk away? “Um, can we—can we talk somewhere else?”

Uriel arched an eyebrow. “You really want to go somewhere alone with me? You do remember what I am, don’t you?”

She couldn’t help another quick glance down the alley. She’d always been able to handle stress, but since her attack, it didn’t take much to ratchet up her heart rate.

“I’d like to talk to you. It won’t take long.”

“You think I’m safer than they are?”

“Yes.”

The word came out just like that. No doubt, no hesitation. Where had all this aplomb come from? Yet she knew intuitively Uriel wouldn’t hurt her, just as she knew from simple eye contact that a driver wouldn’t run her over crossing the street. People still had those. Instincts. If only hers had worked before she’d followed Foley up to his place. But then again, they’d worked just fine. She’d just chosen to ignore them. Never again.

The noisy quartet emerged from the alley in an onion- and sweat-smelling cloud of cigarette smoke. One of them, a tall man with a thick dark beard that looked wet in the faint light, pointed unsteadily at her. “Y-you in trouble, cutie?” Another made a lewd comment.

Uriel turned to them and pulled his hood down low. “Walk away.”

“Hey, oh, sorry to mess your date,” the bearded one replied, shooing his friends away. “We’ll leave you to it. Bye, kitty.”

Amelia gasped when Uriel charged, both sides of his greatcoat flapping back under the speed of his assault. He kicked the bearded man hard and low. A sickening crunch and a howl of pain made her cringe and take a few steps back. Good God, what was he doing?!

Displaying incredible strength, Uriel picked the bearded one up by the crotch and an armpit, flipped him sideways and launched him into his unsteady friends, who backpedaled and collapsed pell-mell with pained grunts and curses.

“You should’ve offered to help,” Uriel snarled. “You always offer a woman your help.”

Abruptly he turned and stomped away. His coat fretted around his booted feet as if a great beast were trapped within its folds.

She should’ve fled from the wounded men—she didn’t want to be there when they managed to extricate themselves from the knot of limbs—and from the killer who’d just let her walk away. Again. Instead, she took off after him, the connection she’d felt with him almost a physical thing tying them together.

“Wait!”

He didn’t slow as he took corners, disappeared into gloomy alleys, emerged onto boulevards. His height made him stand out whenever he’d cross to the opposite side, his tall and slim silhouette like a blade of darkness against shadows. Sector Two, in all its decrepitude and dark scary recesses, flashed by as she lay chase. Each block resembled bleak concrete cubes more than real abodes—habitat designers obviously didn’t care about the people living in this part of the station. Some passersby turned to stare as she dashed by, but others didn’t seem to think out of place a lone woman running. On Cartagena Station, everyone ran either after or from something.

But Uriel wasn’t running. She was. Her pride demanded she stop this nonsense immediately, but she couldn’t. As much as it needled her, she felt no nearer to closure now than before she’d found him. Plus, she was afraid. He was the only one she trusted, even a little bit, in these parts. Already she felt watched, followed, hunted.

“Wait! Please!”

At the foot of some old-fashioned metal stairs, he froze, both hands on the handrails, one foot on the first step. The hood didn’t reveal his expression, but the tight set of his shoulders did.

“You already thanked me. You’re off the hook.”

“I’ll let you know when I am.”

Her tone must have shocked him as much as it did her. He turned toward her, gauging her from within that impenetrable hood before cocking his head to one side. “What do you want?”

Amelia massaged a stitch in her side. She wasn’t used to more physical exertion than lifting heavy files or rushing to take the skytrain.

What did she want? Not only had she found the man who made it his profession to stay off radar, she’d faced him and told him what had been burning in her for so long. She’d thanked him. Success on all counts, no?

“I….”

“What?” He looked annoyed but expectant. Unless she was imagining things. Like that connection between them.

She threw her hands up. “I don’t know anymore. I thought finding you and thanking you in person would put it all behind me.”

“Guilt never does anyone any good.” He sounded as though he knew that intimately.

“It wasn’t guilt.”

An iceberg. She’d only seen the tip of it, and now the rest floated up to the surface. She’d wanted to thank him, yes, but even more, she’d wanted to see him again. Attraction? Was that what she’d felt for him that first meeting, when she was in no position to deal with it?

With the angle, she could see his mocking grin.

“You felt guilty for not thanking me.”

“No. I told you, it wasn’t—”

“Save your breath. It was guilt. So you built this whole thing around it, and now that you’ve met me and thanked me, you just don’t know what to do with yourself.”

“I know what to do with myself, okay. I’ve booked passage for Earth. I’m leaving in a few hours.”

His reaction caught her off guard. He hung his head. “I’m glad,” he murmured.

The Smiling Assassin: Chapter 3

Why had she thrown this at him, as if she’d meant to hurt him? Only she hadn’t!

The man’s eyes flared for a second. The sadness she’d seen fill his dark eyes in the cookshop returned. He nodded. “You should leave then. Good-bye.”

Her heart squeezed. “Wait.”

He took his foot off the step, turned around and crowded her back against a brick wall. Debris crunched under her sneakers.

“I said you should go. Now. Get on that ship and leave Cartagena.”

“I will,” Amelia breathed, her voice suddenly failing her. His proximity interfered with her ability to think coherently. For a moment, he looked predatory and feral, ruled by an inner demon that whispered wicked things in his ear.

The sensation dissipated. Melancholy filled his eyes once more. He stared at the space of concrete floor between them, a symbol of what separated their lives.

“Look,” he said. “I was never raped, so—”

“He didn’t rape me,” she snapped, stubbornly staring up into his eyes. Anger bubbled close to the surface. That pig Foley. It was all his fault. He’d messed her up in the one area over which she’d always been master, her logical mind. “He tried.”

“Okay. No one’s ever tried to rape me, so I don’t know what you’ve gone through, what you lost. But I lost something once. Someone. And guilt kept me going for a while. And when that was gone too, there was nothing else. I’d been too much of an ass to realize I had no life left.”

In his tirade, he’d taken a step closer until his chest practically touched hers.

Heat seeped into her clothes. “Is that what I am, an ass with no life?”

“I think you’re much more than that. You’re smart—you caught me—and you look good, and any guy with half a brain would scoop you up and take you home to his mama.”

Amelia swallowed hard for the things he’d left unsaid. Good God, what was she doing? She’d accomplished what she set out to do. Her ship was due to leave. She should already be at the spaceports, waiting for the gate to open. But as much as she wanted to deny it, this thing that kept her riveted to the spot, that kept her in Uriel’s presence despite the urgency—or perhaps because of it—now had a name. Attraction. She felt attracted to him. In every way.

“Is that what you’d do?” she said.

Strands of hair spilled over his forehead and obscured his eyes. The angular features filled with shadow when he leaned over. “That’s a dangerous game you’re playing, Amelia. I’m not a good man.”

A mix of trepidation and fear tingled up her nape, spread down to her spine and each shaking limb. “How do you know my name?”

“I kept an eye on you for a couple of weeks after the attack. In case.”

“A suicide watch, huh?”

He grinned a cold smile. Such a gorgeous mouth, thin with a pronounced curve at one corner. Laugh lines? The man must have once smiled quite a bit. No longer did, obviously. She wondered why. What could’ve happened to make an assassin of a man with laugh lines?

“Not suicide. A homicide watch. I didn’t want to have saved you only to watch you throw your life away on some vigilante bullshit.”

“That’s pragmatic.” She tried not to sound too offended.

“I told you, I’m not a good man.”

“You’re wrong,” she countered. “There’s good in you, and I’m the proof.”

“The only thing you prove is that I slipped.”

The hurtful words were barely out of his mouth when she fisted the lapel of his felt greatcoat and tugged him down to her level for a collision more than a kiss.

She didn’t know why she did it. Or she knew why, but had never realized how strong it was, how much it had ruled her life over the past year. Seeing him again felt so good, despite the memories of their last meeting. Foley might have stolen a lot of things, but he hadn’t taken that.

The effect of their kiss was instantaneous. And devastating.

His hands all over her. His mouth hard and demanding, hers equally so. As if a dam had been breached. He positively molded her to him, engulfed her in the heat of his grip, the fury of his kiss, the carnal force of his embrace until she felt—she yearned, hoped—they made one person. Desperation. Blazing lust. She couldn’t be sure but whichever moved her, Uriel must have likewise been grappling with his own inner demon as he urgently cupped her nape to anchor her to him.

His kiss deepened. She received his tongue, sucked on it, bit his bottom lip and moaned when he returned the favor. He tasted of lemon and ginger. Smelled of man.

Dust and mortar from the wall crumbled against her back and under her elbows. She squeezed her arms underneath his and latched onto the back of his neck, plastering herself against his fit and firm body, their forms perfectly espoused. She’d found her Uriel. She had lost him for a year—denial could blind her no more—and had found him again.

With a groan deep in his throat, he wedged a thigh between hers, then worked his hips in potent rolls. Low against her belly, a hard lump pressed. A half mewl, half whimper broke the seal of their lips. He sucked it out of her.

Uriel planted both hands against the wall on either side of her head and pushed back to arm’s length. She had to steady herself against his chest.

“Your ship,” he panted. “You have to go.”

“Not now. There’s time.” Where had all this desperation come from? She felt like a drowning woman clawing at the hull of a sinking boat. She couldn’t let go. Her fingers refused to.

“There’s no time.” He growled, kissed her, then abandoned her mouth so he could lean his chin in the crook of her shoulder. “No time.”

“There is. Six… well, five hours now.”

Uriel stood back so he could look at her. “Not here,” he murmured before letting his forehead rest against hers. “It’s wrong, and it’s dangerous.”

Tiny suns fizzed at the edge of her vision. “Where?”

He looked up to his right where another row of sad-looking cubic habitats sat directly atop those at ground-level like mismatched, old children’s blocks. The metal stairs he’d been about to climb must have led there.

“My place is safer.”

When she slipped her hand in his, he stared down at it before silently leading her up the rickety stairs to the second level. They strode down a narrow balcony, Uriel checking each corner between cubes. This man never let his guard down.

They came to the second-to-last cube and stopped in front of a dirty door made of corrugated metal that groaned when he put his shoulder to it.

“Alarm system?” she asked.

Uriel turned to her, eyebrows arched, and for a moment she saw the core of the man underneath the stoic façade, the mirth that, at one point in his life, must have come naturally. She wanted to know that man. Reach out to him. Touch him and have him touch her.

Inside the gloomy doorway, another door, this one a sleek, thick-looking affair. The real door.

From his pants pocket he retrieved an old-fashioned metal key that he cautiously slipped in the lock. He turned the key once clockwise and three times counter-clockwise before pulling it out.

She took a step, but he extended an arm to stop her. “We have to wait three seconds.”

Something metallic clinked beyond the door, followed by a high-pitched whir. Nodding, Uriel opened the door, which must have triggered an automatic light. In a corner of the ceiling, a tiny fluorescent bulb sputtered to life, barely illuminating the small room.

Spartan was the only descriptive that came to mind. His habitat, more like a large cell than a home, was bare except for a narrow bed, impeccably made, and a door she surmised hid the bathroom. In one corner sat an upright polymer trunk, and in another, a sink where neatly folded white towels hung.

Uriel closed the door behind her. The same metallic clink and high-pitched whir indicated the door was now locked.

She should’ve been scared. Anyone ought to have felt at least uncomfortable being locked in the home of an assassin the size of Uriel. But she wasn’t. Couldn’t explain it.

“I’d offer you something, but I don’t keep perishables in here.”

“It’s all right.”

The look on his face was arresting, a mix of awkwardness and intense scrutiny, as if he were trying to see inside her and guess what she thought of his place, of him. His black hair fell in a jagged fringe over his eyes and gave his angular profile a dramatic quality. He looked exactly the way she remembered, the way she’d drawn him on her codex, except that she hadn’t captured the melancholy in his dark eyes. Had it been there at the time, or was it something that had developed since? He was so striking, so dangerously beautiful. Heat rushed to her face.

Uriel closed his eyes and leaned back against the door. His lips gleamed like satin. He licked them. “You know my name, you know where I live, how to get inside my house.” He shook his head.

Amelia gently ran the back of her knuckles against his jaw. His breathing accelerated. His nostrils dilated. She could barely breathe herself, but forced her mind to clear. She’d spent a year to the day thinking about Uriel, wondering, searching, hunting the elusive man, always a step behind, a week too late, a number off the mark. But she’d found him. And it seemed as though he’d found something in her as well.

“You were all I could think about,” she said. “Since the attack.”

He nodded. In understanding, or in acquiescence because he’d thought about her as well? Did she want to hear the answer?

“What am I going to do with you?” he said through a long sigh.

“I’ll be out of your life in a couple hours.”

“What if I can’t let you go?”

She should have been scared. But only regret filled her. “You don’t scare me. You could’ve killed me ten times already, but didn’t.”

“You misunderstood, Amelia. What if I won’t let you go? I could keep you here. With me.” His face hardened as soon as the words left. “Go. Now. Get on that ship and forget about everything.”

“I won’t forget you or what you did. And there’s one more thing I want.” She used the lapels of his greatcoat to hoist herself up to his chin. “I want you to make love to me,” she whispered.

Uriel caught her hand and reversed it so he could kiss the inside of her wrist, the tender flesh there. He lipped it gently, then her palm, the back of her knuckles, each finger.

Each tender kiss was electrifying. She wanted this. With ardor that bordered on fury, she’d never wanted anything else as much as she wanted this. A part of her, missing for a year, had returned to force its way back into her.

Uriel nipped the heel of her hand. Stark white teeth glistened for a split second. “You’re walking a fine line.”

The quick bite aroused and thrilled her. Low in her belly, in her sex, heat spread and throbbed to the rhythm of her heart. She tightened her pussy and thighs, images of carnal abandon in her mind, as her ears filled with the imagined echoes of what their lovemaking would sound like. God, she ached for him with sweet agony. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

A dark smile curved his mouth on one side. “You’re assuming a lot, Amelia.”

“It’s not assumption. It’s trust.”

Sadness washed over his face. He reeled her in, wrapped his arms around her, then proceeded to kiss every square inch of her face. When he reached her jaw, he leaned low and put his lips directly on her ear.

“I wish you didn’t trust me.” He sighed and licked her earlobe, which triggered the basest need in her gut. “You should’ve forgotten me.”

“The way you forgot me?”

“What makes you think I did?”

Her heart skipped a beat. Maybe several. She forced herself not to follow that chain of thought and to remain in the present. She turned her head so her mouth touched his, but she didn’t kiss him, only ran her lips side to side, feeling the quality and depth of his breath.

When he snaked a hand down her back to cup a cheek and suddenly hoist her against him, she let out a small moan that should have embarrassed her, but didn’t.

“You’ve been in my head,” he said through his teeth. From tender, his mouth became demanding and forced her chin up as he devoured her throat. “You’ve been under my skin, in every thought, every dream. I couldn’t look at a woman without comparing her to you. I thought I’d managed to dull the ache.” He licked her throat from base to chin. “Then you show up.”

Before she lost every mental faculty, every shred of self-control, she pinched the edges of his hood and pulled it back from his face. Jet-black hair with a few silver strands spilled over his face. She revealed him to the light, to her. No more shadows.

Uriel grabbed her by the shoulders with the full intent of pushing her away. She had that ship to catch, and he’d make damn sure she was on it when it left, even if part of him wanted her to stay.

A selfish, foolish part of him. He could no more make the cute, doggedly smart woman stay than he could get rid of the dangerous witness.

Instead, he enfolded her in a tight embrace that ratcheted up his heartbeat and created feverish heat to rush to his cheeks. It had been so long since he’d held a woman. So damn long.

He could swear his heart would fail. What was it about this woman that made him lose his edge? She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous by any means. Too tall for her weight, with bony hands and no curves whatsoever, she didn’t embody his ideal of female beauty. But there was something in those large dark eyes. It had been there when he helped her, and it still was. That attraction, that pull he felt just looking at her. She could stare right into his soul. Or she could, if he still had one.

He felt strangely denuded without his hood and wondered what she thought of her “savior.” His male pride demanded she find him attractive even if his more pragmatic side realized he was no woman’s knight in shining armor. He was probably more scary than sexy. Yet Amelia didn’t seem to feel intimidated either by his size or his dark looks. Strange, because he usually made people feel uncomfortable, a reaction that he often used to his advantage.

She threw her head back and clutched at his lapels, forcing him harder against her. She hung to him like a woman drowning. Why had she tried to find him? Had it only been about her, to simply assuage her guilt, or did another motivation lie behind her reckless pursuit? There had to be more than guilt and gratitude. What did she want from him? And would he be willing, would he be able, to grant it?

He might not know what Amelia wanted from him, but he knew what he wanted from her. More than just to lose himself in her flesh. Companionship. Temporary release. A warm place to be for a couple hours. Solace.

As if moved by unseen forces, his hands grabbed at her hips to crush her to him, completely, to make her part of him, the same person, one flesh, one soul. Desperation must have played a large part. They had so little time. She’d be gone from Cartagena in a matter of hours.

But then again, she knew where he lived, knew his face and name. She was dangerous. Maybe when time came, he wouldn’t be able to let her leave.

Damn.

The thought horrified him. He’d rather live with the risk, even if it spelled his death, than tie that loose end. So for the first time in his life, he decided to take a chance.

Actually, it was the second time. The first had also involved Amelia. Since when did he take these kinds of chances on people? He was no gambler. What did it mean that he couldn’t seem to find his notorious edge whenever he was in her presence?

He’d rather not know.

Her hungry mouth quashed everything but the present moment. Burned it all away. He leaned back against the door, welcomed the cool metal against his nape, and unlocked his knees so he could slide down a few inches to be more on level with Amelia’s throat, which he covered in kisses and licks. Nibbles, nips and outright bites. She moaned every time he touched her. It enthralled him how she responded to his touch. Whatever clothes she wore, he wanted her out of them and fast. With fingers he had no idea could work so fast despite the violent shakes, he undid her shirt, each tiny hook an implement of torture, until he exposed a shoulder. That, too, he covered with his mouth, his lips, his tongue and teeth. She fisted his hair, yanked him lower. He readily complied.

“Amelia.” He couldn’t say anything else. Didn’t even know why he spoke at all. He just wanted to taste her name. There was something else he wanted to taste, too.

“Get rid of that,” he murmured, pushing her to arm’s length. “I want to see you.”

She didn’t play coy with him, for which he was infinitely grateful. He knew what he wanted. That she knew as well not only gave his ego a pat on the back but also hinted at another layer underneath the simple needs of the flesh. She did trust him.

As crazy as it was, she trusted Uriel Saar with her body, made herself bare and vulnerable to him, a very large, armed-to-the-teeth killer. A man. When she’d have every reason to despise them all after her ordeal at the hands of that scumbag Foley, she instead trusted one. Him, of all people. No greater gift than that. He’d make sure—damn sure—to receive such a gift with all the appreciation and graciousness a guy could give. He’d repay her in kind. He’d trust her. For a short while, anyway. Then he’d put her on that ship and go back to his life.

Commercial over. Back to regular programming. The thought didn’t cheer him one bit.

His heart skipped at least one beat as she took a step back, unclasped the codex from her arm, dropped it to the floor without a glance and unhooked the rest of her shirt. She yanked it open to wrestle it off her shoulders. The sight of her shoulders drawn back, exposing a bit of beige satiny bra above the collar of her black camisole, reduced his vision to a narrow strip that only Amelia occupied. There was nothing else but her. Nothing counted. Nothing mattered. She was all he’d ever need or want.

After she’d finally tugged an arm from her shirt, she sent it flying across the room. It fell partly on the sink before sliding to the floor. The camisole followed and revealed a no-nonsense bra that cupped small breasts he burned to touch and lick.

“Wait,” he whispered. “My turn.”

He detached his back from the door, unbuttoned his coat and let it fall where it may. She watched with the intensity of a bird of prey as he got rid of the triple-stitch webbed belt and the assortment of throwing knives strapped to it, the long-muzzle gun and holster under his arm, and the straight razor from a spring-loaded bracer on his left arm.

A shadow of a smile played on her thin lips.

“You have your tools,” he said. “I have mine.”

“I didn’t say anything.” She licked her lips when he tugged his shirt out of his pants.

His ego swelled to dangerous proportions. “You didn’t need to.”

She reached back to unclasp her bra, but he stopped her with a shake of head. “No. That, I’ll do myself.”

“You’ll need to come closer, then.”

He drew near, watching her pupils dilate as the distance between them diminished. Damn, his cock was about to explode. He was so hard it hurt. “Do you trust me?”

She nodded and licked her lips again.

“Then turn around.”

Amelia could have sworn she was about to pass out. She panted so hard she was seeing stars. Slowly, she did as Uriel instructed. Turned her back on a man who’d just put twenty pounds of metallic death on the floor between them. As if he’d wanted to dispel any doubt lingering as to his nature. As if he was saying “this is what I am” and letting her decide if she still wanted this.

And did she ever.

Heat on her shoulder heralded imminent contact. Warm and moth-light, his hand landed on her upper arm, grazed downward to her wrist, then moved up again. Lips pressed against the back of her head, her nape, a shoulder. A small nip made her gasp. Her nipples hardened at the thought of what this stranger and she were about to do. She wanted this.

Tongue and lips, hot and tender, traced serpentine shapes over one side of her back, then the other, before zeroing in on her spine and going down, down to her waistband. A knee by her leg indicated he’d knelt close behind her. She shivered when nimble fingers traced the shoulder straps of her bra and converged on the clasp. Her breasts loosened a bit when he undid her bra. Bit by bit, with excruciating slowness, he slipped the straps down her arms to expose her nipples to the cool ambient air. She panted hard now.

She waited for him to make the next move. Hands both gentle and firm came around her and cupped her breasts. With such long hands, he easily covered each. With a small space between the heel of his thumbs and his index fingers, he trapped her nipples and proceeded to roll them, slowly and leisurely at first, then with more force, until she had to bite down hard to keep from moaning. Oh he was good with his hands. Very, very good.

His mouth landed in the small of her back, pressed kisses there, licks that curled her toes. While he kept her in place with burning hot hands on her breasts, he kissed his way upward.

“Amelia,” he murmured. “What am I doing?”

“You’re making love to me,” she said without turning.

Black hair spilled over her arm when he kissed her wrist. Then bit her. Not to scare but to thrill. “You’re right, I am.” He sounded shocked. And pleased.

“And I’m making love to you,” she said, this time turning to face him.

Black eyes narrowed to feral slits when she leaned over him to undo the last few hooks on his dark gray shirt. A sinewy, athletic chest rewarded her efforts. She parted the shirt, bent lower to place a soft kiss between his pectorals as she slipped the garment around his wrists. Scars covered him. They were everywhere. Some old, others newer.

What had happened to him? All these scars. She kissed his chest again, and this time added a small lick to his nipple.

It must have felt good because he closed his eyes with a faint, guarded smile. “Amelia.”

“Shh.”

She stood straddling the knee he kept on the floor while his other nudged her leg. A vivid mental image of her sitting astride him and taking him deep created a fog of carnal abandon. With both hands, she pressed his face to her belly.

He seemed to have been waiting for just that hint, for he crushed her to him with burning, noisy licks and kisses. The mix of cool air and hot saliva covered her belly and breasts in goose bumps. She moaned with each touch.

“You taste exactly the way I thought you would,” he murmured against her flesh.

“You’ve been thinking about how I’d taste?”

His nod made hair cascade from behind his ear and tickle her skin. “I’ve been thinking about it, dreaming about it. How you’d taste, how you’d feel. Your mouths, both of them.”

The Smiling Assassin: Chapter 4

Thrills tightened her pussy. The words excited and titillated her, true. What woman wouldn’t want to hear about a man’s desire for her? But that he’d been thinking about her all that time proved even more spine-tingling. And poignantly ill-timed. She was leaving in a few hours.

Need quickened her breath, made her fingernails unyielding against his scalp, tore low moans as he worked his way up again. She yelped when he stood abruptly, taking her with him still straddled around his waist. Uriel dove for her mouth and stole and sucked and kissed the breath out of her and, quicker than she believed a man carrying his lover could move, he pivoted and pinned her against the wall. Anchored by his hips and hands, she had never felt so safe in the shelter of a man’s embrace.

Between kisses, Uriel covered her throat with licks. She could imagine how his glorious tongue would feel on her pussy.

He let her feet slide to the floor, but before she could hook a leg around his waist, he yanked and tugged her pants around her knees, panties included.

“Oh, Amelia,” he breathed, slowing so he could look at her from face to belly then up again. His dark gaze felt like a physical touch on her skin. He licked his lips. “Come here, you.”

She bit her bottom lip hard when he licked her mons and parted her with his fingers. Licked again. Then again. Harder. Zeroed in on her clitoris, which he sucked noisily before sinking a finger into her pussy. Spasms tightened her muscles around his finger. She milked him, made a fist of her vagina and squeezed him as hard as she could. And when he began to pump, she knocked her head against the wall as she fell prey to one fine series of tingles that spread in feverish rings. She tried to spread her legs, but her pants impeded her despite some enthusiastic kicks. Without a word he pulled them off, making quick work of her shoes, leaving only the socks, which had slid down around her ankles.

In the back of her mind, she knew she made for a less than sexy sight. She didn’t care. And neither did he, it would seem, as he lapped her sex in long, hard passes.

“Oh, God….”

The sound of his mouth against her, slurping, sucking, kissing. The sight of the top of his head as he bent low to give her pleasure. His finger up her pussy, a piston, precise yet unrelenting. She was close. So close. Still he thrust his finger. His tongue—that glorious organ—coupled with the penetrations blinded her with ecstasy until nothing else mattered but what he did to her body. She felt like a cork on a raging sea, tossed, swirling, lost. On a long moan she came.

Uriel abruptly stood.

She hurriedly unzipped his pants to free his cock, which sprang into view, a glistening invitation she couldn’t refuse. Her kneecaps had already connected against the floor by the time he’d planted his palms on the wall, boxing her in. As if she wanted to be anywhere else!

Without wasting a single second, she roughly two-handed him and wolfed him down as far as she could. She ignored the gag reflex the sudden incursion triggered and licked, sucked, rolled her fists around his smooth shaft. Muscles bunched along his sinewy thighs. With her hands splayed over his cheeks, she pushed him against her face, used her thumbs to nudge him back, then pushed again. She popped him out and looked up at his face.

“Make love to my mouth, Uriel. Like this.”

She repeated the gesture, forced his hips to roll so his member would slide down her throat.

He took over for her, rolled his hips leisurely, pulled away a few inches, curled back in, slid deeper into her mouth every time he moved.

She made mewling and growling sounds, barely resisting the urge to bite down on the sleek cock, working her jaw to accommodate his length and girth. Just as he was, his shaft proved long and slim and oh-so precise. God, she wanted to bite down, rake her nails and mark him.

She transferred the frenzied near-violence to his cock, sucked him hard enough to concave his balls. His penetrations accelerated. She knew he must be close.

When he roughly pulled away, leaving her with her mouth open and her hands empty, she was about to protest but only managed to gasp when he hoisted her up to his height, using a hand to trap a thigh around his waist. His unyielding eyes on hers, he tucked his bottom lip in. Then he took her.

She cried out. Knocked her head back. Smooth and long, his claiming left her in the verge of total hormonal riot. She wanted him hard. He granted her silent wish.

Meeting his potent thrusts, she unfurled around him. She felt branded, claimed, overpowered, as he drove deeper into her, reduced her flesh to febrile nerve-endings that fired messages to a brain long past coherent thought. His name resounded in the tiny room. Over and over. Sweat and their essences linked them. She clung to him, bit his shoulder, moaned unabashedly when he sucked her tongue and bit the end before doing the same to her bottom lip. She tasted the mix of both their cums on his tongue. Intoxicating cocktail.

He grunted with the effort. Each shove crushed her shoulder blades against the wall. Each retreat felt like a small death, each penetration like a renewal. Ankles locked around his lower back, she welcomed his lovemaking with all the fury, all the passion she could muster. For him, she spread wide. For him, she filled the room with her cries. For him, she came like a bomb.

A great humph of air left her when her back abruptly connected against something soft. The bed? Uriel pulled out, flipped her onto her stomach and settled on top of her like a predator on his catch after a long chase. Her body reacted before her brain had registered the movement. She curled her butt up, fisted the covers and waited.

“Come on,” she urged.

Instead of his cock, she received his mouth, his tongue. Fingers inside her. Stretching her, rolling her clitoris, rubbing it hard, digging in her flesh so he could stretch her cheeks wide for him. His mouth demolished the last shred of restraint she still clung to.

On a roar, she pushed her pussy against his face, rolled and rolled, desperate for the furious coupling she knew he could give. In his arms, she ceased to exist. Self-forgetting. Nothing mattered. The attack, her impending move to Earth, herself.

She had become one with him.

Uriel had no idea a woman could move that way, could take him all in and ask for more. He’d always had to be careful with his bed partners. A physically big man couldn’t afford to lose his cool.

“Oh, you tigress,” he murmured against her sex, introducing a finger that he twisted ’round and ’round.

She couldn’t have bucked any harder without falling off the bed. So he pushed another finger into her, rubbed slowly so she’d get used to the stretch. Glistening, her pussy tightened around his knuckles and almost made him lose his mind. He’d never, ever had such a woman in his arms. Amelia not only fit him physically—she was a tall gal—but emotionally as well. She seemed to know when he meant to take it slow and when the urge to pound himself into her burned his resolve. And it was coming back, that impulse. Her pussy was so hot, so wet. So inviting.

When he pushed off the mattress, she must have felt his intent for she spread her knees, grabbed the footboard and cut a glance over her shoulder. No words were needed. Not only was she going to welcome him into her, the feral look she gave him allayed any doubt he might’ve had about her willingness or her readiness.

Her cleft was a glossy strip of pink satin covered from anus to pussy in her honey and his saliva. He grabbed her hips and forced her knees wider with his, then wider still so he could admire the way her flesh spread, her back arched. She was ready for him. He’d never been more ready for a woman. His woman. For the lifespan of a spark, the notion that she was all his—at least for now—warmed his heart. He pulled on her hips and bucked forward.

His penetration was nothing short of explosive. She gasped loudly, as did he. Fire burned his balls. His belly and thighs cramped. He would’ve waited for her channel to adjust to his length, but she twisted and undulated with so much energy that he couldn’t help joining her. With near animalistic abandon, he fucked her sweet little pussy as hard as he could. Pounded himself into her. Lifted her knees off the mattress with his thrusts. Into her. In. Hard.

Her moan turned into a long whimper that became a ragged keen. Soon he provided a bass to her rising falsetto. Her sex squeezed him hard and milked him. She must have been coming. Again. Fire licked his lower back. He didn’t care. Sweat stung his eyes. Didn’t give a shit. Skin against skin. Hard knocks, wet and soft flesh. His woman. He was making love to his woman. And she to him. He was coming. Hard and fast.

With a growl, he only had time for one last thrust before he pulled halfway out and fisted the base of his cock, squeezed hard to choke the cum back down. Tiny, burning pulsations soon dissipated to leave behind a pleasant tingle in his balls. Man, it had been close, too.

Still panting, he encircled her waist, brought her right up against him and rolled onto his side. The realization he’d never spooned before hit like a ton of bricks. It felt so good. So damn good.

“That was….” He swallowed. He was so thirsty. “It was….”

“Whew?”

His laugh must have startled her as much as it did him, because she twisted onto her back to look at him, pushing a strand of hair from his face to gaze at him the way no one had ever done before. As if she’d known him all her life.

“Yeah, it was ‘whew’ all right,” he replied at length. “It was great. The best.”

She grinned.

He couldn’t help it. He draped his arm protectively over her and nuzzled closer until his chin rested against the top of her head. Sweat linked them. He watched her breasts rise and fall with her breathing, slowly returning to normal. They’d have to move soon. Shit, he wanted to stay this way forever.

“Why do you, er, do what you do for a living?” She sounded unsure.

“Why not?”

“Isn’t there something else you can do?” She arched to look up at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

It was bound to happen. He’d been expecting that question. Nosy forensic accountants.

“Fair question. I’m scary, I’m prudent, I don’t get carried away. That makes me good at that job.”

“But it’s so dangerous.”

“Not as much as working for scumbags like Foley.”

He hadn’t meant that comment to hurt and was glad to see Amelia nodding instead of getting emotional. He hated when people did that. Made him cranky.

Then it dawned on him she hadn’t said it was gross or wrong or anything else he would’ve expected someone to say about his choice of profession. She really was a strange and tough cookie. She’d said dangerous. As though she cared. The more he tried not to guess at the motive behind her comment, the less he succeeded, until the urge to ask overwhelmed his good judgment.

“Why do you think my job’s dangerous? Why do you care?”

He’d tried for offhand, but even he could hear the eagerness in his voice. Damn.

“Because I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“You wouldn’t be there to see it. You’d never even know.”

She slipped her hand in his and brought it up to her so she could kiss it.

So hot. He wanted to squeeze it hard but was afraid to hurt her. She was tough, but still. “I’d know if we keep this thing going.”

“This ‘thing,’ huh?”

Even if he could only see her cheeks from overhead, he saw that Amelia had blushed, which released a whole lot more hormone into his bloodstream. As if he needed that. Impeded his ability to think coherently. But damn if her concern didn’t make him all warm and tingly! “We can’t keep this ‘thing’ going because you’re leaving in a couple hours.”

She rolled onto her stomach and leaned her pointy chin on her fists. She nodded. Those lovely brown eyes of hers could stare a hole through armored plating. Or a man’s heart.

“I don’t have to.” She grimaced.

“You’re a lousy liar. Of course you have to. Unless you have some serious connections I don’t know about, you had to give up your shirt for that passage to Earth, didn’t you?”

“The shirt, the shorts, the habitat, and the job, too.”

“There. Settled.” That face again, the crinkled nose. He loved it. “What?”

“Hypothetically speaking, would you have kept this thing going?”

If he tried to be funny he’d only end up making an ass of himself, so he opted for what came naturally. Blunt truth. “Yes. But it doesn’t matter now.”

Brief and to the point. Like a bullet in the forehead.

Her smile could power a small station. “I’m glad you think so.” She scratched her throat, shrugged. “You’re from Earth.”

“And?”

“You haven’t gone back since you’ve moved here.”

The tone was careful, the words economical, but he heard the offer plainly. “Well-informed, are you? Well, I can’t go back. There’s nothing for me on Earth.”

Liar. There would be now.

“You know,” she said, “there’s no difference if the space is occupied by one or two passengers. It goes by cubic footage.”

And there it was.

He shook his head. Kissed her knuckles. “You don’t know me. You shouldn’t offer to spend eight weeks on a freighter alone with a stranger. It’s dangerous.”

“There’ll be hundreds of passengers. Plus, we’re not strangers anymore. We haven’t been for a year.”

He checked his codex in the pocket of his pants, which he’d thrown on the floor in his hurry to get naked. Depending on the automatic boarding schedule, she had two hours. Three tops. It’d take one just to get to the spaceports.

But a cloud had passed over her joy. He could see it clearly in those expressive eyes. “I’ll take you to the spaceports,” he said.

She nodded silently.

Something broke in his heart. For Christ’s sake, man. Say something. “Plus, hanging out with me is dangerous. Someone could get ideas.”

“Ideas like leverage?”

“Exactly.” So, she was smart and tough and cute. Just the kind of woman he’d have loved spending time with. Or loved, period.

Something caught his ear. A faint sound, barely discernible except to those who, like him, never slept with both eyes closed, took their gun into the shower, and never stayed more than a month in the same place.

His moment was over. It had been good. Damn good. And now it was gone.

***

Amelia’s heart fluttered. Half of her felt infantile and stupid for the emotional response, but another rapidly growing portion of herself sensed that something had finally snapped into place. She hadn’t been so at ease since her attack. Even beforehand.

And in a cruel twist of fate, she had to leave this blossoming joy behind and take a ship light-years away to spend the rest of her life apart from the one person she suspected understood her the most. She might as well admit it to herself—she had feelings for him. All these months, she’d grown closer to her ghost savior. As her search started centering on her goal, so had her heart on him. She’d fallen for Uriel the moment she’d met his dark eyes, even if there hadn’t been time to deal with it initially, amidst the trauma and fear. She’d had a year to work it out.

“We have to go,” he said.

The realization made her want to punch the bed. Damn timing. “The offer is there, Uriel, if you change your mind.”

From peaceful, Uriel’s expression turned tense. He nodded, took his hand from hers. “Get dressed,” he murmured in the same tone of voice he’d used before, even though his gaze had grown cold, his mouth thin. “Make it quick.”

Something in the way he seemed to become still, like a hunter waiting, convinced her to listen without—for once—arguing. She sprang to her feet, pulled on her pants and shirt, was bending over to get the shoes when he grabbed her wrist and yanked her to him as he rolled off the bed.

Then thunder hit. Left her dizzy.

With a deafening blast, directly where she’d just stood, a spot on the concrete wall pitted in a string of tiny eruptions. Someone had their finger on the trigger and wasn’t letting go.

“Stay down!” Uriel snarled under his breath while he fished under the bed, pulled out a wicked-looking silvery gun as long as her arm and just as thick. He sat back against the wall, spread his feet, and aimed the monstrous weapon at the opposite wall.

Her hands over her head, Amelia watched him arm the gun with precise, economical movements. He’d done this before. She wasn’t sure which happened first—the gun’s ear-splitting roar, the heat that buffeted her, or the blinding muzzle flash. All she knew was that it culminated in a bay-window-sized hole in the wall. Concrete crumbled and fell amidst other debris. Dust rose in great billowing fists.

By the time she came to her senses, Uriel knelt beside her, boots, pants and the belt holding the many knives on and his greatcoat halfway there. He pushed a handgun against her palm.

“You know how to use this?”

She took a second to look down at the long black thing in her hand. Her ears buzzed. Her throat felt raw with dust and smoke.

“Pointy end out.” She coughed. “Pull on the trigger.”

Despite the situation, he grinned, gave her a quick kiss. “It packs some recoil, so be careful. Put your shoes on.”

She shoved her feet in, but didn’t bother to tie the laces before she scrambled to follow Uriel across the small room. He pulled on something underneath the sink near the pipe, and with a low grinding noise, a slab of concrete retreated into the floor. The first few rungs of a metal ladder gleamed like ink. Darkness swallowed the rest.

“I own every cube adjoined to mine,” he said, indicating she should go first while he aimed the muzzle of his monstrous gun at the hole he’d made. “Hurry.”

She squeezed the gun into the back of her pants and slid down the hole, barely catching the second rung in her haste. Metal, cold and hard, squeaked against her sweaty palms. But by God, she raced down that ladder into darkness because if she weren’t quick enough, Uriel might be shot before he could follow. Her foot encountered a hard surface. She’d reached the floor. She looked up just in time to see him blocking the light from above as he rushed down. He worked fast.

“Stand against the wall to your left.”

Amelia plastered her back against the wall while she aimed the gun at her feet lest she shoot the only man who could help her. What the hell was going on? Who was shooting at them?

“Who are they?” she whispered.

“Take your pick. Turf war, personal vendetta, pissed off competition. Doesn’t matter.” He cursed. “Do you have your codex with you?”

“No. It’s in the room. I’ll go—”

“Too dangerous. We’ll have to get you on that ship fast, before they find the codex.”

It suddenly struck her. Oh God, she’d given them—whoever they were—everything she’d accumulated on Uriel. They’d know everything. “And everything in it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not the first time I start over,” he replied tightly. “Won’t be the last.”

He must have jumped, because he landed much sooner than she’d expected. With a scraping sound, the square of light above their heads diminished into a narrow strip, then to nothing at all. Complete darkness enveloped them. She put her hand against her mouth to stifle her cough.

“Here,” he whispered, his voice her only companion in the pitch black. She hung onto that voice. Her heart beat so fast it hurt her chest, her ribs, even her throat. Liquid drumming whooshed in her ears. “Grab my coat.”

She fisted the felt garment and followed as Uriel silently padded forward a few steps. Then he seemed to be doing something that involved bending over.

“Sit behind me,” came the whisper.

His bike?

After a short moment of blind patting, she located the small portion of seat behind Uriel, swung a leg over it and was sitting the best she could when another deafening explosion rattled the habitat above their heads. Something must have been dislodged because she heard debris fall. Shit!

“Hang on tight, okay? Don’t let go.” Uriel patted the hands she joined over his belly.

Affection like a heat wave rushed through her. She squeezed him hard and laid her head against his V-shaped back. Despite the chaos and fear, she felt safe with him, protected, sheltered. They might die. But somehow—and her logical brain could do nothing on this one—it wasn’t so bad.

But then again, she was leaving while Uriel would stay.

Between her legs, the air-pressure bike rumbled to life and grew warm. She felt it come off the floor by a few inches before Uriel angled it slightly upward.

A high-pitched whir rose in the darkness. She remembered that sound clearly. It had preceded his firing the monstrous gun and now alerted her that a lot more dust and smoke was about to choke her. She squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth and held on tight.

A boom like a thunderclap striking indoors. Violent recoil that pushed Uriel back against her. Then light stabbing into her brain.

The APB’s roar drowned everything else as Uriel gunned the engine and drove them through the new hole in the wall. She yelped in spite of herself. Wind whipped her hair back, her shirt. She opened her eyes just as he gave a violent yank to the handles and swerved up and to the right, above the second level of cubes, over the roofline. Someone shot at them. She heard the bullets zipping by and felt the heat whipping out like convulsing snakes in their wake. She cried out. Or she thought she did. Hard to tell in the commotion.

Uriel’s greatcoat flapped against her thighs as he bent over the handles, his silvery gun tucked under an arm. It started to slip. Amelia grabbed it just as her companion veered left, right, then left again. What the hell was he doing?! Then she saw them. Four ABPs in hot pursuit. Shots thunked against concrete pillars supporting the upper levels as they flew past. Vivid imagery. Walls filled with graffiti, metal I-beams rusted and missing rivets. Strangely, she registered every detail despite the speed and Uriel’s furious flying. Still, she held on to the gun with both hands around his waist. The thing weighed a ton!

She distinctly heard his growl when he gave a violent twist and shifted his weight to the left, which gave her a millisecond to follow suit as he brought their APB an inch from the roof ledge. They flew over and into the airy station’s “sky.” Because of its cylindrical configuration and size, Cartagena’s interior had been left hollow to simulate a sort of thin and long artificial sky. They burst out of the Sector Two habitats like a black bullet before aiming right back down. For a split second, she felt weightless.

Behind them, only two of the pursuers managed to follow their crazy stunt. Two black dots zoomed by, unable to match Uriel’s speed. His machine must have been custom-made because she’d never seen anything like it. But two APBs remained. Something clinked near the back of her thigh and created moist warmth that forced her to spare a hand to check it. It came back wet and purple. Shit!

“Fuel is leaking!” she yelled into Uriel’s ear.

Nodding and turning slightly to the left, he offered her a stunning view of his profile. Focus and deadly determination made it even more angular. Hair whipped in thick black ribbons. She’d never noticed his nose tended to the aquiline. Suited him perfectly.

Amelia felt it as acutely as if someone had lit a switch inside her head. She loved him. Uriel Saar, an assassin. Potentially a dead one soon because of her. That lost codex could sink him.

“The gun!” he yelled. “Hold it out!”

She snapped out of it. As best she could, Amelia brought the muzzle outward until it pointed more or less out between the APB’s handles, which she used as a sort of bipod.

“Hold on!” he warned a split second before he did a complete about-turn.

Time seemed to slow down.

Two black APBs—she even spotted scuffs on their slim hulls—faced them. Three men, two on one bike and a lone pilot on the other. Bluish headlights. Heat patterns in vortices distorting the air beneath both. Guns pointed at them.

Then from slow-motion, time felt as if it fast-forwarded.

Their pursuers must have guessed Uriel’s intent and split up left and right. But too slow. She’d already heard the high-pitched whir. Both hands in a death grip, she kept the gun’s blunt end against Uriel while he fired. The recoil was so violent that the muzzle end flew right out from between the handles, slipped in her sweaty grip and plummeted to the ground five hundred feet below. Someone was going to have a nasty jolt.

Like a crow losing its feathers all at once, one of the pursuing APBs disintegrated under the impact and sent a rain of metallic and burned bits down in a wide arc. She couldn’t even tell there’d been two men sitting on the thing.

Somewhere overhead, the siren of station security shuttles drowned everything else. A magnified voice ordered them to— She couldn’t hear a thing above Uriel’s souped-up engine.

The remaining pursuer pulled up in a tight loop, leveled directly in front of them.

“Uriel!”

Everything happened fast.

He shuddered then slumped forward over the handles, coming dangerously close to sliding off the seat.

“No!”

The Smiling Assassin: Chapter 5

Her heart must have stopped. Black spots peppered her vision. Her voice broke under the strain of screaming his name. Fear, paralyzing at first, changed into raw energy. Desperate energy.

Amelia was barely able to squeeze her legs hard enough to keep the much larger man pinned on the seat. She slipped her arms under his and reached for the handles. The steering column turned slightly so that she was only able to reach the left one. Acceleration was on the right. Dammit!

He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead.

She chanted the mantra over and over, wanting to believe. Needing it.

Focus on piloting or he will die.

She forced her mind to clear and noticed that during their chase, they’d neared the spaceports. Through the thermoplastic honeycomb, she could spot different-sized space ships alongside giant cruise liners and cargo freighters.

Freighters! Hers must be one of those!

If she could just not die before then—and get treatment for Uriel—it would be easy to add a guest to her precious cabin because it was already booked. Passage to Earth was a yearly enterprise and much too expensive to book last-minute. They had nursing staff aboard the freighters and, because it was cheap and “cattle” travel, everything was mostly automated, including boarding. No wonder insurances companies refused to cover these voyages.

Renewed optimism fired her veins.

But he didn’t want to come to Earth.

As they began a blood-curdling downward spiral, spinning faster left, always left, she dredged the last shred of strength she possessed. Amelia rose from the seat on the thin footrests, stretched over the slumped Uriel, by the tips of her fingers seized the right handle just in time to avoid the first hangar coming fast at them. Her pursuer must have thought his work was done, for no bullets accompanied her into the darkened recess that swallowed her. Thankfully, the security shuttle chose to follow the other APB and not Uriel’s. She could still hear its siren.

Using strength she had no idea she possessed, Amelia brought the bike up from its spiral and applied the air-brakes as hard as she dared. She countered the diminishing momentum by squeezing her legs against Uriel.

Across from the spaceports, an industrial-looking dockyard offered the perfect place to land. Because it was still night—according to station life, anyway—no one worked the many pieces of heavy equipment parked along the chain link fence. She landed the APB on the concrete with one hard thud, another, then a third, but couldn’t keep it upright despite her frantic efforts. It landed sideways and spilled Uriel’s inert form on top of her.

Right across the way, she could spot the yellow placards announcing the cargo area. She’d made it to her ship!

After what felt like an hour, she extracted her legs from underneath Uriel and crawled a few feet on all fours before rushing to the closest machine. A peek inside its cabin revealed no first-aid kit. On her fourth try, she spotted what she needed in a yellow box by the seat. A piece of tubular metal—she had no idea if it was a tool, a piece of machinery or garbage—made quick work of the thin plastic window. She sprinted back to the APB with the first-aid kit and rolled Uriel onto his back.

Gently, she pulled the greatcoat apart. “Oh, no.”

Blood. It was everywhere. She nearly vomited then and there.

She breathed hard but slowly. This was no time to pass out. He might bleed to death. Already he was in deep shit because of her. How could she have forgotten the codex? She’d worn that damn thing for years and barely took it off to shower! Rage made her curse under her breath.

Jaws clenched, she made a mess as she tore packages of gauze and wiped his chest in search of the wound. Near his right armpit, she found it, a bullet wound with a small front hole and a mess of bloody flesh at the exit point. She sprayed both wounds until there was nothing left in the can of coagulant agent and pressed the last gauze pads against his back.

All that blood. She’d never been queasy about blood, but this was reaching her tolerance level. After she taped him the best she could, she sat on her heels. The yellow placards called to her. Her ship was right across the way. Five minutes tops.

Amelia was on her feet, running, a second after the thought hit. She wasn’t going to stand by and let him mop up her mess. She’d rather stay than abandon Uriel.

Life without him wouldn’t mean anything. She had learned that in the year of trying to find him, of Uriel occupying her thoughts and dreams, her hope that finding her elusive savior would make everything snap into place. She was going to make that decision, and with a little luck—maybe even more than a little—she wouldn’t ruin everything. Make the biggest mistake of her life.

She reached the first automatic check-in booth and with blood-slickened hands activated the screen. On the dirty aqua-green display, the clock’s numbers resembled glowworms twisting. Barely an hour and a half until the booths closed. All the other passengers must be onboard by now. No wonder the place was deserted.

Blood smears made it hard for her to read, but she managed to wipe off most of them with her sleeve. She punched her station credit number into the screen, followed the English instructions from a menu of two dozen languages, and soon held her future in shaking fingers. If she’d messed up, she’d literally be paying for it the rest of her life. If she survived.

***

The pounding in his shoulder woke him. He tried to sit but his world vacillated. With a grunt, he barely made it to his side. Then, slowly, each inch punctuated with a snarled curse, he hoisted himself to a semi-seated position. His whole back and shoulder throbbed. To his shock, blood-soaked bandages littered the place. A parking lot? What the hell had happened?

He saw Amelia running in his direction and winced. Killer instincts tensed his muscles. He reached for his gun, which wasn’t there. Then it all came back to him. He’d taken a bullet. Another. But this one had hurt like nobody’s business. Still did, despite the treatment he’d received. Who’d known the tough little cookie would evade their pursuers, manage to land the APB with a guy twice her weight flopping around like a wet noodle, and patch him up? The sight of her running toward him swelled his chest. And he had to give it all away. Life could be such a bitch.

“Uriel!”

She did a sort of power slide—on concrete—that brought her right up to him and into his arms. The collision nearly made him pass out, but he held onto her with all he had. Which was one good arm and a whole lot of relief.

“Are you hurt?” he asked through her hair. “What time is it? Did you miss your ship?” Part of him, shamefully, hoped she had.

“No. We have just about an hour.”

An hour.

The smell of her filled his nostrils, his brain, left him giddy. He took another long whiff. This had to last him a lifetime. Already, his old life weighed on him. She had a bright future ahead of her. A new life on Earth.

He pulled away, trying not to broadcast what an emotional wreck he’d become in the span of a few hours. To change the subject, he looked down at his wounds. “You’re good at this,” he murmured through a smile he knew wouldn’t fool her. “Should be a doctor.”

She adjusted a piece of tape, gathered the wrappings and other testaments of their actions, and dumped it all in a nearby garbage chute. A disinfectant wipe in her hand, she rubbed her bloodied fingers. Hard.

The gesture reminded him there was no place for love in his life. They might find out about her and use it against him. She could get hurt. Or worse.

“Stop rubbing, Amelia. It’s gone.”

She looked down at her red fingers. “There was….” Tears welled in her eyes. Silent sobs shook her, and as much as she obviously fought to stifle them, she couldn’t keep the tears from spilling over.

For a second, he thought he’d start bawling, too. He had to be strong, for Christ’s sake. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and while he rested his chin on the top of her head, she fisted his sleeve and buried her face in it. For a long while she just stayed there, clinging to him.

He didn’t want to rush her, but she couldn’t miss that ship. “Amelia,” he began softly, patting her head. “You have to go.”

“You’re coming with me.” The firm tone belied the tears.

Uriel closed his eyes, glad she wouldn’t see the temptation he knew must have shown. Not just temptation. Something else he hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever. Hope.

“I can’t,” he said.

“I want you with me.”

He couldn’t believe the offer. His first reaction was to push it away and slink back into the familiar shadows. He was glad Amelia was getting off Cartagena safely. They’d obviously lost emotional detachment. She liked him and he liked her back. No way around it. But after their little encounter with the bad guys, whoever they were, and the fact she’d left her codex behind, he wouldn’t want her to hang around. She’d have all kinds of vermin crawling up her leg now. She wouldn’t be safe. One, she’d associated with him, and second, her station data was in that thing. They’d get access to her file, if nothing else. It was plenty scary enough for him. Amelia had to vanish.

“Let’s go,” he replied through pretend calm.

But he turned it around in his head. She wanted him to come with her. Didn’t she know what he was? Didn’t she want a “normal” man with her? He could give her nothing but sleepless nights of worry. His profession wasn’t the eight-to-five type. And that was here on Cartagena. On Earth, he had even less, just an old life not worth going back to. Being a dockworker wasn’t his idea of a proper profession, either.

Liar.

He had something. Someone.

Uriel stood, ignored the way she stared at him, and pretended to be too engrossed with his injury to notice how she rubbed her eyes and looked across the street. The spaceports loomed in front of them, filled with mammoth freighters, shiny cruise liners and sleek government crafts beyond the honeycomb thermoplastic panes. No one on the docks. Damn, they were cutting it too close.

“Let’s hurry, okay.” He set off, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling the hood low. Trying to shut out the world. But there was no hiding from the ache gnawing at him inside.

She followed silently. And if that didn’t hurt him worse than getting shot!

Don’t look back, man. Just don’t.

If he looked at her too much, he might as well pack his bags now because he’d never be able to let her leave. Already the urge to hug her lithe frame against him and never let go clouded his judgment.

She wouldn’t be safe with you, Saar. Give it up.

Because her safety was paramount, because it had come to mean more to him than his own, he resolved to not bow under the pressure she put on him. Never mind his own internal battle with his heart. He knew what was going on. He was falling for Amelia. Had probably fallen for her when he’d put a hole in that scumbag’s chest.

“Here,” he said after they’d crossed the street and neared the clump of automatic boarding stations standing like yellow monoliths across the street. “I’ll keep watch while you check in.”

Instead of making her way to the booths, she stopped cold, which raised his hackles. Had she seen something? He would’ve whirled around on the spot, gun in hand, if he’d been able to move that fast. His whole arm burned, as did his shoulder. He wanted drugs. Lots of colorful pills. Maybe a drink, too. “Did you see something?”

She shook her head and planted her hands on her hips. Those hips he’d do anything to grip for another disorderly go. He’d take his time, though, make tender love to her. Not that he’d have another chance. Something inside his chest squeezed painfully. Was that it? Heartbreak? It hurt for real. Damn.

“You can’t make me leave,” she said, looking not at him but at the enormous ship moored a few hundred feet to their left. Its rusty, spotted gray hull curved above their heads to disappear into the blackness of space.

“I could.”

“Yeah.” She nodded, turning to him. “But you wouldn’t.”

Maybe it was the way she said it that struck such a powerful chord in him. Or it could’ve been the deadly serious set of her jaw, or the glint of steel in her eyes. Whatever it was, it went through him like that bullet. But instead of leaving behind pain and a mass of bruised flesh, her words left him feeling buoyed and alive. Content. Happy. As if he’d just made it home after a long, hard journey. Well, shit.

Fight it. For her sake. You can bring nothing to the table.

“Amelia.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just go.”

“You have to come.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Her tough, resolute tone surprised him. As if it were a done deal. But then again, she’d landed his APB—and hell knew how difficult the thing was to fly under normal conditions, let alone with a dead weight at the handles. The woman possessed incalculable reserves of character and strength. Man, he liked her. Dangerous at the best of times.

“I said you have to come. Because I want to, and because it’s already done.”

Uriel straightened. She didn’t back away when he turned to her, despite the difference in height. “What’s done?”

“Your boarding,” she replied, walking by him and directly toward the dirty accordion tunnel leading inside the ship proper. “It’s already done.”

“What?”

Before he could add anything, the freighter’s air horn signaled the start of its pre-departure process. Shit. Another quartet of blasts and that’d be it. The turnstiles would freeze up, the hatch at the end of the accordion tunnel would close. He knew enough about shipboard procedures to realize the freighter would leave port within minutes.

The four horn blasts tore a yelp from her. She sprinted for the steel turnstiles, realized Uriel hadn’t followed her.

“Come on!”

He took a step. But only one. “You went behind my back.”

“You were out cold! I had to do something!” With her foot on the pressure plate under the turnstiles, Amelia made sure the sensors knew there was still a passenger in the boarding area. Sweat slicked her hands. “Uriel!”

“I have nothing to give you!” he snarled, threw his hands up but grimaced when he upset his wound. “Just go, for Christ’s sake!”

Amelia realized she couldn’t. She took her foot off, stepped well away from the turnstiles.

“Do you hear me?” Uriel sprinted for her. “The ship’s leaving!”

“No! Dammit, not without you!” she yelled above the buzzing in her head.

His hand was merciless when he grabbed the front of her shirt and forced her back toward the boarding gate. She fought him the whole way there. She barely touched the ground.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded, getting ready with a fistful of shirt to propel her over the turnstiles. She had no doubt he could.

“I love you!” she yelled right in his face. “I want you with me!”

Uriel froze on the spot.

Another four blasts of the horn made her plaster her hands to her ears and, for a split second, she saw the doubt in his eyes, the hope blazing valiantly, the temptation her offer proved.

There’d never be another opportunity. If she passed up this last chance, she’d never see him again. She grabbed his sleeve and yanked him with her as she squeezed past the steel turnstile.

Instead of fighting her, Uriel propelled her forward, nearly carried her by an arm as they ran up the tunnel toward the hatch. Somewhere below their feet, engines rumbled. The sound of a dragon waking.

“Hurry!” he yelled above the quick burst of horn. Even she knew what this meant.

“The hatch!”

Amelia snarled something—she didn’t even know what—as the both of them hurtled into the hatch just as the thick steel panel slid closed with a grating noise and a mini-twister of dust and sand. Not even a foot behind them.

They’d made it! Air whistled out of the rubber seals when hull integrity was achieved. One of her ears popped.

Bent in half, Uriel panted hard. Black hair spilled from within the hood. He must have been in agony. He turned away from her, staggered to the bulkhead so he could lean against it for support.

“I can’t believe I did that,” he murmured, sounding awed, weary, shocked. He repeated it a few times, each occurrence with emphasis on a different word. “Fuck.”

Amelia fought the urge to apologize. Tears welled in her eyes, but she fought that too. Uriel didn’t appear too happy with himself, and there was nothing she could do about that except convince him she wanted this. The rest, he’d have to deal with on his own. He had come with her, and nothing else mattered.

“Here.” She reached tentative fingers to pinch his sleeve. “We should go to the cabin. Wash up, get something to eat, some rest.”

“I don’t need rest,” he snapped before shaking his head and yanking the hood off his head. Red rimmed his eyes. “I didn’t mean to sound like a jerk. I’m sorry, okay. It’s just that everything is fucked up now.”

She nodded.

“I don’t like to be indebted to someone. I’m not used to it and I don’t like it.”

A hard lump in her lower back reminded her she still carried his gun. She pulled it out, proffered it with the muzzle pointed down.

“Yeah, at least I have my safety blanket,” he muttered as he slipped the gun under his jacket. He didn’t touch her fingers when he took it.

She noticed a black placard with yellow numbers. While Uriel joined her in front of the rusty steel door and waited in silence, Amelia pressed on their number before clutching her hands behind her back to hide how badly they shook.

If he couldn’t believe what he’d done, neither could she!

He sighed. “Look—”

“That’s okay,” she cut in. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I disagree.”

“Can we talk about it later?” Was that her voice? When had she started to sound so damn weak?

A buzzer interrupted them a second before the steel door slipped into the bulkhead. Once inside the lift, more like the inside of a square can, she pressed the button for their level, then stood back to stare at the numbers as they flashed in sequence. Fireflies marching in rows. Four, five, six. By her side, Uriel stood immobile, eyes closed.

She started when the buzzer announced their deck. Uriel preceded her off the elevator, one hand slipped inside his jacket, his eyes narrowed and scanning the place. Threat assessment? On a cargo freighter? She thought he’d make for a great close protection agent. Her own firm employed them as escorts to and from banks or for audits of particularly recalcitrant clients.

Uriel gestured that she could come out of the lift.

Heat wafted up her collar. Protective by nature, or by choice? “Thank you.”

“Sure.”

They stepped into a narrow, sour-smelling passageway painted dark blue. Dust bunnies rolled when they walked by. She’d splurged on a cabin with a space-view porthole. With any luck, they’d see Earth from orbit. A peeling plastic sign that read Deck 8 – Cabin 23B stopped her.

She cleared her throat. “That’s us.”

The word sounded so strange. Us.

Because the grimy panel looked to be home to entire colonies of germs, she used her knuckle to punch in the access code, then waited for the green light. The door slid sideways to reveal a small cabin not much bigger than a walk-in closet. Two bunks, both folded into the bulkhead, a rectangular porthole with a plastic folding chair underneath. Everything was the color of green olives. Their home for the next eight weeks.

Uriel didn’t look pleased or displeased. Had she made a terrible mistake by forcing the issue?

What have you done?

Amelia sat on the chair. Adrenaline drained out of her. He didn’t need her anymore. She’d patched him up and there he stood, back to his old stoical self, even if his eyes shone with repressed anger. Her nerves finally gave, and fatigue crushed her all at once. She leaned her forehead against the tempered glass, closed her eyes and waited, waited. Tears didn’t come. Too tired, jubilant, afraid, upset. Thinking hurt her head.

A hot hand landed on her shoulder. “We passed the showers coming in,” Uriel said softly. “I’ll stand outside while you have one, okay?”

His solicitude touched her, yet she couldn’t dredge up the energy to reply with more than a faint nod.

They retraced their steps a few doors up and stopped in front of one bearing a faded plaque with the female symbol hastily drawn with a black felt pen. Five-star luxury.

To her shock, he poked his head inside, checked it out, then retreated so she could pass. “I’ll guard the door. Take your time.”

Inside the washrooms, where mold filled most joints and ran along the maladjusted floor joists, she had a quick, lukewarm shower in a plastic stall barely wide enough for her shoulders. Anonymity and inexpensive travel had its disadvantages. The air dryer made a racket as she quickly turned a few times in front of it, wrestled back into her clothes and stepped out.

Uriel stood leaning against the bulkhead with a foot propped against it. Despite the relaxed pose, she could tell his injury bothered him. His face looked paler.

“You want my gun to stand guard?”

“Erm… no, no, I think—”

Uriel threw her a slanted look and she realized he’d been making fun of her, trying perhaps to lighten the mood, or send the subtle message that he might act a certain way on the outside, but inside, something else might be going on. Delusion? She didn’t care and chose to cling to the hope.

In case he had meant to lighten the mood, she grinned.

And if there hadn’t been any hidden meaning behind the remark…?

Well, she had eight weeks to figure it out. God, her brain hurt.

He peeled his frame off the bulkhead and stepped past a similar door marked for men. Did she want his gun? Funny guy. She wouldn’t have been able to fight a tissue off, she was so dead tired, but she stood guard at the door anyway and avoided looking at the couple of passengers who walked by in search of their cabins. Uriel emerged, smelling of soap and with his hair dripping still. He looked a bit better, less pale.

A vibration rumbled under her feet. They were leaving.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I don’t like being out in the open this way. And when we get there,” he went on without looking at her, “we’re going to talk.”

Her heart sank.

Back in their cabin, she helped get the bunks down, trying not to hover like a nurse when he grimaced a couple of times. Even knowing intellectually that the bullet hadn’t been meant for her per se, and that Uriel had represented just as tempting a target as she, emotionally, jabs of guilt stabbed deep. He’d lost everything in a single day. Just as she had the year before. A complete circle.

Uriel raked his hair back with his good hand. He sat, staring at her with those eyes the color of deep space and just as unfathomable. “You mind telling me what the hell got into you?”

To her shock, frustration surpassed everything else. The guilt, the uncertainty, the fear of rejection. “What was I supposed to do? Leave you there?”

“Why not? I would’ve kept going. I always do.”

“Go on? You can’t ‘go on’ like that.”

Uriel arched an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Alone. With no one to watch your back, to have a coffee with and chat.” She played with the waistband of her pants so she could do something other than stare into his eyes. “I couldn’t leave you, not after what you did for me, not after spending a year looking for you. I… I like you, dammit.”

“That’s not the word you used earlier. Or was that just to nudge me in the right direction?”

Amelia rubbed her face as she sank into the chair. That thing had to be the most uncomfortable piece of furniture in the system. It dug into her butt. “You really think I’d do that to you?”

“No.”

Something in his tone made her look through her fingers. “You believe it? Good, because it’s true.”

The sad expression on his face betrayed him before he voiced what was on his mind. “You realize I have nothing to give you,” he murmured, showing his empty hands. “Nothing. I don’t have a home—”

“But I will.”

“A friend—”

“I’m there.”

He rolled his eyes. “Or a job. Imagine what that’s like for someone like me. How would you enjoy living with a guy who goes out every night, kills a few people, and comes back home for a coffee and a chat?”

She chose to ignore the barb. “What were you doing before you moved to Cartagena?”

“Dockworker.” The word sounded as though it tasted bad.

“There. It’ll be easy finding work, then. Turns out great.”

“Me a dockworker with you a forensic accountant?” he asked incredulously. “How does that work out? There’s a little bit of a step there.” He showed two different levels with his hands.

Was this what had bothered him the most? That his profession didn’t somehow equate with her own? Or that he’d have to start over, at the bottom of the scale, salary- and status-wise and didn’t enjoy living with a gal who made more than he did? Oh, for Pete’s sake.

“I hope you don’t think it bothers me that you’d be a dockworker.”

Uriel cursed as he unbuttoned the greatcoat and grimaced while he slipped one side off his shoulder. Amelia joined him on the bunk so she could help him get rid of the heavy garment.

“No, but it pisses the hell out of me.”

In their haste to leave his place, he hadn’t had time to put his shirt on. He unclipped the belt holding the various knives and dropped it on the opposite bunk. Blood had seeped through the bandages on his chest.

Amelia couldn’t stop staring at the stain. Fight it. He doesn’t want—or need—pity.

“It’s perfect,” she retorted, too stubborn to give in. “You’ll work mostly nights, and so will I. So we’ll both be home at the same time. And you can even apply to my firm. They hire security experts for escorts and things like that. Forensic accounting is dangerous work.”

After a second scowling, a small curve appeared on Uriel’s luscious lips. “I won’t have the last word, will I?”

“If it’s ‘yes, dear,’ sure you will.”

“Amelia,” he began, then closed his eyes and sighed. “Man, you’re giving me a headache.”

She grabbed his hand in both of hers. “It’s simple. We’re going to Earth together. Once we land, you do what you want, but there’s a spot for you in my home, my life. And in here, too.” She pointed to her chest.

His eyes riveted her to the spot when he turned to her, kissed the knuckles on her hand. “Think about what you’re saying, Amelia. Stop and really think about the kind of man you’re letting into your life.”

She did. For his sake, she froze the gears that always looked for the next bit of data to crunch, the next number to add or column to align, and took a step back from the situation.

She never would’ve guessed only a few hours ago that she’d find her elusive savior, not only talk to him but also make love with him, then dodge bullets on their way to a deep-space freighter bound for Earth. Dodge bullets! How her life had changed in a single night. Yet despite the tumultuous events, she wouldn’t change a thing. Not even Foley’s attack. Without it, she wouldn’t have met Uriel. Without it, she wouldn’t have found the man she’d come to love.

“You haven’t changed your mind,” he said more than asked. Was she imagining the hope she saw in his eyes?

“No. I wouldn’t change a thing, even what happened last year. Nothing.”

Rage flashed in his black orbs. “Yeah, well, I would change something. No quick ticket for Foley. I’d make him last. I’d work him long and hard, the fucker.”

Heat spread to her face. Need knifed her belly. She wanted to hug that man like nobody’s business. “That’s not what I was talking about. Anyway, that’s not what you were paid for. It’s not what you do.”

His smile had nothing friendly about it. “No, but I would’ve done it for free.” From hostile his expression turned kind.

Such a complex man. “So what now?”

“Now, we get some rest before I make a fool of myself.”

They stood so she could pull the frayed cover back over thankfully crisp, white sheets and tapped the mattress to indicate it was his.

“You have to stop doing that,” he remarked with a curve to his lips.

Was that a smile there? She knew perfectly well what he meant but wanted to hear it. “Doing what?”

“Doting on me. I might become used to it.”

When Amelia straightened, she caught him looking at her in a way that let her know in no uncertain terms what was going on in his mind. Sensuality spread through her. He filled her vision, her nose, her every sense.

“Get used to it,” she advised him. “It’s in my genes. Mom is a doc, and dad is retired now, but he was a teacher. So I dote on my friends and sometimes lecture them, too.”

“Great.”

Her breath stopped when he reached out, pinched the lapel of her shirt, and pulled her back to him until she stood almost right under his nose. Heat from his naked chest reached her, tightened her belly. His eyes mirrored what went on inside her.

Lust.

“I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you,” he murmured. “As bad as I’ve ever wanted anyone or anything else. You’ve been all I could think about.” A long index finger coiled a strand of her hair. “And it wasn’t only about sex, just so you know. I just wanted you here.”

She grinned. “I’m here now.”

“And that makes me the luckiest bastard in the system. And the horniest, too.”

“Are you always that blunt?”

As much as she tried to sound offhand and flippant, her voice betrayed her, the breathlessness of it, the depth of her tone, the way her mouth had formed the words. She licked her lips, watched the effect it had in Uriel’s eyes. The irises were so dark they melded with the pupils but still, she saw them dilate like black-sun coronas, and felt his heat intensify, the tension building between them, coiling.

“That wasn’t blunt,” he said.

“What is, then?”

“I want you on your elbows and knees.” He licked his lips. “That’s blunt.”

And more titillating than anything else a man had ever said to her.

Hair spilled from his shoulder when he leaned into her ever so slightly. His nostrils flared.

Afraid to kill the moment, Amelia remained immobile even if she wanted to throw herself at Uriel, hold him, wrap her legs around his waist and ride him all night. But she couldn’t refrain from tilting her chin up, her head sideways. She met him halfway.

But he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he whispered into her ear, “I love you.”

She nodded because she couldn’t talk.

When he straightened, she was shocked to notice moisture in the corners of his eyes. A man throwing himself into a lake knowing he might drown couldn’t have looked more anxious, more determined yet hesitant. She wanted to melt into a puddle at his feet.

That this physically intimidating man—an assassin, for God’s sake, so sure of himself—would trust her enough to share such intimate words, would put his fate in her hands, touched her more deeply than any poet ever could.

She couldn’t take it any longer. She kissed him. Hard.

“Oh, now I pay for my passage, do I?” His mocking grin only served as a stimulant to the fire swelling in her belly.

She shook her head. “No, now we sleep. Then, you pay for your passage.”

Uriel wrapped his hand around the back of her head to pull her closer to him. He looked straight into her eyes, took her hand and placed it on his crotch where a hard lump bulged along the inside of his thigh. “You think I can sleep like this?”

Blunt.

Uriel watched her eyes widen. The little she-devil thought he could just tell a woman he loved her, then go to sleep? Who did she think he was?

As soon as the heat of her hand seeped through his pants, his hard-on became painfully tight, probably contributing to the dizziness clutching at him. He wanted her. On her back, on her elbows and knees, straddling him, up against the wall. But then again, he might have to wait a couple of weeks to pull that off. He wanted her here. Now. To hell if his shoulder felt as though it would detach from the rest and let his arm flop to the ground. So what if he’d probably be able to fall asleep during a gunfight.

“Come here,” he growled, wrapping his hand around her nape and reeling her closer.

He tried to keep some modicum of self-restraint but had to bow to the needs knifing him. Within seconds, he couldn’t even think straight. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, sucked her lips, nibbled her chin, licked her throat. He loved the taste of her. Clean and simple. No additions, no surprises. He didn’t trust easily, but he’d come to depend on her taste, her smell, the way she looked. Depend, and also need. In such a short time!

Although to be fair, the image of the skinny brunette scrambling off Foley’s bed to retrieve her clothes had haunted him. There’d been something about her. Something special. He should have made the prick last long and hard. Only he hadn’t wanted her to see him do it. A guy had his principles.

Her moan yanked him back to the here and now. He’d embarked on an Earth-bound journey, had left everything behind, and all for a skinny brunette with nervous hands. Ha. But she was his skinny brunette with nervous hands, and God help those who messed with her.

He wanted to push her supine on the mattress, but couldn’t bend that far without triggering fireworks behind his eyelids and setting liquid to drumming in his ears. His shoulder lanced to the rhythm of his heart. He’d need to get his hands on some painkillers the next morning or risk becoming one cranky passenger.

So, Plan B. He always had one.

He wrapped his good arm around her, dipped her so he could sit, and leaned back until his shoulder touched the mattress, then let go all at once so he wouldn’t use his muscles to keep his torso up. After a few seconds of blinding pain, he felt better. Especially since Amelia had followed him, latched on, sucking his tongue into her mouth.

Hurriedly, because damn it if lust wasn’t burning the last of his resolve, he undid the hooks on her blouse and slipped it off her shoulders. So the bra had stayed behind with her codex. He filled his hands with her bare breasts, rolled the lovely pink nipples. Freckles? He hadn’t noticed that the first time. He kissed each one, gently, slowly, making sure to linger in all the right places. Her arms shook from keeping her weight off his. Such consideration. No one had ever acted this way around him.

For a moment back there at the boarding gate, he’d frozen like a newbie at his first gunfight. What if he gave up everything and ended up alone anyway? What if he lost her? Again.

Oh, but the look in her eyes when she yelled those three simple words. I love you. It had quelled his fears, disintegrated his doubt. God, he loved her.

“Come up higher,” he murmured.

She did, gasping when he trapped a nipple between his lips and gave a few good sucks and flicks with the tip of his tongue. She seemed to like that, so he did it again. This time kept her nipple between his teeth while he teased it with his tongue, as hard as he dared. Her moan swelled his chest with pride. He could do that to her. Make her moan his name. He loved it!

He released her nipple. “Take your pants off. Go stand over there so I can see you.”

Amelia literally leaped off the bed, yanked her pants down—a striptease at mach five—and kicked them off to the side. Hair in a narrow black strip glistened in the cabin’s fluorescent light.

“Kill the light, would you?”

When she did, only a blade of light from the dockyard outside penetrated their cabin, cast everything in bluish shadow, licked one side of her from hipbone to shoulder. Had he been able to, he would’ve bent her over and taken her right then and there, facing the porthole. As it was, he could barely stay conscious.

“Come,” he whispered. He couldn’t take his gaze off her.

Amelia approached until she stood right by his knee.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to do all the work.”

She chuckled. “That’s okay. It’ll just compound your debt.”

“You’re worse than a banker.”

She climbed on the bunk and crawled on all fours until her face loomed over his. “You have no idea.”

Oh, he liked her this way, all fired up!

“Sit on my face, so I can eat you out.” Hey, he’d told her he was blunt.

A flash of teeth announced she was smiling. Good. He didn’t want his crude language to kill it for her.

He caressed her thigh while she straddled his middle, obviously taking great care not to come too close to his injured shoulder as she planted a knee by his head. Her pussy was right there, a few inches in front of his nose, so he took a long whiff, filling himself with her scent. His woman. He felt as if he’d always known that subtle perfume.

My woman.

With a hand, he parted her pussy, rubbed his thumb gently back and forth along her moist flesh. Her clitoris was already a hard little ball of nerve endings. All for him. All his. Oh, he’d get to that soon.

“Move over my face,” he murmured.

She put a hand against the bulkhead and proceeded to roll her hips in figure eights, coming close to his mouth, which he’d open for a quick lick before she was gone again. The little tease.

“Lower.”

This time he anchored her midway with his good hand, digging his fingers into her flesh to keep her put while he filled his face with her pussy. He licked and nibbled and tongue-fucked her until he heard his name again. A long, plaintive note. God, he loved hearing it this way!

“That’s it,” he whispered between licks. “Let me hear it.”

“Uriel,” she panted. Repeated. Moaned and whimpered. “Uriel.”

“Stretch yourself for me. That’s it, nice and wide.”

With his thumb he rubbed her clitoris ’round and ’round. Then up and down like a pendulum. Circled it. Forced it out of its fleshy recess with his tongue so he could suck on it.

She cried out when he pushed his tongue in, then a finger. He collected some honey and spread it all over her cleft and inner thighs. So much of it. He licked it all off, then gathered more. Her belly constricted. He could feel it coming, her wave, and readied for it with mouth wide open. She released right onto his tongue. He sucked the climax right out of her, growling incoherently and forcing her harder against his face. Fuck his injured shoulder. He wanted that pussy all over his face.

“Ahh, God, Uriel, yesss.”

“That’s it, come, give it to me.”

Her moans turned into hiccupping cries. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. They filled the tiny cabin.

Before he could object, Amelia reached back and started fiddling with the closure to his pants.

“Hey! I’m not done with you—damn!”

She’d managed to slip a hand in and fisted his cock. She roughly pulled it out. Her sweet pussy was taken from him when Amelia retreated to his thighs.

“Lift your butt,” she urged with frantic tugs. It was all he could do not to have her rip his pants right off. The woman had some grip!

Pants down around his ankles, he could only watch in stupefaction when she straddled him again, using one hand to brace herself against the bulkhead while the other seized his cock. With a play of light and shadows from the porthole that left him almost giddy with anticipation, he watched his cock between her legs. Teasingly, she tapped his glans onto her, that sweet, wet flesh driving him nuts. Without warning, she sank on him all at once.

“Ah, God!”

Amelia felt powerful, feminine, wanted, loved, as she stabbed downward around his smooth cock, taking him in to the hilt. His curse made her smile. But the basest urges needled her into action. She wanted—needed—that cock, that man, in her, hard and quick, slow and tender. Right now.

Each roll of her hips tore a small growl from Uriel. Then each of her twists, a long sigh. She worked him good, bouncing up and down, gyrating her hips, grabbing her breast with her free hand before forcing his hand to replace hers. He rolled her nipple mercilessly. She whimpered her need at him. He answered with potent hip thrusts. She met them. Doubled them.

“Uriel,” she breathed. Again and again.

Deep into her she took him. So hard. So hot. And hers. Up and down. She fucked herself on him, let him make love to her in return, then arched back so he could thumb her clitoris, which throbbed its little heart out. She felt it coming, the second wave. As if she stood on the edge of a precipice, arms out wide, eyes closed, trusting or beyond caring, she let herself go.

Despite his injury, Uriel managed to roll her beneath him and bore down with all his weight. He forced her knees wider and up over her chest. Her hips burned. She didn’t give a shit. He was taking her there, that place where nothing mattered but sharing herself completely with that man. Her man.

In a rush, she came. She came like a thunderclap. Exploded in a million twinkling bits. His name erupted from her just as his semen did from him. Hot jets pumped into her, throbbing and lancing her. Her own climax blinded her and made her deaf to her cries and his groans. Her senses narrowed to a thin sliver that only his face occupied. In the throes of the most violent orgasm she’d ever experienced, she felt herself fall, twirling and disintegrating, lost but at home in his arms.

After a few seconds, a few hours, who knew, Amelia locked her ankles around his waist. Sweat slicked his back. Despite the gloom, she spotted a dark stain on his bandage. Concern made the aftermath of her climax evaporate.

“I’m sorry.” She kissed his shoulder.

“What?” He panted, swallowed. “Why?”

“You’re hurt. We shouldn’t have.”

“We did exactly what we should’ve done,” he countered, wincing when he rolled onto his side.

She pulled the sheets over them and spooned around him this time. She draped an arm over his hip and caressed his long thigh. She felt scars under her fingertips. So many. It broke her heart.

“You’re going to have to tell me how come you have so many scars.”

“I will. Not now.” He yawned then tensed. “Is the door locked?”

She couldn’t remember, so got up to check. It was locked. She brought his gun back to the bunk.

“Here.”

He turned slightly back so he could look at her. “You don’t have to do this. Normal people don’t sleep with guns under their pillow.”

“You didn’t?”

“Of course I did. With a couple. But you’re not like that. Right?”

“Look,” she said, nuzzling back around him and closing her eyes. “It’s part of you. I knew that beforehand, and I accept it.”

His shoulder relaxed. He slipped the gun under his corner of the pillow. “You’re something else, Amelia. But still, give me a couple of weeks to adjust, get my bearings back. Then there won’t be three pounds of steel under our pillows, all right?” He sighed. “I wish I could’ve met you… before.”

“Before what?”

“A lot of stuff. But you’re here now. It’s good enough for me.”

“Good enough, huh?”

Uriel twisted to face her. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“As for my debt….” He brought her hand up to his mouth for a light kiss. “Since it’s obvious I can’t repay you in specie, you won’t mind if instead I repay you by other means?”

She grinned. “This cabin cost me a fortune.”

Since first meeting him, she’d wondered how the man could have laugh lines despite his chosen profession. She knew now. A wide grin stretched his mouth, creating dimples on either side, dimples she burned to kiss. Later.

“And you say I’m blunt?” He nipped the heel of her hand, in no uncertain terms letting her know he intended to repay that debt and then some.

After a quick grin, Amelia nuzzled her face in their shared pillow and yawned. Fatigue deadened her limbs and dulled her senses.

“You’re not sneaking out of the cabin without telling me, okay?” His words came out a bit slurred. He must have been so tired, with the blood loss and everything else that had happened.

“Without my bodyguard? Are you serious?”

“I’m your man, not bodyguard. But I’ll bust their knees just the same if they look at you the wrong way. I just might look that up, what you said about escorts.”

She knew he would and loved him for it.

A few seconds later, his breathing deepened, slowed. Because he trusted her, he’d let his guard down and was falling asleep. Her man. Her smiling assassin.

About the author:

After a twelve-year career in the Canadian military (army), where I learned English and the many uses of parachute cord and gun tape, I decided to recycle my skills and become a writer. Of erotic romance. What can I say? I’m a late bloomer. To know more about my books, my real-life adventures or my opinions about nothing important, visit me at www.nathaliegray.com.

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