I was wrong. She’s still far from accepting me.
Lifting my hand, I tuck a shiny strand of hair behind her ear. With the blanket wrapped around her and her chestnut waves in disarray, my pretty doctor looks young and vulnerable, more girl than woman. Seeing her like this makes me want to protect her, shelter her from the cruelty of my world.
Too bad I’m part of that world—and maybe the cruelest of them all.
“I never left,” I answer, lowering my hand. “At least I didn’t mean to leave—not for this long. I had a job to do, but it should’ve only taken a day or two.”
“A job?” She blinks at me. “What kind of job?”
I consider not telling her, or at least glossing over some of the harsher realities of my work, but I decide against it. Sara’s opinion of me can’t get much worse, so she might as well know the full truth.
“My team carries out certain missions,” I say carefully, observing her reaction. “Jobs that few others can handle with the same level of skill and discretion. Our clients generally operate in the shadows, and so do the targets we’re paid to eliminate.”
The post-sex flush on her cheeks fades, leaving her face starkly pale. “You’re an assassin? Your team… kills people for hire?”
I nod. “Not just anyone, but yes. Our targets tend to be quite dangerous themselves, often with multiple layers of security that we have to penetrate. That’s how I ended up with this.” I point to the fresh scar on my stomach and see her eyes widen as she takes it in—likely for the first time. I doubt she got a good look at me as I was fucking her.
“How did this happen?” she asks, looking up from my stomach. Her face is even paler now, her porcelain skin taking on a greenish tint. “Is that a knife wound?”
“Yes. As to how, a moment of inattention on my part.” It still pisses me off that I didn’t see the guard behind me reach for his knife while I was dealing with his gun-wielding partner. “I should’ve been more careful.”
She swallows and studies my scar again. “If it’s so dangerous, why do you do it?” she asks after a moment, her eyes returning to my face.
“Because hiding from the authorities isn’t cheap,” I say. So far, Sara’s taking my revelation better than I expected, though I guess seeing me kill those two druggies might’ve prepared her for something like this. “The work pays extremely well, and it’s a good fit with my skill set. I used to consult for some of our clients before this, but running my own business is better. I have more freedom and flexibility—something that became important to me when I got my list.”
Her lips tighten. “The list that my husband was on?”
“Yes.”
Her gaze drops to her lap, but not before I glimpse a flash of anger in the soft hazel depths. It bothers her that I feel no remorse about that, but I’m not about to fake it. That ublyudok—that bastard husband of hers—deserved a much worse death than he received, and the only thing I regret is that he was a vegetable when I came for him. That and the fact that, for a brief instant, I hesitated before pulling the trigger.
I hesitated because I thought of Sara instead of my dead wife and son.
The recollection fills me with familiar rage and pain, and I force myself to take a slow, deep breath. If I didn’t feel so relaxed after fucking her, it would’ve been next to impossible to contain the agony flooding my chest, but as it is, I’m able to control myself—even when Sara gets up and excuses herself to go to the bathroom, still wrapped in the blanket.
She’s giving me the silent treatment, but it doesn’t bother me. It’s already after midnight, and there will be plenty of time to talk tomorrow.
Stretching out on the bed, I wait for Sara to return. It’s just as well she chose to cut short our little powwow. Though I barely exerted myself today, I feel as tired as after a mission. My body is still in recovery mode, a fact that frustrates me. I hate it when I’m not in battle-ready shape; weakness of any kind makes me feel antsy and unsettled.
Sara takes her time in the bathroom, but eventually, she reappears and lies down next to me, pointedly not sharing the blanket with me. Equal parts annoyed and amused, I pull the blanket off her and arrange it over both of us when I have her where she belongs: in my arms, with her tight little butt pressing against my groin.
“Good night,” I murmur, kissing the back of her neck, and when she doesn’t respond, I close my eyes, ignoring the twitching of my hardening cock.