I hardly blamed him. Just because he worked for the mafia didn’t mean he had armed men showing up at his door after midnight.
Clearing my throat, I took a step toward him. “My name is—”
“Elijah.” His voice was soft, a barely there whisper. “Elijah Kingston. You’re thirty-one years old. You spent eight years in active duty, and have the most recorded kills of any US sniper in military history. You’re an assassin now, arguably the best one the mob has ever seen. You’re here to kill the bad guy.”
I’ll be damned.
He directed his words at the floor but each sentence he spoke somehow hit me square in the chest. Though his voice was barely an octave above silent, there was a resolute, finality to his tone that told me he was confident in the knowledge he possessed of me.
“You’re very good at killing bad guys,” he said, and I couldn't help but grin. Not just because he’d paid me a compliment but because of the way he’d said ‘bad guy.’
His quiet voice growled over the syllables, and I saw his fists clench and unclench as if he was going to cold-clock one of those fuckers himself.
“I hear you’re very good at finding bad guys, so I suppose we’ll make a good team.”
His head lifted then, and the hair framing his face parted enough to expose his features.
Hell.
He was stunning in an ethereal type of way, and he reminded me of an antique, glass doll. Silas’ pale skin was smooth—free of blemishes, scars, or freckles. His long eyelashes swept across the tops of his cheeks each time he blinked, and I liked the way his pink lips twitched up into a shy smile.
His hair flopped forward again, long enough to brush the edges of his slender jaw, and with a flick of his fingers, he tucked it behind his ear.
“Do you prefer I call you Midnight?”
“I… I like Silas. You can call me that.”
“Alright. Is it okay if I come in?”
He nodded, and I followed him inside, tugging the door shut behind me. Using the tip of his pointer finger, he jammed it into the keypad at a quick pace and before I knew it, the locks re-engaged with a heavyclank.
“My desk is over there.”
With a pivot, I found myself standing at the outer edge of his home. The apartment was big, massive even, and in the center of it all was a window nearly five times my height. There was a steel staircase to the right of that window, leading up to a loft. From my vantage point, I could make out an unmade bed and a dresser with several drawers still open.
A kitchen was to my left—the living room in my direct line of vision. He had a sectional that took up most of the space. It was littered with blankets and a few pairs of forgotten socks.
Plants were everywhere, resting on his countertops and in big pots along the edges of his walls. A few were in baskets, hanging from crooked hooks soldered into the wall.
The floor we walked across was cement, but he’d covered sections of it with different sized rugs, effectively creating a little path from the doorway to his workstation. It was just below the loft, out of sight from the front door. He paused next to a leather computer chair.
“This is where I work.”
Well, fuck.“It’s impressive.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely.”
He had three monitors, and each screen displayed something different. There was a glow in the dark keyboard and a mouse off to the edge of the desk, and a headset dangling from the corner of a monitor.
Small LED lights framed the space, casting a blue hue across his skin. The glow was a spotlight on his movements, and I noticed him gazing at his chair with his bottom lip between his teeth.
He looked so innocent in that moment—so fucking young.Christ.I wanted to suck that bottom lip between my own.
Awareness pebbled across my skin, the fine hairs there coming to life. I’d suddenly felt like a recharged battery, roaring back to life with enough power to shut down the whole fucking city.
He made a noise, and my eyes shot to his face.