Page 33 of Slay Bells Ring

His shoulders go up and down as he shrugs once. “But I do. It’s fucking crazy, but I do. If we weren’t waiting on more wannabe hitmen, I’d have you in my bed, committing every single inch of your body to memory. I’d be inside of you every chance I got.”

Heat creeps up my neck and causes a flush to grace my skin. A part of me wants to look away from his intense stare, but I can’t. He has me caught, pinned down, motionless from his words, and certain other parts of my body react in kind.

Like my thighs. It’s a good thing he can’t see them squeezing together right now.

Kane lets out a chuckle and shakes his head as he runs a hand through his brown hair. “I told you it’s crazy. You’re doing things to me, little killer, and I don’t know how or why.”

I’m doing things to him? No, it’s the other way around.He’sthe one who’s doing things tome. I didn’t come here to have any sex, just for a spot of murder during this lovely holiday season. Fucking my parents’ killer wasn’t ever on my list of things to do… and yet here we are, both of us not where we thought we would be.

Though there are half a dozen ways the conversation could continue, Kane abruptly changes the subject: “Finish eating. It’ll be dark in less than an hour.”

I dutifully eat, take a quick visit to the restroom, and then it’s time to set our trap. Kane stokes the fire one last time before he sits in the corner of the dark kitchen and waits. I lay on the sofa bed, my head exposed so it’s easy to see who I am, and though my mind should be focused on the possibility of another assassin coming my way, I can’t stop thinking about what Kane said.

He wants more. He wants me again. Why? Am I some sort of weird forbidden fruit to him, or what? Then again, you could ask the same of my strange desire for him. He’s the one man on this entire planet I shouldn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole, and yet when he was touching me I never felt more alive.

God, this situation is so fucked.

I do my best to push all thoughts of Kane and what we did out of my mind as I lay there in wait. Time crawls by, and for the longest time I hear nothing but the slow crackling of the fire. Even though we got some sleep after all that fucking, I could use some more; it becomes a struggle for me to remain awake.

A part of me hoped, even now, that Kane’s instincts would be wrong, that there was just the one hired assassin. But when I hear the telltale signs of someone picking the lock outside, I realize just how right he was.

Time for assassin number two.

You’d think it’d be easy to pretend to be asleep while knowing someone with a lot more experience is nearby, ready to protect you, but it’s not. I want nothing more than to sit up and meet this assassin head-on, but in doing so Imight get a quick bullet to the head. No, whoever it is has to come into the cabin and come towards me so Kane can surprise him from behind.

The door to the cabin swings open slowly, quietly. If I wasn’t awake, the sound would not have woken me. It truly is a miracle Kane was awake that night and overheard the first breaking in.

Whoever it is steps inside. He must see me, because he doesn’t hesitate. I hear his footsteps on the wooden floor, the planks creaking under his weight. I don’t hear Kane move at all—but he does, and that just goes to show that Kane is better at what he does than these guys.

He’s as silent as a mouse, and I hear the sounds of a gun falling to the ground the same moment Kane whispers darkly, “Surprise, motherfucker.”

I hear the grunt of a man after that, and I’m slow to open my eyes and sit up and watch as Kane blocks the flow of blood to this man’s brain for a few seconds, his forearm over the man’s neck. It’s the same position he knocked me out in.

The man, wearing all black, tries to struggle, but that struggling is futile, and it’s only a few seconds before his eyes roll into the back of his head and his entire body becomes limp. When that happens, Kane releases him and lets his body slump to the floor.

“Well, that wasn’t too hard,” Kane remarks. He didn’t even have to pull out my knife to take him on. “These guys—” He kicks the man’s nearest boot. “—are hardly trained at all. Definitely not any, uh, coworkers of mine. It’s like they were hired offCraigslistor something.”

Can’t deny that. They’re pathetic compared to Kane… which makes me realize I’m all the more stupid for thinking I could storm in here and take on Kane.

“Let’s tie the fucker up,” he says. He goes to grab the rope he brought out of the bedroom, and I groan as I get to my feet to help him. Kane lifts the man onto one of the kitchen chairs. “You don’t have to. You could sit—”

“I’m tired of sitting,” I tell him, holding the unconscious man upright while Kane works on fastening him to the chair. If I’m careful with how I stand on my feet, I’m okay. Mostly. Like I said, any kind of pain pill would do me wonders right now.

He does the ankles first, then the wrists get tied behind the man’s back, the rope woven in between his arms and the back of the wooden chair, and then back again a few times. By the time Kane’s done, there is no way this guy could free himself.

After he’s tied up, Kane rummages through the man’s clothes. Some ammunition, a knife, and a smaller gun is all he finds. No phone, no wallet, nothing. Everything he takes from the man he deposits onto the table behind the unconscious assassin.

I get a chill, and Kane hurries to close the door and lock it right back up.

“Now what?” I ask.

“Now we wait for our guest to wake up, and when he does… we’ll have some questions for him. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll give us the answers we want, otherwise—” Kane pulls out my knife from his pocket, glinting it in the dim light from the fireplace.

I have to say, my knife is way more impressive than the one Kane pulled off the man.

“—it’llbe time to use this baby again,” Kane finishes with a devilish smirk, and I can immediately tell he’s in his element. He knows what he’s doing, and he knows he’s good at it. For just a fleeting second, I see the man who killed my parents and came to find me afterwards, the man who almost killed me, too.

But then I blink and his expression softens when he looks at me. “I can keep watch over him, if you want to try to get any real sleep. It’s up to you. I don’t know how long he’ll be out.”

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