Page 41 of All Your Pain

“What happened to you to need to fight so much?”

“A lot but also nothing.”

“I don’t—,”understand.He cuts me off with a kiss.

“Want to kiss you, not talk about my past.”

He can’t skirt around it forever and he knows that. I’ve opened up to him about my dad. The least he could do is show me some of the same vulnerability. It’s not like I'm going to tell anyone his secrets.

I’ve decided that if I do ever make it out of here I’ll just quietly disappear. If I go to the police then the chances are that my dad will find me and I can’t go back to that life. I also don’t want Dean to be arrested even though his crimes do deserve it.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, searching my face.

“What do you do when you’re not working?” I ask, needing to steer my thoughts away from dark places.

He shrugs, “I’m usually either working or I’m with you.”

“You don’t have any hobbies?”

He's contemplative for a moment, his hands roaming to the more sensitive parts of my body. "You're my hobby."

I grab his wrists. "I'm serious, Dean."

“So am I. But, I guess, watching movies. I used to do some cage fighting. Got paid a lot of money for it even when I didn’t win just because I’d last for so long.” He moves from on top of me and settles in next to me instead.

“Why did you stop?”

“I ended up with two broken ribs. Didn't even realize, but Bones made me get checked over. Turned out I nearly had a punctured lung. The doctor advised me not to fight anymore. Of course, I didn’t listen,” he hits me with one of his big grins before continuing. “I was hired by a guy who’d seen me fight a few times. He wanted me to get rid of someone for him.”

“Was he your first kill?”

“No. My first was a few years before that.”

A few years?He must have been so young.

"How old actually are you?" I ask.

"Twenty-six."

"That means—"

"Don't think too much into it." I know from his tone that's the end of that conversation. I'll let it go for now.

“Was that how you got into whatever your job is exactly? An assassin? Hitman?”

He laughs loudly.“Assassin?I quite like that. Maybe I’ll make some business cards with it on.”

“You don’t have to mock me, you jerk.”

“Oh, baby, I wasn’t mocking. It was cute.You’recute. Come here.” He pats his thigh and I find myself moving closer to sit next to him but he pulls me on to his lap.

“I’d been teaching myself how to track people down using the resources I was able to buy with my fight winnings. Turns out I was pretty good at it. After I found a few people from my past and discovered how easy it was for me to kill them, I got a guy I knew to sort me out with a page on the dark web and that’s where I got most of my work until I made a name for myself.” He really has had to fight for everything in his life by the sounds of it.

“Isn’t the dark web really dangerous?”

“You worried about me, little kitten?”

“Obviously not,”we say at the same time and I blush.

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