Page 16 of Claimed By the Hitman: Codename Cupid

He pulls back, staring into my eyes.

I search his handsome face desperately, tracing every sharp line for some hint as to what’s going on.

"Fuck Olympia. Fuck protocol, right?" He holds my face with both hands, keeping me from shaking. "Rose, I've had you in my sights long before Olympia assigned you to me. Apollo… remember him? You punched him in the mouth on an assignment in West Africa."

The memory makes me laugh. It puts me at ease. Apollo was such a shit-bag assassin. "He was hitting on me. Bastard wouldn't cut the shit. I busted his lip."

"Straightened him out, didn't you?" Cupid laughs.

I can see in his eyes how badly he wants me to understand. I take a few deep breaths and nod.

"Apollo told me about you. Assassins... We're like a cohort. We find each other. We talk. One drunken night in Spain, Apollo told me all about his stone-cold handler and that busted lip. We went for tapas, actually. Have you had tapas in Spain? I’ll take you. I know the best—”

“Cupid…”

“Right. Unimportant.” He shrugs. “He told me about Hera. I pressed him for details. I don't know... I became obsessed. Obsessed with the woman who punched assassins trying to get in her pants. Just hearing about you made me feel more alive than I ever have."

“What are you saying?” I’m still quivering. “You’ve been stalking me?”

“I’m saying it’s no coincidence that we were assigned together…”

It doesn’t make any sense. Olympia operates so far above us all. How could he influence their decisions?

“I found you, Rose,” he whispers my name like it’s his most guarded possession. “No identity is so well protected that it can’t be found. Twenty-nine years old. Born in Idaho. West Point graduate and Army veteran. Worked for the CIA before being recruited to Olympia. Currently residing in Charleston, North Carolina. You have a beautiful home, by the way.”

The thought of Olympia’s deadliest assassin prowling outside my home sends a chill down my spine. It frightens me in a way that transcends fear. How long has he been watching me? How many nights passed with him so close that he could have decided at any moment to reveal himself?

Would I have wanted him to?

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s why I didn’t just knock on your front door. That’s why I watched from a distance until my time came: that look on your face. How could I have explained myself? You would have flipped. You would have shot me, even. I would have taken the bullet gladly, but I knew there was another way.”

Cupid risks sliding onto the couch with me.

Even with my body radiating panic, I don’t inch away. Somehow, impossibly, hearing all this makes me want him more. And how could it not? Paris wasn’t a fluke; it was the night that set me free.

I’ve never been in more danger in all my life, never been so close to death. That home in Charleston is a memory I’ll never return to.

And it feels so good.

Every word he says to me breaks another link in Olympia’s chain around my neck. I was suffocating in the lifestyle, drowning without knowing it. Cupid showing up at that café in Paris was my first gasp for air…

“My behavior that Olympia has been so concerned with,” Cupid says with a smile, “ started when I found you. I don’t know how many handlers they have, but I was ready to run through them all until they sent you to me. And your last assignment, Hephaestus, how do you think he got hurt?”

“Olympia told me he was injured rock climbing…”

“He was,” Cupid says. “I cut his line.”

I hold his fierce gaze. “You could have killed him.”

He laughs, “I’ve killed for money for years, Rose. You think I won’t kill foryou?”

My heart races for him.

Cupid has been pursuing me, hunting me, stalking me… and I had no idea. All this time, Olympia’s finest killer—maybe the finest in the world—has had his sights set on one thing: me.

I feel like I’m sitting on heaven’s highest pedestal. I’ve been raised to a level of desire reserved for deities.

He’d die for me.

---