Page 26 of Assassin's Heart
Clients didn’t tell us why they wanted a hit; they just paid us. It was up to us to find out the why, to decide if it was a job worth taking. I had read some messed-up shit in my time, but it had never affected me the way Leah’s simple “you know” did.
The look in her eyes… Fuck.
“C’mere,” I said, needing to touch her, to feel her body against me and know in that moment that she was safe. Whole.
She stared at my hand for a long moment, and I braced myself for her rejection. Held my breath. The moment her fingers slipped into mine and she rose from her chair, I knew I didn’t deserve it.
I took it anyway.
Shifting my legs apart, I pulled her close until her belly met my groin and her breasts plumped against my chest. The sensation was almost indescribable—like coming home and getting hit with a jolt of electricity all at once. Leah’s head fit right in the hollow of my shoulder, and as she settled there, her deep sigh echoed my own.
Home.
She drew in a breath, pressing her breasts harder against me.
Electricity.
Fuck.
“I don’t need your sympathy, Remi,” she said, her voice not as certain as her words.
I ran my palms up her back, down along the dip of her spine. “Who said it was sympathy?”
“Okay then.” She shifted, her body molding even closer to mine. A groan caught in the back of my throat. “I don’t need to be cuddled.”
“Maybe I need it,” I said, not bothering to hide the hoarse tone creeping in. If we could have nothing else between us, there needed to be truth. I wanted her body, no doubt about it, but I’d give anything to take care of her. To love her.
She went rigid against me, the ease of her body against mine gone in a hot second. “Why would you need it?”
“Why do you think?”
Stepping back, Leah narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t about sex.”
Tell my dick that.If her body was against mine, there would always be an undercurrent of hunger beneath whatever else was going on between us; that was fact. “It isn’tallabout sex.”
“No.” Panic filtered into her eyes as they landed everywhere but where I needed them to be—on me. “Absolutely not.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and simply looked at her. We both knew the truth, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
Both fists tightened at her sides. “So I tell you about the worst night of my life and you want to fuck, is that it?”
The words hit their mark, deadlier than an armor-piercing round. Leah had known just where to strike.
Weaknesses aren’t allowed, remember?
So why did it feel like she’d just cut out my heart?
Straightening, I shoved myself away from the desk. “Let’s head upstairs.”
I was halfway across the room before I realized Leah wasn’t following. I didn’t want to care. Before this woman, I’d avoided caring about anyone but my brothers. Somehow she broke through the barriers I’d never allowed to be breached, found the soft underbelly I hadn’t known existed.
Fuck that.
“Remi.”
My name on her lips jerked my body to a stop without my permission. How the hell had I let a woman I’d had no more than a handful of conversations with gain this kind of power over me? Planting my hands on my hips, I glared up at the ceiling and wished I could just keep walking. “Yeah?”
Footsteps behind me, soft, suspicious—a barefoot attacker, knife ready to slip between my ribs. She stopped just out of sight. “I’m sorry.”
