Page 21 of The Ghost Assassin

A few minutes later, we’re in the apartment and I leave Kit in the hallway for his own safety. He’s lucky I don’t send him to hang out with Jack. I trust Kit in the heat of the moment, which says a lot about me, but when he gets too confident, he blows the cover off the logic pot, and it boileth over.

I pour Kane a whiskey I’m certain he will need when he arrives and end up at his favorite window spot, sipping it myself. It’s interesting that my father hasn’t contacted me over Murphy, and I’m really not sure what to think of it. He’s about to be governor. The polls say that’s inevitable. Between that and his link to Pocher, he’d find out about this, but then he might be kept in the dark by Pocher and told to stand down and disconnect himself. It wouldn’t be the first time he tried to disconnect himself from me, even by way of my murder.

He knew Pocher was going to kill me.

I’m not sure how I’ve managed to stand in the same room with him without killing him at this point. I down the whiskey, the smokey taste burning a path down my throat.

The alarm buzzes with Kane’s arrival, and I swear my heart is racing. Entry into the apartment is not fast, and I walk to the bar, refill his glass, and then step in front of the door where I know he’ll enter. I’m just in time. It opens, and he’s standing there in jeans and a leather jacket covering a snug T-shirt. He’s male perfection, and it’s hard to believe I ever denied him.

Just seeing him delivers a rush of desire but logically, too, relief that rivals the sense of relief I’d felt when they pulled him out of the ocean. He’s my husband. When did I ever think I’d own that statement? The door shuts behind him, and his eyes are dark, his expression harder than I have ever seen on this man before. He’s rattled in a way that is undefinable.

“What went wrong?”

He steps into me, cups my head, and kisses the hell out of me. He tastes of danger and death, and when he tears his mouth from mine, he reaches for the glass, downs every drop, and then captures my hand. His energy is wicked and dark, shooting up my arm, and charging my body. He sets the glass on the table by the stairs and guides me upward, toward the sanctuary that is our bedroom. His steps are measured but determined, anger and frustration vibrating off him.

Something has happened that has nothing to do with Murphy.

The minute we’re in the bedroom, he shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it on a chair before he’s pulling me to him. “What happened?” I ask. “Kane, what—”

“Later, Lilah.” Already his mouth is slanting over mine, and I taste it this time. I taste what I’d missed moments before—the possessiveness, the demand, the urgency to claim me as if I’m not already his.

Whatever happened, he believes it’s the end of us.

Chapter Thirteen

Suddenly, I don’t want to know what happened.

There are only a few things in this life that could convince Kane he’s about to lose me, and none of them are good. Two of those things include death and a jail cell, which means everything about this night went wrong. I push against him, tearing our lips apart.

“Don’t ask,” he warns.

He doesn’t mean never. In the past, he would have, but we’re beyond that now. He means now, and I’m so beyond okay with that. I push out of his arms and sit down on the end of the bed to remove my boots. Kane does the same, and then we both stand. He stands there—we stand there—facing each other, watching each other.

The burn that is our desire sizzles between us, alive and well and untouched by the world around us, but there’s more there, too. The tension between us ticks, and there’s a storm behind his intense, heated stare I can feel beating at me.

Because it’s not his war, it’s ours, but Kane will try to save me again.

He will try to make this his battle, not ours.

Angry now, with only one way to express myself, I tug my shirt over my head and toss it away. By the time it hits the bed, Kane’s shirt is over his head as well. The rest of our clothes follow. We undress but don’t speak. I don’t even hesitate to devour his hard body with my eyes. He’s mine. I’m his. If he thinks anything that happened this night has changed that, he’s wrong.

This man has buried bodies for me. I’ll bury them for him.

I might have resisted that in the past, but never again.

I step toward him, wanting him so damn much it hurts, and it’s all it takes to unleash him.

He catches me to him, his fingers there, moving me toward him, and while they tangle in my hair, his tongue licks into my mouth. There was a time when I let him taste my hate for him, but this is not the same. I taste us, and I realize in this moment, it’s always been us. My fingers tangle in his hair now and I say, “Whatever it is—”

“Damn it, not now, Lilah,” he growls, his teeth catching the delicate skin of my lips, the pain jolting me into the moment and out of the next, which was his plan.

A moment later, my back hits the mattress with the heavy, delicious weight of his body on top of mine, a dark push and pull of past and present consumes us. “Lilah,” he murmurs, in that richly accented way he says my name when he wants to turn me on, but I’m already there. He presses inside me, long and hard. His fingers are back in my hair, and just like that first night we came back together after those years apart, he forces my gaze to his.

My mind flashes back to that night…

“I would have killed him for you with no guilt. I would have made him suffer. Isn’t that what you want to hear? And my willingness to do it doesn’t make me a monster any more than you wanting me to do it or doing it yourself makes you one.”

“You’re justifying your actions and mine. That’s dangerous.”

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