7. Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Ashley
H is answer isn’t fast, and I lean forward this time. We’re close and staring at each other. “Were your orders to kill me?” I demand.
“Only if you became a problem. You were never going to be a problem. I had to create a cover story, a believable life, complete with a girlfriend, and why wouldn’t I choose a woman I couldn’t stop watching?”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? How many times have you chosen women as targets because they were fuckable?”
His jaw sets hard. “That is not how it was with you.”
“But it was with others?” I snap back.
“If you’re asking me if I ever fucked someone who didn’t know who I was, yes, I did.”
“Why me?” I repeat. “There are hundreds of choices at the firm. I was low on the food chain, a paralegal.”
“That made me less obvious.”
I swallow hard and sit back. Once again, my inability to finally make that law degree happen slaps me in the face. “Because I was nothing and disposable.”
“The fact that you had no family ties made you appealing, yes, but it also made us appealing. In that, we were the same. We were alone without each other.”
“Your family—”
“Everything I told you about me was true.”
“Liar. Noah. ” I stand up and try to turn away, but he’s there instantly, catching my wrist and turning me to him.
“I am Noah. I broke every protocol in existence by using that name with you. That’s how much I needed to be real with you.”
“I don’t know how you want me to respond to that,” I whisper. “It’s a name. Just a name. You are so many things I didn’t know you were. And how do I even know it’s true?”
“Right. Just a name.” He releases me, and I’m stunned when he leaves me there. He actually walks out of the kitchen.
He’s pissed. Now I’m even more pissed. I rotate and follow him. “Are you really angry because a name isn’t enough for me? Do you know how much you hurt me? Do you even care?”
He whirls and pulls me to him. “It’s not just a fucking name. I was an assistant district attorney. I went after the kingpin of a cartel. I didn’t back down. I was going to end up in witness protection, just like you. That’s when the CIA recruited me. And yes, I’m a fucking assassin. And no, I don’t regret one single person I’ve killed. They were all like that kingpin.”
“You said you’d have killed me if I became a problem.”
His energy whips and cuts. “Do you really believe I’d have killed you?”
“That’s not the point. You just said—”
“I don’t regret anyone I’ve ever killed. The end. You’re going to have to decide if you can live with that answer when this is over, when I get you your freedom back because I will. Unless you grab that gun and kill me. Just make sure you won’t have any regrets.”
He releases me but doesn’t walk away. “The gun is right there in the kitchen waiting on you. I’m surprised you left it. That’s what you wanted. The damn gun.”
“I don’t want the damn gun. Not to use on you.”
He studies me several long beats. “Don’t call me Noah. Ever again. I’m Aaron. Keep it that way.”
With that, it’s as if he’s shut a door. He turns away and walks to a small bar in the corner, pouring himself a whiskey. It’s then that I realize the assassin part of his story overshadowed everything else. I find myself closing the space between us, and when we are once again facing each other, his stare is intense, unreadable, heavy.
“You took down a kingpin?”
“Yes. I took down a kingpin.”
“And you lost everything?”
He downs his drink and sets it down. “You know my story. My parents died when I was ten. My sister died when I was twenty. There was no you in my life back then. What cost was there? Don’t make me a hero. I’m not the man I was back then.”
“Are you trying to convince me to trust you or to hate you?”
He drags me to him, his fingers tangling in my hair. “I don’t regret who I kill, but I do look forward to the next one. I’m so fucking not a hero that I never even gave a shit what that meant for you.” He sets me aside. “I’ll get you out of this. I owe you that much. And then I’ll let you go.”
That cuts and burns. Now he’s not even fighting for me. My eyes burn. “I hate that you’re playing mind games.” I turn and walk away, but he catches my arm.
I whirl on him. “Stop grabbing me. Stop. I need to think.”
He releases me. “You have plenty of time. There’s a blizzard outside. You might want to grab that gun and hold on tight because you’re stuck with me a while.”
I stand there, staring at him, the part of me that believes I know him, certain that I’ve hurt him. I want to step to him. I want to touch him. I want to talk to him, but I’m not objective with this man. I need to breathe. I need to think. I back up and walk to the kitchen, the only place I know that I can escape to right now. Once I’m there, I notice what I didn’t before because of my hyper-focus on Noah; the wind whips and whistles beyond the cabin. I grab my hot cocoa and gulp it down when I swear I need that whiskey he’s drinking. I don’t focus on him trying to scare me out there. I focus on trying to understand him, understand us. I go back to the past and try to remember what was real and what was fake.
The past—back in that bathroom, the first night after we met—
I still can’t believe he’s in the bathroom of the bar after I caught him flirting with that woman. Or maybe he wasn’t flirting with her. Maybe she is a married client with kids because right now, he’s kissing me, and I don’t want him to stop. I’m against the bathroom wall, his big, hard body pressed to mine, and I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I only know the taste of him, one-part whiskey, one-part demand—the woodsy, wonderful scent of him, and his touch, his strong hands molding me closer.
His hands settle on my waist, his lips lingering above mine, his breath a warm, wicked promise of another kiss I want so damn badly. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you all day,” he murmurs, his voice somehow both silk and sandpaper that I feel on every nerve ending I own.
Nor have I been able to stop thinking about him, which makes those words exactly what I want to hear. “The girl who fell on the ice?” I laugh nervously, trying to caution myself not to read too much into anything with this man, not when I’m this hypersensitive to anything he says or does. “I’m sure you couldn’t stop thinking about me.”
He strokes my hair off of my face and fixes me in a brown-eyed stare, he’s so damn tall, dark and good-looking that it steals my breath. “You were adorable and sexy this morning.”
He thinks me being clumsy is adorable and sexy? “You were a gentleman,” I say. “That left a lasting impression.”
“Is that right?” he asks, mischief in his eyes. “My manners left an impression? That’s why you came here tonight?”
I blush, and I’m really not a blusher. “And I like your suit.”
He laughs, a low masculine rumble I feel from head to toe. “Is that right?” he asks again.
“Yes,” I say. “It is.”
Someone knocks on the door, and I jolt. “Oh God,” I whisper, grabbing the lapels of that very suit right now. “They’re going to know we were in here together.”
“Then maybe we should just fuck and make the scolding we’ll get worth it.”
My eyes go wide. “No.”
He laughs. “I’m teasing. Mostly.” He takes my hand. “Leave this to me. I’ll handle it.” I don’t have time to argue because he’s already charging forward and taking me with him.
“Noah!” I call out, using his name for the first time on my own, and it feels as intimate as I feel panicked right now.
He opens the door, and I don’t know who is outside, but he says, “Evening, ma’am,” and I cringe even before he’s out the door, pulling me in front of him, with his back to whoever he just spoke to. I never see our visitor.
He walks me forward with his hands on my waist until we clear the hallway. Once we’re in the bar, he steps to the side of the wall and places me against it, stepping in front of me. “Drinks? Dinner? My place? Your place?”
“Coffee,” I say, not about to let this get out of hand if that’s even possible at this point.
His eyes heat, wickedness in their depths, before he says, “There’s a coffee shop in my building.”
“There’s a coffee shop next door, too.”
He laughs. “All right. I get it. Slow down.”
“Yes,” I say softly, my body tingling wildly in disagreement as I add, “Slow down.”
His hands shackle my waist, and he pulls me close, our lower bodies aligned. “Coffee,” he says, and he makes it sound sultry. He makes it sound like sex.
“Coffee,” I reply, sounding breathless.
We stay like that for a moment and then he laces the fingers of one of his hands with mine and leads me through the bar. We exit into the Houston winter night, and the cold air is a shock to the heat this man is stirring in my body. I shiver, and he pulls me under his arm, using his body to shelter mine. “Good thing it’s a short walk,” he says, setting us in motion toward the coffee shop he obviously knows as do I.
In all of two cold minutes, he’s holding the door to the shop for me, and I’m hurrying inside. Another couple of minutes, and we both have white mochas as we sit down at a tiny table for two, facing each other, just me and this man.
“Tell me about yourself, Ashley,” he says softly, and when he does, I don’t feel like he’s just speaking words, filling space. There is something in this man’s eyes that says he really wants to know me. And, God, I really want to know him. I want to know him in that deep, burning way you hope you feel one day and then when it finally happens, like now, it terrifies you for one reason: you already know that if you let him, this man will steal your heart, and that gives him power. The power to lift you up and make you burn, yearn, and smile, but he can also hurt you.