Chapter five
Greyson
After returning to the living room, I shrug into my jacket, which I left lying over the back of the sofa.
It smells of her—the flowery scent of her perfume lingers on the material.
My cock hardens in my jeans. Fuck, not now, not her.
My body has an undeniable ability to want every woman it shouldn’t.
Every woman who should be off limits becomes the one I need, and I have a low tolerance for resisting it.
I love nothing more than a soft, feminine lady in my bed, though I’m unsure Tilly is either of those things despite her looks.
Ever since I laid my jacket over Tilly’s shoulders in the woods after we crashed, my cock has had a mind of its own around her.
In what I guess has been twelve hours, she’s morphed from being an irritating brat to a woman I want to surrender myself to between her legs.
Her screaming my name would make me the happiest man on the planet.
But, considering she’s my boss’s niece and that hitmen are looking for us, this wouldn’t be a good use of my time.
But it’s a fucking appealing one. If I died buried in her, I’ll die happy with a bullet in the back of my head, but my cock deep in heaven.
Before I can do something I’ll potentially regret, I walk to the front door and go outside to see if this house can offer anything of value to us.
Ideally, I’ll find a small hidden office with a telephone, a computer, and an internet connection.
I chuckle at the absurdity of the thought, but a man can dream.
Without my ridiculously positive thinking in the past, I have no doubt I would have ended up dead.
The same is true today—here in the highlands of Scotland, believing we will survive this means we most likely will.
Sadly, all I find outside is a garage full of cardboard boxes that have seen better days.
The slightly damp cardboard hides every wall.
Each box has a description of what’s supposedly inside written in calligraphy-style text in blue marker.
My eyes run over each one, searching for something potentially useful.
Rows of kitchen equipment, paperwork, and bathroom supplies repeat over and over.
What the hell do they do with kitchen supplies up here?
There’s no electricity. When I open one box, I find an electric blender.
Bizarre. Finally, my eyes land on a box labeled “Fiona’s stuff.”
Of course, it’s located at the bottom of a stack of six other boxes. I lift each down one by one.
White plastic comes into view as I tear open the dusty old box to find layers of bags, the kind you put your groceries in at the store.
I remove one, and inside is women’s clothing—nothing glamorous, only basic jumpers and jeans.
Further investigation reveals a pair of sneakers.
I hold one of the items up, assessing whether it would fit Tilly.
It’s hard to tell; the owner was on the larger side.
But they’ll be warmer than the scraps of material she’s wearing now.
I stuff a few items into a bag and continue my search but find nothing of value to help us.
“Greyson,” Tilly calls out, and I take that as my cue to return to the house. When I round the corner from the garage, I find her standing on the front step, still wrapped in the blanket. Her eyes widen slightly as I walk toward her, then her pretty pink lips twist into a smirk. I narrow my eyes.
“What’s with the face?” She cocks her head to the side, and her smirk grows more intense. I feel my nostrils flare in annoyance at her open jest. This woman looks at me as if I’m a puppy at her beck and call. It’s flipping infuriating but also a fucking turn-on.
“You’re looking a bit rough, Greyson,” she purrs.
“Have you looked in the mirror?” I shoot back. She smiles wide, then bites her lip naughtily.
“Youth is on my side,” she says. “I can pull off the rough-around-the-edges look far better than you.”
Without waiting for my response, she turns away and walks back into the house.
When I catch up with her, she glances over her shoulder, then lifts a hand and curls a finger, gesturing that I should follow. “Come, I’ve made us something to eat.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“Come, boy,” she says with a chuckle, keeping her eyes fixed ahead. “I’ll feed you, then you can work out how to get us the fuck out of here.”
The dangerous events of the past twenty-four hours surge to the surface. I reach forward and grab her arm, spinning her to face me.
“This isn’t a fucking game!” I roar. “Your stupidity has got us both in this situation.” She responds by taking a swing at me. Her clenched fist cracks off my cheek, and the plastic bag in my hand falls to the floor.
“I warned you not to touch me,” she hisses. “Next time, it will be a knife between your ribs.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Her focus drops to the hem of her dress; mine follows, and I watch as she lifts the material. Strapped to her leg, in a makeshift holster made from tape she found fuck knows where, are two small kitchen knives. Her eyes raise and she lifts an eyebrow.
“Do you think I wouldn’t?” she says, her voice ice. “Show me some respect, and address me like you would my uncle. Or you could test me if you like? You have to sleep sometime, Greyson.”
We glare at one another. On the one hand, I know she’s right; grabbing her like that was uncalled for. On the other, she feels like a loose cannon and I have no fucking idea what she’s going to do next.
“I’m sorry, Miss,” I relent, my masculinity seeping from my pores with each word. This woman will be the death of me. “But may I suggest that respect is a two-way process? I tend to treat people as they treat me. It’s a force of habit.”
“Noted. Now, please come and eat what I’ve prepared. It looks edible, so just pretend it is.”
I crouch down to pick up the fallen bag, then follow behind her into the kitchen. On stepping through the doorway, the smell of cooked food hits my nostrils and my stomach growls. Fuck, when did I last eat? I don’t remember. She giggles.
“Hungry, Greyson?”
“Ravenous.” She gasps slightly at my word, and I can’t help the tiny thrill that runs through my body. My words affect her, even though they shouldn’t. “What did you make?”
She sashays over to the table and opens her arms dramatically, signaling the two plates crammed with food sitting on the surface.
She turns to face me and smiles broadly.
It’s clear she’s proud of herself for the feast before us.
Her genuine pride is joyous to see. I’ve not spent much time with Tilly before now, but she’d always come across as fake and deeply unhappy.
No matter how much of a fa?ade someone puts up, a person who’s truly joyless can never hide it.
Over the years, I’ve encountered all sorts of people in my line of work.
Most of them are miserable; it’s true that money can’t buy happiness though, in my experience, it can make it easier to find.
But in the mafia families I’ve worked with, nobody has struck me as a person happy with the life they were born into.
They’re just making the best of where they’ve ended up.
It's a bit like me, I suppose. Becoming an assassin wasn’t exactly at the top of my wish list as a small boy. Sustaining my own life while snuffing out others isn’t something I aspired to. So here I am, but hopefully not for much longer.
I need to buy my way out of here or my life will be taken. There are only so many brushes with death a man can avoid, and I must be on my last one. The Grim Reaper is on my shoulder, waiting to collect what he’s due; I can feel it. And according to him, I owe him my soul.