He flicked his gaze to the greenhouse, then the sky.
Gradually, she became aware of the fact that it was getting easier to see him. Shooting a startled glance upward, she exclaimed,“Oh.Gods, I didn’t even think about it! You need to get inside! The sun’s coming up.”
Mr. Bounds shook his head hard, making his long ponytail whip behind him.“Fuck.”
Passing a hand over his face, he slowly straightened. When she caught his gaze again, his eyes were only slightly less wild than they were before. “Tell me again,” he demanded, taking one menacing step closer. “Tell me you’ll see me tomorrow. I won’t be able to sleep if you don’t.”
Zia licked her lips. The instinctive urge to flee was almost overwhelming — and arousing.
“Eight o’clock,” she answered. Zia cursed the sun for taking him away the moment she got what she wanted. Longing thickened her voice when she added, “I’ll be waiting for you.”
A vicious sort of satisfaction flashed across his face.
Taking one step backward, he kept his gaze locked on her when he rumbled, “Good, pet. Think of me while I sleep.” He let out a harsh breath and scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “Gods know I’ll be dreaming of you.”
ChapterNine
It was hard notto scowl at the little cottage Zia called home.
Of course, Harlan knew what it looked like. One of the first things he did when his obsession with the witch took root was investigate her home. It was second nature for him to dig up everything he could about a target — what their habits were, where they lived, what and who was important to them.
He knew Zia’s house. He knew the floor plan. He knew what she paid each month and who her landlord was. He knew that there were seven sensors installed around the tiny wooded property and that she had recently asked the owner to fix a leaky sink.
But up until the night of their date, he did not allow himself to cross the line intogoingto her home.
The assassin he once was wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have easily disabled her paltry security and waltzed right in, ready to learn every illicit and mundane detail about his prey’s life before he struck in the darkest part of the night.
He didn’t do that, though.
Harlan had been trying to leave that those habits behind him for four years. Besides, Zia wasn’t a target. There were no bounties on her head. No one had anonymously contracted him to put a bolt through her brain in exchange for cash.
She was not a part of that world, and certainly not the kind of target he ever would have accepted.
Being the best meant he got to be choosy. The choosier he got, the more coveted his services became. By the end of his career, he made a point to only accept bounties for the vilest of the vile — feyrunners, flesh-peddlers, and those who wished to create their own cruel little empires out of filth and violence.
The only people he was beholden to were the Amauri family. When they asked him to kill, he didn’t get to ask questions, or say no. It was only through a profound act of service to the matriarch herself that he had been allowed to walk away from them at all.
Zia could not have been farther from that life if she tried.
So he stayed away. For a year, he fought his fascination with her and resisted impulses ingrained in him after a lifetime of clawing his way out of the gutter. He didn’t watch her home. He didn’t track her car. He didn’t monitor her communications — though he did keep an eye on her landlord, just to be sure she was being taken care of.
Even the planting of the sensors fell to Atticus. As much as it pained him, Harlan knew he couldn’t be trusted so near her home.
Until now.
Even as he pulled to a stop in front of her cottage, Harlan wasn’t entirely certain he should be allowed to.
Because now that he’d seen it in person, he didn’t like it at all.
It was a plain, square little house with a sparse lawn and a gravel driveway. Light from inside blazed through the cracks in the curtains, throwing the looming trees that ringed the property into sharp relief.
And thereweretrees. Zia’s cottage sat on a tiny speck of land carved into the dense Sierra Nevada mountain range’s forest, almost like an afterthought. She had no neighbors within earshot and only one easily blocked route in and out. There was no fence or ward around the home, either. Even the sloppiest criminal could walk right out of the trees, break a window, and be inside her home without anyone noticing for the gods knew how long.
If they didn’t trip the sensors, it wouldn’t be until Zia skipped multiple days of work that anyone would even think to look for her.
Harlan’s stomach turned as he hit the ignition switch.Un-fucking-acceptable.
Stepping out of the low-slung sports car, he braced one hand on the roof and buttoned his suit jacket with the other. The air was bitingly cold and spiced with the scents of pine and rich, red soil.
