“Where do you think you’re going?” The chair moved as she stood, fire in her expression. “We need to discuss what happens next, and you still need to give me back my dagger.”
Titus tensed his muscles. “What happens next is we figure out who hired you. Which means you stay with me.”
Rae ignored his clearly stay back vibe, closing the distance between them. “Wait a god damn minute –”
“You run and I’ll hunt you down, and we both remember how fucking easy that was.”
She barely hit the height of his shoulders, but she didn’t seem to care as she glared up at him with tightly coiled rage.
“But you won’t leave, because you won’t risk it,” he continued when she remained silent. “What is it Rae? Is it the fact you’re waiting for the right moment to kill me? Or is it because you’re too scared to go out on your own and get shot at again.”
A little squeak of temper escaped her parted lips. “I’m not scared. I’m not the one who has a target on their –”
“Those bullets weren’t aiming for me.” He was sure of it. The car had blown up too easily, as if something had been planted inside.
Doubt widened her eyes. “No… I still have over fifty –”
“It looks like we need each other,” he interrupted, just to see her face glow with resentment. “So be good.” Her little snarl was beautiful, but he didn’t stay long enough to watch her explode, needing to rip the fabric from his back, and burn his skin beneath scorching water. To distract his beast from the infuriating woman that seemed to awaken something inside him that he’d thought he’d lost.
Fuck the Fates.
Chapter11
Rae
“Be good?” she growled at the closed door, the shower starting seconds after he’d entered. “Be fucking good?” What was she, a dog? Rae lifted her middle finger, facing it against the door for long enough her arm ached.
Titus was wrong, there was another contractor hunting him, not her. There was no other explanation. She still had time to kill him, except, she was beginning to realise, that it might be more difficult than simply stabbing him when his back was turned. If he’d survived a shot to the heart, maybe he could survive other stuff?
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!” she whispered, rubbing the heel of her hands against her eyes. She had to kill him, she had no choice unless there was a way to get out of the assignment without initiating the forfeit. And while it pained her to admit it, but he was right, she did need him. Because no way was she going to just let him wander off into the sunset when it had taken her weeks to fucking find him in the first place. She was sticking to him like glue.
Jesus Christ.How the hell did she get into this position? She’d been good, counting down her kills one at a time, enjoying her restricted life as much as she could. And now she was essentially stuck in an expensive apartment with a man who seemed to have the emotional maturity of a potato. One who was currently stripped naked, completely wet and –
Rae squished that visual dead.
Stress. That was the reason for her impure thoughts. Stress-induced madness.
Deciding to explore rather than think about Titus naked behind such a thin door, she moved through to search the kitchen. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” There were no knives, and only a few long-life crackers that tasted like cardboard and did nothing to quell the rumble of hunger. It was as if the kitchen had never been used, the marble so clean she could probably have eaten off it. A show home.
Leaving a few crumbs just to piss him off, because their weird truce was still standing, she continued to look through the apartment. The living room was just as clean, the wood immaculate and without a single scratch. The ridiculously large TV didn’t have a speck of dust, but there was no remote in sight. The window was almost the size of the entire back wall, a small balcony too skinny to really accommodate Titus comfortably, but enough for Rae to step on and study the city she called home. It was late, the moon high in the sky and yet the city was awake, the mixture of old, and new architecture glistening against the dark. The street below was clean, cobbled, and far too pretentious for her tastes. Even the streetlights looked expensive, tall, black structures that looked more at home in a different century, but somehow worked against the townhouses opposite.
With a sigh, Rae stepped back into the bare in comparison living room. The door on the right looked to be another bedroom if she went by the large shadow on the carpet, but the entire room was empty, as was the adjoining bathroom. The fixtures had been ripped out, a blackened mark crawling up the wall to the ceiling as if there had been a small fire.
Returning to the main bedroom, Rae brushed her fingers against the tall armoire, the wood an intricate design. The handle was thick in her hand, heavy as she opened the door. “Holy shit!”
Inside was an array of sex toys. Plugs, dildos, paddles, and some stuff she’d never seen before, and wasn’t sure how to even use, sat displayed along the shelves. Wipes, bottles of lube, and other cleaning supplies rested at the bottom. Rae cringed at how loud the door slammed, glancing towards the bathroom where she could still hear the steady sound of the shower.
He’d been in there a while. Long enough that Rae was agitated at being stuck waiting, her legendary patience nowhere to be seen. The need to figure out a plan pushed her forward, lifting her hand to knock against the door.
“Titus?” she called, knocking again. “I know you can hear me, we don’t have time for this.” If she could hear the shower, he could hear her. Probably. “Fuck it,” she mumbled quietly, hand grasping the handle to find it unlocked.
Steam billowed from the slit in the door, the bathroom much larger than she had expected. The open aired shower took up the majority of the back wall, the mirrors facing it obscured from the condensation, the top half covered with a towel. Titus’s head was thrust back, eyes closed with his wet hair draped down his back. Water cascaded across his skin, the tattoos that covered every inch glistening. It took her a second, the lines and curves intricate around the Chinese dragon that seemed to wrap around his arm, before she glanced down to watch his hand move rhythmically beneath the stream.
“Can I help you?” he asked, not stopping the languid movements of his fist over his thick cock.
Oh. My. God.
Rae felt her mouth snap open, forcing her eyes up to his face. “I… you weren’t answering me.”
