Part 1
I was rescued by a hitman, only to get kidnapped again…
He stood, staring. We were both covered in blood. My hand was still gripping the knife I used to kill Wilson. The mastermind of an operation trafficking illegal goods and people with the same regard.
I had been unlucky enough to get caught trying to steal a rare diamond. Yet, I was lucky enough to be underestimated. Wilson wanted to “play” with me before selling me off. The idiot had me locked alone in his bedroom. The one with knives and swords on the walls. Behind locked glass displays. He left a renowned thief with regular displays and basic alarms to them. Less secure than a goddamn museum. The camera pointed to the door. I case his victims would try to leave. Not a window in sight. He must have been paranoid about snipers.
He was dead now. His body lying beneath me. And the man who walked in stared bewildered. I stuck to my initial plan, pointing the blade to my throat. I could kill one surprised man, not all his goons.
“Luisa!” He dropped his weapon, raising his hands. “I came here to kill him.” He pointed at Wilson’s corpse.
Who was he and where did he know my real name from?
“How did you get here?” I glanced behind him to see more corpses.
“I killed those who got in my way.”
“Can you get me out of here? I’ll pay you.”
“I’ll get you out.” He offered me his hand.
We walked out and he grabbed a gun off a body. Passing by the open safe, I slowed down to look inside.
“I have it.” He said pulling me along. “I took the diamond.” He pushed me against the wall next to the stairs, kicked the door open, weapon readied. There was not a sound. He gestured for me to follow. “It’s in my breast pocket.” Why would he tell me that?
Now I was suspicious. It was like he was daring me to steal it from him. As we made our way out, I was less and less tempted to.
“Where’s your team?” The downstairs hall was a scene out of a horror film. I was grateful for my strong stomach.
“I came alone. My driver is there to pick me up, though. You can tag along.”
If he had done all that on his own, I stood no chance against him. A car pulled up by the side exit. He opened the door waiting for me to get in.
“The cops will be here in five minutes.” The driver in his forties commented to us.
“Fuck.” I crawled into the back seat behind him opposite to the opened door.
I wasn’t going to be in the vicinity of this carnage in a Lycra cat suit covered in blood. Plus, that hitman had my diamond.
“My name is Erasmus.” He said sitting down beside me. “From the Nav clan.” That family rang a blaring horn in my memory.
The driver took off right after I buckled in. The windows were tinted, thankfully. The heating was on full blast. It made my nose itchy.
Erasmus slowly unbuckled me before pulling me to sit on his lap. I only complained once he sat me with my back against his chest. I didn’t have access to his breast pocket in that position.
“What are you doing?” I didn’t fight him. He could snap my neck in a second and I wasn’t armed anymore.
“I’m cold. I lost blood, I think. Got shot through the leg.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry, it’s already healed.” He reached between my mid-thighs. His hands were freezing. I could feel it through the Lycra. His heartbeat was slow against my back. His cold lips grazed my ear, “You smell tasty.”
I shivered with a gasp, “Please tell me you are not a cannibal.” I tried to joke.
“I’m not.” He paused. “I guess it’s not normal I want to eat you.”
I gulped trying not to lean against him. Then I noticed my hands were holding his wrists in place.
“You haven’t asked where to drop me off.” My voice was getting a little husky for the taste of the logical part of me. “We thought you were dead.” He took a deep breath smelling my hair. “I did not inform your father I found you alive and kicking…and stabbing. You looked so fierce with that knife in your hand.”
Maybe I should have aimed it at him. “I wasn’t going out without a fight.”
He sighed relaxing, “Sleep in my bed tonight.”
Damn that heat surging through me.
“No.” I didn’t sound too convinced. Not to my burning ears.
“Why not?”
“Do you realize how this looks?”
“I don’t care how it looks. Your presence makes me sleepy. I’m holding you tonight.”
… Why did I want him to? It was like every fibre of my being, but my voice of reason was begging for his hands to reach just a few inches higher.
My brain was getting a little fried by lust. “Like a plushy?” I wondered out loud.
“A warm, fleshy, plushy,” he specified. “That smells more delicious than anything I have ever tasted.” He inhaled with his nose in my ponytail. “May I lick you?”
“What?”
“I want to lick you.”
“Now you ask?”
“Should I not ask?”
“Yes, you should ask.”
“May I lick you or not?”
I glanced at the driver, “No.”
“Bummer.” He leaned his chin on my shoulder.
The rest of the ride was spent in silence. Erasmus held me still in the same position. His hands squeezed me tighter when we took sharp turns. I almost let out a moan at one of them.
We could not have arrived sooner. Driven through two large gates in a manor right outside the metropolitan area. The car rolled on the turn around to the entrance of the home.
The driver got out and opened our door, offering his hand to help me step out. Erasmus whined as I left him. The night had settled, and I was craving a hot shower. I was sweaty and caked in dry blood. Much like him. My hair was even stuck in clumps at the front. The splatter zone.
There were a few lights shining through windows, mainly on the ground floor. My companion for the night was grinning as he slipped out of the car.
With an arm around my shoulders, he said, “You didn’t run?”
“Where to?” I gestured to the gates flanked by ten-foot-tall brick walls.
“Not much of a climber?” He jabbed with a swagger that both annoyed and turned me on at the same time.
“I am a climber…” I could climb any wall with the right tools or anchor points. “But by the time I got there, you would have had plenty of time to kill me.”
“I do not intend to drag you into my bed.” He sighed sharply. “Carried if need be. But never dead. It’s no fun to lie with a cold corpse.”
“Can I go home?”
He grumbled considering the logistics that should be rather simple. “Not tonight.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t slept in a while. I’m sure I’ll sleep if I hold you.”
“What about tomorrow? Can I leave then?”
He grumbled again, pulling me towards the manor, stopping once I resisted. “Tomorrow you can call your father to come pick you up. Mine might ask for a ransom, though. Since I refused payment for the job.” Refused payment? Why?
“Fine.” I took a long exhale. “Your bed better be comfortable.”
“It is firm and plush.” He squeezed my shoulder. “With a thick, fluffy comforter and a memory foam cover. My pillows got washed two days ago. I bought them last month.”
That sounded like heaven. “I’m borrowing your shower.” I walked in with him.
Banisters, two ways, like in the movies. And I thought my father was loaded. We lived in the penthouse of our hotel. This place was all wood trim and warm as if each room had a fireplace. They probably did.
“May I wash you?” He led me up the stairs.
“What? No.”
“You may wash me if you want.”
“No.”
“Fine. I’ll be content with you wearing my clothes to sleep. In my arms.”
We didn’t come across anybody on our way to his room. Aside from the paintings on the walls, whose eyes seemed to follow us.
He opened the door for me to cross the threshold. My eyes were locked on the bed. I needed to be clean to sleep well, though. It was not very big. A double, like mine. It looked awfully reminiscent of the beds at our hotel.
On his bedside table. There was a picture. Leaning closer, I saw it was a photo of me. Years ago, in a ballroom gown during a competition at the dance academy I went to. The father always said fighting used the same muscles and flexibility.
“Do you like it?” Erasmus was right behind me.
I shivered and grabbed the frame for a closer look. I usually appeared strange in photos. No one could get a genuine smile out of me. I wasn’t smiling in that picture. I was focused. It made me look—
“Gorgeous, right?” He was taking his clothes off by the rustling.
“You’re showering first?”
I felt safe from unwanted touch around him. Yet, I stayed conscious he could take my life anytime.
“Do you want to go together? My shower is big enough.”
“You can go first.” I didn’t turn around. Afraid I would like what I see. Like I knew I would.
“I’ve got a photo album in the top drawer.” He stepped away. His bare feet smacking slightly against the tiles.
I frowned, opening the top drawer. A red, velvet, photo album with a picture of a rose in the showcase slot. Sat on the edge of his reading chair, I flipped through pages of me in public. Erasmus had too much time on his hands to have been following me like that. There was a section with me stuffing my face at my favourite food trucks. Each photo had a date and a place handwritten below it. For five years he had taken these pictures.
Why had we not met formally? If he held such an interest? All he had done since rescuing me was making that interest clear as day. He thought I was dead. I thought he had been after the diamond too. But he wasn’t a thief like me. He had proven himself to be an efficient killer. I turned to the pile of soiled clothes. The shower was still running. I had only heard of his family through the grape vine. The Nav was one of the only crime clans I respected in the underworld we inhabited. They didn’t deal drugs or human traffic. Only dead bodies. Maybe my father had hired him to avenge me. That was what Erasmus referred to by refusing payment.
Compared to his family, my father and I were simple money laundry thieves. I was intrigued where that over-skilled hitman got his obsession from. It was somewhat flattering.
I snatched the diamond from the pocket inside of his jacket.
Red, sizable, mesmerizing—
“Do you want it?” He was back.
“I went through great lengths to acquire it,” I summarized.
“I’ll give it to you.” He reached from behind and took it from my hands. Leaning close to me. “In due time. On a proper ring, hopefully.”
Had he? He asked for my hand very casually. That he planned to, at least.
“You are very open about all this.” I turned to face him, mesmerized once again.
Lines, sharp lines of his face, scars and body. He was in pyjama bottoms. Red plaid with green.
“Should I not be?” he wondered, snapping my eyes back to his. “Would you prefer I hide these things from you?”
“I would not.” I much preferred an opened hand. His adoring smile had me blush. “Why were you there tonight?”
His smile wavered as he explained, “Your father told mine you got caught. That you were dead. He wanted payback. My father asked who was up for the job. Once I knew, I went refusing the money. It was personal.”
“You were avenging me?”
“More lost than anything. To kill those who had taken your life or die trying. It was the only thing I could do.”
“You’re strange. Why go to those lengths for somebody you have never spoken with before?”
“Because every cell in my body knows that you are my soulmate. The more I observed you, the more it confirmed it. Rather it is the adorable way you stuff your cheeks with tacos on the side of the street, or that ruthless way you dance, and I assume fight as well. As I speak with you, I find myself falling deeper.” He took a step and reached for the hair of my ponytail. “And deeper.” He kissed a strand. Eyes closed before gazing back into my eyes. “Down an endless pit I never want to get out of.”
When had I lost my breath?
“I’m going to shower.” I stepped past him as his hand lingered in my hair. The strand he had kissed slipping through his fingers. I stopped. “Can you unzip me?”
“Yes.” His hands were quick to find the closure against my nape. Yet he pulled it down slowly, exposing my back.
Once he reached the end of it, I apologized again.
“I’ll be waiting.” He dropped on the bed. “I have left spare clothes on the counter.”
“Thank you.” I slipped away from his sight.
I closed the bathroom door with a sigh, leaning my exposed back against it. Erasmus already had been handsome covered in blood. All cleaned up like that… It made me want to make a mess out of him. I shed my bodysuit. I never wore much underneath for ease of movement, mostly.
