It was an odd thing how easily I went from single and not looking to completely enraptured with a man who was quite possibly the worst choice relationship-wise.

How would I introduce him to my co-workers?

Hi, this is my boyfriend, Dex Something-or-Another. What does he do for a living? Oh, he’s a contract killer. How did we meet? Oh, that’s a funny story! He was going to kill me!

Yeah, imagine the water-cooler gossip over that one.

Not that I was a huge socializer.

Actually, being an extreme introvert, I hadn’t actually cultivated any relationships, friendship or otherwise, which was why no one probably noticed that I’d disappeared.

I frowned at the pinch of self-pity. It would’ve been nice for someone to care.

Dex stirred and his eyes opened. That still creeped me out. Most people had to acclimate from sleep to awareness but not Dex. He was instantly awake and ready to murder the minute his lids cracked open.

“Don’t think for a second that I don’t see what you’re strategy is for avoiding any questions I have,” I told him, stopping Dex’s hands from reaching for my breasts. I wasn’t going to fall for that again. He was going to answer some of my questions for a change. “I need to know more about the man I’m sleeping next to.”

A wall slammed down behind his eyes as he rolled away from me to climb naked from the bed. I sucked back a groan at the perfectly chiseled backside and tried to focus.

Thank God, he dressed quickly otherwise, his plan to continually distract me might’ve worked again.

“Dex...”

He turned, his eyes cold. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to, baby girl.”

Oh, hell no. He wasn’t going to shut me down like that. Not this time.

I climbed from the bed and dressed as quickly, following him into the kitchen when he thought the conversation closed.

“What could be worse than being a killer? I already know that part, obviously,” I said, getting in his way when he reached for the pantry. “I need to know more than just your fake information. All things considered, I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

“And why is that?” he asked, bracketing me with his arms, locking me in place. There was an air of menace about him that frightened me but I wasn’t going to back down. “Is it because you think we’ve shared something special?”

The derision in his tone made my bravado shrivel. Yeah, sort of? At least I’d thought it’d been something out of the ordinary.

Apparently, I’d been laughably wrong.

I was beginning to feel I’d made a huge mistake but I was trapped.

“Oh baby,” Dex chuckled but the sound was mean. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. We’re locked together by circumstance not because we met on . There is no us, therefore there’s no need to know more than the superficial. I like fucking your tight pussy. I would go so far as to say, I like it a lot. But at the end of the day...your slick ass cunt is the same as any woman’s. So, before you start making demands, like you’re owed any sort of explanation just because I stick my dick in you to pass the time...think again.”

Tears welled in my eyes. I wasn’t a crier by nature but Dex had skewered me.

I was a pleasant diversion?

I’d given my virginity to an asshole.

Dex backed away, giving me some breathing room. “Are we clear that this topic of conversation is fucking closed?”

“That’s not the only thing that’s closed,” I spat, wiping at my eyes. “You’ll just have to find some other way to entertain yourself because this girl is out.”

I spun around so he wouldn’t see the tears starting to fall but before I could take two steps, glass shattered all around me just as Dex knocked me to the floor, his body protecting mine.

“Stay down,” he instructed in a low tone, reaching up to pull a gun that’d been tapped to the underside of the butcher block island. I gaped at how a loaded gun had been there the whole time.

He army-crawled across the glass-strewn floor to slide up the wall so he could peer from the living room window.

I was shaking from head to toe.

Not only from the fact that someone had found us but because I, sort of, wished the bullet had found its mark.

How could I have thought that Dex had feelings for me just because I gave him my virginity?

I felt colossally stupid.

And naive.

I didn’t like the feeling at all.

Reminded me too much of when I’d been a bullied kid — the geeky girl no one asked to the school dances or picked for sleep-overs.

Dex slipped out the back door. If retribution wore a face, it would’ve been his.

I squeezed my eyes shut but the image of Dex, his expression made of stone, his gaze deadly, remained.

I’d never seen that side of him.

The Dex he’d let me see was sexy, firm, with a crooked smile and a body that wouldn’t quit.

But this was also a side of him.

And that side scared me senseless.

What if he changed his mind and decided I wasn’t worth being shot at?

Would Dex look me straight in the eye as he pulled the trigger?

I was wrong — I didn’t want to die.

I wanted to live.

I wanted to find out why the hell my mom had lied to me my entire life.

Why we seemed to have wealth and yet I knew nothing of where it came from.

I needed to know who I truly was before I met my maker.

I remained on the floor, quaking, knowing that either Dex would come back alive or not.

If he didn’t, I was next.

Hell, I could still be next if Dex survived yet had a change of heart about protecting me.

I yelped as a shot rang out. Ears covered, I curled into a ball, wishing I could disappear.

I wasn’t religious, I didn’t know a single prayer but damn, if I didn’t start babbling something.

Hail Mary, Sweet Baby Jesus, The Rapture, The Ghost, the Holy Trinity, whatever works, please don’t let me die!