He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
I watched Chad like he’d just spoken monkey language.
Who the hell did I have left on earth to ‘watch over me’? I almost laughed. “Okay, um, I’m officially confused.”
Getting to his feet, Chad drew me up from the chair. “Let’s talk in the living area so Viv can clean up this mess.”
Still a little nervous, worrisome, and overly bemused, I let him lead me through the open-floor plan, and we took up residence on the couch. Chad lifted my feet up onto his lap and began massaging my soles.
Okay. This was nice. Really nice. God, please don’t let me die.
“I don’t know who ordered protection over you,” Chad admitted.
“Chad…” I sighed, frustrated, “I’m getting more and more confused by the second.”
Concentration dedicated to my feet, his brows furrowed as he said, “When Nadia first brought you to my attention, I took immediate precautions.”
“Ah, so it was Nadia who ratted me out.”
“Yeah, before she got so disturbingly smitten by you.” He glanced over at me and shook his head. “How’d you manage to turn a completely straight girl gay?”
With a chuffed smirk, I replied, “Same way you managed to turn a completely gay girl straight.”
Bringing his attention back to my feet, he abandoned that little digression and hopped back on the main topic. “I went by your apartment and installed cameras so I could always be two steps ahead of y—”
“That’s impossible,” I said, wagging my head, disbelieving. “I swept my apartment for bugs every night.”
Lips compressed, Chad gave me a pointed look, as if saying I’d had no idea who I was dealing with. “Ah, yeah. My guys found your bug detector and tampered with it so you wouldn’t pick up on the ones we planted.”
“You…argghh!” I tried to kick at him, but he firmly held my feet in place.
“Did you forget you were trying to assassinate me?”
Out of valid excuse to throw a bitch tantrum, I huffed and relaxed back into the couch. “You jerked off on all the girl-on-girl action that went on in my apartment?”
“That would imply I’m a pervert,” he deadpanned.
“Did you?”
Refusing to entertain me with an answer in the positive, he ignored it altogether and continued with the original topic. “A man broke into your apartment when you left for work one night. He didn’t seem to be digging for anything like a burglar would; just snooped around and checked stuff. Flipped through notebooks and drawers. Like someone searching for clues to back up a conjecture. Two nights after that, when you left for work, a completely different person broke in. Wired up a cam in your bedroom and left. Soon as he left, I went and got rid of it. That’s when I decided playtime was over. So… I organized a plan—which I predicted you’d play right into—to get you here.”
“In the garden…was that planned, too?”
“Yes,” he confessed.
“It was a distraction,” I stated instead of asking.
“Yes.”
Mortification licked at my veins, or maybe it was irritation, or indignation, rather. “And then you want to give me shit about our fucks not meaning anything to me.”
Fingers still massaging my soles, he spoke in an annoyingly calm tone. “That’s not important right now.”
Like hell it’s not. But I let it go…for now. “So what did you do on the fifth floor?”
“Off the guy who installed the cams in your apartment.”
I straightened. “He was living at The Chess?”
“Yep.” His thumbs massaged deep into my soles and I emitted a low, appreciative moan. “For a month, he told me when I questioned him. Claimed he meant you no harm. Said he was assigned to protect you. But of course, I didn’t believe him. So I offed him. When you left to tail me, my dirty cops moved his body to your apartment and set it on fire.”
“Then if you killed him, who were you putting on a show for in Excelsior? The handcuffs and the bike bombing?”
“The two who’d followed you there,” he filled in. “I guessed whoever sent them to spy on you was whoever sent you to kill me. So the burnt-out apartment, the bike bombing, me taking you as hostage, was to send a message that you failed. If I had you, the general assumption would be that I’m going to imprison and torture you for information, then kill you. The goons would report back to their boss, and that would hopefully throw them off you, marking you as a lost cause.”
“You think it worked?”
Massaging paused, Chad looked at me like I was an imbecile. “No, Jhay. Now that I know your boss is my father, I’m positive he saw right through it. He knows I’m never going to kill you.”
My shoulders sagged in disappointment. “Well, that’s comforting.”
Cruising his hands up my left leg, he squeezed my thigh. “You’re safe, Jhay. Someone powerful, extremely powerful, more powerful than my father, is protecting you. Rafail will have to get through those men before he can get to you. I’m the only one who’s wide open. The gun is at my head, they couldn’t give a shit. The gun is at your head, your assailant meets his death before he can even pull the trigger.”
Oh God. I removed my feet from his lap and crawled over to him. “But I’m with you. Why won’t they protect you, too?”
“Because I killed your mother.”
It was like a dagger twisting in my heart, that harsh reminder. Because I killed your mother.
He killed my mother.
He. Killed. My. Mother.
Why, then, should I care about his safety? Oh, but I did. Greatly. As though his life meant more to me than my mother’s ever did. “These people protecting me, what does my mother’s death have to do with them?”
His gaze drifted from mine and to the clock on the wall behind me. “It’s getting late, Jhay. You should go showe—”
“Don’t do that,” I said, getting onto my knees. “Don’t shove me back into the dark. Tell me.”
“Stop pushing, Jhay,” he grumbled, leaning forward and dropping his hands on his knees. It was like keeping the truth from me was taking every ounce of strength in him. “I don’t want to keep anything from you, okay? But I was ordered specifically not to tell you…”
“Specifically?” I asked in utter shock, almost cackling in disbelief. “Since when did you, Chadrick Niiveux, start taking orders from people?”
Slowly, he turned his head to shoot me an annoyed glare. “Since I decided, like you, that I don’t want to fucking die.”
A pause from me, then, “Is this person really that high and powerful?”
“Yes,” he stressed with extra emphasis. “If he wants me dead, I’m dead.”
I eyed the fading bruise on his cheekbone… “That’s how you got that shiner, isn’t it?”
Chad shoved a hand through his hair and nodded. “I got blocked off on a backstreet in Sonoma Valley yesterday. By Feds. Heavily armed.”
“Whoa.”
“Knocked me out. When I woke up, I was in a room with… Org.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know the person.”
“I lied, okay?” he snapped. “I’m not even supposed to be telling you this.”
I kept quiet and let him continue.
“He was pissed. I’d already been on his shitlist for assassinating Isabel….now one of his men was killed by me again.”
“So the guy back at my apartment really was telling the truth,” I summed up. “He was protecting me.”
“Yep.” Chad sighed, sounding frustrated with the world. “It was eventually pardoned because I did it to protect you.”
“Oh.” I chewed that over for a minute before asking, “What did he tell you?”
“What he thought I needed to know.” He turned his gaze straight ahead. “And what he thought you didn’t need to know.”
“And he threatened to kill you if you told me?”
“Pretty much,” Chad confirmed with a nod. “Apparently he’d been searching for you since your family’s death. Belatedly learned about their assassination. No word about you, whether you were dead or alive. Couple months ago he received confirmation that you are indeed alive, your whereabouts, and your status. Afterwards, he received unsubstantiated word that the person who ordered you to assassinate me ordered an assassination on you as soon as you got the job done.
“Org received no validity on that information, but he took no chances and sent his men to guard you. They’ve already killed four men they caught sniffing you out in the last two months. But more kept coming. My father wants you dead as bad as he wants me dead.”
“That sonuvabitch,” I hollowly whispered, my heart thudding in my chest. “He promised me he would free me if I got the job done. He promised me freedom.”
“My father’s definition of freedom is completely different from yours,” Chad dryly commented.
I swung my feet off the couch, sitting upright, trying to process all this horrifying info. “All this time, my life depended on yours? All this time, while I was trying to kill you, you were protecting me? My God…”
Chad reached over and gripped my arms. Tight. “I would never hurt you, Jhay. I still—” He stopped abruptly and closed his eyes. When he opened them, the soulful, reassuring person was gone; now a thick wall of impassivity. “You should go shower and get some rest. We’ve been at this all day. I swear my head’s about to explode.”
Moving closer to him, I reached between his strong thighs and rubbed my palm over him, and in a second he was hard, like rubbing a genie awake from its lamp. “Let me take the edge off.”
He gave me a look. And I knew what he was thinking: “After all that info dump, the only thing you can think about is sex?”
The look was right. Considering the heavy shit we just discussed, yeah, the look was appropriate. But I couldn’t help myself, or the way my body fired up around him.
Chad was like my Beautiful Sunday. As long as he was right there beside me, so close I could hear his heartbeat, I didn’t give a damn about the outside world. Death or danger. Threats or fatalities.
I only cared about him. Breathing him in, letting him consume me. It’s like I’d grown addicted overnight. And now I was heady, burning with an unprecedented fervency.
I was dependent. I was addicted. I was in love.
Taking hold of my wrist, Chad removed my hand from his person. “Shower.”
“Do I smell?”
“No. I’m trying to get you to leave before I give in and fuck you in places you’re not ready to be fucked yet.”
A roiling heat settled down below. “You just need a little time to yourself, then?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I agreed, getting up. “I’ll take a bath instead of a shower and give you ample time to get your thoughts together. But then…”
Raising his eyes to me, Chad cocked up a brow. But I wasn’t amused. Sex, I took it seriously. When I needed it, I needed it. And by hook or by crook, Chad was fucking me tonight. End of.
Face serious, tone unflappable, I told him, “Just fill in the blanks.”
On my heels I spun and made a beeline for my bedroom. Should I be thinking about the black eye of the storm we were in? The shit whirling around us? The danger? Who that Org person was? Why he was protecting me? How my mother dialed into all this? Why Rafail Niiveux wanted both me and his son dead? How free slash captivated I was? Had I jumped from a frying pan into a fire? Was I truly safe?
Maybe.
Maybe I should be thinking about all those things. Worrying. Pondering. Questioning.
Instead, all I could think about as I ran my warm bath, stripped and eased down into it was Chad’s cock.
How fucking screwed up and far from reality was I?
Chad owned all the thoughts in my mind. I couldn’t fathom what the hell was happening to me. This wasn’t me. I was not a girl.
I was a kick-ass, badass, gun-busting, face-punching, bone-breaking assassin. So what the hell was this feelings and emotions and all-consuming stuff?
The sex. It was new. The man-to-woman thing. It was new. The fucking with feelings thing. It was new. All of it was new. So maybe that was it.
The newness of it all.
Sinking lower into the oversized bathtub, I spread my legs and thought about our fuck in the garden. Rubbing my fingers over my clit, I reminisced on how his mouth had felt on me. How his cock had felt inside me. With a low moan, I slipped two fingers inside me and finger-fucked myself until I came, biting my lip to stifle the sounds. Sated, I dropped my head back on the inner rim on the tub and closed my eyes.
I must have been in the tub for a while, because I was startled awake from a light sleep by giggles and chuckles sounding outside the walls. The chuckles sounded like Chad and Ronnie, but the giggles were from a female. Which was not Vivian.
Curious, I unplugged the tub, got out, dried off, threw on a robe and followed the voices. Once I broke the end of the hall, I hit the brakes with a tile-scraping screech.
Shirtless, Chad was sitting at the breakfast bar nursing a beer, and next to him in a skimpy ass dress was the doctor bitch who’d removed the tracking chip from me earlier. A glass of red wine in one hand, she was leaning in to him from the bar stool next to him, her other hand on his chest, right over the empty birdcage, tits pressed up against his bicep.
Ronnie, also nursing a beer, was seated at the dinner table, watching me with a smirk I wanted to punch right off his face.
Making an unladylike noise in my throat, I rambled over to Chad and Doctor Bitch.
Phlegmatically, Chad gave me a once-over and took a swig of his beer, while Doctor Bitch arched a perfectly plucked brow at me.
“Why are you here?” I demanded of her.
Both of Doctor Bitch’s eyebrows went up now.
Maybe it was the murderous expression on my face or the harsh tone of my voice, but she suddenly seemed nervous and shifted her gaze from me to Chad. “Do I need to answer to her?”
Stoically unconcerned, Chad just shrugged, taking another swig.
Doctor Bitch looked back to me, her chin tipping up this time, her bravado switch flipped. “I’m here because I’m needed. Whenever Chad calls me, I come.” She flicked her long-lashed, fuck-me hazel eyes to Chad and licked her lips. “And I always come.”
Giving Chad a sidelong glance, I asked, “I thought you said ‘used to’?”
I didn’t wait to hear his reply. I grabbed Doctor Bitch by her glossy blonde tresses, yanked her head back, then slammed her face down on the countertop.
She let out a girly scream at the impact, as I was pretty confident she was seeing a million stars. I gave her no recovery time. Fingers still tightly curled in her hair, I hauled her off the stool, her face smeared with blood, gushing either from her nose or her mouth—did I care which?
I flung her onto the ground and the stupid bitch even fell like a girl, wrist bent backward and pinkies cocked off. I struck a kick to her ribs then promptly went astride her and printed my fist to her cheek. “That’s for over-drugging me today.” Another punch. “That’s for having the nerve to come here after over-drugging me.” Another punch. “And that’s for touching—”
Strong arms grabbed me around the waist, hauling me off the bleeding, hollering woman.
“Okay, that’s enough.” It was Ronnie, and he was laughing, hard. He really found this funny? Why did men find two women fighting so amusing? Despite his body racking with laughter, Ronnie’s hold on me was tight, allowing me the freedom to do nothing but breathe heavily.
Doctor Bitch, completely frazzled and beaten into the ground, bleeding within every inch of her face, unsuccessfully tried to get to her feet, stumbling back down with every attempt.
Through her one good eye, she glared at Chad, who was still sitting at the breakfast bar, swigging his beer, dispassionately blasé.
“How can you just sit there and let her do this to me?!” she screamed. “You called me here. You said you needed me!”
Unexpectedly, puzzling both me and Doctor Bitch, a slow, evil grin slipped onto Chad’s face. Emptying the last of his beer, he gave Ronnie a chin lift, then tilted his head to indicate Doctor Bitch.
Ronnie released me immediately, stalked over to Doctor Bitch, scooped her up and escorted her out of the penthouse, leaving me, Chad, and blood on the tile floors.
After about five minutes of me waiting for my breathing to return to its regular pattern, and him watching me with an entertained gleam, I said, “I warned you things would get ugly, didn’t I?”
He stood up and began prowling toward me. Dubious about his intentions, and distrustful of the way he’d just let me beat down that woman without interference, I backed up, not scared but wary, until my ass hit the dinner table.
Chad kept advancing, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be afraid or aroused. He did promise he wouldn’t hurt me, so…I went along with the latter. When he finally got up to me and his hand reached around and cupped the back of my neck, that was it. I melted. Completely.
And by the time his head dipped and his lips met mine, I was mush. Putty in his hands. As if I ever stood a chance against him, I submissively parted my lips and invited him in.
He entered, he took over, he possessed. He ordered and I complied. He commanded and I yielded. He dominated and I submitted.
He was a drug.
I was an addict.
He was becoming more powerful.
I was dying.
He should not be feared, he should be loved.
Chad tugged on the ties of my robe, letting the thing fall open. Bringing his hands to my shoulders, he used his index fingers to push the material until it slid off my shoulders, off my arms, and pooled in a silky heap at my feet. Breaking the kiss, he looked down between us and realized I was standing completely naked before him.
Raw hunger flared in his eyes, and when they came back up to mine, I asked, “Why did you call her over?”
Clasping my hips, he raised me onto the dinner table and pushed my legs apart. Taking both my nipples between his fingers, he pinched and released them.
I whimpered at the stinging sensation left behind.
“You have the most perfect tits, I swear to God…” Chad whispered. Then he lowered his head and kissed between them, cupping them in his hands, pushing them together, licking his tongue up my cleavage, pressing his face between them.
Uh huh, he loved my breasts.
“Why did you call her over, Chad?” I asked again.
Leaving my breasts, he smoothed his hands down my sides, getting down on his knees as he kissed down my stomach. When his face was fully between my thighs, I shifted my ass to the edge of the table and widened my legs to give him easier access.
“For you,” he answered, just before swiping his tongue up my seam.
At the lick of pleasure, my eyes flickered down, but I managed to get out, “What?”
But he’d already begun his meal, and apparently this particular killer had propriety and didn’t speak while he ate.
Propping my feet on his shoulders, I pressed my palms down on the table and raised up my hips to grind on his tongue, my head tossed back, my mouth hung open as I circled my hips round and round and fucked his mouth.
As though he’d never gotten his mouth fucked before, he let out an approvingly strangled noise, and when I glanced down at him, he was staring up at me, his eyes wild. Tall, flickering flames blazing. I was doing things to him, and I liked that, liked that very much, so I circled my hips faster, grinding in his mouth.
He plunged two fingers inside me and pumped them in and out to the rhythm I’d set.
That did it for me. As my orgasm crashed through me like a wrecking ball smashing through a dilapidated building, my hips shot higher, forcing Chad to raise with it, his mouth sucking onto my clit like his life depended on it, never letting go, sticking with me, competing, holding onto the very end.
As the intense sensations slowly faded, my hips lowered back down onto the table, and Chad let go. While I floated on the afterglow, he got to his feet and rid himself of his jeans. Commando. Always commando.
He paused and deliberatively studied me.
“What?” I asked.
“I want to take you from behind, but…”
At the mere thought of him fucking me from behind I froze up, my heart drumming, whooshing loud in my ears.
Noticing this, Chad cupped my face and forced me to look at him. “Hey, I won’t, okay? Not until you’re ready.”
I’ll never be ready. “Thank you.”
He motioned for me to move back on the table, and I slithered up in the center and lay back, watching him crawl up between my legs. Thank hell this table was made from some strong, expensive wood and not some flimsy IKEA shit, or we’d both be crashing to the floor from Chad’s weight alone.
“I love opening my legs for you,” I let him know.
That bit set something off inside him, and he roughly fisted his ridiculously large cock while his other hand caressed my inner thighs. He began stroking his cock, making me wait for it. My clit throbbed ponderously below, so I reached down and glided two fingers over it to soothe the ache. So good. Felt so good.
Chad watched my fingers working over my clit, and his fisting incremented. “Don’t stop,” he commanded.
And I didn’t, I continued to work myself into a frenzy. But when I realized he’d picked up momentum, pumping himself faster and faster to his own pleasure, I surmised that if I continued, he wouldn’t fuck me. He’d just bring himself to orgasm, and I wanted him inside me. So I removed my hand from the cookie jar.
“I want your cock, Chad.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, looking chagrined. “Here, now, you resemble a virtual model in a porn magazine. Forgot for a minute that you’re actually real, and I can actually do this…” He plunged into me, and I quickly covered my mouth to capture my scream, the pain was so intense. “Yeah,” he breathed out, eyes closing down, “so much fucking better.”
And then he palmed my breasts and began fucking me into the table. I kept my legs wide apart so he could take me however he wanted. Reaching my hands above my head, I grabbed onto the edge of the table and kept myself firm so I could withstand his slams without shifting on the wood.
Chad’s eyes were opened only a fraction, and he looked so consumed and out of this world with pleasure that I was afraid to move even an inch to ruin that high he was on. His high made me high. His pleasure spurred mine on. And so I gave myself up, wholly, willingly, desperately, and let him pound me until I unraveled beneath him, my eyes knocking back and my joints locking into immobility as another orgasm blasted through me like a rocket launch.
I held on tight to the table, my body being ripped apart, sharing between my orgasm and Chad. Both of them fighting for control, both wanting to dominate me. But as my orgasm lost its strength and its hold on me, Chad won out, pumping into me faster and harder, until he suddenly pulled out, fisted his slippery cock and jizzed all over my stomach. Warm bursts of liquid squirting out, shooting as far as up to my cleavage.
That’s when I remembered we’d forgone the whole condom thing. Even in the throes of passion, this man was thinking straight. That’s Chadrick for you.
Chad collapsed onto me. Our skin sticking together with his sperm. He kissed my neck, along my jawline, my lips, nose, everywhere, until he ran out of kisses and simply dropped his forehead to mine.
“What did you mean when you said you called that doctor here for me?” I asked, possibly ruining the moment.
“So you could have your revenge.”
Huh? “Huh?”
Bracing up on his forearms, Chad look down at me, his face a picture of sated drowsiness. “She overdrugged you, you forgot?”
Oh. “Ohhhh.”
“Yes, ‘ohhhh’,” he said, scowling. “I didn’t like what she did. I called her to do a job and she made it personal. You were temporarily paralyzed. Believe me, I was tempted to blow a hole through her brain. But I figured a beat down from you would be more lenient.”
“So you called her here for me,” I mused.
“That’s what I said.”
Pushing up to his knees, he backed up from off the table, then drew me up with him.
“Remind me never to cross you,” I said, grinning.
Face still grave, Chad shook his head, as if I wasn’t getting it. “It’s you she crossed, Jhay. You. Only reason she’s still breathing is because I kinda have a thing about killing women.”
“Yeahhh, sure you do…” I dragged, heavy on the sarcasm.
Chad scooped me up in his arms and took off with me down the hall, as if I weighed as much as a puff of cloud. He kicked open his bedroom door and went straight for the en suite bathroom, turned on his rain shower, and deposited me under the stinging streams.
I yelped when the unprepared for stings of heat bit into my skin, but Chad was in the shower in a heartbeat, plunging his tongue down my throat. This primal side of him, I loved it. He was acting starved, possessed, like he wanted to eat me, couldn’t get enough of me.
And I let him have me.
I let him kiss my mouth like an over-horny teenager getting kissed for the first time. Let him push me back against the wet tiles, jack me up, and fuck me wild and crazed like a pussy-starved ex-con fresh out of prison. I turned over my will and let him have me, however he pleased, because I was his. I have always been his.
I just didn’t realize it until now.