They hired him because he was a ghost.

A ghost from a country that ceased to exist when he was eleven years old. A trained killer that took what he needed, killed the oppressors and escaped his yoke. He had no conscience, no moral reservations or code of conduct to dictate his kills. He took the contracts based only on his wants. Some might call him a monster. There wasn’t enough humanity in him to know what a monster was.

Men, women, children. Made no difference to him. He walked away from death, went back to his existence and slept his 6.5 hours without remorse. He ate, he researched and worked out, honing his body to lethal precision then he moved on to the next kill. He was intelligent enough to understand that there was something wrong with him. Watched enough people and movies, read enough books to realize that he was different. Curiosity had led him to dig into the phenomenon of himself. Or perhaps it was the lack of himself.

Sociopath. Lack of emotions. Whatever it was. It made him very good at his job.

Until her.

He’d never hesitated before. But now he stood behind her, his gun extended, inches away from her ash blond head. His hand was steady, his brain calculating the payday on the little scientist, telling him to shoot. But his finger was refusing the order.

He’d studied her ahead of time, same as he studied all of his victims. He never got too close before a kill. Didn’t want to get picked up on camera and linked to a victim. Instead he dug up as much information as he could without physically touching the mark.

Sidney Fossett. She was 25 years old, 5’5” tall, 138 lbs. The youngest of a large family of eight children with both parents still living. Highly intelligent, with an IQ of 167. She had two university degrees by 18 and her first doctorate by 21. At the age of five Sidney was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, or high-functioning autism.

She specialized in biological engineering and was currently working with an underground government organization. Her assignment was to work as part of a team to weaponize a biological agent that could take out a large city. Apparently, Sidney didn’t work well with others and was prone to taking work home with her. A strange quirk that was deemed acceptable by the agency as long as she lived on the base and kept all of her notes completely transparent.

Sidney cared about little besides her own work. Perhaps that was what caused him to hesitate. He understood the driving call of little beyond work. As he stood behind her, finally standing in the presence of the woman he’d stalked for two months with the intent to kill, his narrow world of one snapped open suddenly to envelope two. His gun still trained on her head, he did something he never did. He lifted his eyes from his target and looked around.

His extremely focused world opened up to encompass the rest of the room. He was… curious? The room was plastered in paper. Every inch was covered from top to bottom in papers. Some had been handwritten and some had been printed, likely from the small printer in the corner of the room attached to her laptop. She was currently scribbling away using pencil and a calculator and mumbling to herself. He had zero understanding of the words that were coming out of her mouth, but he was pretty sure she was utilizing every one of her many degrees in chemical and biological engineering.

He was beginning to understand the significant hit the world would take with the loss of this brain. He stiffened, his finger tightening on the trigger when she shoved her chair back, scraping it along the hard wood floor and stood abruptly, mumbling, “I’m so close, yet that egotistical, dickless man child… can’t take a woman in the field…”

He knew he should take her out before she saw him and started screaming, but her scent hit him as she rounded the small table and headed for the wall opposite them. She smelled like home-baked apple pie and warm woman. Lust kicked him like a punch in the gut and his dick responded with a jerk. Shock flooded his system. He couldn’t remember the last time his cock had reacted without his permission. He took women to bed only sparingly, when he felt the need to remind himself of why people were messy and complicated. He didn’t understand why his body was reacting this way.

Sidney was certainly lovely, but no raving beauty queen. Her blond hair was piled in a crazy, haphazard knot on top of her head. She wore no make-up and her blue eyes were obscured by thick glasses. She stood on her toes, her denim skirt rising up to the back of her knees and her ill-fitting beige sweater swaying with her movement. She wore mismatched ballet flats on her feet. One was red and the other black.

“Maybe sabotage… or maybe it is just me, but I’ve never failed so spectacularly. I’ll have to sleep on it. Too bad sleep is food for the brain. Fuck sleep, such a waste of time.”

He nearly laughed out loud at her annoyed mumbles. He felt the strange sensation in his throat and was shocked once more. What was this woman doing to him? She rounded the table, nearly coming face-to-face with him and his gun. Then, failing to see him entirely, sat back down and continued to scribble. His jaw opened in surprise. Had she even seen him?

Unable to help himself, he reached out and slid his long, thick fingers into the messy bun at the back of her head. He never touched a mark. But he was breaking the rules anyway. What was one more? She was a dead woman anyway. He just wanted to see her eyes before he did her. Slowly he tilted her head to the side so that her face was in the light. She didn’t struggle, but she did frown a little.

The breath caught in his chest as her eyes flickered up to his face and finally took in the stranger standing in her apartment with a gun. He slowly brought his gun hand up and hooked the edge of her thick black-rimmed glasses with his small finger, knocking them off her face. They clattered onto the table. She didn’t react, just continued to stare up at him.

He had been wrong, perhaps fooled by her ill-fitting, mismatched clothes. Sidney was stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. He pressed the gun against her temple because he had no choice. She was a mark and he didn’t pull back from a kill. She had to die. It didn’t matter that she’d somehow shifted his universe in a way nothing had done in his entire life. That she made his cock stand up and beg. That she stopped his trigger finger even though his brain knew better.

She ran her small, pink tongue over her lips and opened her mouth to speak. Now she would beg for her life. Promise him anything. The flash of her lips wrapped around his cock burned through his brain like a lightning strike. Maybe this once he wouldn’t mind if a victim begged for mercy.

“I have work to do,” she said, her voice soft but vibrant.

He frowned. Didn’t she understand what he was there for? He pressed the gun harder against her temple. She rolled her eyes impatiently toward the weapon.

“I need you to leave now,” she snapped, urgency clear in her voice. “I think I’m close to a breakthrough. I have too much work for this right now.”

The urge to laugh bubbled up in his throat once more and he found himself swallowing it with extreme control. What was wrong with this woman? She was making it sound like he’d come over for a playdate instead of murder. Fuck, she was priceless. He was beginning to realize that killing her would be like setting fire to the Mona Lisa. Simply not possible.

“You can come back later,” she said cajolingly, her eyes straying to the paperwork on the table.

This time a chuckle did escape his lips. The sound was most definitely rusty because it was the first time he’d laughed in… well… as long as he could remember. The woman wanted to get back to her work so badly that she’d invited him to come back later to kill her. Sadly, he was pretty certain she was serious. Because as soon as he let her go she was going to immediately bury herself in her work and forget he was ever there.

And fuck if he didn’t just fall in love.