Black Widow
Run.
The word stabs through my brain and then echoes in the literal kick to my midriff and another one to the side of my head seconds later. My breath puffs out, half in surprise, half in pain, and I land with a hard bump on my ass.
Run.
I need to get up, grab that black emergency bag that’s been waiting patiently at the back of my closet for three weeks now, and get the hell out of town. The out-of-the-blue phone call was bad enough. Ignoring my instincts after coming face-to-face with the shadow that should’ve stayed in the shadows? Yeah, I need a kick upside the head.
So why aren’t you listening to your own advice? The voice in my head mocks me as I struggle to catch my breath.
“You ready to go again?”
I blink away the streams of sweat sliding into my eyes but welcome the slight sting of saltiness on my membranes. Weirdly, it, more than the pain throbbing in my ribs and shoulders, tells me I’m alive. Maybe it’s even forcing me to open my damn eyes and face reality? My cover is blown—
“Yo, B? Are you awake in there? That head kick didn’t dislodge your brain, did it?” My Muay Thai instructor stares at me with his head tilted and a smirk on his face. He’s not my usual sparring partner. Kevin, the owner of the Soho fight club and my regular trainer, is away for some MMA contest in Chicago, which is why I’m stuck with this joker.
I roll my eyes as I straighten up from my hunched-over position. “It’ll take a hell of a lot more than your feeble-ass kicks to dislodge anything on my body.”
I grit my teeth as his gaze slides, predictably, over me. At least he doesn’t linger. I get a quick hit of blatant male appreciation before he attempts to resume his professionalism. “You had a dazed look in your eyes that told me to go easy on you.”
“Please. We’ve sparred twice before, Anwat. I beat your pathetic ass both times, even though you allegedly brought your A-game.” I infuse as much sneering into my voice as possible. Hopefully it’ll dissuade him from doing what he wants to do, which is to find a way to promote his own interest.
Predictably, his eyes gleam at the direct challenge to his ego. “So you wanna put your money where your smart mouth is and go again or what?”
I toss the idea around, and I watch him prowl back and forth on the black rubber mat as I toy with the Velcro strip on my glove. Maybe I should go another round. There’s nothing like blinding pain to wipe out thoughts of everything else, especially the thought projected in neon lights that tells me that continuing to fight when I should flee won’t end well.
Anwat slowly approaches, eyes narrowed, and positions himself before me with intent. I want to laugh. I can break every major bone in his body and severely compromise several organs in two minutes. I haven’t used my skills in years, but once learned, that knowledge never goes away. Especially when the threat of danger is ever-present, like a second skin I’ve never been able to shed.
Anwat beckons me with a jerk of his chin. The urge to punch the shit out of it ripples through me. That’s certainly another avenue I can take. But that sort of action I reserve for those who deserve it, and pay for the privilege, at the Punishment Club. So I step back from the temptation. “Sorry, sunshine. Maybe one day I’ll give you the chance to impress me.”
He slowly lowers his hands, irritation stamped on his face. “What the fuck, B? You booked me for two hours. It’s only been twenty minutes.”
I shrug. “No need to crap your pants, Anwat. I’m not going to demand a refund. Go have a beer on me.”
He yanks off one glove with a little more force than necessary. “I don’t drink beer.”
I sigh, finish removing my gloves, and drop them at his feet. “Have an iced tea then. God, you always this annoying?” I say as I walk past him.
“You always such a bitch?”
I whip around, once again dying for a fight to displace the fear crawling through me. “What did you just call me?” I snap.
To his credit, he immediately steps back, hands raised in apology and surrender. “S’all good, B. S’all good.”
A tiny bit of regret for his cowardice lingers as I step out of the ring and head for the shower. For several minutes I stand beneath the hot spray, accepting what I can’t hide from anymore.
This can’t go on.
Fight or flight. I need to pick one and get the hell on with it. Except the fight went out of me a long time ago. In a cold, dark room in Cairo four years ago, my heart stopped beating, and it took everything else with it. No, not everything. Raw, eviscerating guilt remained. For a long time, it was the only emotion to cheerfully take root and nurture itself with absolutely no help from me at all. But slowly, other emotions invited themselves to the party.
Fear. Anxiety. Apathy.
Craving. At times that was the worst of all, that dark, merciless, gouge-your-soul-out craving. For him.
My nightmares are filled with him. My lustful dreams too. My waking hours are spent fighting the thought of him. But he never goes away. Always lingering. Always taunting.
The memory of him pulses through me so vividly that it’s almost as if he lives inside me. In my darkest nights, I toy with the possibility that he left something inside me on that last assignment in Cairo. It’s not outside the realm of possibility. It was why I paid a few thousand dollars to undergo a thorough body scan in a black site lab just to find out. The evidence that I wasn’t carrying a metal tagging chip that would lead him to me didn’t dispel the notion that the object of my craving still had a hold over me, even if it was all in my head.
The piece of my wasted soul that I sacrificed on the altar of my forbidden desire will forever be its own testament to how far gone I was by the time I left him behind.
Perhaps it’s the reason I’ve thrived as manageress at the Punishment Club. It was supposed to be a six-month gig. It’s been over four years. At first I imagined I could find salvation for my own sins within the walls of the private club. After all, it’s the place I created for other people who wanted to atone for their sins. As a moneymaking venture, it’s been obscenely successful. But I quickly accepted there would be no such salvation for me. There was no going back for the person I’d become. So I embraced my role as the punisher.
And then I became complacent. I even attempted a friendship.
Until the first phone call came three weeks ago.
Fight or flight.
I turn off the faucet and step out of the shower, my thoughts still turned inward. I dress in my customary black getup of yoga pants, tank top, and zip-up hoodie, stuff my damp hair under a nondescript black cap, and shrug on my backpack. I pause with my hand on the door handle, my heart hammering its urgency about what I know I should do. I take a few breaths to center myself, slow down my heartbeat. Solidify my decision.
Flight.
After four years of leading a near-stagnant life, acceptance that I’m about to run again is easier than I thought it would be. Maybe it’s because I know Axel Rutherford, my boss, will understand. Against all odds, he’s finding his own shaky salvation with Cleo McCarthy. I’ve learned a few things about him that tells me he could make my life difficult if he wants to, but I know he won’t prevent me from disappearing as quietly as I arrived.
Flight. Okay.
I leave the twenty-four-hour fitness club, stepping out after a quick, customary surveillance of the quiet streets. I picked this club purely because it was located in the most unsavory part of Soho. Some helpful soul also disabled a couple of street cameras a while back, and the city authorities didn’t replace them after the third vandalism.
That has worked in my favor, although I have to carefully navigate about a dozen more between here and my apartment six blocks away. I pull my hoodie over my cap for added protection and quicken my footsteps. I’m itching to add sunglasses to my disguise, but that’ll draw too much attention at this time of night, so I pull out my phone and adopt the universal fuck-with-my-phone-time-at-your-peril position.
Three blocks from home, I feel it. I don’t recognize the tingle at first because it’s been a while since I last experienced the unmistakable sensation. Or perhaps I resist it because I don’t want this, like the phone call three weeks ago, to be true.
The sensation spreads fast and hard and real. I’m being tailed. Shock punches through me. It’s enough to weaken my knees, almost making me stumble. Enough to drag a set of icy claws through my gut. I snatch in a breath, gauge my surroundings without looking over my shoulder, and mentally zip through escape possibilities.
There’s no way I can go back home now without leading them right to my door. The subway is out of the question. Too many cameras. Same goes for other forms of public transportation, even at this time of night.
Without hesitation, I break into a sprint, heading north. Luckily, this being New York City, no one raises an eyebrow at a woman fleeing her demons at one o’clock in the morning.
Within five seconds, I know this ploy isn’t going to work. The distinct sound of a large engine—possibly a van or an SUV—speeding up confirms my tail has backup on four wheels. Maybe more than just one.
My heart leaps into my throat.
I’m fit enough to keep running all night if I have to. But I get the feeling my pursuers have other ideas. I can’t hear the ones on foot yet, and stopping to check behind me will slow me down, but I know they’re there. And I don’t fool myself into thinking they’re not as well trained as I once was.
Shit. I need to get off the streets. I check out the restaurants and open establishments a block away, wondering if I can slip inside and out the back of any of them. But I’ll still be on the street, possibly cornered in an alley. I rule it out and sprint across another street. I spot a familiar monument up ahead to my left.
Washington Square Park.
Too many open spaces but with enough tree cover at this time of night for it to be a better bet than the street. The pedestrian crossing sign lights up, and I dare to hope it’s an omen that I’m headed the right way.
The sound of the revving engine smashes that hope to shit a second later. They’re no longer making an attempt at stealth. This is full-on pursuit.
I still can’t make out footsteps behind me, but I run into the park, through the marble arch, and veer left into the nearest clutch of trees. I get a little bit of that smashed hope back when I see that the early summer foliage will provide even better cover than I’d hoped for. Enough to hug the edges of the park’s perimeter until it’s safe to return to the street.
Halfway across the park, in the middle of the small wood, I force myself to stop behind a large beech tree. My pounding heart makes it difficult to hear, but I take shallow breaths and force myself to listen.
Nothing. Not beyond sounds of humanity recycling itself in a never-sleeping city anyway.
I turn my cap backward so it doesn’t give me away when I tentatively peer out from behind the tree.
I don’t fool myself into thinking I’m safe. They’re still out there. And my position is also a prime spot for a mugging by some drug addict desperate to fund his next hit. Or worse. I double-check my surroundings to make sure I’m truly alone. Then, as silently as I can, I reach for the side pocket of my backpack. The sound of the zipper opening rips through the silence like a jet engine, and I grit my teeth as fear climbs higher.
My hand closes over the compact Ruger I’ve been carrying since I got that unwanted phone call three weeks ago. The gun’s cold metal brings no reassurance, but I’m grateful for the false protection it provides. As much as I hate them, guns will make even the meanest bastard hesitate for a second before—
“Are you going to shoot me with that thing, Faith?”
My mind goes blank for a damning few seconds before it attempts to grapple with the detonation at its epicenter.
The voice. That voice! Oh God.
Icy shivers drench my body, followed immediately by a furnace-hot craving so sinful and monumental that I stagger back on my heels and sag against the tree. I’m aware my mouth is open on a wordless, stupefied gasp, but I can’t get it to close.
He’s here.
Killian Knight.
The gravity of his presence pulls mercilessly at me, as if it’s determined to yank me straight into his orbit. My free hand grips the bark of the tree. For support? Resistance against the need pounding through me? I have no idea.
Somehow I fooled myself into thinking he’s forgotten about me. That he pushed me into his past and moved on after Cairo. Every thought I try to form fractures. The reality that he’s here, with the sort of manpower he always commands, blocks out everything else until only his name reverberates through my head.
Killian.
“Yes, it’s me, baby,” he answers, exhibiting that unnerving decoding of my thoughts that always freaked me out.
Oh God…
“No,” I manage to croak.
“Yes,” he counters. Then he steps out from behind the nearest tree. A dark shadow in a world of sinister shadows. The description is so apt that I swallow hard.
Run.
I can’t move. I’m frozen in place as he closes in on me. Half a dozen feet away, he stops. His gaze is hooked into me, his eyes probing me in the near darkness.
“Have you forgotten what I taught you?” His voice is deep. Smooth. As dark and decadent as the inner sanctum of a club he once took me to in Morocco. And hypnotic enough to make me fall off the edge of the world with him.
“I…what?”
“Aim for the head, sweetheart. That is, of course, if you’re planning to shoot.” He’s shrouded in darkness, his attire as dark as my own.
I can’t see his face clearly enough to ascertain whether he’s undergone as much change as I have. But I don’t need to. Killian Knight represents danger in every form. But it was my raw addiction to him that I feared the most. And like every recovering addict, the terror of a relapse is never far away. In my case, it’s a mere six feet away.
Run.
“You think I won’t shoot?” I challenge, instead of doing what my instinct is screaming for me to do. Logically, running is no longer an option. He’ll catch me before I make it to the next tree. It’ll be a waste of time to try.
“No, on the contrary, I think you very much want to. Which is why I’m telling you to aim for the head,” he states evenly. His advice doesn’t stop him from taking another step toward me.
My gut clenches as I catch the first faint scent of him. I stop breathing because I don’t want his intensely intoxicating smell in my head. “What the hell do you want?” My voice is nowhere near steady, but I don’t care.
“What I’ve wanted since that day five years ago. August twenty-fifth, wasn’t it?” There’s a hell of a lot more feeling in his voice now.
It evokes. It churns. It burns.
August twenty-fifth. My birthday. Maybe karma designed it that way so I’ll never forget. But I have a feeling had we met on any other day of the year, that date too would be seared in my memory just as vividly. Just like the days that followed have been.
The guns trembles wildly, and I’m scared I’m going to drop it. My left hand leaves the tree so I can cup my right hand to keep the weapon steady. “Well, you can’t have it. Whatever it is. So do yourself a favor. Turn around and disappear back to wherever you came from.”
“Oh, sweetheart. You know as well as I do that I can’t do that.” There’s a hint of pity in his voice, maybe even regret. But the remaining ninety-nine percent is all cold, steel-hard determination.
A disturbing sensation jerks inside me. Dread? Anticipation? I reject both. “Why not?”
He doesn’t answer. I don’t push him because I don’t really want to know.
“How the hell did you find me?”
He takes another step, and he’s close enough for me to catch the naked resolve gleaming in his eyes. “With great difficulty. But know this, baby. I never stopped looking.”
“I really wish you had.”
A hint of movement as he shakes his head. “No, you don’t. If you did, the safety would be off that gun and I’d be taking my last breath at your feet.”
Dammit. “I’m hoping you see sense and walk away before I’m forced to use it.”
“And I’m hoping you get rid of it so I can take you in my arms and kiss the hell out of you. You have no fucking idea how much I’ve missed tasting those lips, baby. Hell, I’ll even allow you to shoot me if you promise to kiss me first.”
This time a gasp releases itself from my throat. “You can’t be serious—”
“Oh, I am, sweetheart. Deadly. Fucking. Serious.” The raw edge in his tone delivers the inescapable message my brain has been refusing to accept.
Killian Knight is here for me. And neither my gun nor my words are going to sway him from his purpose.
So I take the only option left to me. The one I discarded a couple of minutes ago.
I turn and run.
Predictably, he catches me within five seconds. Predictably, I fight with everything I have. But within one breath and the next, he disarms me, and I’m trapped, my back to his front, against him.
From shoulder to thigh, our bodies are imprinted against each other.
God. His body. His smell. The feel of his steady exhalations against my nape. The electrifying reality of his body against mine is too much to bear. I’m dying.
So I struggle harder. Arms claw. Legs tangle. All in a silent battle because my screams will attract attention I don’t want. I need to get rid of him without drawing attention to myself.
Once a spy, always a spy.
“Stop. I’m much stronger than you. I don’t want to hurt you,” he breathes in my ear.
“Then leave me the hell alone!” I hiss back.
He sighs. “Faith—”
“Jesus. Don’t call me that!” My reaction to the name is visceral. I can’t stand the reminder of the woman I once was. Wife, devoted churchgoer, chairperson of the Little Leaders Fundraising Club. Sundresses and blinding smiles and bouncy chestnut curls and all things nice.
Dying, dying, dying.
The arm clamped around my waist binds me tighter. “I’ve come for you, Faith.”
I can’t stop my trembling or the dangerous rush of forbidden excitement that comes with it. I simply cannot feel like this. “No.”
“Yes.” He whips us both around and presses my body into the nearest tree. The sensation of his hard, muscle-packed body against me sends every atom of my being into fiery free fall. Memories rush to the fore of us like this—in combat training, dancing to the rhythm of a salsa beat in Mexico, and fucking…God, how I loved him taking me like this—and I want to do the unthinkable and weep.
Killian Knight is everything I should’ve run away from the day he walked into my life. Everything I should’ve gotten on my knees and prayed to be delivered from. His brother called him the devil long before I met him. I shouldn’t have laughed at what I thought was gross exaggeration. I should’ve crossed myself and said a few more Hail Marys.
Because what came after guaranteed me a front-and-center place in hell.
“Let me go, Killian. Please.”
I don’t know whether it’s the sound of his name on my lips that drives the shiver through him. Or the naked plea in my voice. Either way, I then feel his lips brush a kiss on the top of my head before he exhales. “No. Never.”
Fight kicks in. I use my purchase on the tree to attempt to dislodge him. He’s an immovable mountain. He whips my cap off and slides his fingers into my hair, holding me even more immobile. His body presses harder into mine, and I feel the rigid outline of his cock in the crease of my ass.
The sound that emerges from my throat is a cross between a growl of fury and a whimper of desire. The memory of him, hard and huge and deep inside me, rocking me to the fieriest depths of pleasure, isn’t one I want to recall. Nor do I want to recall the guttural, dirty words that tumble from Killian’s lips from the moment we get naked. But they’re blazing a path of unstoppable destruction through my head, and I want to kick my own ass ten ways to Sunday.
“Shh, baby, it’s okay to remember,” he says soothingly, so in tune with my feelings it’s scary.
“Fuck you. It’s not okay. I’ll never be okay.”
“I know. But this is still happening. I’ve come for you, and I’m not leaving without you.”
“If you think I’ve turned meek and mild since you last saw me, you’re in for a hell of a surprise.”
I feel the slide of his finger against my neck, brushing my hair away, exposing my nape. I can’t stop my body’s tremble at his touch, much as I’m dying to.
“I know you haven’t. But I need you to come with me. So I apologize in advance for this.”
“I…what?” I start to turn my head. The touch of something cold and damp against my neck sends a bolt of shock through me. Ice-cold dread rolls through me even as I start to lose sensation in my extremities. “Killiarrrr…” The second part of his name thickens in a slur on my tongue as I feel another kiss against my temple.
“You’re mine, Faith. You’ll always be mine. And I’m sorry, but this part is nonnegotiable.”
Those are the last words I hear before sweet oblivion sweeps me away.