Chapter Thirty-Four - James
“Trust me,” I tell her as I pull her up off her knees and have her straddle my lap. “That’s it. I feel like I’ve fucked that up along the way and I’m not sure how to get it back. You think I’m here to kill you or your brother. And I’ve told you over and over, that’s not my job.” I put my fingers on her lips and she opens her mouth to suck. And holy motherfucking shit, all I can think about is stuffing my cock down her throat again. “Let me finish before this body wipes my mind of all coherent thoughts.” She giggles a little, like I’m kidding. And it pisses me off that she’s not hearing me. So I grab her face and hold her a little too tight. “Harper,” I say sharply as I fist her hair and make her gasp. “Listen to me. You’re not the job. But there is a job.”
Now she’s listening. “Who?”
“It’s not a who. Just trust me. Either you do or you don’t. Everything I’ve done since we became Six, whether I realized it at the time or not, it was all for you. For our moment. For a future that does not involve being in debt to anyone, especially the Company. So no matter what happens, I need you to understand this. Everything I’m doing is about you. And your safety.”
“You’re going to do something bad, aren’t you?”
I throw up my hands a little at that statement and roll my eyes like a teenager. “I’m an assassin, Harp. You know what I do. I wish I could tell you no, I’m a good guy and I’ve always been a good guy. But I’m not. I’ve never done a good deed in my life. Not really—not for real, because if I was helping someone, then it was to gain a favor or pay a debt. But I want you, us,” I add quickly. “I want us more than anything else in the entire world. The fucking second I recognized you out on the beach watching that ugly sunset, that’s all I can think about. And yeah, having you rubbing up against my cock as you sit in my lap right now—that’s all part of it. But just part. And the sex is not enough.”
“You want things like… marriage? And babies?” she asks with a puzzled look.
“Don’t you?”
She shakes her head. “No. I don’t want my sons to be made into soldiers or my daughters turned into trophy wives. And I don’t want to marry some old man who only wants me for sex.”
“I just told you, I want more than sex and I’m not that old. Twenty-eight is not that old.”
“James, how many times do I have to explain this? You are not my promise. My father is using me to make you do things.”
“It’s working.” It’s really fucking working. That bastard can ask me to do anything right now and I’d do it if it meant I could keep her.
“Then I want you to stop. I don’t want you to play his games. Just run away with me. We can go anywhere. A big city where no one has a face. We can start again and forget all about the Company.”
“Please, Harper.” I shoot her a sidelong look. “You cannot be that naive. The Admiral’s daughter and the last assassin. If ever there was a pair begging to be hunted down and killed, it’s us.”
“Then let them try. Let them hunt us. Let them kill Harper and James and then maybe we can live again as other people. As new people.”
“You want to fake our own deaths?” I laugh. “It would never work. They’re not stupid, Harp. They have endless resources, they have satellite surveillance, they own entire towns. If we were stupid enough to run away for real, they’d hunt us down like dogs to make sure we never talked.”
“So it’s hopeless?” She’s got a sad pouty face on and I’m suddenly tired of this depressing conversation. I stand up, cupping her ass to keep her body close to me, and then walk across the room to the hallway closest to the kitchen. There’s a bedroom down here, I think. I walk with her head resting on my shoulder and stop at a door. “Open it,” I say.
She leans down a little, making her still-wet pussy rub against my stomach. The door swings open and presents the master bedroom. I walk her over to the bed and then ease her down gently, straddling her hips as her body settles into the soft down comforter. “Nothing’s hopeless, Harp. But this is an area I forbid you to go. You’re not in charge of finding our future, I am.”
“But what if you need help? I’m not allowed to help?”
“No. And we haven’t properly talked about what happened this morning with that—” Shit, what do I call it?
“Murder?” she finishes with the word I was trying my best to avoid.
I scoot down until my cock is nudging towards her entrance, pushing against her clit. She tries to open her legs, but my knees have her locked together. She whimpers as I thrust the head of my dick into her crease. Her folds are so wet, I have no problem sliding right inside her.
Fuck, she feels so damn good.
I ease out slowly, making her breath all ragged with panting and little moans slipping between her perfect lips. “Harper,” I say as I cup her face once again. “Look at me, Harper.” She opens her eyes, just enough to be legitimately open, but with my next thrust they close again. “If I tell you to stay put, what do you do?”
“Stay where I am,” she answers dutifully.
But I’m not convinced she means it. Hell, she looks like she might come at any second. She’s cunning. And she’s got moves. I need to hammer this home. “Tell me why.”
“What?” She opens her eyes now because I’ve stopped moving inside her. “Jesus, James, I’ll listen, OK?”
“No, that’s not enough. Tell me why you’ll listen.”
“Because you said so.”
I shake my head at her. “Wrong answer. If I tell you to do something and you do it, the reason you do it is because you trust me. You understand?”
“I trust you.”
“Why do you trust me?”
“James—”
I lean down and kiss her softly. “Tell me why,” I whisper into her mouth. “Tell me, Lionfish. Why do you trust me?” My hips grind against her, moving my cock deeper inside her. She buckles her back and moans as her body protests the depth of penetration. I pull back and she groans, thrusting her hips towards me now, asking for more. “You trust me because I love you.”
She opens her eyes and smiles.
“You understand now? You trust me because I would never”—I cup her face harder as my movements inside her gentle—“ever hurt you. Do you understand that? If I tell you to walk through fire, it’s because I know beyond a doubt that you are fireproof. If I tell you to take a bullet, it’s because I know that you are bulletproof. If I tell you to walk away from me, it’s because you know I will come back for you. No matter what I tell you to do, you will do it, and you will be safe because I said so. Because I love you. Because you trust my love.”
I stare at her and she holds the moment with me, but then my pace quickens and the gentle lovemaking becomes more urgent. I can feel her body writhe beneath me, and even though we’ve only had sex a few times, this is her signal. “You will follow orders, soldier,” I say as I unlock her legs from between my knees. I hike her ankles up onto my shoulders and pump hard. She gasps and squeals with each penetration. “Say yes, sir, captain. Say yes, sir.”
She explodes under me, murmuring something close to a, “Yes, sir, I will, yes, sir, I’m yours.”
And that’s all my cock needs. I come inside her, spilling my seed into her, hoping against hope that we are creating a future together. Creating more than just me, more than just her. Making us. It’s every kind of love I’ve ever felt. It’s a gushing of emotion. It’s a promise and a conclusion at the same time. This chorus of long, satisfying moans wipes away all the blood years, all the contracts, and all my sins. It cleanses me in a way the desert never could. It doesn’t dry me out, it fills me up.
If death is a deal, then love is a promise.
“You fill me up,” I growl, biting into the soft flesh of her neck until her back buckles and her fingernails claw into my back. “You fill me up and make me realize—”
“Realize what?” she breathlessly prods when I don’t finish. Our hearts are still racing, pounding against each other, feeding off each other as they pump life through our veins. Pump life back into us. Take us away from the past and towards the future.
I don’t even know how to convey what it is I’m trying to say, but words just pour out of my mouth like water. “You take away the dark emptiness, Harper. You take away all the years of indifference and dissociation and right now”—I cup her face again—“right now, this is more real than anything I’ve felt in years. Maybe ever. This feels like something new. Something apart from what I was and a way forward into what I can be. This feels like hope, baby.”
She stares up at me, her expression solemn, her eyes searching, her brow worried. “I’m afraid to hope, James. I’m afraid to hope because I just think hope is a trap. Hope makes you want things that won’t come. Hope breaks your heart.”
“Not my brand of hope, Harper. This isn’t about luck, baby. This isn’t about circumstances or fate or coincidence. It’s about construction. Building, from the bottom up. It’s layer upon layer of secrets and debt. It’s level after level of subtle calculation and overt completion.”
She tisks her tongue as I collapse on top of her, and then pushes on my body until I fall off to the side and wrap her in my arms. “All those words are meaningless unless I know what you’re doing. And you’re not telling me anything specific. And you know I’m not on any kind of birth control, right?”
My eyes get heavy from the perfect combination of exhaustion and satisfaction. “Jesus Christ, woman. You did not hear a word I said. Just fucking trust me already.” I lean in and kiss her, this time with tongue and lingering, and we exchange breaths like lovers.
I’m all talked out. Completely wiped out. But just before we drift off I feel her gentle touch as she moves my unruly hair away from my forehead. And then the press of her sweet lips as she whispers into my ear. “I trust you, Six. But you need to trust me too.”