I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. I'd just told Elda, point blank, that I killed two old men, and she looked put out more than anything, her lower lip sticking out a little in a pout.

Any other person would have been even the tiniest bit scared. There was no remorse in my voice because I had none. I spoke of it casually because there was no other way for me to talk about it. The two were a nuisance; I was there to kill the general, but Greco just happened to be there, and he was a bastard anyway.

But Elda wasn’t exactly someone normal. In a lot of ways, she was like me.

"Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were going to move? I gave you my number for a reason." She complained.

"You're this upset because I got your kill?" I let my tone tell her I was amused.

Though I had to admit to some relief. I hadn't been sure how she'd take it. The opposite, her being disgusted with me, would have been worse. There was just no way to be positive what her exact plans for Greco were. But she'd said she was a hit woman, meaning she was in the same boat as me, so she must have made some kills herself, so I'd made an educated guess. If all she wanted was to talk, she could have found a way at the wedding, but she hadn't.

"Well, you had whatever you had with the general, and I had my own beef with Greco. Yes, Luke, I would have been grateful if you'd told me and not taken my kill."

She didn’t sound mad, just a little irked. I took another step closer.

It felt like it had been ages since I'd seen her, even though it had only been a week. She was dressed simply in black pants and a black T-shirt that molded to her form. Her feet were bare against the floor, with her hands, neck and face, the only skin showing in her outfit.

She was too hard to resist.

I was also probably still riding on the adrenaline. But I could feel my body grow hot at having her near. I wanted her, badly, and the time apart hadn't changed that. If anything, it made me want her more.

I knew I had things to think about, to plan. I'd just killed two people. I'd gotten rid of the evidence, rushed but thorough. I wiped down the gun and passed by the police precinct, being sneaky about dropping it outside, then walking around for a bit to be sure I wasn’t getting tailed. I drove the car back to the owner's place, wiped down whatever I touched, and walked again for a while before getting a cab that dropped me off four blocks away, then walked to the hotel.

Shit was going to hit the fan when the two bodies were found and identified, and I had to be out of the area by then, get my shit packed and my ass on a plane out the country.

But all I had on my mind just then was her.

She seemed to notice my preoccupation, frowning at me.

"Is sex all you can think about?"

But she still didn’t sound annoyed.

Because Elda no longer needed to kill Greco, she was free, much like I was. We both had the time to spare.

My smirk just grew wider as I saw her the heat build in her eyes. I stepped forward at the same time she did, and we met each other in the middle. I wrapped my arms around her waist, hers going around my neck, our lips meeting and molding together. She sighed into my mouth as I kissed her softly, groaning and pushing into me when I hardened the kiss, slipping my tongue into her mouth, rolling it around hers, tasting the inside of her mouth.

I pulled back when we both had to breathe, and met her eyes.

"Well," she said breathlessly. "I guess you're a smarter man than I thought. Way to keep your priorities straight."

There was a hint of teasing in her tone, and I laughed, breathlessly.

"I try."

I reached for her clothes as she reached for mine. Getting undressed while we both tried to keep our mouths locked was a bit of an adventure, but we eventually managed. Then we were stumbling onto the bed. She pushed me back for a moment long enough to get some condoms from the nightstand.

"Planning for some company, baby?" I arched an eyebrow.

She just grinned back. "Well, I was hoping you'd call me before I left. I did leave you with my number for a reason. Do you want to use them, or not?"

I didn’t respond, just tugged her back and wrestled her under me. I kissed her mouth, then pulled away to kiss down her neck, onto her breasts. I took first one, then the other nipple in my mouth, teasing the peaked tip with my tongue, scraping the buds with my teeth, then sucking lightly. Elda just moaned and writhed under me, her hands in my hair directing me when she wanted attention on her other breast. Neither of us was in any hurry to get off, so we took our time.

But I wanted to taste her. Again. She'd gone down on me, and I wanted to reciprocate for her. Again. So, after a while, when her nipples were swollen dark and I felt they'd gotten enough attention, I teased down her stomach. I kissed her skin, added an occasional nip. I licked inside her navel, and she moaned and arched into me. I reached under her thighs, shouldering them apart and grabbing her by the hips. I stuck my nose in the curls at the juncture of her thighs, closing my eyes as I breathed in, deep. Her hands were still in my hair, nudging me lower.

"Please."

I pulled back, glanced up at her and met her eyes. I used the flat of my tongue, licked up the length of her sex, ending with the tip of my tongue pressing into her clit. I did it again, and then more, watching her come apart, reveling in it.

It got to me as much as it did her. I was hard, humping the mattress to get some friction on my hard dick, moving my hips slow so I wouldn't go overboard and come on the sheets. Then I stiffened my tongue, slid it inside her body, thrusting nice and slow. One finger, then two, joined my tongue, and I worked her slowly. I pulled my tongue out of her as I added a third finger, wrapping my lips around her clit and started a rhythmic sucking, matching it to my fingers thrusting inside her, teasing her with the tip of my tongue.

She didn’t last.

I watched her orgasm hit, felt her inner walls clamp down on my fingers, her body shuddering as she cried out. I didn’t stop, letting her orgasm go on for as long as it could. I stopped when she slumped back into the bed, pulling my fingers out and licking at the wetness. I kissed her hip and then got up on my knees between her thighs.

Elda looked up at me with a satisfied expression that left me pleased and made me harder than granite. I reached for the condoms, removed one from the strip and tore at it with my teeth. I sat back on my heels, smoothing it down my cock. I gave a couple of strokes, just looking at her body, and then gripped around the base of my cock, pulled down on my balls, driving back the need to come. I didn’t release until I was sure I wouldn’t embarrass myself.

I lifted her hips, rested her ass on my thighs as I sat back on my heels, and then positioned the head of my cock at her entrance. I didn’t thrust inside her immediately, sliding my cock up her sex, teasing her clit with the head of my cock, then moving down only to do it again. I repeated the motions until she was squirming under me. Then I nudged the head at her entrance, moving until the tip was barely inside, then pulling back.

"Luke."

I shivered when she said my name on a moan, and my cock twitched.

"Fuck!"

Neither of us could take the wait anymore. I pushed, slowly, and we both sighed once I was in to the hilt. I held her legs, up and out, working my hips slowly, watching as she got used to it, as desire rose in her again. Then she was moaning and squirming, pushing her hips into mine, taking me in deeper.

At her squirming, I stopped, releasing her legs. I shifted the both of us until I was lying on top of her, her legs and arms wrapped around me, my hands under her shoulders. We moved in sync, her hips pushing up to meet my thrusts. I kissed her as we moved, her mouth, all over her face, whatever skin I could reach. I moved my tongue lazily, thrusting it in and out of her mouth to match the rhythm of my cock moving in and out of her body.

When orgasm came, it hit us at roughly the same time. I felt her squeeze around me, and I was spurting into the condom, muffling a groan in her mouth.

We lay in each other's arms as we came down from the high, Elda snuggled up to my chest.

"Will you tell me?"

I opened my eyes, before closing them again, keeping her head tucked under my chin, one arm around her as the other hand stroked her hair.

"About what?"

"This general, why you two wanted to kill each other. You were in the army, correct?"

I hummed. "Right. The IRA. I wasn’t originally posted under him; he ran a special unit. I worked my way up, earned my way in. It was great at first. I mean, not great, but I wasn’t made to enlist because I didn’t have a choice, it was something I wanted to do since I was young. I dreamed of it, and I achieved that dream."

God, I had been so naïve back then. Like I'd thought it would be the answer to everything. I wouldn’t listen to my parents, especially my mother when she begged me to stay at home. I left as soon as I was eighteen, young and fit, and was going out for training about a month later.

"What happened?"

I felt my face fold into a frown as I remembered. "I escaped, from the IRA, from Ireland. I decided they were nothing more than a rebellious group. I didn’t feel the passion and drive for the movement like I did when I first joined. They were killing too many innocent people and for a cause that I no longer believed in anymore.

"But why escape? Wasn’t there any other way of leaving?"

"Trust me, Elda, there wasn’t. I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as saying I didn’t want to be a part of it, anymore. That would be defecting, and it wouldn’t be taken lightly. I couldn’t even stay in Ireland after. A friend helped me cross the border, change my name, arrange for some papers. I moved to the States. I have a different name than the one I use, even Bable is an affected surname. I kept my first name, Luke, out of some sentimentality. I knew the General would want me dead for the betrayal, but Luke was a common enough name, he couldn’t possibly look for every single one."

It seemed like he had done something similar, though. I hadn't told Greco enough of my background for him to be able to track down the General, so it was an easy guess who had contacted whom first. I wasn’t sure if he'd even checked to be sure it was me, or if he would have just waited to confirm the body.

"It was stupid of me, probably," I mused. "He must have assumed the tack I would pick and followed it. There was no other way he could have found me, not after five damn years."

"What do you mean?"

"I needed someone big, someone powerful when I came here. The only way to survive was to find someone like that and stay anonymous. I'd been trained to kill, it was the only skill I had. But I couldn’t exactly join a different army, now could I? Besides, I didn’t want to. And I wanted the man dead, and I couldn’t do that on my own and penniless. So, I looked for the biggest and baddest, and I found Greco. I picked him by chance, then we met, and I got the job as his hitman. He knew me as Luke."

I wondered how long it had taken the General to find me, the past five years or if he'd been waiting for me to come out and the search was more recent.

"You're skipping something. Why did you want him dead, if all you wanted to do was escape?"

This was the part I didn’t like; the part I would have wished she'd forget. I wrapped her tighter in my arms, and she moved closer willingly. I focused on her warmth and took a deep breath.

"When I left, my unit and pretty much the whole of the IRA even though they didn’t personally know me, took the defection as a sort of betrayal. Especially the General, as the man I worked directly under. Unlike the rest of them, the General took it personally, as I knew he would, because he made no secret of his philosophies. I knew he'd feel that I was weak, and I knew in his mind, anyone that was defined as being weak should be executed."

His views had bothered me most. More innocent people had died under his rule in the two years I was with him than in the nearly five years I'd worked for Greco. He didn’t differentiate between army and civilian. It was a wonder he'd been able to work with a criminal. But then, Greco's views weren’t so far removed from his own, just less extreme and limited to what affected his income and his business.

"So, when I left, I wanted to get as far away as possible, knowing he'd search for me. I didn’t, however, expect him to go after my family."

Elda went rigid in my arms, and I gave her a light squeeze.

"My parents, my baby sister about five years younger, an older brother and sister, twins, only three years older. They were all still quite young, the two oldest being twenty-five. I don’t know how he did it, but he got them all home somehow. Big sis had a kid, though she wasn’t married, and the baby was there, too, maybe a couple of years old. He murdered all of them. Then, he made sure, when it was reported on TV, his face was in just about every news delivery, by TV or newspaper, and his voice on the radio."

There was a short silence where we just breathed, and I ignored the ache in my chest, burying my face in her hair.

"How can you be sure that he did it?"

"Even if he didn’t do it personally, he had a big hand in it. Why on earth would he parade himself for the news talking about the death of my family right after announcing my disappearance, nearly four months later?"

"Did he say you were behind it?"

"Oh, no. He acted very much the leader he supposedly was, a man worried about his subordinate's whereabouts and his mental state should he hear the devastating news of his entire family's demise."

I'd wanted to choke him, just reach into the TV and wrap my hands around his neck, when I watched the interview where he spoke about all that. I'd also wanted to cry, and there were nights when I had nightmares, thinking of all the ways he could have gotten them together, imagined him using my disappearance as an excuse to lure them into a trap.

"My plan, when I decided to look for work, was to go after the General's family, like he had mine, and then go after him. He had a family about as big as mine, even had a daughter and two sons, but his wife was deceased. There were his parents…"

I'd have to spare them with him gone. There would be no satisfaction in killing them for nothing. I wasn’t the same monster as the General, and I wasn’t so needlessly cruel. They were innocent in everything because they had nothing to do with my family's murder other than being related to the man responsible.

"I guess I didn’t expect him to find me before I got to him, but I waited too long. I don’t regret keeping my name, though. After my family was gone, it became a way to remember them by." I shrugged. "Killing the General is enough. Originally, I planned to, but I don’t need to kill his family. They were innocent in all of this."

There wasn’t any more to say, and we stayed in silence for a time. Then I felt her shift, and I loosened my arms. Her hair tickled my chin as she moved her head, and I looked down as she looked up, and our eyes met.

"And what about now?"

"Now…"

"What are… you going to do now?"

I didn’t miss her hesitation, and I smiled. "Don’t you mean we? What we're going to do now, together."

"We don’t really know each other very well," she demurred.

"I don’t know about you, but I have no home, so I can go pretty much anywhere. Besides, I killed a man for you, even though he was just conveniently there. At least give us a chance before you write me off."

"I guess there is that." She sounded amused. "Very well. I should warn you, though. I live in Italy and I happen to love my home.

I smiled. Like that was going to deter me.

"I always fancied living in Italy. The food, the climate. And most of all," I added, teasing, "the women."

She growled at me, making me chuckle. She only growled at me some more.

"If I drag you with me anywhere and you end up paying attention to someone other than me, I will kill you."

I roared with laughter. Then I rolled her over, pushing her into the mattress as I took her mouth in a feverish kiss.