Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
But this woman who wears a mini knife around her neck is more than who she seems.
I relax in my seat, letting her speak first. The car turns down an alley, weaving through the city and making its way east.
“Why?” she finally asks.
I cock my head. “Why what?”
“Why did you kill him?”
“It was a job. Nothing personal.” A disappointing target, who didn’t even fight back.
She snorts. “A knife to the heart? A bullet would have been easier.”
My brows raise. With each passing moment, she’s proving herself an enigma. Is she dangerous, like me? I hope so. Conquering her will be the sweetest challenge.
“I prefer a blade. It’s more intimate. Respectful.” I pat my jacket lining, where my preferred killing knife is secured.
“So you’re a psychopath.”
My gut kicks with an unexpected laugh. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”
“I guess it’s useful in your line of work.”
“My line of work?”
“You’re a hitman. You said it wasn’t personal.” She sounds impatient, as if she knows I’m being deliberately obtuse.
I was prepared for hysterics. Messy tears, blotchy skin, panicked thrashing. Even a mafia princess would lose her cool and make threats or pleas for her life.
Her controlled reactions are unexpected and so much more delicious.
“And what about you? I killed your groom in front of you.”
“I’m in shock.” She does not sound like she’s in shock. She sounds like I interrupted her lunch.
What will she look like with her lipstick smeared from my kisses, her hair wild?
Soon I will know. My groin tightens at the thought. The monster in me roars, ready to roam free. I keep him leashed a little longer. My prey is close beside me but still wary. I want her fiery and fighting, as desperate for me as I am for her.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to sample a bride on her wedding day. To touch her, feast on her, make her moan. My work offers me many depraved delights, but I’ve never experienced this one.
But now I have the chance. The fact that this bride might hate me only tempts me more.
I seduce her, on her wedding night, mere hours after slaughtering her betrothed.
And I will make her enjoy it.
Her veil tumbles over her brow, and she shoves it up again. I brush her hand away. Slowly, carefully, I remove each hairpin, holding her gaze.
After three pins, she looks out her window, but the red staining her olive cheeks isn’t from her makeup. Finally, a reaction.
I separate the veil from her head, roll down my window, and let the wind snag the filmy white fabric. It blows away, dancing in the car’s wake like a ghost. “Better?”
“Much.”
I shift closer, taking up more than my fair share of the bench seat. She glares at me. I raise my chin, daring her to comment.
For a long moment, electricity crackles between us. I want to push her back onto the seat and claim her now. Only years of reining in my basest impulses allows me to deny the animal attraction that’s making my heart pump faster in her presence.
Judging by the goosebumps breaking out over the mounds of her delicious breasts in the tight, white bodice, she’s feeling something similar. Perhaps it’s simply fear, but as someone who trades in death, terror is a useful tool. It can make a person love or hate you. Or both at the same time. Best of all, the symptoms of fear—the shortening of breath and elevated pulse—are easily confused by the body as arousal.
“What is your name?” I ask.
She presses her lips together before answering. “Vera. Yours?”
I cock my head to the side, deciding if I should tell her. “Do you really want to know?”
I let her think through the implications. Common sense says if a kidnapper lets you know his face and name, he does not intend for you to live long.
She knows this. She hesitates, and licks her lips as she thinks things through. The sight of her tongue sends a stab of arousal through my core. I shift in the seat, needing to adjust myself to relieve the pressure of my pants on my rapidly swelling cock.
“Yes,” she says, and so seals her fate. My arousal is a red haze, rising like the blood lust I usually feel when I kill my quarry.
I can’t stop the cruel smile twisting my lips as I tell her, “Victor.”
She gives the slightest nod. Still so careful, so controlled, just like she was at the altar, where she first caught my attention. Her groom was dead, the wedding guests had fled, and she faced me silently. No screaming, no crying. No emotion. But I could sense her mind working under the veil.
If only I could slice her open, reveal her thoughts. But now is not the time for the knife. I’ll have to use other weapons at my disposal to prise her apart. My words, my lips. My cock.