Bullet to the Heart (19 page)

Alone again.

“You’ll let her leave without incident, or I’ll not help you.
Vous me comprenez?”

“If you’d given me a moment to explain why I brought her back, none of this would have been necessary.” Nodachi’s voice was a lash striking.

Remi felt lacerated inside. She needed out, needed to be away from this place where hope for vengeance sang in the very foundation of this house. It was too much to carry the weight of everyone’s hopes for justice.

She strengthened her will, remembering her reasons for being here in the first place. “You had her strung from the rafters, Mr. Nodachi. How fucking
necessary
was that? Whatever your purpose, you should probably realize the only way you caught her was because she let you. Did you not think it bizarre your grand luck at having two of Joseph’s first team in the same place at the same time?” She spit the question out, letting the words drip with her disdain.

His eyebrows rose and his nostrils flared. The red tint on his cheeks attested to his anger and chagrin. “Did you think to hold us both?” She rounded on him but left the gun at her side, the temptation to shoot him too strong.

“He didn’t think,” Adam said. “She was in trouble, hurt and crying when we walked in and discovered her over the decapitated woman. We darted her and brought her here. It’s that simple.”

She spoke though her throat felt raw from holding back her rage. “Because she
let
you. You are too arrogant, and it will cost you much, Mr. Nodachi. More than you’ve already lost.”

“Take your finger off the trigger, Bullet. Go back to your room,” Rand said in a soothing voice.

“Fuck you, Mr. Beckett. I don’t need your pity right now. Keep it for yourself. You’ll need it to warm you when the fires of your revenge are banked.” Remi turned then and walked from the room.

One foot in front of the other, she gave up the desire to fight for that moment and walked to her room. Blade would be safe. For now it was enough.

Tomorrow she would deal with the fallout from tonight.

Rand hadn’t slept well. Fuck that; he hadn’t slept at all. The men had all gone over what happened with a fine-tooth comb, trying to piece together the events in Shanghai and make it fit with what little information they had about both Bullet and the assassin called Blade.

To have absolute verification a team of female assassins had been let loose on the world hadn’t been nearly the gut punch he’d expected. Women were universally the more vicious gender. Cross a woman and hell had no fury to compare to her rage. But Bullet’s face as she’d spoken to Blade had been so sad, so resigned.

It had triggered a need in Rand to soothe, but there was still a large part of him that couldn’t see Gretchen Dearborn as anything other than a killer. Granted, it wasn’t the largest part, but it was there. He wanted her like people in hell wanted ice water, but the fact remained she’d killed and would kill again—indeed, had ties to his family’s killer.

Rand stopped at her door, knocked softly, and entered. She had no expectation of privacy here. The worry ran through his mind that he should probably show more intelligence than just walking in on her. She was armed now, as he hadn’t confiscated her weapons.

He snorted. Had she no guns, she was still as deadly as anyone he’d ever met. Something in the air set him on alert, and he halted after crossing the threshold. She was huddled in the corner, wrapped in a blanket and mewling softly. Alarm chased through his bloodstream, potent as it lifted the hair on his arms. He pulled the Kimber from his waistband and began searching the darkened corners of her room for a threat.

There was nothing. That she had yet to wake concerned him. Bullet was never without full cognizance. It seemed even when she slept, she did so with one eye open. He walked over to her and nudged her foot with his.

She moved immediately, sweeping with her legs and taking him to the ground. He rolled and glanced up just as her foot connected with the side of his head.

He partially blocked it, but it threw him for a second. “It’s me, Bullet,” he growled as he pushed up and prepared for her attack.

His voice must have gotten through because she stopped her advance, normally light-blue eyes dark and turbulent with something that looked a lot like panic. She stopped and retreated back to the corner she’d been in, sinking down on her haunches and breathing deeply.

A fine layer of sweat filmed her creamy skin, and the sunlight left her shrouded in gold, wild red hair a glorious halo around her pale fine-boned features.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and sank down to sit Indian-style on the floor.

Rand held up his hands after he put his gun back in the holster at his back. “You’ve got to stop attacking me,” he replied ruefully.

“Maybe you should stop sneaking up on me.”

He didn’t respond to her acidic retort. Instead, he ventured into territory that had him wondering if he’d lost his mind. “What were you dreaming about?”

She looked askance at him, clearly taken by surprise. “I don’t dream.”

Her simple answer disturbed him. “Beg to differ with you. You were just crying like a scared child in your sleep. That’s probably why you didn’t hear me come in.”

She dropped her eyes from his, stared at her hands. “I don’t dream.”

“Yes, you—”

“I don’t dream, Mr. Beckett, I remember,” she whispered, and then jumped to her feet, her body a thing of fluid beauty in the early morning sun.

That she was standing there in nothing more than a tank top, sans bra, and soft, white cotton panties had him breathing heavily. He cursed his body’s response, anger shooting through to replace the lust.

“You know, you make a lot of those cryptic statements. ‘I don’t dream, I remember,’ oh and another personal favorite, ‘bodies are tools to be controlled by strong minds.’ Tell me, Bullet, who the fuck taught you these things? Who fucking hurt you?”

She closed her eyes, but her pain reached across the distance between them and grabbed his heart, suffocating him.

He gasped in a breath, and before he could check his movements, he was cupping her face in his hands and lowering his mouth to hers.

It was soft kiss, a gentle melding of his mouth to hers. She relaxed against him, and he barely contained a shout of primal joy. She made him feel things he’d never felt before, not even for Lily. His
wife
.

Her name didn’t bring that instantaneous agony it normally did. Oh, the hurt was still there, but it was tempered with plumeria, silky cream skin, and hair the color of sunset. It was something he couldn’t dwell on. Instead he focused on Bullet.

He felt the wetness on her cheeks and sipped at the tears that fell. Her diamond bright eyes opened on his, and what he saw there made him want to kill Joseph Bombardier in a whole new way and for a whole new reason . . . for her.

“Your pain breaks my heart, and that’s frightening. I didn’t think I had one anymore,” he said against her lips.

“I’m a killer, Mr. Beckett. You should never hurt for me.” Her voice was resolved, and in it was years of loss.

“If I could stop it, I would. You have worked for him, killed for him. I should hate you, but I—”

Silence held sway as he tried to stop the flow of his words. This was wrong. It could never be.

“You what, Mr. Beckett?”

Her gaze pinned him, and he felt bitterness that he wanted to answer her at all. Then it was replaced as her eyes flared, and he was caught in her heat, her pain.

“I . . . don’t,” he growled, and then took what she was offering.

He tasted her deeply and didn’t allow her tongue to run from his, instead sucking it into his mouth and pulling deeply on it. She moaned, and he tasted that sound too, felt a shudder ripple through her body as the echo of it moved under his skin.

He lifted her tank top off and turned her quickly, giving her no time to think. His body was pounding a demand to have her under him right now, and nothing, not her objections or his, was going to get in the way.

She grabbed his shoulders and levered herself up, wrapping her legs around his waist and pulling his hair as she tried to get closer to him. The heat between her thighs called to him, and he pressed forward even as he laid her on the bed.

He settled into her body, soft curves cradling his hardness, and her scent made him dizzy with need. She shifted under him, pulling at his shirt, and in seconds she had it over his head. He allowed the break between their lips for the sake of the coming contact between their bodies.

When it happened, he hissed in a breath and she moaned, the sound reverberating through the room and feathering over his body in tiny pinpricks of vicious lust.

“
Me toucher
,” she whispered frantically, rolling her hips against his, her body a sinuous ribbon of cream on the blue of the coverlet beneath her.

“I will,” he vowed. He neither knew nor cared what she’d said; it was the tone of her voice that spoke of her need.

He’d damn well meet those needs and embed himself inside her. No part of her would be able to forget he’d taken her.

He lifted up and she sighed, reaching for him. He smiled, knowing it was more of a grimace, but he didn’t care. Her eyes were closed, the dark auburn of her lashes making shadows against her pink cheeks.

She was fucking gorgeous. Not classically. Her face was too willful for that. Her lips were succulent, but that stubborn chin spoke of arguments that would last all night but end with the sweetest of lovemaking. His dick screamed at him, begged to be released from the constriction of his jeans. Patience, he willed.
Patience
.

“J'ai besoin. Arrête ça!”
She writhed beneath him so beautifully, breasts rising and falling, nipples berried and begging for his mouth.

“What are you asking for, I wonder,” he mused aloud. She didn’t respond, and he drew a line down the valley of her breasts to her bellybutton with his forefinger. The silk of her skin was a temptation all its own, but he wanted what lay between her thighs too badly to be deterred.

Rand had given up on staying away from her. He refused to try to justify it any longer or make excuses for the lust he felt. She was here and she would be his. He’d close his eyes to the pain in hers and just take them both where their bodies begged him to go.

His lips followed his finger’s path to the edge of her cotton panties, followed the slope of her hipbone, and then he took a deep breath. She stilled immediately and her eyes slitted open, the blue of her irises liquid in the sunlight.

She licked her lips and he smiled.

He hooked his finger and slowly pulled her panties down, his own breath locking in his lungs as he unveiled her. Was the hair at her mound as soft as that on her head? Damn it . . .
yes, it was
. He pulled the panties off and threw them.

She rose up on her elbows and watched him. He almost lost it right then, so close to coming in his pants he didn’t know if he could hold back. He grabbed her hand and placed it over his jeans-covered cock. She squeezed softly and he groaned.

Her bottom lip was being trounced between her teeth, and he wished it were him biting it. “Take them off,” she whispered.

He stood and unsnapped his jeans, had them off in seconds, and then he moved to the edge of the bed, staring down at the naked woman lying so proudly before him.

“You understand this means nothing?” He regretted the words as soon as he uttered them. Her face fell and her eyes darkened. She nodded, and the ends of her hair caressed her pretty breasts.

Goddamn it
. He’d hurt her. When all he’d wanted to do was bring her pleasure, something he instinctively knew she’d never had much of.

He stood above her and watched as she lifted her head, eyes blazing, desire riding a wave over her trembling body.

“I understand that for you, it means nothing.”

With those words, she destroyed him.

He’d crushed Remi with his words, but she understood. And still she was willing to take what he was willing to give her. The heat he built inside her demanded surcease, and though all of these feelings were foreign, she knew better than to run from this.

He would hunt her because, as much as he protested wanting her, the truth was right there in the rigid lines of his body and swollen member that jutted so proudly from between his legs. She wouldn’t run. She couldn’t.

She pushed backward and lay down, careful to be acquiescent. She
wanted,
and nothing would stop her from having, but she was dealing with a man who had limited patience.

His face hardened, the muscles of his chest, arms, and legs jumping under his bronze skin. His hand stroked his penis from root to tip, and she couldn’t keep from licking her dry lips, wishing it was her mouth making the journey. It would have shocked her, but she’d put away the part of her mind that was in a constant state of thought. She was going to feel every moment of this, come hell or high water.

He came down over her and settled between her legs, the heated brand of his cock coming to rest against her opening. Her eyes closed and she sucked in a breath. So close. So very
close
.