CHAPTER 14
Hans
Cassandra Cantrell, the thirty-year-old beauty next door, is blinking up at me with her trusting amber eyes, her mouth red and puffy from my kiss, and her body vibrating like it’s ready to explode.
The girl who flutters through life, no regard for her own safety, is looking at me like she wants me to fuck her. Like she’d happily reenact any one of those photos, only this time with my dick buried inside her. One hole or another.
She’s watching me like she’s waiting for me to explain what’s happening. To explain why it feels like this between us.
She’s doing that, and I’m getting text messages. Which means someone needs to die tonight.
And because I have more deaths on my hands than bones in my body, I’m the man who’s going to do it.
Karmine’s words echo in my mind. The warning about bad actors closing in. And I know I have to leave.
“Hans?” Cassandra says my name, and I hate it.
Because I crave it.
I flex my fingers, taking in one last handful. “Lock your door.”
A question starts to form on her sweet lips, but I pull my hands free.
Free of her chest. Free of her heat.
Then I step away, breaking the last contact between us, forcing her legs to unwind from my waist.
Cassandra tips backward.
Her arms go wide, she lets out a little shriek, and then she hits the sitting part of the couch with a little bounce.
Before she can right herself, I shove my hand between the cushions, then stride out of the room and out of her house.
I don’t belong here.
CHAPTER 15
Cassie
Stunned, I lie motionless, the wrong way on the couch with my feet in the air.
Did he just drop me?
The front door opens and slams shut.
Did he just leave?
I scramble to get upright, then crawl to the arm of the couch nearest the window.
Hans is already striding across the street, his long legs cutting the distance in seconds.
His truck is parked in his driveway, and he stops next to the driver’s door.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket to check his messages. And I hate that I wonder if it’s a woman.
He puts the phone back in his pocket, then opens the truck door. Before he climbs in, I see him toss something into the cab.
Wait… was that my book?
Still watching out the window, I stick my arm behind the back cushion, trying to find the Lust Shots book I saw him tuck there.
But I can’t find it, because he definitely took it.
Hans, my neighbor, stealer of breath and nudie books, pulls out of his driveway.
I sink back onto my butt.
What the hell just happened?
CHAPTER 16
Hans
I slam the heel of my boot against the metal door.
The shitty lock crunches with the single hit, and the door swings open.
Bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling illuminate the four men as they jump up from the thin, soiled cots they were lounging on.
The room is square. Two cots against the two side walls.
Two men to my left. Two to my right.
“Who the—”
The world will never know exactly what that guy was going to ask, because the blade of my first throwing knife sinks hilt deep under his chin, in the center of his throat.
He crumples back onto the cot.
With my left hand, I throw across my body to the rear right corner of the room, toward the man positioned opposite the first. And the only man to have his gun drawn.
My aim is better with my right, but the second knife still hits its target. Lodging itself into the center of the man’s forearm, it forces him to drop his gun.
I’m not looking for stealth tonight. I’m not here to be in and out as quickly as possible. I’m here for blood. I’m here to make these motherfuckers pay.
For what they’re in the middle of doing.
For what they’ve done before.
And for what they prevented me from doing with Cassandra.
The man reaches for the knife penetrating his arm, and I can see in his expression that he’s not going to pull it free on the first try.
He should leave it.
He should fight with it in.
But he’s a fucking moron.
The two uninjured men are on either side of me.
And I have two new blades in my hands.
The man on my right lets out a shout as he stops trying to get control of his firearm and leaps for me.
With his hands empty, I snap my attention to the left. That man isn’t ditching his gun, making him the biggest threat. And his gun has already cleared leather.
He pulls the trigger, and the noise is almost deafening in the small room.
The bullet hits dead center in my chest.