Behind The Hands That Kill (In The Company Of Killers #6)(7)

I smiled up at her, reached up and cupped the sides of her face within my hands and pulled her down to kiss me. Her lips were soft, careful, as if she worried she might break me. She had always been that way with me; I thought it both amusing and endearing at the same time.

“One year ago today,” she said, her mouth inches from mine, “I met the only man in the world who can put up with my shit.” She kissed my forehead, then straightened her back and rose into a sitting position atop me.

“Are you going to let me up?” I asked. I could easily get away, and she knew it, but I enjoyed giving her more power over me than she really had.

I felt her thighs tighten against my hips; she grinned.

“No,” she said, “I want you to stay in this bed with me for the rest of your life.”

“If that is what you want,” I said, matter-of-factly, “then that is what you will get, my love.”

I felt myself growing beneath her; the palms of my hands moved up her thighs and I clutched her hourglass hips within them.

Curiously, Artemis cocked her head.

“What?” I asked.

She sighed lightly, looked away from my eyes for a moment long enough to make me wonder if she was ever going to answer.

“When you call me that,” she began, “sometimes it feels…”

“It feels what?”

She sighed again, a bit deeper this time; then her dark eyes fell on mine with a sense of urgency that made me uncomfortable.

“Forced,” she finally answered, and I blinked, stunned. “I don’t know, it just…I don’t know.”

“Speak your mind,” I told her, moved my hands up and down her bare thighs in hopes of comforting her. Of course I could have asked the obvious question: Are you insinuating that I do not love you, Artemis? But I needed to stay as far away from that topic as I could.

Artemis frowned, pouted, the way she always did when she was trying to get me to baby her. I liked it—that childlike frown, and babying her. I reached out and grabbed her around the waist, pulled her down on top of me, and with a little less aggression than she had with me, dug my fingertips into her sides.

A peal laughter filled our small apartment bedroom; she kicked and screamed. “Please stop! Victor please! I’m going to pee—PLEASE STOP!”

Of course, I didn’t stop.

And, of course, she did pee.

When I saw the look on her face—I was on top of her by then—that blank, horrified expression that could only be caused by pissing one’s self, I finally stopped tickling her, and I roared with laughter. I laughed so hard and for so long that tears steadily seeped from the corners of my eyes.

“Victor!” Her size-seven foot hit me square in the chest and sent me flying across the bed.

It made me laugh even harder—I thought I might piss myself, too.





Present day…




I snap out of the private reverie.

Laughter. Smiles. Tickling. That was a time so long ago, when I was the one still wet behind the ears, despite my progression in The Order. Still so young. So incredibly foolish. But most of all, vulnerable. Needless to say, I learned from that mistake.

Or so I thought I did.

“Judging by that look on your face,” Apollo says, “I don’t believe you.”

I look over at him.

“Yes,” I answer with honesty this time, “sometimes I still think about Artemis.”





Izabel





The woman holding me hostage in this room looks over at me, expecting some kind of response, knowing it’s the moment she’s going to get one. A shift of my facial expression? The tensing of my shoulders? The holding of my breath? How about all three?

“I don’t want to hear this,” I tell her, looking away from the speaker on the desk where I’ve been listening to Victor talk to some guy for several minutes now.

“You don’t have a choice,” she says.

She’s wearing all black, every part of her covered but her head and her hands. Black boots that stop just below the knees. Black bodysuit that zips up the front from her navel to just beneath her chin. Black hair pulled into a tight braid that drops to the center of her back. Black eye shadow. Even the gemstone on her only ring is black.

“Does it bother you?” she asks, stepping toward me with a gun in her right hand.

“What exactly?” I can’t look her in the eyes.

The soft sound of laughter finds my ears.

“That the man you love,” she begins, drawing closer, “loved someone before he loved you.”

I laugh lightly, though it’s fake. And forced. Swallowing my pride, I keep the woman in my sights, but keep my eyes on the wall beside her.

“Why would that bother me?” I say, pretending that it doesn’t. “It would be ridiculous—everybody has a past.”

I can sense the woman smile, I can feel her eyes on me, studying me, laughing quietly at me like a bearded woman in a freak show circus.

Then I feel the cold metal of her gun press against my temple.

“Go ahead. Shoot me. I have a feeling before this is all over, you’re going to anyway.”

There’s a pause, and then she says as if she’s bored, “As much as I’d like to, me killing you wasn’t part of the plan.” Not sure I’m comfortable with the emphasis she put on ‘me’.