Dead Drop (The Guild #2)(32)

I did love a good deception, and it meant they accepted governmental-level wages rather than the lofty contract fees collected on Guild work. Money may not mean a lot to me—I was already wealthy far beyond anything I could spend in one lifetime—but I also wasn’t fucking stupid. Money made the world turn. The more I had, the easier it was to grease the wheels for whatever I needed.

And failing that, a good bullet to the head always worked.

“Making progress, sir,” Douglas replied with a watery smile. There was sweat on his brow, and he stank of fear. I must not be projecting Leon the approachable tech bunny very well today. Ever since Danny met the real me, I was putting less and less effort into covering my crazy.

Because she hadn’t just seen the insanity beneath my surface. She’d accepted it. Hell, she’d been aroused by it. That reaction had blown my goddamn mind, and I wanted to push the boundaries further. Would she be scared if I admitted to murdering the last two tech bunnies assigned to work with her? Or would she see it for what it was, a romantic gesture because I couldn’t stay away from her?

“About fucking time,” I muttered. “Email me what you’ve found.”

I stalked back to my private office before Douglas could respond, eager to see his information on Danny while in private. Where I could sit back and let my dick harden like I already knew it would, as I read about all the dirty little secrets my woman thought she’d erased from record.

The email hadn’t arrived when I sat back at my desk, and I drummed my fingertips impatiently on the desk a few times while I waited. Fucking Douglas was taking his sweet time, and I was about to start throwing knives, I was so keyed up.

I hated being away from her. Now that I’d admitted the depth of my obsession to her—and myself—it was pure torture not to have her within my line of sight twenty-four seven. I had to remind myself that she was no mere mortal. She was the Danny DeLuna, with a jaw-droppingly impressive kill list under her name. She was entirely capable of protecting herself, so long as no other executioners took the task of killing her. Something I’d taken care of by blasting the entire network with a bloody warning in the form of Bryan’s mutilated corpse.

Anyone below executioner level, she could handle. But that wasn’t the fucking point. I wanted to handle it for her. I wanted to swoop in and save her when the adrenaline was high and her death flashed across her eyes. Goddamn if I didn’t fantasize about torturing and killing anyone who hurt her, while she watched with hungry excitement. Or maybe she would want to help. It could be a real bonding moment between us, carefully and systematically spilling blood together.

“Fuck,” I uttered aloud, grasping my dick through my pants. It was so hard I was at risk of messing up my boxers unless I stopped thinking about her with blood-soaked hands and glittering eyes.

Ordinary vices had never been my thing. Smoking, drinking, drugs… they were all a sign of weakness. Of dependence and an inability to cope with the demons inside one’s own mind. Or so my mother had told me from the moment I could grasp her therapy sessions.

I was quickly finding one thing I couldn’t deny myself, though.

Wetting my lips, I unzipped my trousers and fisted my erection right as Douglas’s email appeared in my inbox. Perfect timing.

Grinning and already breathing hard, I opened the attached file and read through the contents while casually fucking my own hand. The first few pages were the ideal material to jerk off to, as well. Old case files from when Danny had still been under the care of an orphanage in Avignon, France. Back when the Circle had considered promoting her to become an executioner, just after she turned eighteen.

The files had been redacted last time I’d seen them—done by one of the last generation Circle members—but Douglas had done good work removing those black redaction marks. Now there was nothing to stop me reading about her grading missions in explicit detail. Whoever had been shadowing her hadn’t skipped a single thing, right down to her victims’ screams and desperate pleas for mercy. Pleas that went totally ignored as Danny did exactly as she’d been raised to do.

I could see it all clearly in my mind, like I’d been there myself. She was exquisite. Utter perfection, all sharp knives and pouty lips.

Tipping my head back on my chair, my eyes drifted shut, and I imagined it was her delicate hand around my cock. Her big blue eyes peering up at me like she was full of secrets and trouble, ready to fuck up my life. Fuck.

I came hard enough that I splattered my shirt and needed to grab some tissues in my desk drawer to clean it all up. Such an amateur. DeLuna had that effect on me.

Satisfied—for now—I turned my attention back to the files Douglas had untangled. Why had she never become an executioner? Was it her own choice, or—

Ah, there it was. Her promotion had failed Circle approval after the fourth seat had voted against it. Fourth seat was Emmanuel Blanchet, who’d argued that if Danny were to be made executioner, her “considerable assets for information extraction” would go to waste. In other words, he was making too much money using her as a honey trap. He wanted to continue exploiting her body, selling her cunt, rather than turn her into the kind of cold, emotionless, business-only murderer that they seemed to think executioners all were.

The fucking idiot clearly didn’t realize most executioners hid in plain sight under a whole range of unsuspecting jobs. Like me, pretending I was nothing more than tech support.