Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(71)

I agreed with Griffin. I wanted him dead as well. In fact, I intended to kill him myself. But this was no time for it. “We have no weapons. We’re half-dressed. We’ll come back for him. We can’t do it now.”

His face twisted, and for a minute, I thought he would throw me out of the way and jump through the door to strangle Marcel.

But then he nodded. “Okay. We’ll come back for him.”

“Yes,” I said.

We started up the hallway.

The carpet was soft under my feet. I remembered that it was a pretty periwinkle blue color, but I couldn’t see the color in the darkness. I liked the way my bare feet sank into it.

I started to step into the living room.

Griffin yanked me back, pressing me into the wall.

What?  He pointed.

There was a man sitting at the front door, which was wide open. He was smoking a cigarette and nursing a can of beer. I guessed he was keeping watch. The only thing in our favor was that he was facing out, looking to see if anyone was coming through the door.

How were we going to get past him? That was the only door out of the house besides the one in the basement, and it was padlocked shut.

He needed to move. Maybe if I made a noise, if I threw something into the kitchen, for instance, he’d go in there to investigate, and we could run through.

I was still holding the key. It had gotten us out of the basement. I guessed we didn’t need it anymore. I hurtled the key through the air, aiming for the doorway to the kitchen.

There was a small noise, metal striking metal, almost musical.

The man at the door turned around. “Mick, that you? You in the kitchen?”  No one answered.

The man sighed. He got up from his chair and loped through the living room to go into the kitchen.

He had to walk right past the hallway, where Griffin I were hidden in the shadows. I held my breath, praying he wouldn’t see us, that he wouldn’t look.

He didn’t.

We ran out as soon as he was out of sight. We bee lined out the front door, down over the steps of the front porch, and onto the gravel driveway.

I yelped.

Gravel on bare feet hurt.

“Quiet,” said Griffin.

He was striding across the gravel as if it didn’t bother his feet at all. I hobbled after him, flinching at each painful step. We made our way towards the van that was parked in the driveway.

And then the porch light came on.

Griffin hurled me on the ground, throwing me behind the van. I fell blindly onto the gravel, face up. It hurt. Tiny, sharp rocks bit into my mostly bare back. I managed not to make a sound.

He leapt on top of me, covering my body with his own.

“You looking for something?” said a distant voice.

“Yeah, I heard something in the kitchen. But I checked it out, and there wasn’t anyone in there.”

Griffin’s face was over mine. His eyes were hard, glittering—his jaw clenched. But there was something intimate about our closeness, possibly because we were hardly clothed. I could feel the warmth of his skin against my own.

A laugh. “You had too much to drink. You’re hearing things.”

Griffin shifted, his pelvis moving away from me.

He had an erection. I felt it.

I bit my lip. It turned me on. But being turned on seemed wrong. It wasn’t appropriate, we were on the run, and the things that had happened to Griffin...

How was he managing it, anyway? I tried to ask him silently, as if we could communicate with our eyes, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore.

“Maybe,” a voice was responding on the porch. “It’s for sure that there’s no way they got out of that basement with those padlocks on the door.”

“Definitely,” said the other voice. “Lay off the beer, huh?”

The sound of a door slamming.

The light went off.

Griffin whispered to me, his voice urgent. “We can’t take the car. It’ll tip them off. They think we’re still locked up. We need to use that to buy time.”

I nodded. “Makes sense.”

He got up and hauled me to my feet. Grasping my hand, he dove into the woods that surrounded the house.

I did my best to keep up.

The woods were dark, because there wasn’t much of a moon out tonight. Griffin moved like a cat, but I wasn’t as skilled as him.

I ran into branches and stepped on thorny vines. The forest reached out for me, tangling in my hair, lashing my cheeks, tripping me.

Griffin moved on regardless, his grip an iron vise on my hand. He yanked me after him, no matter how I faltered.

And I did my best not to cry out every time something cut or hit or scratched me.

If he noticed my discomfort, he didn’t let on.

Then, abruptly, he stopped.

He shoved me against a massive tree trunk, pressed his body against mine, and assaulted my mouth with his own.

I was so surprised by the kiss that I just let it happen, not even responding.

Griffin didn’t seem to mind. His hands were launching an onslaught on the scraps of blanket he’d tied around my chest. He pushed the fabric out of the way, prodding my breasts, pinching my nipples.

I gasped. Seemingly against my will, heat coursed through my body. I went limp, surrendering to the violent movement of his fingers.

He pulled his mouth away from mine, his expression feral. His mouth went to my breasts. His lips found my sensitive places. His teeth scraped me, bit me.