Red. (Den of Mercenaries #1) (9 page)

“
A
definite step
up from the last one, but you have terrible taste in hotels,” Reagan said as she entered the room of Niklaus as he held the door open.

He merely smiled at her words. “It’s enough for me.”

She would just have to take his word for that.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she carefully removed her shoes, wiggling her toes into the carpet for comfort as she had been standing on linoleum and concrete all day.

“I’m going to grab a shower,” Niklaus said as he reached for the bag that was sitting next to the night stand. “Wanna join me?”

Reagan shook her head, feeling shy all of a sudden. Sure he had just been fucking her against a brick wall, but there was something about the idea of showering with him that felt too…intimate.

“I’ll go after you if that’s okay.” Not that she had anything to wear once she got it, but she was in desperate need of one.

Like he had read her thoughts, he held his bag up, “I’ve got you covered on that front.”

As Niklaus disappeared into the bathroom, Reagan lay back, listening to the shower as it kicked on, letting her mind drift a different time when she hadn’t been as happy with Niklaus.

Already, she had to remind herself that she was still angry with him, that what he had done was not okay. But what was the point when she had already let him do exactly what he wanted? She wasn’t usually so easily bent to someone’s will, but when it came to Niklaus—he made her weak.

By the time he was walking back out the bathroom, his skin still damp from his shower, her fatigue was already setting in. She had to force herself to get up and shower away the night, then pull on Niklaus’ clothes as she crawled into the bed beside him.

She was waiting for that first caress of her skin, could practically feel it already though he had yet to actually touch her, but he didn’t touch her—at least not in that way.

His touch was surer, less lingering as he pulled her into his side, curving her into the fold of his body.

When she looked up to him for an explanation, he merely shrugged and said, “I told you we would talk.”

“Okay, tell me why you left.”

“I had another job,” he answered back immediately.

“Why didn’t you say you were leaving? You know I showed up one day and they said you had never been checked in.” Though the man that had told her didn’t look he necessarily told the truth all the time.

“If I came to see you before I left, I wouldn’t have.”

“Niklaus…”

“I’m serious.”

She shook her head, still disbelieving. “You don’t have to say that—you’ve already convinced me to sleep with you again.”

“I mean it.”

“Maybe you do.”

“You don’t believe me,” he said, though he didn’t sound offended in the slightest.

“Why should I? You haven’t given me much reason to. I know nothing about you.”

“Then
ask
.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” she said. “Just tell me everything, anything you’re willing to say.”

And he did, though he spoke haltingly. He told her about his childhood, about growing up poor with a mother that did everything in her power to make his life good.

The way he spoke about her, so easily, and with genuine adoration in his tone, she could tell he loved her very much, but there was also a wistful note to his voice that made her wonder how long it had been since he had last seen her.

“Why don’t you go visit her?” she asked.

His lips parted, but no words come out, not immediately. “I’ll save that story for another time.”

“Then tell me something else.” She didn’t expect to get all his secrets in a night, not even in two.

Niklaus didn’t hesitate in telling her more, his voice soothing as he wove stories of his life and the sketchy encounters he always found himself in.

At some point, as she remained tucked into his side, she fell asleep listening to his voice.

R
eagan had fallen
asleep with her head on Niklaus’ chest as he’d traced indiscernible patterns along her skin with his fingertips. She couldn’t think of a single person that she had wanted to fall asleep next to, at least not this deeply.

But she hadn’t been so far under that his movements hadn’t eventually jostled her awake.

At first, she had thought he was trying to wake her, but as she opened her eyes, gently sliding out of his hold, she realized that he was still fast asleep, his eyes darting behind closed lids. Even with just the tension in his body, she knew something was wrong and wanted to soothe whatever it was away, but it was the stricken look on his face that worried her most.

While he slept, he didn’t look as defiant, as dangerous as he did when he was awake and able to use words to his advantage. She had seen him asleep before, if only briefly, and during that time, he had looked like the weight of the world was finally off his shoulders, and he could breathe again.

Now? Well, now he looked like that weight was back on and it was crushing him.

Without thinking, Reagan reached for him, smoothing her fingers over his shoulders, hoping to ease the tension that seemed to be bundled there, but her touch had just skipped over the scarred tattoo when he suddenly bolted up, grabbing hold of her wrists as he went.

In seconds she was underneath him in the bed, her hands gripped so tightly that even if she wanted to get free, she couldn’t.

“Niklaus,” she whispered, careful to keep her voice down with the frenzy she could see in his gaze. “It’s me.”

He didn’t let up, not immediately. Niklaus just looked down at her as if he didn’t recognize her, as though whatever he was seeing was meshing with the nightmare that had kept him under.

Blinking slowly, the fog seemed to clear, and he gradually released his hold on her, but didn’t move off her. Not yet.

“Sorry, I—”

“It’s fine. You didn’t really hurt me.” But she didn’t try and touch his scar again.

Gradually, he sat up, rubbing at his eyes as he sighed heavily. All too quickly he went from one extreme to a look of sadness that made her ache for him.

What did he dream about that put that expression on his face?

They didn’t ask a lot of personal questions when they were together, though she had learned a few more things about him this time around as opposed to the last.

But this…this she hoped he would share, if only so she could ease that storm she saw behind his eyes.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He didn’t respond for at least a minute, but he turned back towards her, the emotions she had seen replaced with darker ones, but at least she was more familiar with the way he was looking at her now.

“Help me forget,” he said as he pushed off the headboard, pulling her into him.

She looked into those fathomless blue eyes of his and asked the one question she wanted the answer to. “What are you trying to forget?”

Carefully, his fingers drifted beneath the edge of her panties, deftly pulling them down and off, tossing them over the side of the bed. Her bra quickly followed and without them, she was naked before his gaze while he remained clothed.

Now that she thought about it…there was never a time when she had seen him fully naked. And at that moment, as she thought about the way he held her arms pinned to the bed, she couldn’t remember what his skin felt like.

But tonight, whatever had caused the change in him had his shirt coming off, revealing ropes of muscle that flexed with the movement. To say that he was a work of art was an understatement. From the indentations at his waist, to the sharp lines that made up his abdomen, it was quite clear that he was cut. Yet, he wasn’t physically perfect.

He had scars, lots of them, some of which she was finally seeing and not just where the two stars were inked into his chest. Another looked like someone had slashed across his stomach with a knife, and even one that looked suspiciously like a bite mark.

Whatever life he had come from, it hadn’t been an easy one.

And she had never seen them, not until after he had crawled off her, going over to his bag to grab a condom that she saw his back for the first time.

And the scars that were all over it.

She gasped, unable to contain the sound, not even as her hand lifted to her mouth as she stared.

Jagged, vertical lines stretched nearly across the entirety of his back, some bigger than others, and a few that even looked like they were still painful to the touch.

How had he even gotten them?

Her minds ran wild with possibilities, each one worse than the last, and she was so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed Niklaus moving back towards her until he was right back between her legs, but his expression was different now.

Less lust.

More…something.

He held her face in his hands, far gentler than she was expecting. “It was a long time ago.”

“But—”

“No, I don’t want you to worry yourself with this. Because right now,” he said then paused, as though considering his next words, “when I’m with you, I don’t think about them.”

She didn’t know who or why the scars had been embedded into his skin, but she wanted to erase them, eradicate the pain that she knew would have been excruciating for him.

Reagan didn’t realize there were tears in her eyes before one slipped free, spilling down her face.

Very carefully, he used his thumb to brush it away, bringing his lips to her cheek as though she were the one in need of comfort instead of him.

“Can I…”

She was almost afraid to finish that question, not sure whether for him or for her. She didn’t want to bring up bad memories for him, but she wanted to touch them, to offer him comfort when he quite obviously hadn’t had it then.

Reagan didn’t have to finish her question for him to understand what she was asking. Though his motions were stiff, he did turn, offering her an unobstructed view of what she wanted to see, and now that he was close, they only made her hurt more.

The scars didn’t seem to be made in any discernible pattern, but it was quite obvious that whoever had left the marks on him had wanted him to hurt. Badly.

Hesitantly, she reached out, careful to let her fingers ghost over one of the lines that was a shade lighter than the rest of his skin. With the way that the scars looked, she had expected to feel something when she touched them, but it was just as smooth as the rest of him.

Though healed, those scars remained with him.

“You got the others covered up,” she said after some time, tracing the length of another line. “Why not these?”

“I wanted the reminder,” he said, glancing back at her over his shoulder, his expression unreadable.

“Of what? Pain?”

“No, that I won’t break.”

She was readying to go on, to offer him comfort in the form of words, but he shushed her with a kiss, almost making her forget what she was questioning him about.

This time felt different.

It wasn’t like they hadn’t ever touched before, that they had never explored each other’s bodies, but as her fingers drifted up his spine, feeling the grooves, but also over the scars the decorated his skin, she felt like she was feeling him for the first time.

Like she was becoming lost all over again to the things he made her feel.

“
N
iklaus
?”

He turned his head in her direction, her calling for him distracting him long enough that he lost track of what shape he was tracing on her leg.

“Hmm…”

Shifting onto her side she looked down at him, her expression unreadable. He would have thought after the hours they spent rolling around in bed that she would be a little more relaxed next to him, but she just looked inquisitive, as though she was trying to figure something out about him.

“What do these mean?” she asked, gesturing with a touch of her fingers to one of the stars tattooed on his chest. The raised skin of the scar felt different to those on his back. Here, she could feel the texture.

“To me? Nothing. To someone else? Everything.”

She didn’t understand. “Then why get them if they mean nothing to you.”

“Because they meant something to someone, and in a moment of weakness, that someone meant something to
me
.”

Reagan still didn’t understand, not really, but the way he spoke about it made her wonder about the person he meant.

“Did you lose them?”

He shook his head, seeming sad in that moment. “I don’t think I ever really had them.” Then, he touched her face, smiling at her in a way that melted her heart. “But I have you, and that’s better.”

What could she say in that moment that could adequately describe what she was feeling for him…what she had been trying to avoid since the very beginning.

But his next words brought her back to reality.

“Don’t,” he said after a moment, his gaze drifting over her face.

Confused, she asked, “Don’t what?”

“Don’t fall in love with me.”

Was she that transparent that he could see just how much she enjoyed being around him? And worse, how could she possibly be falling in love with someone she hardly knew, not really anyway.

Unable to respond as she didn’t know how to respond to that, Reagan remained silent, listening to the thumping beat of his heart, the cadence slowing with every breath he took before he was asleep, still holding her like she was a lifeline.

Even as he slipped under, she still remained awake a while longer, too restless to fall asleep.

O
ne thing Niklaus
had learned after a year-and-a-half on the job was when to walk away. Whether it was just him losing perspective, or that he was risking death by staying on the mission any longer than what was necessary, he knew when it was time to abandon ship and get as far away from it as he could.

It wasn’t that he was in a particularly dire place, or even that his life was being threatened in any way, but his mind, his thoughts, his
sanity
…he felt like he was losing it.

All because of the girl fast asleep tucked into his side.

How had another week already passed them by? Niklaus could still remember flying out for London, helping an associate with an extraction job just six months ago because he had felt he had gotten too close to Reagan.

From the curve of her smile when she saw him, or how they fit together like two puzzle pieces when she was by his side…He had enjoyed it, the time he spent with her, and though he had been a little reluctant the first time around, he still had been able to leave her without thinking too much on it.

But now, lying next to her, feeling the way her chest rose and fell against his side, how her dainty hand rested against his chest, her fingers nearly touching one of the stars he had inked on his chest, Niklaus knew it was time to leave again.

He didn’t know when things had shifted between them, or rather, when it had finally shifted for
him
. He’d been content with using her for his own selfish needs, releasing pent up aggression that constantly hounded him.

Except now, he was beginning to crave more of her. Her time. Her attention. Everything.

He just wanted her…

Already, she had called off twice from that job of hers just so she could spend more time with him, and instead of dissuading her, he had been silently glad that she had.

Niklaus was beginning to realize it was no longer just a hookup to him. He actually
liked
her.

And knowing that, even without having ever spoken those words aloud made the delicate gold chain around his neck to feel a little heavier.

He knew the impossible task he was undertaking, his debts, and obligations. Though he had already killed three so far, he knew without a doubt that the others, those that were in higher positions in their respective organizations, wouldn’t be nearly as easy, especially when so few of them came stateside where he had the advantage.

This obligation to Sarah was the reason he had accepted Z’s offer in the first place, allowing the man to mold and transform him into the very person he needed to be to get the job done.

So if this was what he gave his life and identity to be, why was he fucking around? When he wasn’t working towards the goal, making sure that he finally brought an end to the men that tortured without care, he felt like he was failing at the one thing he should have been able to do.

The last thing he needed to be doing was relaxing, letting his guard down, and enjoying the company of someone like Reagan.

That wasn’t what he deserved.

It was because of him that Sarah had died so brutally, and worse, only he knew the truth of this. Her family still mourned the daughter they lost, his disappearance long forgotten by all except his mother.

Only once had he had the courage to venture back to that place in the dead of night, peeking through the windows of his old family home just to catch a single, quick glance at her.

Maybe it was ritual. Maybe he had caught her in a reflective mood, but she’d been sitting in the rocking chair, holding a picture of the pair of them, her eyes sad as she regarded them.

How easy it would have been, knocking on the door, letting her know that he was fine, that there was no reason for her to be sad anymore.

He could still remember the self-control it had taken for him to content himself with just the reminder of her face before he slipped back out into the night.

Some could still have a family—sometimes their assignments were actually sanctioned by various governments—but for Niklaus, whose introduction to the Den had been as brutal as it was, he couldn’t ever see anyone from his previous life.

And that led for a lonely existence.

That, on the other hand, he did deserve.

He didn’t want, or need, anyone else getting hurt because of him.

Slipping out of the bed, knowing that Reagan slept like the dead, he walked over to the small closet, reaching for the book bag he had thrown up there earlier. Maybe some part of him had known that he needed to leave, otherwise, why would he have stopped by one of his drop-spots and packed it full of bills he had on hand. He’d sat and counted it all out, making sure he had the exact amount that she said she needed to open up the place of her dreams.

No, Niklaus realized belatedly. It wasn’t because he was planning on skipping out on her again that he had gathered up the money. He had wanted to give it to her, hopefully see a smile—even as she asked him where he got it from—and be glad that he was finally able to give someone something. But he knew that it could never be like that. Not when she could be hurt just by his association with her. Once again, he found himself leaving another piece behind.

Why had he ever entertained the idea in the first place? He and Reagan could never be anything more than what they were, and he knew that without a shadow of a doubt.

Never mind another case of mistaken identity, after the things he had seen, and the men he had crossed, there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t be hurt, and then the next time around, he would have no one else to blame but himself.

Not her too…he couldn’t have her on his conscious.

Dressing quickly, he packed what little he had left in the room, scanning to make sure, leaving the book bag on the table for her to find in the morning.

As he was leaving, Niklaus turned back at the last moment, drifting to her side. He smoothed her hair back out of her face, gently so as not to wake her. Tracing her face with his eyes, he pressed a kiss to the center of her forehead, another light one to her lips, then drew back.

There was no farewell, not even in his thoughts as he backed away.

Though he knew it was, he still didn’t want this to be the end.

Not yet.

B
efore she had even opened
her eyes, Reagan knew he was gone. She could feel it in the chill of the air, the way the silence of the room seemed to try and swallow her whole.

She turned, reaching out anyway, finding the spot where Niklaus had lain before empty and cold. It shouldn’t have bothered her—it wasn’t like this was the first time he had done it.

But as she sat up, holding the sheet to her chest looking around at how barren the place felt without presence, it felt like her heart was fracturing.

It had only taken mere days for her to recall why exactly she had missed him so much. She should have known better. Once should have been enough for her to know not to give him more, to be careful with her feelings and thoughts and dreams.

Her gaze landed on the bag, the lone item in the room that didn’t belong to the motel and she hadn’t brought along.

Maybe Niklaus had forgotten it in his haste to get away from her…

Before, she might not have looked, would have held onto it hopes that he would come back looking for it.

She would still hold onto it now, but not before she had a look inside.

Tearing at the zips, she tugged them down, pulling at the edges of it to look inside, and promptly blinked, just to make sure she was seeing correctly.

With a shaky hand, she reached in, pulling out one stack of twenty-dollar bills, another of hundreds, and even some in fifties. Reagan didn’t even realize she was dumping the money out of the bag as she tried to make of what she was seeing, but it wasn’t until she got to the change in the very bottom of the bag that she got an idea.

She could not have been sure, she had only mentioned it in passing, just an afterthought in the conversation they’d had, but as she sat at the table, counting each bill, tallying the numbers up in her head, and by the end of it, it felt like he had taken her breath away all over again.

$167,852.36 exactly…

This wasn’t a mistake on his part, but a goodbye.

He wasn’t coming back.