Assassin's Promise, The Red Team Series, Book 5 (25 page)

“I don’t think I have a choice. Greer’s saved me more times than I can count. I obviously don’t know what I’m up against.”

Hope reached out and squeezed her arm. “I’m here, if you need me. Even if you just want to talk. Generally, I’m messing around in the garage. But they have a great pool here, too, and I’m often in it.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

A few hours later, Remi leaned back against the pillows and stretched her legs out over the papers on her bed. She wondered how much longer she could delay going back to the university. If things didn’t change fast, there was no way she could do that. Even if she put a very public halt to her work on the Friendship Community, it was already too late—she was in too deep.
 

She wouldn’t survive a return to the university at this point. And how many others would she be endangering simply by being on campus when the WKB came for her again?

She’d have to let things play out for a few more days, then decide what to do. Maybe the provost would be understanding if he thought she was attempting to comply. Maybe Clancy could start her classes for her for a short while.

She listened to the sounds in the house. She could hear mumbled voices of the guys in the billiards room downstairs. There was a faint buzz from the TV down the hall in the south bedroom wing. It all made her feel comfortable. And not alone. Bad things always seemed to happen when she was by herself lately.
 

She changed into a pair of flowery boxer briefs and a tank top, then brushed her teeth and got ready for bed.
 

“Hey, Remi.” Greer’s voice came into her room as he knocked on her open door. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Greer?” she called out. “Can we talk for a bit?”

“Sure.” He walked down the short hallway sandwiched between her walk-in closet and bathroom. She didn’t know if all the bedrooms were set up the same way, but hers felt a lot like a hotel room—except the furnishings and linens were top grade.
 

Greer leaned against the corner where the hallway met her room. “S’up?”

He wore a white T-shirt that looked sprayed on. It conformed to his muscles, leaving nothing—and everything—to the imagination. His brown hair was mussed, as if he’d run his hands through it, making it spiky and unkempt. A day’s growth of beard shadowed his square jaw. He looked as tired as she felt. Neither of them had gotten much sleep lately.
 

“Nothing. Nothing new, anyway. I’m tired, but I don’t think I can sleep.”

“Might help if you close your door.”

“I like the noise. I like hearing people around me.”

He came into the room and started stacking the papers spread out on her bed. “Remi, you gotta leave this stuff downstairs.” He put everything back in the box and carried it over to her dresser.

“Why?”

“Because it’s ugly shit. You need your room to be a refuge. In my world, you learn to keep a space that feels peaceful.”

They were in his world now, weren’t they? In her world, she’d lived her work, 24-7. It defined her life, as she’d intended. Greer wasn’t just a wrinkle she hadn’t planned for—he was a cliff she was terribly afraid he was going to ask her to jump off.

He sat on the bed, folding his legs as he faced her. “Want to tell me what happened downstairs when you saw Whiddon?”

“No.” The shock had been terrible. Prophet Josiah had lectured long and passionately about the spiritually corrupting power of the secular world, but all the while he was living in both worlds, rising in the ranks of the nation’s political leadership and keeping a harem in the Grummond Society.
 

She would never forget the day he selected her for his wife. All the twelve-year-old girls had been presented to him, in their little white dresses…the only dresses to that point in their lives they’d been allowed to adorn with lace and ruffles.

They’d stood in line in front of him. He’d picked three of them. She had no real understanding of that event’s significance. Her mom had gone pale when the news was delivered to her.

“You said you would end him,” Remi whispered, hoping she’d misheard him.

He neither confirmed that promise nor denied it. “What did he do to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

He took hold of her hands, threading his fingers between hers. “Remi, we haven’t known each other long, but we’ve been through a lot together already. You know you can trust me.”

“He isn’t worth the cost of ending him,” she said, watching Greer. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
 

Greer didn’t answer, but his face said it all. She could tell his mind had already been set. She shook her head. “Sometimes, you look like a college student, like any of my students. And other times you look like an ancient warrior with eyes that see the fire that made the glass, never the glass itself.”
 

“You can turn the conversation away from yourself, but the question remains, and I will get an answer.”

She ignored that. “I don’t want to talk about me. Let’s talk about you. What happened after the home invasion you told me about when you were a kid?” She rubbed her thumb over his. “Having been through that now—more than once—that had to be devastating as a kid.”

“It was. After Gramps and I got my parents and sisters into the panic room, we took care of the bad guys.” He sighed. “When my family came out, there was blood everywhere, all over me, Gramps, the walls, the floors. A baptism in hell.”

“You had to be in shock.”

He shook his head. “Two of them got away. I wanted it finished. Gramps and I went after them. They showed up dead a few weeks later. One had a lethal allergy to bee stings. Sadly a bee got in his car and stung him. The other wrecked his car, wrapped it around a tree.”

“Did you kill them?”

“That would be illegal.” He shook his head, giving her a look that said he was shocked she thought he was guilty. “They were on Interpol’s top hundred wanted. I suppose karma caught up with them.” He brushed his thumbs down the sides of hers. “After that, my parents became skittish around me. Like you, they thought I was guilty. I was allowed to go to my sisters’ weddings, years later, but only if I promised no one would die.”

Remi’s eyes widened. “Did anyone die?”

“No.” He grinned like they weren’t talking about murder and assassinations. “It was a wedding.” He looked at their hands. “Gramps was gone by then. I think he outlived his enemies, for none came to make trouble.” He looked at her over their hands. “My folks threw a welcome home party when I got back from Afghanistan. They were so careful to keep up appearances. They wore their fake smiles and perfect clothes and all the neighbors came.”
 

“I’m sure they were happy to have you back in the States.”

He shrugged. “Would have been cleaner for them had I not returned.” He looked at their joined hands. “When my fiancée left, it was as if a divide was carved between me and them, like if she couldn’t even stand me, then they’d been right in their judgment of me.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re right. I think you’re pretty awesome.” Tears distorted the seam of his sleeve, where she’d locked her eyes. “Besides my mom, you’re the only other person I’ve ever felt safe around.”

He looked into her eyes. “I’m glad I got to meet you. You’re different from any woman I’ve known.”

She blinked and met his eyes. “I’ve never known anyone like you, either.”

Greer smiled. “That’s probably a good thing.”

Her gaze lowered to his T-shirt, then she met his eyes and asked, “Does it bother you, what you do?”

“No.”

“What happens if you make a mistake? Kill someone who’s innocent?”

“Karma works the same for everyone. But I can usually tell the guilty from the innocent when I’m standing at the business end of a knife or a gun.” He held her gaze. “We’re going to be lovers, you know, not just fuck buddies.”

Remi started and almost pulled away, but his hands tightened.
 

“If that means you want one of the other guys posted on your guard duty, let me know, but it won’t change our fate.”

Remi slowly smiled. “You seem rather certain of yourself.”

“I am.”

“How do you know?”

“Besides the way you kiss me?”

She nodded.

“Because you’re the first woman who’s willing to touch me without being paid.”

Remi frowned. “You frequent prostitutes?”

“No. I hire women to sleep with me. No sex. Just sleep. They’re sleep partners.”

She studied his eyes. “Why?”

“I don’t like being alone when I sleep.”

“You could just find yourself a girlfriend.”

“It’s not that easy. You’ve seen why. I’m not exactly an asset to a woman interested in building a future.”

“You think I’m not interested in a future with a guy?”

“If you were, you would have already.”

“Maybe I’ve been busy building my career.”

“Or maybe you’ve been busy hiding from relationships. Why would that be?”

She pulled her hands free, stung by how close he came to her reality…and how neatly he circled back around to the subject of her freak-out in the conference room. She stood up, silently inviting him to leave.

Greer stood up too, rising next to her, towering over her, breathing her breath, which now came in fast, shallow pulls of air. He lifted his hand to her neck, capturing her rapid pulse. He lowered his head, holding her gaze until he was too close for her to focus on, watching her lips as his mouth brushed hers.
 

She shivered at the contact. Her body tightened from her breasts to her thighs. Breathing became a struggle. She wanted to press in to him, wanted to feel his arms around her, wanted to prove to him she hadn’t been hiding from men…just from every man who wasn’t him.

She caved first. Tiptoeing as she leaned in to him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him closer. She moaned. He growled in answer. His hands moved over her, touching her shoulders, her neck, lifting her chin. His lips parted and his mouth opened. She wanted to feel his tongue inside her, to know the taste of him. She was glad when he backed her up against the wall; she needed its support.
 

He broke from the kiss. He kissed the space between the corner of her mouth and her chin, then her throat, then the curve from her shoulders to her neck. She arched in to him. He pressed his lips to the soft flesh below her collarbone. Her hands were on his biceps. She felt them bulge as he lifted her.

She wrapped her legs around his waist. Gripping his face, she lifted it for a kiss. She started to tug at his shirt. He set her down so she could pull it up. She stood between his bare feet to push it up. He leaned forward, catching her mouth with his, his shirt still fisted in her hands. He wrapped his arms around her body, surrounding her in his strength.
 

She moved her body against his, reveling in the waves of movement they shared, body to body, mouth to mouth.

Too soon, he paused, drawing a long breath as he leaned his forehead to hers, the back of her head hard against the wall. He took his shirt all the way off. Gripping it in one hand, he set his fists against the wall, caging her between his arms.
 

She watched his face as her hands slipped down his neck, over his collarbone to the light fur on his chest.

“Admit you will be mine,” he demanded.

She smiled, shocked that he’d gone all primitive. “I’ll admit no such thing.”

He made a small predatory smile as he caught her throat in one hand, then slid his fingers around the nape of her neck and lifted her chin up with his thumb. He kissed her, his mouth open, hungry. “Admit it. Because you will.”
 

“No.”

“Mine to protect, mine to cherish, mine to hold, mine to lift up.” He looked at her. “Mine to follow.”

She shook her head. “What kind of man says things like that?” She frowned. “What kind of man even does those kinds of things?”

“The kind of man I am. A man who’s been alone so long that he isn’t really living.”

“You really scare me, Greer. You don’t want the part of me I can give you. You want all of me.”

He nodded. “I do. I want all of you.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do that
yet
.” He drew back. Heat rolled off him like a tin roof in the summer. “I’ve waited this long; I can wait longer.”

She watched him walk out of her room, taking his heat and leaving her hunger.
 

Chapter Twenty-Four

Greer startled awake. It was still dark out. He’d opened his window before he went to bed. The fresh air calmed him; it was a normal temperature.

His body was hot, but the sheets were cool. He spread his legs to find the places his body hadn’t heated. The cool cotton against his bare skin gave him a hard-on, which only increased his heat. The hunger Remi had started was spreading like a coal fire through his body. And he knew she wouldn’t be coming to help him.
 

He checked the clock. Two a.m. He leaned his head back on his folded arms and closed his eyes, clearing his mind, emptying it of any content, then slipping into the forced nothingness. He could sleep on demand. It was a skill he’d developed long before the Army, one his grandfather had taught him in his early teens. He used it tonight, as he did most nights.

Greer sat in Sally’s room at the clinic in town. The machine monitoring her vital signs quietly beeped, its green screen illuminating the dim room. He looked at the bed where Sally lay. A sheet had been drawn up over her face. The machine began to scream as the beeps merged into a solid flat line.
 

Greer jumped up and grabbed her shoulders through the sheet, shaking her, shouting at her. The monitor went silent. Sally reached up and pulled the sheet down. She stared at him from empty eyes. No, not empty. Where her eyeballs should have been were white, glowing beams of light. Her hands reached for his. They were like ice.
 

“Sally, stop it. You’re not dead,” he shouted at her.

She sat up and pointed to her parents, who’d come to collect her from the clinic and bring her back to the community. She silently mouthed, “Help me!”