CAUGHT: A Hitman Romance (17 page)

"I'll believe you."

And with that, he turns around and walks away.

LEONARD

Now she is the one following me. I don't have to turn around to know that she is just a few steps behind me as I walk back out to the terrace.

Good girl.

I step outside and scan the area. There are still a lot of people outside on the terrace, including the group surrounding the bride and groom to be. Luckily, they are deeply immersed in their conversation and don't notice me stepping outside.

I pause for a moment, unsure of what to do, when she steps next to me.

I turn to her. She is looking up at me with those big, fiery eyes. Right now they seem to be more blue than green. Inside the house, I could have sworn that they were of a dark green.

A faint smile appears on her face, an expression that I haven't seen on her before.

Her beauty drives me insane.

I must have her.

Break her.

As if she heard my threatening thoughts, she turns ahead and walks away. She walks straight ahead, taking a few stone steps that lead down from the terrace to the giant garden that spreads ahead of us.

She doesn't turn around once, but her demeanor suggests that she is very aware of my eyes on her. She follows a little pebbly path, walking slowly but with determination.

The garden is pretty open in the area close to the terrace, displaying nothing but perfectly arranged flower beds that are starting to die now that fall is approaching.

She walks by those flower beds, distancing herself further and further away from the house and the terrace. A maze of bushes and smaller trees conceals the rest of the garden in the back, and she walks right into it.

She turns left, disappearing between two apple trees and right into the maze.

As soon as she is out of m
y
—
and everybody else'
s
—
sigh
t
I step forward, idling at the edge of the terrace for a few moments before I decide to take a stroll myself, following the path she has taken before me. I leave my glass on one of the nearby tables and go.

I look at the flowers beneath my feet left and right, pretending to adore them while I approach the obscured corner through which she disappeared.

Just before I reach it, I am startled by another couple coming out of it. They are middle-aged and unknown faces to me, probably friends of the family out on their own little stroll through the garden before twilight sets in. We almost bump into each other. I regard them with a polite nod as they walk past me, smiling equally politely.

It is a good reminder for me that I cannot be sure I will be alone with her, even in this secluded area of the garden.

When I turn around the corner into the maze, a small path lined with high hatches reveals itself in front of my eyes. I follow the passage for a while before I come to a crossroad. Two possibilities, left and right, both lined with hatches just like the one before. This really is like a maze.

I ponder for a moment before I opt for the right side, the one that leads further away from the house. The farther I walk, the wider the path gets. The hatches around it open up a little and soon, I find myself in what seems to be a little garden of itself, surrounded by light brick walls and decorated with flower beds and little bushes. It's almost like a little hall without a ceiling. I follow the pebble path that goes in a circle through the entire miniature garden, the brick wall to my right, a decorative fountain to my left, marking the center of the garden. In between, flower beds and herb beds.

When I reach the opposite side of the small garden, I notice a door in the wall. It is partly covered by ivy and doesn't look like it's meant for people to walk through it.

I stop in front of it and turn around to see whether I am still alone. There is no one around, nothing but absolute silence interrupted only by the sporadic tweeting of birds. I don't hear voices or steps. No sign of another human being.

The door is very old and rusty, and it appears to be locked. There is no path leading towards it.

But something tells me that this is where I need to go.

I take a step forward and reach for the door handle. It opens.

While the door is not locked, it is still hard to open because the hinges are rusty as hell.

I squeeze myself through, cursing at a branch that gets caught on my suit and almost rips a hole in it as I make my way through the door.

"Fuck," I hiss as the door closes behind me and I look down on the ugly scratch the damn tree left on my suit.

A girlish giggle resonates from the right.

I look up and find her standing a few feet away from me, standing on what seems to be another path, but this one is not as neatly arranged as the ones I walked before. I am not even sure we are still in the Barringtons' garden. It looks like a garden at first, but the forest that opens up behind her doesn't look so neatly groomed.

She is standing there, looking like a fucking fairy. Pale and delicate in her light gray dress, her cheeks blushed from the champagne. Her hair looks a bit messier than it did before, but otherwise her fancy and elegant getup is the exact opposite of the wild nature behind her.

My insides growl at the sight of her in this surrounding. Something so perfect, so beautiful. I cannot help imagining her tied around one those trees, her knees drenched in dirt and mud from crawling behind me, her limbs trembling with fear as I tie her up and have my way with her.

Elizabeth smiles.

"You're good," she says, tilting her head to the side. "No one ever comes here."

"I can see why," I mumble, stroking along my ruined suit.

She ignores it.

"What are you doing here?" she asks.

I clear my throat and place my hands in my pants' pockets as I slowly approach her. I notice that she wants to create distance between us. She tenses up more and more with every step I take towards her.

But she withstands the urge to retreat and lets me get so close to her that our bodies almost touch, looking up at me the with blue-green eyes, pursuing their ever-present dance of changing colors.

"Can't a man just take a walk as he pleases?" I retort, looking down at her.

The smile on her face is long gone and has been replaced with that same unreadable expression she displayed most of the day.

Then, she slowly shakes her head.

"Why did you follow me?" she asks, her voice so soft, it almost gets suffocated by the leaves rustling in the autumn wind.

"Did you not want me to?" I retort.

"Do you answer every question with another question?"

She sounds annoyed, but it doesn't show on her face. There is no emotion I could assign to the look she is giving me.

"My questions are usually more interesting than the answers I could give to yours," I say.

She snorts.

"Good comeback."

To my surprise, she suddenly turns around and walks away, following the path that leads into the forest ahead.

I catch up to her and walk next to her. I hate being the one who follows, and she better learn this sooner rather than later.

"No point in walking away," I comment. "You won't get rid of me that easily if that is what you're trying to do."

"I'm not," she says without looking at me.

She turns her head, looking up at me, her face now in the shadows of the trees above us. In this light, her eyes are of a deep green. It almost makes me wonder how I could have ever mistaken them for blue.

"All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking," she whispers.

I frown at her. "Wise words, but wha
t
—
"

"They're not mine," she interrupts me, averting her eyes to stare ahead. "Friedrich Nietzsche. A German philosopher."

"Quite the poet," I remark.

She nods. "Yes, he was a poet, too."

"What an eloquent fit, Elizabeth Barrington," I say. "For you to like European philosophers."

"Liz," she corrects me, looking up at me with furled eyebrows. "Please call me Liz."

"No one else does," I assert.

"Not in my family, no," she admits. "But it's what I prefer to be called. I don't like my actual name."

"Alright, Liz then," he says. “I'm Leonard.”

She nods politely.

"And no, I don't like European philosophers," she corrects me again. "Just him."

I grind my teeth. I don't like how she's the one handling me, correcting and lecturing me with that stern, cold attitude of hers. It is driving me insane.

This girl has no idea how much trouble she is in.

We are walking deeper into the forest, further away from anybody else. The path is narrow and forces us to walk closely next to each other. So close, that her arm randomly touches mine every so often.

It takes all my strength to pull myself together and not grab her to get a taste of her. Just her lips, those rosy, delicate lips that let so little words escape.

But I know I couldn't stop there. I would need to take her, all of her.

I cannot risk it. Not here, not now.

"Is this still part of your family's estate?" I randomly ask, mostly to get my mind from running wild.

She nods. "Yes. It's part of our garden, but a part that no one ever visits, except for me."

She stops and turns towards me, looking up with those dark, green eyes.

"No one," she repeats.

I have come to a halt next to her and she keeps staring up at me with those sublime eyes.

Fuck.

Does she want me to rip her dress apart and destroy her right here and now?

My eyes narrow as I look down on her.

"What are those marks around your legs?" I repeat my question from earlier.

"What's that tattoo you have on your back?" she asks back, throwing me a victorious smile.

"A question for a question," she adds. "Quite annoying, isn't it?"

Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together.

"You said nothing happened to you," I remind her, ignoring the fact that she obviously had a closer look at my neck than anybody else. Whenever the hell that was. "So was it something you did? Yourself?"

I can almost hear her heart jump. She can play it cool as much as she wants, but nothing goes by me. Her eyelashes flicker and she loses eye contact with me for a moment. It is just a split second, but I notice. Her breathing changed, the outline of her breasts rising up and down with deep and fast inhales and exhales, even though she tries to suppress it.

So fucking delicious.

She turns away and faces the path ahead of us, unable to look at me as she says: "What would you think if I said yes?"

"I would ask you what exactly you did," I reply. "And why you did it."

She swallows hard and doesn't say a word. Instead, she continues walking and so do I. Moments pass, minutes even. We walk next to each other in silence.

I intend to give her time, but when she is still not speaking when we reach the end of the forest, standing in front of a fence that marks the border of the Barrington estate, I decide to raise my voice again.

"Did you tie yourself up?" I ask. "Are those rope marks?"

She inhales audibly, proving me right.

She gazes over the fence at a large field, the rural landscape spreading before us. The sun is about to set. The late afternoon light has turned orange, announcing the impending twilight.

Liz places her hands on the fence as if she was looking for support.

"Well?" I probe, leaning against the fence right next to her and looking down at her expectantly.

She closes her eyes as if she was trying to hide.

"Maybe," she finally dares to say with her eyes still closed.

"Maybe, huh."

I love that expression. That vulnerable, shy girl she turns into. She is ashamed and afraid. A delicious mix that I cannot get enough of.