7
1007 Words
“Your minions set it up for you, huh? Just one more way to wash your dirty money?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, in case you’re wondering, you’ve got ninety-six of them.”
“Diaper factories?”
“Shell corporations.”
He pauses, examining my expression. His own reflects deepening interest and what I’d think was a glimmer of respect, if I didn’t know better.
“Have you been studying up on me, little thief?”
“Something like that.”
Ignoring how I threw his own words back at him, he says,
“Why?”
“As a general rule, I do my homework before a job.”
He studies me with the same ferocious focus I felt at the restaurant. His attention is like a physical force. A whisper of electricity zinging along my nerve endings. A finger reaching out to tap me on the shoulder.
A sledgehammer crashing into my chest.
He says, “What else did you discover about me in your studies?”
My temper—short even under the best of circumstances— snaps. “I’ll tell you what I didn’t discover.”
“Which is?”
“That you’re so annoyingly chatty. Are you gonna kill me or what? I’ve got better things to do with my time than talk to the likes of you.”
Oh, god, that feels good. Watching the expression of astonishment cross his evil, chiseled features is sweet, sweet, sweet.
I bet he can’t remember the last time someone disrespected him.
Especially a girl.
Score one for womankind.
My sense of satisfaction comes to an abrupt end when he grabs me by both arms and hauls me across the seat onto his lap.
I gasp as his arms close hard around me.
He’s huge and impossibly strong, holding me easily even as I thrash and struggle. When I scream and kick out at the door, the cab driver squawks in panic.
“Hey! No rough stuff! I’ll pull over and throw you both out!”
Liam says calmly, “Pull over and you’ll get a bullet in your skull, mate. Keep driving.”
When the sputtering driver turns the wheel and slows, headed to the side of the road, my captor adds, “I’m Liam Black.”
Thirty seconds later, trapped and seething in his arms as the cab drives straight down the street at top speed, I say through gritted teeth, “Boy, that must really come in handy.”
“It has its uses.” He gazes down at me, helpless in the cage of his arms. “Answer my question.”
“No.”
“No?”
Judging by his tone, he can’t decide if he’s frustrated or amused by my flat refusal. He stares at my profile for a moment, then says suddenly, “You’re not afraid of me.”
He says it like he just discovered the lost city of Atlantis. With surprise and wonder and—weirdly—a touch of pride.
“Let’s just say I have a healthy respect for your ability to make people dead. Now let me go.”
“So you can break into another unsuspecting victim’s business and steal infant care products?”
“So I can jab my thumbs into your eyeballs.”
He clucks. “So violent.”
“I’m not the one who just threatened the driver’s life.”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
“Especially not you, the guy who’s about to sink my feet into cement blocks and throw me into the Charles River.”
He bends his head to my ear. His voice drops to a husky whisper. “It would be the reservoir, not the river. But you already know I’m not going to hurt you. Now answer my goddamn question about why you donated what you took from me before I turn you over on my lap and give you something to really be snippy about. Which, let’s be honest, both of us would enjoy.”
Then he inhales deeply against my neck and makes a low sound of pleasure in the back of his throat.
I’m speechless.
My face is flaming, and my heart is pounding, and I can’t get my mouth to form words.
Me, the girl who can talk straight through anything from a root canal to a funeral, cannot find the ability to speak, simply because a cold-blooded killer sniffed my throat.
There must be some kind of mind-altering agent in his cologne.
“I…I…”
He skims the tip of his nose against my earlobe, causing my entire body to break out in gooseflesh.
“Hmm?”
My voice choked, I say, “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
He’s all feigned innocence, the heartless SOB. “Let me go!”
“If you answer my question, I’ll let you go.”
That surprises me. He doesn’t seem reasonable that way.
“Really?”
His chuckle is low and full of self-satisfaction. “No.”
At times like these, I really wish I had super powers. It would be so lovely to manifest a pair of poisonous barbed tentacles to wrap around his thick, smug neck.
“So in addition to being a general, all-around bad guy, you’re a liar, too.”
“Aye. Comes with the territory. But people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, my mouthy little thief.”
His lips move over the sensitive skin beneath my earlobe as he speaks, raising the hair on the back of my neck and sending my pulse haywire.
Then I realize he said “my” thief, and my heart stops altogether.
Because there are far, far worse things he could do to me than throw me into the Charles River. Catching the attention of a man like Liam Black doesn’t have to end in blood.
If he decides he likes me, it could end in something worse than death.
“Easy,” he says gruffly, pulling back to look at me. “What just happened?”
- Writer
