"Vonnegut ordered me to kill you," he says gently, holding my gaze. "To prove myself. I told him that I would, that I wanted to, to prove that I was trustworthy, and he let me go. Of course, I had no intentions of killing you. I left that day and went into hiding. Niklas, knowing only the Order his entire life, decided to stay. I thought maybe he just needed some time to figure things out, to decide what was best for him. I kept out of Niklas' sights as well-if he didn't know where I was, he couldn't deceive Vonnegut or feel that he had to choose between us. But then I heard from Fredrik that Niklas had been contracted to kill me and has been looking for me ever since."

"What a bastard," I say, shaking my head in disbelief and then backtrack. "You said primarily. Other than me, why did you leave the Order?"

"It was a long time coming," he says. "When I had to kill my father to save my brother, I knew then it was time for me to leave." His strong fingers caress my softer ones. "You gave me the final motivation I needed to finally do it."

I reach out and touch his lightly unshaven face with all of my fingertips. He continues to watch me, his eyes probing mine through the small, confined space between us, thick with passion and understanding. I lean in and kiss his lips.

"I'm sorry about your brother," I say softly.

He brushes his lips against mine, his touch spreading through my body and down into my toes like a shot of smooth whiskey.

"I wasn't testing you, Sarai." He kisses me again.

"Then what were you doing?" I kiss him likewise and wilt when I feel his hands move across both of my thighs.

He lifts me into his arms, wrapping my legs around his waist, my ass fitted in the palms of his large hands. My fingers crawl up the sides of his stubbly face and touch his lips before my own lips do.

"I was waiting for when the time was right," he says as his mouth finds my neck.

I wind all ten fingers through his short brown hair, raising my chin as his mouth searches my throat and my jawline. My eyes are shut, the lids heavy with a warm, tingling sensation that I know better than to fight against. He walks with me across the room, though to where I don't know and I don't care. I tighten my bare legs around his waist, the cool, smooth surface of his leather belt pressing against my inner thighs. My fingers are fitted around the buttons of his shirt, breaking them apart with ease.

Victor never answers my question, but I don't care about that, either.

His lips cover mine, the warm wetness of his tongue tangling eagerly with my own. Without breaking the kiss, Victor drops my feet back on the floor to slip my panties off one leg at a time. He raises my arms above me and strips off my shirt, dropping it on the floor. My hands fumble his belt, yanking the prong from the leather hole and sliding the rest of it from the loops in one quick motion. He steps out of his pants and tight, black boxer-briefs. He breathes hot and heavily into my mouth as I'm hoisted back around his waist, and he shoves my back against the wall as if he doesn't want to wait long enough to blindly find our way to the guest bedroom. I don't want to wait, either. We've waited long enough as it is.

I feel his cock enter me and before he slides me all the way down on it, a shot of pleasure races through my thighs and up my spine, turning my neck to rubber, causing my head to fall back against the sheetrock wall. The backs of my eyes tingle and burn. The warm, wetness between my legs inundated by a hot, shivering thrill.

He thrusts once, deep inside of me and holds himself there, grasping my hips, my back pressed against the cool wall. I open my eyes slowly, still having little control over my lids, and I gaze into his staring back at me with the same voracious intensity. Tiny, uneven breaths waver through my parted lips. My arms are wrapped securely around him, my fingers prodding the tight muscles in his back.

"I've wanted this for so long," I say breathily.

"You have no idea...," he says in return and then devours me with a kiss, so forceful that I almost lose control of my muscles. My thighs constrict around his waist when he drives his cock into me again. I shudder and gasp, the back of my head falling hard against the wall. He holds my body in place with his arms fitted underneath my thighs as he drives his hips toward mine, tiny explosions going off inside my stomach with every thrust.

My back arches, my breasts pushed into his view where he covers one nipple with his mouth. I raise my arms above my head, seeking something above me that I might use to hold onto so that I can ride him, but I find nothing. I drape my arms around his neck to hold my weight up and I grind my hips against his, moving like a wave, gasping and moaning, desperate for every hard inch of him as deeply as I can take it. His fingers dig painfully into my back. His tongue tangles with mine, his moans moving through my body.

I come fast and hard, my legs and the sweet spot between them contracting around him, my muscles quivering. He comes seconds later and holds my naked body firmly in place, my ass seized by his powerful hands, as he empties himself inside of me.

In the moment, I couldn't care less about the consequences of what just happened. But only in the moment.

With my head lying on his shoulder, Victor carries me down the hall and into the spacious bathroom across from the guest bedroom. He sets me on the counter and stands between my dangling, naked legs.

"Don't worry about it." He kisses me on the forehead and then opens the tall glass door to the walk-in shower.

Confused, I ask, "About what?"

The faucet squeaks as he turns on the water, moving both hot and cold into position until he finds the desired temperature. I watch him from the countertop, the way his tall, sculpted body moves, the curves along the muscles carved in a poetic pattern around his hipbones, the way his calf muscles harden when he walks.

He comes back over to me and I slip his dress shirt the rest of the way off, sliding it down over his muscled arms.

"You won't get pregnant," he says and urges me to slide off the counter and follow him into the shower. "At least not by me."

A little taken aback, I leave it at that.

He closes the shower door and begins to wash my hair. I bask in his closeness, the way his hands explore my body with such careful precision and need.

For a long time, I forget that he is an assassin, whose hands have taken many lives without thought or remorse or regret. I forget that I, too, am a killer, whose hands took a life just hours ago.

Seems we were made for each other, like two puzzle pieces that at first don't appear to fit, but eventually fall into place when looked at in the most unlikely of angles.

CHAPTER TEN.

Victor Fredrik's housekeeper arrives back at the house early in the morning. I'm awake just after dawn, having my coffee on the rock patio in the backyard when she enters the house. She sees me through the sliding glass door when she makes her way into the living room and then joins me outside.

"Would you like breakfast, senor?" she asks in Spanish.

I set the file consisting of my next job face-down on the wrought iron coffee table.

"Gracias, but I won't be eating," I tell her and then gesture toward Sarai walking through the living room in search of me. "But she will be."

"I will be what?" Sarai asks as she steps through the opened glass door. She walks across the rock patio with bare feet, wearing another one of Fredrik's t-shirts-it bothers me immensely that she's having to wear his clothes rather than mine, but the only ones I have with me are those on my back-and a pair of loose running shorts. Her long, auburn hair is disheveled having just awoken and crawled out of the bed.

She sits on my lap and I fit my right hand between her thighs.

"Breakfast," I answer.

Sarai yawns and stretches her arms above her before laying her head against my shoulder. I fit my left hand behind her at the waist to keep her balanced on my lap. The smell of her freshly-washed skin and hair sends my senses into overdrive.

She makes a subtle face, halfway rejecting the idea.

"You should eat," I urge her.

Raising her head from my shoulder, she looks thoughtful for a moment and then turns her attention to the housekeeper. "Sure, I'd like some breakfast, if you don't mind," she says in Spanish.

For a moment, the housekeeper looks surprised that Sarai speaks to her in her native tongue, but she's over it just as quickly.

The housekeeper nods and heads back into the house.

"I think I've put this question off long enough," she says. "Where do we go from here, Victor? What am I going to do?"

I had been thinking about this very thing since I found out that she was in Los Angeles and after what she had done. I stare off toward the pool, lost in thought, my last desperate attempt to sort out the answers in my head. But they are as broken and unsettled as they ever have been. All except for one.

"Sarai," I say, looking back at her, "you can't go home. I knew this the first time I sent you back to Arizona. The situation wasn't nearly as dire as it has become, but now that things have changed, you can never go home."

"Then I'm staying with you," she says and for the first time in my life, I can't bring myself to protest such an issue. Not with her, or even with myself. The largest part of me, the flawed human part, wants her with me and I'll stop at nothing to make sure that it works.

But I know it's not going to be easy.

"Yes," I say, running the palm of my hand across her smooth thigh, "you're staying with me, but there are many things that you must understand."

She gets up from my lap and stands in front of me, one arm crossing her abdomen, the other propped atop it at the elbow. Absently, she brushes her fingertips across the softness of her face as she stares out at seemingly nothing. Then she looks down at me and shakes her head with a perplexed look in her eyes. "I expected you to put up more of a fight. What's the catch? Regardless of what happened between us last night, or what has been going on between us even when we were apart, I still never thought you'd agree to take me with you."

"Would you like me to put up a fight?" I give her a wry smile.

She smiles back at me and her arms drop back at her sides. "No. Definitely not. I-I just...."

I bring one leg up and rest my foot on the opposite knee.

"I never imagined that I'd be in a situation like this," I say. "I cannot lie to you and tell you that I think it's going to work. It very likely won't, Sarai, and you have to understand that." Her face falls just slightly, enough that I know my truthful words have discouraged her more than she'll let her expression reveal. "I cannot change my ways," I go on. "Not only because it's all I know, or that it's what I'm best at, but also because I don't want to." I look her straight in the eyes. "I will never stop doing what I do."

"I would never want you to," she says with a level of intensity. She pulls the nearby empty chair around and places it in front of me before sitting. "All that I'm asking, Victor, is to stay with you. I will do whatever you expect of me, but I want you to teach-"

I put up my hand and stop her right there.

"No, Sarai, I won't do that, either. It won't be like that." Her expression darkens and she looks away from my eyes, stung by my refusal. "I've told you before, I was practically born into this life. It would take you nearly the rest of your life to learn to do what I do, and even still it would not be good enough."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" she asks with a trace of resentment in her tone. "I want to be with you wherever you go, but I don't want to sit by and do nothing, sipping on martinis on the beach while you're out killing people. I'm not useless, Victor, I can do something."

"There are many things that you can do, yes," I cut in. "But doing what I do is completely out of the question. Why do you want this so much?" My voice had begun to rise with the question as I suddenly felt desperate to understand the answer.

The palms of her hands come down on the tops of her bare thighs creating a light slapping noise. "Because it's what I want."

"But why?"

She throws her hands up beside her and yells, "Because I enjoy it! All right?! I enjoy it!"

I blink a few times, completely stunned by her admittance. Truthfully, that was the last thing I expected her to say. A part of me knew that Sarai was more than capable of taking a human life and be able to sleep soundly every night afterwards, but I never anticipated that she would enjoy killing.

I'm not sure how to feel about this. I need more information.

I lean forward, raising my back from the chair and I come face to face with her. "You enjoy killing?" I ask, though it comes out more like a statement. "So, if you were asked to take someone's life, would you do it without question?"

"No," she says, her brows drawing inward. "I wouldn't kill just anyone, Victor, only men who deserve it."

Men? This side of Sarai is becoming more intriguing. I wonder if she even realizes what she just said. Men. Not people in general, but men.

I pull away from her and rest my back against the chair again, cocking my head to one side thoughtfully.

"Go on," I urge her.

She leans back as well, pulling both of her legs up and resting her feet on the seat, letting her knees fall together to one side.

"Men like Hamburg. Men like Javier Ruiz and Luis and Diego. Men like that guard I killed last night. Willem Stephens, for the simple fact that he works for Hamburg knowing what Hamburg does. Men like John Lansen and all of the others who I met at those rich parties when I was with Javier." Her gaze pierces mine harshly. "Men who deserve to have their throats slit."

The gravity of her words, the determination in her face, it quietly stuns me into submission for a brief moment. Is it possible that I have not one, but now two killers in my midst who share a similar penchant for bloodlust? And just as his face crosses my mind alongside hers, I hear Fredrik's car purring into the driveway. It steals the intense moment away and we both look up.

Moments later, Fredrik, dressed casually in a pair of dark-colored jeans and designer shirt, comes outside to join us. He drops the day's newspaper on the coffee table and says, "You might want to have a look at that." Then he glances at Sarai momentarily. "You look nice in my clothes, by the way."

I glare at Fredrik from the side, but bite back my jealousy before either of them notice.

Sarai and I both glance down at the paper, but I'm the one who picks it up. Unfolding the paper, I scan the black text until I find what he is referring to.

Four bodies were found shot to death in an upscale Los Angeles hotel late last night. Only two of the bodies have been identified and are that of twenty-three-year-old Dahlia Mathers and twenty-seven-year-old Eric Johnson, both of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

A few sentences down: Sarai Cohen, also of Lake Havasu City, is wanted for questioning.

I suppose it doesn't matter which identity she used to check into the hotel, her face is the same on both of them.

Sarai snatches the newspaper from my hands before I can finish.

"No...," she grits her teeth as her darkening face peers down into the tragic news of her friends. She tries to make eye contact with me, but it lasts only a second before the paper seizes her attention again as if her mind hopes to have read it all wrong the first time. "I told them to leave L.A.! Dahlia said they'd leave-." Her green eyes bore into mine, full of desperation and fractured by guilt.

I stand up.

Sarai takes the newspaper into both hands and rips it in half right down the center, crushing the leftover halves in both of her fists.

"They fucking killed Dahlia and Eric!" she roars. "They killed them!"

The paper falls from her hands and scatters about the intricate rock patio.

Fredrik just looks at me, waiting for whatever I might do or say. He doesn't speak but I can tell that he wants to.

"Sarai." I place my hands on her shoulders from behind. "I will take care of it."

She swings around at me, her hair whirling around her head before falling back against her shoulders, fury burning in her features.

"THEY ARE DEAD BECAUSE OF ME! JUST LIKE LYDIA!"

Trying to calm her down, I forcefully grab her shoulders from the front and I hold her in place.

"I said I will take care of it," I repeat with even more intensity and sincerity than before. I lean forward to keep her gaze fixed on mine. "I will do this for you, Sarai. Hamburg and Stephens will both be dead before this week is over."

I've lost her. She's staring right at me, but it feels more like through me instead. Her chest rises and falls with heavy, uneven breaths. Her pupils appear tiny, like pinpricks through a sheet of construction paper, the green of her eyes appears to have darkened.

"No," she argues in an eerily calm voice. "I don't want you to do anything."

Absently she steps backward and my hands fall away from her shoulders.

"I'm going to do this for you," I say. "I want-"

"I said no!" She takes two more steps back and then turns around, putting her back to me as she faces the pool.