Heaven and Hell (49 page)

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Authors: Kristen Ashley

Tags: #romance, #contemporary romance

BOOK: Heaven and Hell
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When he came into his bedroom, he was no
longer on the phone and he was also in his usual not in a sharing
mood.

I knew this when he came up behind me as I
was bent over my suitcase by the bed, he hooked me around the
waist, leaned into me and said quietly in my ear, “Meant it
yesterday, honey, make yourself at home. You need to move shit,
move it. I’ll stow your bags when you’re done.”

Then he kissed my neck and moved away.

That was nice, very nice and I definitely
liked it. But it still wasn’t Sam sharing.

And, it should be noted, Sam didn’t grab his
bag and unpack his own stuff.

Whatever.

I did it for him.

A bit later, Sam grilled the chicken at his
grill on the deck. I made a salad of raw spinach, arugula,
cucumber, carrot, mandarin orange slices and pistachio nuts and
prepared some wild rice. I ate mine with a buttered dinner roll we
got from the bakery at the grocery store. Sam ate his with an extra
breast, double the amount of rice and salad and zero roll.

Sam had also made certain that I had
Amaretto and he did this during the detour to the liquor store on
the way home from the grocery.

So now I had a snifter (yes, Sam even had
snifters) of Amaretto and Sam on a deck at a house on the beach in
North Carolina after a good day.

Life was good.

And Sam needed to know that.

So I whispered to the ocean, “Life is
good.”

Sam made no verbal response. What he did was
a whole lot better.

He trailed the tips of his fingers along the
outside of my thigh.

I sighed.

Then I took a sip of Amaretto.

I dropped my hand to rest the base of the
glass to the arm of my chair and told the ocean, still whispering,
“It was hell, honey.”

Sam again made no response but this time his
non-response included physically.

I kept whispering. “Everywhere I’ve been
since he’s been gone, I thought was heaven.”

Sam responded to that, both verbally and
physically. His fingers glided from the outside to the inside of my
thigh and he pulled it toward his until it was resting there and he
muttered, “Baby.”

I turned my head to look at him to see he
was looking at me. “I was wrong.”

His fingers gave my inner thigh a
squeeze.

“This is heaven,” I said softly.

I saw Sam smile.

Then I heard him murmur, “Glad you like my
place, honey.”

I shook my head, turned my torso, leaned
into my armrest, dropped both my legs into his, imprisoning his
warm hand between them and I placed my hand on his chest.

“That’s not what I mean,” I whispered.

Sam twisted toward me, lifted his free hand
and wrapped his fingers around the side of my neck.

“What’d you mean, Kia?”

“Anywhere is heaven as long as it’s an
anywhere with you.”

The fingers on both Sam’s hands clenched
deep, hard, fast and I knew it was reflexively because he didn’t
check it and they caused a hint of pain.

Then he was up. Then my snifter of Amaretto
was on the deck railing. Then my footrest was shoved out from under
my heels. Then I was up, my hand was firm in Sam’s and we were in
the house.

He stopped long enough to lock the screened
porch door, the front door and quickly punch buttons on the alarm
panel.

Then we were in his bed.

There Sam demonstrated to me how I was
figuring out Sam demonstrated how much he felt about me.

And two hours later, climbing back into bed
after cleaning up and tugging on panties and a nightie, I fell
exhausted into Sam’s body and then fell directly asleep.

So directly, I didn’t feel him pull the
covers over me.

I also didn’t feel him turn to his side or
his arms get tight around me.

And, unfortunately, I didn’t hear his
rough-like-velvet voice softly rumble, “Heaven is you, too, baby.”
I didn’t feel him kiss my forehead. I didn’t feel him tangle his
legs with mine. And, last, I didn’t feel him gather me super close
and hold me that way even long after he, too, fell asleep.

 

 

Chapter Twenty

Khakis

 

I woke suddenly when I felt Sam’s arms clamp
around me, he rolled us, squeezing the breath out of me when he was
on top then he rolled us again and we were in freefall.

I cried out my surprise into the dark.

In the split second it took us to fall, Sam
twisted so somehow we landed with bone-jarring thud, me on him, Sam
on his back. We stayed that way a millisecond before he rolled us
toward the bed then he was knifing up as he growled, “Stay
down.”

I did as I was told, heard a drawer open,
scraping then Memphis yapped and kept doing it.

What was happening?

Memphis yapped again, quick successions, in
a way I’d never heard her yap before.

A warning.

Fear slithered over every inch of my
skin.

Then I heard Memphis growl under Sam’s
rumbled order of, “Drop it on the bed.”

“Now –” A man’s voice started to say and
hearing a stranger
in the bedroom in the middle of the
night,
I quit breathing.

A gunshot blasted the air, loud and
terrifying. My body jumped but Sam stayed still and I noted in
shock he was the one who fired. Memphis yapped then I heard her
claws on the wood floors and with my baby on the move, without
thinking, I jerked into action.

Sam clipped, “Kia, stay the fuck down.”

I sucked in air, stopped moving and stayed
down as I heard what sounded like Memphis attacking one of her chew
toys but she wasn’t playing. She meant business.

“Drop it on the fucking
bed,
” Sam bit
out.

“Get the dog off me,” the man said.

“Drop your
fucking
weapon on the
fucking
bed.”

Ohmigod. Ohmigod.
Ohmigod!

What was happening?

I heard the soft
fumf
of something
heavy falling on the bed.

“Now get this fuckin’ thing off me!” the man
snapped.

“Memphis!” Sam called sharply, the noises
Memphis was making stopped, I heard her claws clicking then I heard
another soft
fumf
on the bed and I knew Memphis was moving
toward Sam. “On your knees, hands up, palms to me, fingertips at
your ears,” Sam ground out then came a barked, “Do it.
Now!

Oh God, oh God, oh
God!

“Kia, up,” Sam rumbled.

Immediately I got up. Sam was reaching
across the bed toward something at the same time he had his head
back and his eyes and gun trained on the dark shadow of a man on
his knees across the room.

“Get me some shorts,” Sam ordered.

I didn’t delay. Sam was standing there naked
holding a man a gunpoint. I could see this would be
uncomfortable.

I hurried across the room, opened a drawer,
grabbed a pair of his shorts, left the drawer open and ran back to
him. He handed me his gun and I took it without dropping it even
though holding a recently fired therefore clearly loaded and deadly
weapon freaked me way the fuck out.

“He moves, you even
think
he’s gonna
move, shoot,” Sam instructed.

“Right,” I whispered and now it was me who
was aiming my eyes and a gun at the man on his knees.

Sam took the shorts from me and in about two
seconds he took the gun back from me.

I just stopped myself from heaving a sigh of
relief.

“Turn on the light,” Sam demanded.

I turned on the light. Then I saw Memphis in
reaching distance so I snagged her off the bed and cuddled her to
my chest.

“Behind me, stay there.” Sam kept the
commands coming and I kept doing as I was told.

Then I peered around him at a man with nice
hair cut, khaki pants and a golf shirt. He was slim, fit and very
alert.

And, lastly, I guessed he was my hit
man.

“My next directive to my woman is dialin’
nine, one, one. You got two minutes to talk me outta that,” Sam
told the man.

“We need a chat,” the man told Sam.

“I’m guessin’ that since you breached my
security system and approached with your gun not at the ready, the
fuckin’ safety on. Now you got a minute and a half for your chat.
Don’t waste more,” Sam returned.

“I need assurances,” the man stated.

“Think your broker gave you those,” Sam
retorted.

“Need them direct from you. I do not need
Tanner Layne on my ass. Man’s bad enough but he comes with fuckin’
Ryker and he’s a pain in the ass. Now both ‘a them come with a man
named Devin Glover who’s a
serious
fuckin’ pain in the ass.
I want it direct from your lips, I stand down; you give the order
for those assholes to stand down.”

“You already got that
through your
broker
,” Sam told him, clearly losing patience.

“Yeah, well Layne, Ryker and Glover are
pains in the ass but I’ve had the opportunity to look into
Nightingale and I need to know him and his fuckin’ whack jobs in
Denver won’t get a wild hair and go on a mission just for shits and
giggles,” the man shot back.

“Don’t control Lee or his boys,” Sam stated.
“My advice to you, now you’re on their radar, don’t do anything to
piss them off. Further advice, you already done somethin’ that
would piss them off, you disappear and do it really well.”

“Fuck!” the man exploded and I jumped then I
pressed Memphis and I closer to Sam’s back.

Sam didn’t move.

The man started bitching.

“That cunt didn’t pay me to put up with this
kind of fuckin’ headache.”

“You made a bad career choice. These are
your consequences. Now do not stand there wastin’ my time. I’m
givin’ you a good deal and you fuckin’ know it. As much as it shits
me to allow it, a deal’s a deal and the deal is, you stand down,
you walk outta here and breathe free. You got ten seconds to
decide. At eleven, I’m incapacitating you and then you’re goin’
down another way.”

“I’ll stand down,” the man said
immediately.

Sam sucked in an audible breath.

Then he was silent for three seconds (I
counted).

Then he said with very scary, very quiet
menace, a tone that, even knowing him and how he really was, sent
chills up my spine, “Anything ever happens to her,
ever,
I
will find you, I will hurt you and in the end you will beg me to
kill you.”

I pressed closer to Sam.

The man held Sam’s eyes but, cold-blooded
killer for hire in a golf shirt or not, his face had paled.

Then he nodded.

“Get out,” Sam ordered.

He nodded again.

Then he asked, “Can I have my gun?”

Sam didn’t speak and I wasn’t in a position
to see his face but whatever look he gave the man, it worked.
Instantly, the man got to his feet, turned and moved quickly out
the door.

Sam turned and looked down at me.

“Grab the phone. Foot of the bed, on your
ass on the floor. Dial nine, one, one but do not hit go. You hear
anything, feel anything you don’t like, you hit go. Yeah?”

I nodded, moved to the phone and grabbed it.
Then I moved to the foot of the bed and dropped to my ass on the
floor. Then I hit the buttons and cuddled Memphis to me.

Sam took me in then took off.

I sat there listening hard and breathing
harder.

Memphis stayed still, close and silent.

It took seven years then Sam came back.

He came direct to me, dropped both guns to
the bed, bent down and pulled me up by my wrist. Then he stalked to
his nightstand, tagged his cell, flipped it open, hit some buttons
and put it to his ear. I turned his landline off.

Seconds later, he growled into the phone,
“Yeah, I fuckin’ know what time it is but what
you
don’t
know is I got a fuckin’ bullet hole in the floor of my bedroom
because Kia and I just got paid a visit by her hit man and he
didn’t take me seriously, tried to turn the safety off on his gun
and I had to make a point. Now, Cal, what I wanna know is, how the
fuck did he breach your security?”

Okay, I’d seen Sam annoyed, pissed and
downright angry. Even
really
downright angry.

But it was safe to say he was right now
enraged.

I cuddled Memphis closer.

“Yeah, that’d be good, you come in person to
check it out,” Sam kept growling then continued growling when he
stated, “Yeah, he said he’d stand down. And I feel good about it
because he knows I missed on purpose but still tore a hole through
his fuckin’
khaki
fuckin’
pants
in the dark with my
warning shot. I still wanna know how he breached your goddamned
system. I have two men on dayshift, no nightshift ‘cause it’s
supposed to be impenetrable. I thought we were unsafe, Aziz or
Deaver would have neutralized him and my woman would not be shakin’
like a fuckin’ leaf right about now.”

He’d torn a hole through that man’s khaki’s
with his warning shot?

Uh.

Wow.

Obviously they didn’t mess around in Ranger
school.

“Yeah,” Sam’s voice was now quieter and a
whole lot less ticked off, “I know you got three girls under your
roof and you get me. I also want my question answered, Cal.” He
listened, sucked in breath through his nose then, “Right.” Then
clearly the unknown Cal broke through because his lips twitched and
he muttered, “Yeah, khakis.” Then a pause before he went on
muttering with a, “Fuck me.”

Then he chuckled.

I wasn’t finding one, single thing
amusing.

He must have caught my vibe because his eyes
cut to me then he said into his phone, “Kia’s about to have a shit
fit or a breakdown. I gotta be available for either one. Let me
know your plans.” A pause then, “Right, later.”

Then he flipped his phone shut.

The instant he did, I remarked, “I find it
immensely disturbing that a hit man wears a golf shirt.”

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