Les Recidivists (Chance Assassin Book 2) Page 16

  Bella was the obvious first choice if Frank was feeling murderous, with Gideon and little ol’ me tying for second. But if Frank didn’t know that Bella was screwing Casey, he’d have no reason to be mad at her for doing it or at me for hiding it. That only left Gideon’s life, which last I checked, we were trying to save. Unless something had happened between Frank and Maggie, and she was the target. It sure as hell wasn’t Casey he was gunning for. But there was no doubt he was on somebody’s trail, which meant I needed to make my presence known and remind him of his promise.

  I watched him clean guns we hadn’t so much as looked at in years, spread on the bare kitchen table, the tablecloth neatly folded and draped across the back of his chair. I loved the way his long, slender fingers moved, pulling the gun to pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. The smell of the gun oil brought me back to when I was sixteen, wanting so badly for those filthy, oily fingers to be inside of me, in an anonymous motel room in an anonymous city.

  “Pull up a chair,” he said without glancing my way. It had probably taken him less than a second to know I was there, but five minutes to acknowledge me.

  I sat close to him, expecting to be put to work. I only minded because it was in my nature to be difficult; in actuality, I enjoyed cleaning the guns, especially when I was ordered to. “When you’re done with that, Hugo needs a bath,” I teased.

  Frank smiled and pointed half a gun at me. After having my left eardrum blown out by one in the hands of his psychotic half-brother, it had taken me some time to stop being afraid of them again. Now during the summer I’d have him shoot water balloons off my head for fun.

  “Did someone piss you off, Frank?”

  “Non,” he said, giving his answer the nasal finale to indicate a switch into French. I knew my French needed work, and that pratique made parfait, but his English was starting to get rusty. Then again, Casey was the only one in the household apart from us who knew French, and his absence added to our transition might mean we’d discuss something exciting. I did my best to repeat the question, which only brought me frustration when he said non for a second time.

  Then he said something that took me awhile to figure out, since we were apparently going to a word I’d never heard before. But it sounded a bit like “We’re going to the Czech Republic?”

  “Tres bon, mon chaton!”

  I loved when he called me his kitten. Then I realized that nous would have just as well meant him and Bella as him and me. “And when is this happy little trip gonna take place?”

  “En français.”

  “Fuck that!” I said, trying to leave only to have him grab my wrist before I could go anywhere. I could’ve wrenched free, since his fingers were lubricated, but I stayed. Since his fingers were lubricated.

  “Why am I in trouble?”

  “I wanna go,” I said, then remembered that for someone who looked the way I did, begging usually worked better than demands. “Can I come? You don’t have to tell them who I am.”

  Frank paused and raised his eyebrows. “How do you mean?”

  I knew Frank wasn’t ashamed of being gay, but there was a big difference between punching a stranger’s lights out for sneering at your effeminate husband, and waving a huge rainbow flag in front of your boss and former co-murderers. “You can say I’m a friend or something.”

  “You keep talking like that and I’ll be introducing my boss to a photograph in my wallet.”

  I smirked. “Because I’ll be left at home?”

  “Because you’ll be left at home.”

  So it wasn’t Bella he was planning to kill after all. He was preparing for battle. “When are we going?”

  “Le vingtième décembre.”

  December twentieth. Of course. “Isn’t that cutting it a little close?” He stood up and kissed me on the head, having finished his chores without ever asking, or forcing, my assistance. “Does Bella know?”

  “Not yet,” he said as he washed his hands.

  “When are you planning on telling her?”

  “Le dix-neuvième decembre,” he laughed.

  “You have to give her more than a day to pack.” I made a mental note to thank God I was on his good side. “And what about breaking the news to Casey?”

  “What news? He knows she’s here temporarily. You told him that.”

  “I don’t think you realize the extent of his feelings for her,” I said, trying to stay as vague as possible. Frank would never willingly hurt Casey, but he was heading in that direction at warp fucking speed.

  “Oh?” he asked hostilely. I really didn’t want to fight with my husband over something as icky and unnatural as hetero sex. Especially since I’d been woken before the sun was fully out by Bella climbing out her window and onto Casey’s head.

  “I’m just saying that she got him painting again. For awhile anyway. And maybe it’s good for him to have someone to talk to who isn’t…family.”

  Frank glowered at me. “You think there’s something Casey can’t say to me?”

  Why shouldn't there be? There was plenty I couldn't say to him. “Forget it. You’re giving me a headache.”

  He sighed and rubbed my shoulders. It really was too easy.

  “Should I start running again?” I asked, hoping he’d say no. I was up too early as it was.

  “You should practice keeping your mouth shut.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Jerk.”

  “I mean it, V. That place isn’t safe. I shouldn’t go back myself, much less bring you. And as soon as Silva dies, Bella—” He stopped mid-sentence, something clicking in his mind that made his eyes light up. For a second I was afraid he’d figured out she was fucking Casey, but he didn’t turn all red or reach for a weapon, so it couldn’t have been that. “Work on biting your tongue. If we’re lucky, the majority of the men there won’t understand English.”

  I happened to be the luckiest Irish-American in the history of the world, having used up far more than nine lives before I was even old enough to buy liquor. But my luck didn’t work that way. Now that he’d mentioned it, we’d be blessed with an entire house full of bilingual Czechoslovakians. And biting my tongue would be no good. Even a ball gag had its deficiencies. There was just no match for my big mouth.

  As luck would have it, Maggie and Gideon entered the room, putting an end to our discussion long before I’d run out of things to say about it. It might’ve just been the stress from her Paris vacation, but Maggie’s normally golden hair was looking a little gray. “Where’s my son?” she asked like it was a chore, yawning and helping herself to the last cup of coffee. At least she was nice enough to start another pot for Gideon, who merely frowned when she didn’t offer to share.

  Frank handed her a note, which she quickly read and set back on the table. It was written in green glittery pen, a pen he must’ve brought with him to the house because it certainly wasn’t one of ours. The note said Went to. This was common for Casey. He’d start writing something down, then get distracted and forget to finish. Went to could’ve meant a hell of a lot of places, although I was fairly certain I was the only one who knew whom he went with. “He’s on foot,” Frank said. “He couldn’t have gone very far.”

  “And Bella?”

  “Asleep,” I said. It wasn’t out of kindness that I was covering for them. This was the most fun I’d had in ages. Frank was almost back to treating me like his partner again now that there was blood on the horizon, and anyway, there just wasn’t enough scandal to be had out in the woods. Which reminded me, “Can we go into the city? I need…stuff.”

  “We do need a few items if I’m going to make a proper Thanksgiving dinner,” Maggie said. I got up and hugged her. Candied yams, here I come.

  “Fine,” Frank said. He was still bitter about last year, when he turned the quintessential American holiday into a French culinary masterpiece that I couldn’t bring myself to eat. It wasn’t my fault. It had been our first year in France, away from Maggie and the comforts of a home I’d come to know and love. W
hen she came to visit for Christmas she taught him how to bake a pumpkin pie, so that kinda made up for it. “I should check on Bertrand and Sophie anyway.”

  Bertrand Durrant was a gentle grizzly bear of a man who ran Frank’s bookshop until we had to fire him for selling too many books. The shop had always been more of an extended library than a business venture, and now we paid Bertrand a set salary to sit in the entryway and discourage customers from coming in. He was equally successful at that task, considering he looked like a lumberjack who could punch down trees instead of using a saw.

  We’d met Bertrand when his precocious daughter Sophie had come in and stolen from us. Frank naturally took a shining to her, considering that she liked reading and shared his mother’s name. And Sophie naturally took a shining to me, for obvious reasons.

  Both Bertrand and Frank found it hysterical that young Sophie had a crush on me, although Frank’s possessive nature would take over any time she got too close, and he’d be on high alert as if she intended to club me over the head and drag me back to her cave by the hair.

  I ran upstairs to get dressed. Frank had a tendency to leave me behind as punishment for taking too long primping to perfection. As if Paris wouldn’t be there two hours from now. I spent fifteen minutes deciding which shirt to wear, since we were going to see Sophie and I wanted to look slightly less attractive than usual, while still doing myself justice. It was no use. I looked incredible in everything. No wonder she was in love with me.

  Frank was sitting out in the car when I finished, leafing through the owner’s manual. If it had been written by Victor Hugo, he might’ve shown cars the respect they deserved. He had a history of mistreating his vehicles, driving them until they ran out of gas or oil, lighting them on fire if they got a single dent, and filling the trunk with human remains. Of course, I was guilty of that last offense as well.

  “We’ll have to switch the plates,” he said.

  “For dinner?”

  “The license plates. We won’t all fit in Bella’s car. I don’t want them to know where our car is registered.”

  Changing license plates was the one thing, apart from driving, that Frank could actually do with a car. He was the most paranoid person on the planet, and used to change his plates every time he crossed state lines. He also used to have faux driver’s licenses for every state. But we’d gone legit with Gideon’s help, and now all our documentation was legal. We even paid taxes. Kinda.

  Frank eyed the Czech plates on Bella's car as we backed out of the driveway, as if he doubted that a precaution he'd taken hundreds of times would still do the trick. “You’re really worried about going there, huh?” I asked.

  “Do you remember that job we did in the convalescent home?”

  I nodded. Why someone would pay us a hundred grand to kill a vegetable was beyond me. Although, making it look like mechanical failure was a bit more of a challenge than chopping them into crudités and serving them with onion dip. “Why?”

  “The pissed-off paraplegic veteran who kept threatening to kill anyone who looked at him, who wanted to go back to the front lines in Afghanistan and kill more towelheads. A soldier made redundant. That is who lives in Silva’s house. Dozens of killers with short fuses who, for one reason or another, are off the job. They’ll take any excuse they can to draw blood.”

  The veteran had screamed at me and called me a faggot. I had to prevent Frank from giving our client a two for one deal. I could only imagine that guy multiplied by fifty. Although it was pretty amusing to think of that many paraplegics in one place, swearing at me while I mimicked a blowjob just to be obnoxious when Frank wasn’t looking. But being a human tree stump was a hell of a lot different than a set of broken ribs or a slowly healing bullet wound. Or a head injury that wouldn’t heal, like the gift I was given.

  The British used the word redundant for someone whose services were no longer needed. It was nicer than saying you were let go. Fired. But when I thought of it applied to myself, that I was redundant, I could see why they’d be baying for blood.

  “Doesn’t Bella live there?” I asked. I knew that she didn’t work as many jobs as she used to after getting hurt, but it wasn’t like she was incapacitated. Bella hardly seemed the type to stay sidelined after an injury. When she’d gotten hurt, Frank was afraid that she’d never recover. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe whatever happened to her had taken a serious toll.

  “For now,” Frank said, and didn’t speak of it again.

  Our pied-à-terre was in the eighth arrondissement on the right bank of the Seine, far enough from the river for Frank, who still feared water, to be comfortable, and far enough from the Marais, where Alan Barker and the majority of gay Paris lived, to keep me out of trouble. You had to have a six-digit code and a key to get past the security gate, and another two keys to get inside our place.

  Visiting the apartment automatically brought an expectation of rough sex, privacy not only from our houseguests, but from the dogs barking at our bedroom door. Whether it would be rough enough remained to be felt, though I was ever hopeful.

  Frank and I barely made it through the gate before we took full advantage of finally being alone together. He pressed me against the front door, kissing me as he fumbled one-handed with the keys, his other hand clutching my ass. The door swung open behind me and we ricocheted against the side table just to avoid falling to the floor. We meandered inside, attached at the lips, discarding clothes with every step and hardly noticing Bella’s shopping bags as we stumbled over them on our way to the bedroom.

  I nearly tripped over my own pants, then completely tripped over a rogue high heel when it stabbed between my toes. I angrily hopped up and down on one foot, cursing Bella for causing me the pain that should rightfully come from Frank, until he impatiently slung me over his shoulder and kicked her shoe across the room.

  He tossed me onto the bed and crawled beside me, pulling my shirt up over my head in the brief moment that our lips parted. I tore his shirt clean off when he climbed on top of me, and he moved his mouth down over my body, kissing my chest, licking my scar, and hungrily taking my cock in his mouth like he hadn’t eaten all week.

  I closed my eyes and let the pleasure wash over me, making no attempt to contain it. I never lasted long with Frank. He could make me come in minutes. Probably even seconds. After all the men I’d been with, the years I’d spent hating sex and everything it meant, it was only Frank who had ever given me a true release.

  He forced two fingers inside of me, wet with nothing but spit. I came instantly, tossing my head into the pillows and rearing back against his hand as he sucked me clean, spreading his fingers apart. I desperately fumbled in the nightstand for lube, thinking finally finally he would fuck the life out of me. Then I managed to slice my finger on something in the drawer and I involuntarily yelped, grinding our fun to a complete stop.

  “What?” he gasped. For a second there was legitimate fear on his face, like I was fragile enough that he could cause me serious harm by fingering me.

  “It’s nothing. I just cut myself.” Injuries during sex used to be commonplace. The first time we made love was right after I broke his nose, and there had been many times since when one or both of us was bleeding or bruised when we finished. But after I got hurt, that unspoken trust between us had died. It could still be rough; on the floor, walking funny, hesitant to sit down rough, but it wasn’t all-consuming. I didn’t feel like I was completely his: my body, my life, in his hands.

  We never spoke of the friction between us. We both knew what was going on, but what was there to say? It was my fault I got hurt, because I was too scared to wait for him to save me. And I knew he blamed himself for not getting there sooner. Now Frank was scared. I could see it in his eyes whenever he got aggressive, holding back when he once knew exactly how much I could handle.

  I pulled my hand from the drawer, smiling to show him I was okay and holding the lube up as my trophy. There was blood on it, and all down the side of my index finger
. Frank tossed the lube aside and wiped my hand with his torn shirt. He squeezed it around my finger just slightly before taking my finger into his mouth, sucking on it like a mother kissing it better instead of a man who’d just sucked my cock. He leaned over to peer into the drawer, then took my hand into his and confirmed, “Knife.”

  Knives used to be part of foreplay. Now they stopped the action.

  I brought our conjoined hands to the discarded lube and batted my eyelashes at him. “Please fuck me immediately.”

  Frank laughed. “Well, since you asked nicely.” He kissed me again, his mouth coppery tasting from my blood. He stroked himself wet, leaning over me and sliding inside with one glorious thrust.

  I groaned into his mouth, loving the discomfort of moving quickly when it had been so long. I wrapped my legs around his back, clinging to him as Frank pushed himself deeper inside of me. Becoming part of me. And still he was holding back, never reaching the place he used to reach, his place within me where no one else had ever touched; where I trusted him so fully that he could bring me to the point of death with his bare hands and I would never feel afraid. The place where he lived and died in me. Now another man had brought me to my limit, right to the edge of death, and it was only Henry living there now. Two years later and Frank hadn’t scared him away yet.

  I clenched my hands into fists, my finger throbbing as the cut opened wider. It wasn’t hard enough. I needed him to hurt me to feel truly close to him. I panted, “Is. That. All. You. Got?”

  Frank shook his head disparagingly. Then he set his jaw and grasped a handful of my hair. He nearly pulled his cock out completely before slamming home, hammering me until I couldn’t find the breath to taunt him. But I was still in the moment, aware of his restraint when he used to make me unaware of my surroundings.

  I desperately coerced his hand away from my hair, losing more than I bargained for as he nearly refused to let go. I smiled at him and kissed his knuckles, then suggestively brought his hand to my throat.