The Executioner (Professionals 10)

“I’m just saying, this is the perfect place for me to spill your guts all over the floor,” she told me as she walked inside in front of me. “No one would ever know it was me,” she added.

“Oh, love, how did you know threats of evisceration turn me on?” I asked, watching as she whipped around, banking down the desire in her eyes, but not before I saw it there.

“The last thing in the world I want is to turn you on,” she said, jerking her chin up for emphasis because a part of her must have known her words wouldn’t come out one-hundred-percent convincing.

“No?” I asked, taking a step closer, making her retreat.

“No,” she said, but she gulped a bit after.

“Want to try that again? Perhaps be a little more convincing?” I asked, moving her back another step. Then another. Until her back collided with the wall behind her. And she had no way past me.

“I don’t need to be convincing. It’s the truth. I have no interest in turning you on.”

“Seems I remember a time when you were very interested in turning me on,” I said, reaching out, letting her silky hair sift through two of my fingers.

“A moment of insanity,” she said, voice getting airless. “I hadn’t fucked anyone in too long. It wasn’t anything personal. You were close and you had a dick. That was all it was.”

“Really?” I asked, pressing my knee forward between her thighs, listening to the way her breath caught. “So this isn’t personal?”

“This isn’t anything,” she declared, eyes a challenge.

And, well, I’d never been the type to back down from one of those, had I?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Shawn

It was like some rom-com.

You know like when the guy and girl had some torrid one-night-stand and then out of nowhere bumped into each other by chance, despite having no mutual friends and living across the country from one another.

Except, of course, there was nothing romantic or comedic about this. Well, maybe it was God’s way of laughing and fucking with me after all the shit I’d done in my life.

And, well, it wasn’t that strange, was it?

We were from the same general area.

My family and his ran in the same circles.

I’d probably been in the same room as Bellamy half a dozen times in the past without ever realizing it. Admittedly, I didn’t enjoy these functions, even if they were usually for a good cause. I just didn’t understand why everyone didn’t just donate the money instead of putting on some over-the-top event just to rub shoulders with other people from your same socioeconomic background about what stocks were doing well and how the cheaper travel was “ruining” all the best, previously exclusive vacation retreats.

I’d overheard both of those conversations at events like this one in the past.

I generally spent most of the evening nodding politely and allowing my aunt and uncle or Nasir to do all the talking because I knew I struggled holding onto my tongue when I got riled up over something.

I didn’t ever find myself scanning the room for attractive men since I’d long since realized that the guys at these events just weren’t my type.

So I could have literally stood next to Bellamy and not really even seen him before.

It shouldn’t have been so shocking to see him there.

I took a small bit of pleasure in the idea that he, though, must have been floored to see me there. I didn’t exactly present myself as someone who came from money. I guess because I didn’t. Money was new to me. And I didn’t have money like my aunt, uncle, and Nasir. I made a good salary designing jewelry, but I refused to take hand-outs from my family.

Objectively, my salary was probably inflated because of my connection to them, but I wasn’t rolling in cash either. I was, as I’d told Nasir, comfortable. I didn’t have to worry about paying my bills or funding my take-out habit, but I wasn’t dripping in diamonds or driving a Rolls.

Hell, what I made in a year was probably what Bellamy paid to get his cars washed. Or his lawn cut. Or his teeth whitened.

I shouldn’t have been shocked to see him.

But the second I saw him, I swear it felt like the floor fell out from underneath me. It felt like the wind got knocked out of me.

Ugh.

And, yeah, okay, fine, it felt like someone kickstarted my goddamn libido.

Sense memory or whatever.

My body was remembering what it felt like to move with him.

Why couldn’t the sex have been terrible?

That would have made life a hell of a lot easier.

But, no. It had to be good. Great. Freaking amazing.

And then he had to show up looking like him and smelling like him and sounding like him and reminding my stupid, sex-starved body how good it had been.