Huntsman, p.13
Huntsman, page 13
I take a step toward the pullout couch but abruptly draw up short and pivot, stalking across the buckled and scarred hardwood floor toward the seedy studio apartment’s tiny kitchen. I yank open the door of the refrigerator that was probably popular about two decades ago and pull out a bottle of water. Grabbing a towel off the top of the fridge, I drop it on the floor and shove it against the bottom to catch the water leaking out. With more force than necessary, I unscrew the cap and tip the bottle up to my mouth. I down half the contents before retracing my steps across the room. Only when my ass hits the seat of the chair do I notice the bright brown-and-green gaze on me.
Nah, that’s not right.
I feel it on me first.
The tiny hairs on my arms stand at attention, quiver as if a breeze ghosted across my skin. Only, every instinct I possess relays it’s not the air from the ancient window AC unit causing the reaction. The insubstantial yet tangible touch is too primal. Too her.
I’ve known Eshe Diallo a handful of days—and I use known very loosely since my dick in her mouth doesn’t really count—and yet I recognize her touch to the very marrow of my bones.
To my nonexistent soul.
She doesn’t move, and neither do I. We engage in a visual standoff for several silent moments. But I’m the master at being quiet; she can’t compete.
“Well, I’m not dead, though I feel like fucking deep-fried death.” She closes her eyes, a faint wince playing over her strained but beautiful features seconds before she fixes her stare back on me. “What happened?”
Not surprised she doesn’t remember, I say, “An explosion. From what I could tell, it probably came from under the ring, since it and the area surrounding it got the worst of the blast.”
“How bad?” she asks, voice flat, face blank.
I shrug a shoulder. “I didn’t stick around to assess the damage, and with the smoke, people, and debris, I couldn’t really tell at the time. But the shit didn’t look good.”
She nods, the thick fringe of her lashes hiding her eyes from me. Part of me wants to march over to the bed, grip her scratched chin, and demand she look at me. Insist she let me see those eyes so I can decipher what’s going on in that sharp mind.
But I remain with my ass rooted to the chair. It would be a colossal mistake to voluntarily touch this woman. Shit, in my head, I’ve committed this cardinal sin so many different times, in so many different positions, Satan is looking at his watch, waiting on me like, Ticktock, bitch. Ticktock.
“I need to get in touch with my girls. Where’s my phone?”
“Fuck I look like? Your errand boy? It’s probably under a pile of cement blocks and shit. You lucky I got your ass outta there.”
“Dammit.” She chews on her bottom lip for a moment, and I stare. Hard. I want that juicy, lush flesh in my mouth. “I have to check on my Seven. See if they’re okay.”
The worry and frustration in her voice shouldn’t do anything to me. But the fact she’s just woken up after being caught in the blast of a bomb and her first thought is for her people? Yeah, as much as I don’t want to admit it, that does something to me.
“I have burners. I’ll get you one.”
“Thanks.” She narrows her gaze. “Why did you?”
“Why did I what?” I ask, lost at the sudden switch in topic.
“Why did you get my ass out of there?”
I stare at her, unblinking. No way in hell I’m answering that.
Mainly, because I still don’t know the answer to the question. Even if I did, I wouldn’t give her what she wants. Because something tells me I wouldn’t like the truth.
“You haven’t asked where you’re at,” I say instead.
“Don’t need to. Your Dorchester place.”
Shock ripples through me, and it takes every bit of self-control I possess not to allow my expression or body betray it. But Jesus Christ. How does she…?
The shock hardens into a dark block of ice that settles in the middle of my chest. The cold seeps into my veins, my blood.
“How do you know that, Eshe?” I ask, the emotion as empty as my conscience.
A smile ghosts across her full mouth, and I zero in on the wound bisecting the corner of her bottom lip. She either doesn’t know how close she is to death or doesn’t give a fuck.
Since she is who she is, I’m going with the latter.
“I already told you, Huntsman. Two years.”
“I don’t know what the fuck that means.”
“There isn’t much I don’t know about you.”
Why that sends a fissure of fear down my spine as if she issued a threat, I can’t grasp. Don’t want to. I just know it makes me mean.
Meaner.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you, Eshe. Other people, it’s just a job. But you? I’m going to take my time with it. Find out the spots that make you scream out and make sure I play there the longest with my knife. By the time I finish, you’re going to pray for death, and there won’t no mercy coming. Not from God, and for damn sure not from me.”
She blinks. Blinks again.
“I think I just came,” she whispers.
I surge to my feet, disgust soaring its way through me on crimson-edged wings, and it carries me across the one-room, bottom-floor apartment and out the door into the tiny foyer. Disgust not at her. That would be too easy, too simple.
Nah, it’s all directed at myself.
Because I had to get the fuck up out of there like a goddamn coward before I crawled on that bed, tore the covers back from her lushly curved body, thrust my hand between those thick thighs, and found out for myself if she really had nutted all over my sheets.
After scrubbing my hands over my short sandy curls, I interlock my fingers behind my head, tipping it back to stare at the water-stained ceiling. I can’t even lie. There’s a part of me that wants to charge out the front door onto the cracked and broken lot that the empty, blue multilevel house sits on. Inhale the air that smells of car exhaust, fried meat someone’s cooking for dinner, and the faintest whiff of weed. Shit, I’m desperate for anything that doesn’t carry the scent of cedarwood, musk, and earth as rich and brown as the beautiful tone of her smooth skin.
But I don’t trust her. Even battered, bruised, and with alarms set around my nailed-shut windows, I don’t trust Eshe not to escape. So I’m fucking trapped. As trapped as she is.
Aren’t we two fucking peas in a pod?
Releasing a low growl, I drop my arms, turn on my booted heels, and return to the apartment. Eshe’s no longer lying down but sitting with her back propped up against the back of the pullout couch. As if she’s been waiting on me to reenter, her gaze finds me as soon as the door opens and, like a fishing rod, reels me in, tugging me across the room until I’m back in the chair I abandoned.
Without removing my gaze from her, I reach over, grab the nearly empty pizza box, and toss it onto the bed. She’s the first to break our standoff when she dips her head to the contents and greedily scoops up one of the three slices left. When she moans, her lashes fluttering down as she chews, my entire body tightens until it threatens to snap in half with the slightest nudge. My dick bricks up, volunteering as fucking tribute to be that volatile nudge.
Locking down the vicious curse clawing its way up outta my chest, I insert immediate distance between me and her by returning to the kitchen for a bottle of water. By the time I approach the bed once more, she’s wolfed down one slice and is already biting into the next. I lob that at her, too, and she catches it one-handed without pausing a beat in eating.
“I like what you’re doing with the place,” she says around a mouthful of pizza.
I survey the room as if I don’t know every nail, splinter, and water stain in the apartment. Still, I see it through her eyes. The boards nailed over the bulletproof windows. The peeling wallpaper. The brown water stains dotting the ceiling. Yeah, it’s a pit. And it serves its purpose.
“How long have I been out?” she asks.
“Seventeen hours.”
“Damn.” Her eyebrows wing up. “You cleaned me up and dressed my wounds.”
I don’t answer since she’s stating the obvious.
“And put me in your T-shirt.” Dropping the water to the bedcover, she pinches the shirt and lifts it to her nose, inhaling noisily. “Mmm. Smells just like you, too. Like murder, mayhem, and sex. All my favorites.”
She’s trying to get a rise out of you. Don’t give in. Don’t give in, muthafucka.
“Pizza. I’m not surprised we’re here eating this. It’s your favorite, after all. Doesn’t matter the topping.” She tips the slice to the side, studying it like it’s an unknown species instead of an Italian dish. More surprise undulates through me, but I must do a shit job of concealing it because she shakes her head as if she’s a teacher and I’m her disappointing student. “How many times I have to tell you there isn’t much I don’t know about you?”
She shifts against the back of the couch as if seeking a more comfortable position. Since I don’t sleep more than four hours in a stretch, I don’t have any additional pillows to offer her.
Goddammit. This ain’t the Holiday Inn, and I ain’t hospitality services.
Ignoring the discomfort flashing across her face and the equally fleeting need to ease it, I lean against the wall, crossing my arms over my chest.
“All right. Given name, Malachi James Bowden. Thirty-three years old. Birthday May nineteenth. Shoutout to the Tauruses. One sister: Miriam Tanai Bowden. Died at the age of four. First kill at ten, the foster father who murdered your sister. Second kill, two months later. Mike Flannery, the pimp in Worcester who beat and tried to rape you.”
I don’t move, but shock pins me to the wall all the same like a dissected frog splayed wide with all its organs and guts on morbid display.
“Hired assassin Derrick Trudell took you under his wing at thirteen, and you started killing for money. You don’t need me to tell you the reputation you’ve earned since then.” She tilts her head, and that feeling of being studied, examined, increases. But I remain still under her scrutiny, refusing to give anything away. Anything more, that is. “You like to read; your home library is really impressive.” A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, and just how the fuck she knows that is worrisome. Oh right. I have video of her breaking into my shit and walking around like my place was hers. Don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out it wasn’t the first time she’d been there. “You don’t watch a lot of TV, but when you do, your go-tos are the old black-and-white classics. Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson. Your favorite snack is apples. Your favorite drink is Glenlivet 18—not to be a snob, but that’s shockingly highbrow. I would’ve pegged you for a Corona man, myself.”
Shut up. Shut the fuck up.
The guttural words reverberate off my skull like a desperate mantra, growing in volume until it fills my head like a deafening storm.
But underneath the growled winds … I swallow hard. A part of me I hadn’t even been aware existed until this woman chained me to her bed and took her knife to my skin, brought my body to life with her mouth, shudders with each detail she drops. That part craves each point. It’s been so long since I’ve been seen. Since someone knew me. Saw, knew Malachi, not the Huntsman.
Not since Miriam.
And until this moment, I didn’t understand that the hungry, gnawing emptiness inside me was …
Loneliness.
“Apples were…” I rasp, the words slipping out of me of their own volition. Horror sizzles inside me, and despite being a whole-ass grown man of thirty-three, embarrassment scorches my face. And yet, I can’t stop the rest of the words from escaping. “Apples were my sister’s favorite food. I hate them but eat them for her.”
“I missed that detail somehow,” she murmurs, as if talking to herself, her gaze dropping to the untouched bottle of water. After a moment, that startling sharp focus shifts back to me. “Tell me something: Is that why children are off-limits? And why people who order those hits have been known to disappear? Oh, you’re a killer, same as me. And you make no apologies about it. But you have a code of honor that’s all your own. And fuck anyone who doesn’t get it. But I do. I have a theory. I think it’s your way of honoring your sister. Of protecting her from the monster you weren’t—”
I shove away from the wall and stalk to the window, fists hanging by my sides. Tension rides me harder than a whore with a forty-dollar trick. My first inclination? Hurt her. It’s what I’d do to anyone else who dared speak to me like that. They wouldn’t be able to talk without a throat. And God knows I want to put my hands around hers. But only to squeeze tight while I beat that pussy up like it offended me.
I drag a hand down my face.
The desire to find out how she knows all this seethes inside me. But that would require asking her questions, and I … can’t. I can’t open myself up more to her than I already have. Exposing more of my underbelly will drive me closer to insanity, and no one wants that. This world won’t be able to handle that.
Shit.
Eshe has me betraying myself, the very values and codes that have kept me alive for the last twenty-three years.
It was a mistake bringing her here.
I knew it when I tossed those bodies off her.
I knew it when I carried her out of that tomb of a warehouse.
I knew it when I brought her here, washed her, and bandaged her wounds.
Time to bring this back to business. I need to keep her alive long enough so I can kill her.
Turning back to her, I, of course, find her gaze on me. Whenever I’m in her vicinity, Eshe’s always studying me as if I’m this specimen that either amuses or fascinates her. Like a toy she delights in playing with before she tears it apart limb by limb.
I resist reaching down and adjusting my dick in my black joggers.
“You realize that bomb was meant for you, right? Not a message for your aunt or the Mwua—”
“Abena.”
I frown. “What? Isn’t that what I said?”
“No, you called her my aunt. Don’t refer to that bitch that way. She ceased being family the day she had my mother gunned down in the street like a dog.”
I nod. Okay, yeah. I get that.
“You were the target of that bomb.” When she doesn’t speak again, I cross the room and pick up the chair, turn it around, and drop into it. Leaning forward, I prop my elbows on my thighs, linking my fingers together between my spread legs. “Seems I’m not the only person after you anymore. I took out another assassin tonight who was there for you. Another contract has been put out on your life. And I have no doubt Abena is behind it.”
“Not that I’m questioning your reasoning or your information, but why do you say that?”
“Because of the reward. Three million—two less than she paid me. But the promise that whoever kills you can take your place as olori sweetens the deal. The power and earnings that brings in more than makes up for that two million.”
Fury floods her features, and I catch myself edging closer as her eyes crystallize into golden shards.
“That’s not how we work. She can’t hold up a family position—a fucking hereditary or earned position—like a bargaining chip for personal and political gain.”
“She know that? Because my source isn’t wrong.”
My source might be a teenager, but Jamari is one of the most brilliant hackers I’ve ever encountered. This shit here is child’s play, and he wouldn’t give me bogus information.
“There would be a fucking rebellion. I can’t imagine any true Mwuaji accepting an outsider—someone outside our family—in the position of olori. She’s not even promoting a soldier but a fucking mercenary who’s not blood? What in the actual fuck?”
Her chest rises and falls under my T-shirt, the only sign of her rage. Any other person would be ranting, maybe throwing the nearest object, pacing the room. But her fury’s so frigid, the lick of it’s giving me frostbite.
I didn’t think she could possibly get sexier, but she did. She is.
The murder, the hate in her eyes … it calls to every damaged, broken thing in me. And not to heal. Not to comfort.
To mate.
To join her jagged pieces with mine.
Her harsh chuckle echoes in the room.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised, but fuck if I’m not. Blood before belief. That bald-headed bitch had her own sister killed for power and sent you after me, so why am I shocked that she would sell out our traditions, our beliefs, our family?” She shakes her head on another of those rough laughs, her gaze going hooded. “This you? I’ll admit, it would be the most elaborate assassination attempt I’ve ever heard of. Blow a spot up, then save me to get my guard lowered just enough to kill me. Have I judged you wrong all this time and missed an unseen ambitious streak?”
“You’re upset, so I’ma let that slide. But anyone else would have my bullet decorating the back of their head for that insult.” I straighten, leaning against the back of the chair.
She defiantly stares at me for several long moments before dipping her chin. Her form of acknowledging my words and an apology.
“I’m a killer, not a king,” I tack on for no reason whatsoever. I don’t owe her an explanation.
“I believe you.”
I shouldn’t give a fuck that her acceptance matters. But it does.
“That shit last night wasn’t me, but if you do pray to a god or goddess, you might want to start getting some time in with him or her. Because one of the people who picked up the contract—and the one responsible for the bomb—was Poison.”
“Poison?” Eshe balls up her face. “Huh.”
“What the fuck does ‘huh’ mean?”
She frowns, her gaze going unfocused for a few moments. With a small shake of her head, she looks at me. “Earlier today, someone took shots at me and my Seven. I assumed it might’ve been a Mwuaji soldier sent by Abena. But now … Who is this Poison, and why haven’t I heard of him before?”
“Not a him. Her. And because she doesn’t care to be known. She doesn’t give a fuck about reputation or any of that shit. Which should give you a clue of exactly how dangerous she is. She’s been around for about ten years, and no one knows exactly what she looks like because if people call me a shadow, she’s a goddamn ghost. And just as good as me. Maybe better and more dangerous, because you’re right—I don’t take out kids. Her? She’s not restrained by that kind of code. It’s only about completing the mission. That’s it, that’s all. She won’t give a fuck about the position of olori, and yes, she gets paid, but neither money nor power drive her. I called her a ghost? Nah. Let me correct myself. If they call me the bogeyman, then she’s the Terminator. Focused. Unstoppable. That’s who’s on your ass now.”
