Chrysalis, p.16
Chrysalis, page 16
I could only manage a string of expletives as he filled me up, stretching me past what it seemed I could take…except I knew I could take more. I pressed back as he slid forward, filling me completely.
“You okay?” He kissed the side of my neck sloppily, and I nodded, unable to speak without saying something stupid. I didn’t think love you, love you, love you, would go over all that well, and that was all that was filling my mind.
He rocked experimentally a couple of times, and I groaned. His fingers tightened on my hips like he was afraid I was going to go somewhere…which was absolutely stupid. “God, Christian. I don’t think…not gonna last.” He started thrusting rapidly, and I could only hang on for the ride. “I hope you’re close.”
Close? I squeezed my dick again, trying my damnedest to hold off. I’d been close since he first jammed his tongue in my ass. “Go ahead. I want you to.”
He sank his fingers in my hair and turned my face to the side before claiming my mouth in a sloppy kiss. The angle was all kinds of wrong, but we made it work, biting and nipping at each other’s mouths like a couple of horny teenagers who’d just discovered kissing. And suddenly, even gripping my dick relentlessly wasn’t enough to stave off the orgasm.
My mouth slid off his as my wobbly elbows gave way, and I pressed my torso flat against the bed. I came with a low groan, spilling messily through the clench of my fist. I unclenched and grabbed the base of my dick. Gray hit my prostate a few times, and I spurted a few more times in the tangle of bedsheets against my belly.
Gray snapped his hips faster as I sank down completely into the bed, ready to let him use my ass at will. His thrusts got shorter and faster, and he let out a low growl before unloading inside of me. If I hadn’t already come, feeling him pulsing in my ass would’ve done the trick. As it was, I let out a weak sound of approval.
Gray ran his hands up and down my sides, his eyes still closed as he tried to come back down to Earth. “Sorry,” he finally said. “I didn’t mean to come so fast.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I beat you by quite a bit.”
“Noticed? You practically strangled my dick when you came.”
“I didn’t hear any complaints, Laurie.”
“Nor will you.”
“When’s the last time you got some?” I teased gently. “A decade? Two?”
“Two months,” he murmured against my sweaty back. “I told you that the breakup between Devin and I was a long time coming.”
“Born-again virgins get more action than you do, Gray.”
“Is that really a thing?”
“Well, I have a dick still in my ass, so I’m obviously not the authority on anything virginal.”
He chuckled. “Just give me a minute, and I’ll clean you up.”
After a few moments of synchronized breathing, I realized his had gotten a lot slower. He’d fallen asleep. I chuckled softly. Sex had always completely wiped him out. I didn’t bother to do any of the things I knew I needed to do, like clean us both up. It wasn’t the first time we’d had sweaty, sticky, messy sex, and if there was a God above, it wouldn’t be the last.
I knew sex was probably going to make things more awkward between us, but I’d never had a better opportunity to use the phrase oh well. I couldn’t be sorry for experiencing the gift that was having the well-mannered, put-together Grayson Laurie losing control on my body. I would do it again and again.
No matter what.
14
Nicholas Shelby hadn’t spoken for over five minutes.
I watched him as he thought, a process that seemed to involve a lot of pulling of his hair. He was a short, wiry guy, with a shock of auburn hair and doe-shaped brown eyes. He spoke faster than I was used to—not a lot of babbling nonsense, just quick and to the point.
I gave the rubber band on my wrist a few nervous pops. I wasn’t a guy who typically needed to fill a good silence, but this one was starting to grate on my nerves. I slid my tongue over the backs of my teeth, busying myself by counting ridges and grooves. I was pretty sure a large percentage of them were fake.
Maybe I used to play hockey. I enjoyed that thought for about two nanoseconds before I remembered that I went to the Bambi school of ice skating. That would probably make flying across the ice after a teeny-tiny puck kind of…difficult.
“So…the coffee is pretty good here. I wonder how the pastries are,” I said, fiddling with my cup. When my companion across the table still didn’t respond, I nattered on. “I may try a few before I leave. That lemon tart looks—”
“Could you stop talking and let me think?” Nick snapped.
I sighed and sat back in my chair. He had a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, like someone had dipped a brush in light brown paint and then flicked it at his face. I’d describe him as cute if I didn’t think he’d gut me like a fish…hell, at this point, I was even afraid to think it. As if he could read my train of thought, he narrowed his eyes at me. I hurriedly tried to redirect my thoughts back to all things pastry.
“Amnesia,” he finally said. “So that shit is real?”
“Of course it’s real.”
“Yeah, I know. I know.” He gave his hair another tug. “You wouldn’t lie about something like that. It’s just that I’ve just only seen that shit in the movies.”
“Yeah, well. Having your mind turn to soup isn’t quite as much fun as you’d think.”
“Where are you even staying now?”
“Gray was nice enough to—”
“With Gray?” he all but squeaked.
I froze. Had he been a target, and I’d gotten sloppy? “Yes,” I said slowly. “You sound surprised.”
“I thought you left him to keep him away from this life. Then you just drag him back in again?” He tugged at his hair again. “Why would you do that?”
I’d done a little more than just reenter his life. I’d let him tag my ass like I was endangered wildlife last night. I decided to keep that little tidbit to myself.
“I assume you’re looking for a more sophisticated answer than my brain is on hiatus,” I growled. “Do you have anything actually helpful to tell me? Like what I was working on that could’ve gotten me shot in the head?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? You were supposed to be getting your revenge for the murder of your family, and then you just dropped off the map, Cross.” Tug. “I mean, what was I supposed to think?”
I batted his hands away from his hair before he gave himself bald spots. “You want to run that by me one more time? Who murdered my family? And why?”
“God, it’s just so hard to believe—”
“That I don’t remember shit, I know, I know.” I leaned forward as he sipped his tea nervously. “I keep having visions…was my mother a dairy farmer?”
He choked and spluttered tea right in my face. I blinked, wiping tea out of my eyes as he proceeded to have a coughing fit. I waved off a barista who started for our table as Nick struggled to get his coughing under control. After a moment, he sent me an apologetic look as he offered me a napkin. And by “offer,” I mean he started patting my face with it like I was a toddler, and I snatched it from his grasp.
“Thank you for that,” I said dryly.
“Sorry,” he said after one last cough. “It’s just that…wow, Cross. Just. Wow.”
“We were feeding baby calves in my dream. Twice,” I said defensively. “I drew a reasonable conclusion.”
“Your mother was an assassin. A damned good one, much like her father.” He shook his head. “Her father was determined that she steer clear of the family business, but no one told Katerina George no.”
“Katerina,” I said, trying out the name on my lips, just to see if it tasted familiar. It didn’t.
“Her friends called her Kat. But she was known as the infamous Monarch.”
“Jesus.” I stared at him in disbelief. What the hell was going on with my life? “So I come from a long line of dairy farmers/assassins?”
“Not dairy farmers,” he said exasperatedly. “Just assassins, Cross!”
“Because that’s better?”
I fervently wanted to go back to the previous worst day of my life, which was waking up in the hospital with no memory of how I got there and a bullet in my skull. That day was now known as my happy place.
“Monarch,” I said almost to myself. “The butterfly keychain in my safe.”
“It probably belonged to her. She had a thing for butterflies. That’s why she named you Chrysalis. You were her new beginning.” He squinted at me as I gave him a blank look. “Shit, you didn’t think your name was—”
“Let me say it one more time for the folks in the back. Am-neee-sia,” I said the word as slowly as possible even as he glared.
“She homeschooled you for a while in case anyone was looking for her, but eventually, she thought it was safe enough to send you to school. She thought the name Chrysalis would get too much attention.”
“What happened to her?” I finally asked.
“Well, rumor has it that she was burned out and looking to leave the business for a while. Then she met your father, who was a mark. She fell in love with him.” He shrugged. “Same old story of boy meets girl.”
“Yes, boy meets assassin, assassin gives up everything for love, and they wind up on a dairy farm. I think I’ve read that one,” I said dryly. “Why was my father a target? And what…what was his name?”
“Sean Cross,” Nick said. “And I have no idea. But he was as eager to leave his old life as she was. So they did, and they were happy. For a time.”
“When did that change?”
“You can’t ever leave the business, Cross. You should know that.” His tone was about as subdued as I felt. “The son of an old target found her.”
“Who?” I asked quietly.
“She’d taken out some drug cartel lord, a cruel man named Vargas. It was her last job, and she used his own signature to take him out. No weapons. Just her hands.” Nick seemed a little too starstruck for my comfort. Clearly, he was a fan of my mother’s work. “She was in and out of Vargas’s compound after she did the deed, but he wasn’t quite dead yet. When his son Taz found him, Vargas had just enough breath left to tell him that the person responsible was the Monarch.”
“That’s unfortunate.” Vargas having enough life left to finger his killer was some butterfly-effect-type shit. It had changed the course of many lives… and ended others completely. My chest ached. I almost didn’t want Nick to get to that part, but I had to know. “How did he find her?”
“Taz spent many years tracking down the Monarch, but he didn’t get anywhere until he put out word of a reward for information leading to her capture. Dead or alive.” Nick swallowed. “A former agent and lover didn’t take too keenly to your mother starting a new life with someone else. He gave her information to Taz and collected the reward.”
I was certainly eager to test out my new ninja skills somewhere around his throat area. “Where is he?” I asked coldly.
“Dead. Taz hates disloyal people, even when it works in his favor. Loyalty is everything. Taz shot the agent in the head. Then he ordered a blackout on your entire family.”
Run and hide, baby. Her face flashed through my mind again, and I realized the fear on her face hadn’t been for herself. It had been for me. Run and hide.
“My father?” I asked, a little choked up. “Did they get him, too?”
“Yes. And two younger sisters, Ellie and Jenna.”
A dull ache began to throb in my stomach. I put a hand over it as if I could soothe it by touch alone. “How old?” My voice was a shaky whisper.
“Five and six.”
“God.”
Nick sent me an alarmed look as my eyes and nose stung with emotion. He probably would’ve looked less frightened if I’d pointed a gun in his face. “Don’t get weepy on me now.”
I scowled. But his words did a good job of pulling me back from the edge, which was probably just what that fucker intended. “I don’t cry.”
“Yeah. You do.”
At his teasing grin, I wanted to kill him all over again. I hated him knowing things about me that I couldn’t remember. “Why did I get to live?”
“They couldn’t find you. Luckily for you, you had a habit of bunking down in the barn with the animals. When you needed a place to hide, that’s the first place you went.” Nick shrugged. “The authorities found you snuggled up next to a pig.”
“You could’ve left that part out,” I accused.
“I know.” His mouth quivered like he was trying not to grin. “But I thought you deserved to know everything.”
“Where did I go then?”
“WITSEC,” Nick said. “They gave you a whole new identity and shipped you off to live with another family in protective custody. That’s how we met.”
“You were….”
“Also in protective custody, yes. My father got involved with doing the books for some mafia kingpin. I didn’t know who he was back then—I just thought he was another boring client of my father’s. But I’ve always been too curious for my own good and too good at hacking into things to mind my own business.” He sighed. “I was on his computer one night and saw some things I shouldn’t regarding some hits they’d done on former associates. His boss got wind of it and decided I was too risky of a loose end. It was one of the few times my father stepped up and did the right thing.”
“What happened to him?”
“What do you think?” Nick cast me a look loaded with derision. “They played tiddlywinks and lived happily ever after.”
“Nick,” I growled.
“The kingpin had my father killed. Luckily, he’d been under FBI surveillance for a while, and they were able to put him away. But we had to go into protective custody. You came to live with a family next door to us a year later.”
“Your mother….” I said hesitantly. “She made lemon bars a lot. Right?”
He smiled faintly. “Not bad, Cross. Maybe we’ll plug those holes in your brain yet.”
“We’re going to need a lot more putty, that’s for sure,” I murmured.
“You knew what happened to your parents, but not why. I helped you hack into your file, and that’s when we found out about Vargas’s cartel. Your life’s goal became taking him down.” He rolled his shoulders a little uncomfortably. “I’ve never fully apologized for that.”
I looked at him blankly. “Why would you apologize for telling me the truth?”
“Because sometimes the truth is better off buried.” He held my stare for a few moments before looking away. Not for the first time, I wondered if he was telling me everything. “You became obsessed. You trained under the excuse that you wanted to be a cop, and your host family was so impressed with your dedication that they sent you to some advanced training camps. At one point you were recruited by a company named Maxim—”
“Maxim. I have a tattoo on my neck with that word.” I frowned. “What does the company do?”
“Mostly military tech. I assumed they hired you because you had the right skills to do…whatever it is they do. You weren’t very open about it, but I know there was a lot of training involved.”
“But they wouldn’t have trained me for shits and giggles. What did I do for them in return?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. You had a goal, Chris. You were very focused on that goal.”
“So…did I?”
“Did you what?” he asked impatiently.
“Did I achieve my life’s goal?”
“You took the Vargas crime family down, if that’s what you mean.”
“That…sounds like a lot of killing,” I said grimly. “I’m not sure I want all the dirty details.”
“Don’t be such a fucking wuss.” He shrugged. “It was just nine people. Give or take.”
“Oh good. Just nine,” I said faintly.
“That’s all it took. You executed well-placed, influential members of the family, which left the younger generation in charge. You also accomplished it over three years, which kept everyone on edge. Every hit was clean and left no trace. Like mother, like son, I guess.”
He smiled again. I wasn’t sure if he was aware, but Nick seemed to come alive most when we were talking about murder and mayhem. It was disturbing.
“They didn’t know what was going on,” he enthused. “It was a real mindfuck, thinking they could be killed at any moment.”
“I’ve experienced that mindfuck,” I said dryly. “Not as much fun as you’d imagine.”
He chuckled. “Without Taz, the leadership role went to his son, Theo. He had no loyal crew, mostly because they knew he was an idiot who barely knew how to hold a gun, barring what he’d seen in the movies.” Nick curled his lip. “What with the infighting and shoddy leadership, the Vargas empire crumbled six months after you killed Taz.”
I blew out a breath. It was a lot to take in. “So if I avenged my family, what was left? What was I working on the last we spoke?”
“I don’t know. You didn’t tell me what you were working on.”
I scowled. “How could you be my handler if you don’t know what the fuck I was up to?”
“I handled you just fine,” he snapped. A woman two tables over sent us a wide-eyed stare. Nick lowered his voice. “You worked for a company, and you had missions you didn’t tell me much about. But if you needed some legwork or computer work done, I was your guy.”
“Such as?”
“You were looking into the research and development department at Maxim and something called Project Geneza.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t able to find much.”
I looked at him expectantly. When he didn’t continue, I prodded, “Yeah? And?”
“And what?” He scowled. “And don’t give me that face. I told you everything I know. I’ve been connecting dots for you for the past twenty fucking minutes.”
“And I’m grateful for that,” I said begrudgingly. “That still doesn’t tell me what Project Geneza was and who shot me in the head.”
