“You won’t get pregnant,” he says and urges me to slide off the counter and follow him into the shower. “At least not by me.”
A little taken aback, I leave it at that.
He closes the shower door and begins to wash my hair. I bask in his closeness, the way his hands explore my body with such careful precision and need.
For a long time, I forget that he is an assassin, whose hands have taken many lives without thought or remorse or regret. I forget that I, too, am a killer, whose hands took a life just hours ago.
Seems we were made for each other, like two puzzle pieces that at first don’t appear to fit, but eventually fall into place when looked at in the most unlikely of angles.
CHAPTER TEN
Victor
Fredrik’s housekeeper arrives back at the house early in the morning. I’m awake just after dawn, having my coffee on the rock patio in the backyard when she enters the house. She sees me through the sliding glass door when she makes her way into the living room and then joins me outside.
“Would you like breakfast, señor?” she asks in Spanish.
I set the file consisting of my next job face-down on the wrought iron coffee table.
“Gracias, but I won’t be eating,” I tell her and then gesture toward Sarai walking through the living room in search of me. “But she will be.”
“I will be what?” Sarai asks as she steps through the opened glass door. She walks across the rock patio with bare feet, wearing another one of Fredrik’s t-shirts—it bothers me immensely that she’s having to wear his clothes rather than mine, but the only ones I have with me are those on my back—and a pair of loose running shorts. Her long, auburn hair is disheveled having just awoken and crawled out of the bed.
She sits on my lap and I fit my right hand between her thighs.
“Breakfast,” I answer.
Sarai yawns and stretches her arms above her before laying her head against my shoulder. I fit my left hand behind her at the waist to keep her balanced on my lap. The smell of her freshly-washed skin and hair sends my senses into overdrive.
She makes a subtle face, halfway rejecting the idea.
“You should eat,” I urge her.
Raising her head from my shoulder, she looks thoughtful for a moment and then turns her attention to the housekeeper. “Sure, I’d like some breakfast, if you don’t mind,” she says in Spanish.
For a moment, the housekeeper looks surprised that Sarai speaks to her in her native tongue, but she’s over it just as quickly.
The housekeeper nods and heads back into the house.
“I think I’ve put this question off long enough,” she says. “Where do we go from here, Victor? What am I going to do?”
I had been thinking about this very thing since I found out that she was in Los Angeles and after what she had done. I stare off toward the pool, lost in thought, my last desperate attempt to sort out the answers in my head. But they are as broken and unsettled as they ever have been. All except for one.
“Sarai,” I say, looking back at her, “you can’t go home. I knew this the first time I sent you back to Arizona. The situation wasn’t nearly as dire as it has become, but now that things have changed, you can never go home.”
“Then I’m staying with you,” she says and for the first time in my life, I can’t bring myself to protest such an issue. Not with her, or even with myself. The largest part of me, the flawed human part, wants her with me and I’ll stop at nothing to make sure that it works.
But I know it’s not going to be easy.
“Yes,” I say, running the palm of my hand across her smooth thigh, “you’re staying with me, but there are many things that you must understand.”
She gets up from my lap and stands in front of me, one arm crossing her abdomen, the other propped atop it at the elbow. Absently, she brushes her fingertips across the softness of her face as she stares out at seemingly nothing. Then she looks down at me and shakes her head with a perplexed look in her eyes. “I expected you to put up more of a fight. What’s the catch? Regardless of what happened between us last night, or what has been going on between us even when we were apart, I still never thought you’d agree to take me with you.”
“Would you like me to put up a fight?” I give her a wry smile.
She smiles back at me and her arms drop back at her sides. “No. Definitely not. I-I just….”
I bring one leg up and rest my foot on the opposite knee.
“I never imagined that I’d be in a situation like this,” I say. “I cannot lie to you and tell you that I think it’s going to work. It very likely won’t, Sarai, and you have to understand that.” Her face falls just slightly, enough that I know my truthful words have discouraged her more than she’ll let her expression reveal. “I cannot change my ways,” I go on. “Not only because it’s all I know, or that it’s what I’m best at, but also because I don’t want to.” I look her straight in the eyes. “I will never stop doing what I do.”
“I would never want you to,” she says with a level of intensity. She pulls the nearby empty chair around and places it in front of me before sitting. “All that I’m asking, Victor, is to stay with you. I will do whatever you expect of me, but I want you to teach—”
I put up my hand and stop her right there.
“No, Sarai, I won’t do that, either. It won’t be like that.” Her expression darkens and she looks away from my eyes, stung by my refusal. “I’ve told you before, I was practically born into this life. It would take you nearly the rest of your life to learn to do what I do, and even still it would not be good enough.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” she asks with a trace of resentment in her tone. “I want to be with you wherever you go, but I don’t want to sit by and do nothing, sipping on martinis on the beach while you’re out killing people. I’m not useless, Victor, I can do something.”
“There are many things that you can do, yes,” I cut in. “But doing what I do is completely out of the question. Why do you want this so much?” My voice had begun to rise with the question as I suddenly felt desperate to understand the answer.
The palms of her hands come down on the tops of her bare thighs creating a light slapping noise. “Because it’s what I want.”
“But why?”
She throws her hands up beside her and yells, “Because I enjoy it! All right?! I enjoy it!”
I blink a few times, completely stunned by her admittance. Truthfully, that was the last thing I expected her to say. A part of me knew that Sarai was more than capable of taking a human life and be able to sleep soundly every night afterwards, but I never anticipated that she would enjoy killing.
I’m not sure how to feel about this. I need more information.
I lean forward, raising my back from the chair and I come face to face with her. “You enjoy killing?” I ask, though it comes out more like a statement. “So, if you were asked to take someone’s life, would you do it without question?”
“No,” she says, her brows drawing inward. “I wouldn’t kill just anyone, Victor, only men who deserve it.”
Men? This side of Sarai is becoming more intriguing. I wonder if she even realizes what she just said. Men. Not people in general, but men.
I pull away from her and rest my back against the chair again, cocking my head to one side thoughtfully.
“Go on,” I urge her.
She leans back as well, pulling both of her legs up and resting her feet on the seat, letting her knees fall together to one side.