Page 79 of Hannah and the Hitman
We were on the couch–not over it–with Hannah sprawled on top of me. Naked. I intended to keep her that way, not because she could apparate like Harry Potter, but because there was nothing better than her bare. She was warm and soft and so fucking pliant. I’d only opened up my pants enough to get my dick out, too eager to fuck to take the time to strip down. My dick was tucked back in my boxers, but I hadn’t done up my pants or belt.
It was this little slip of a woman who gave my conscience a shove off my twenty-story balcony and put it in freefall. Because she was the only person I didn’t want to let down and fuck, had I let her down. Not from Sal wanting me dead. That was the easy part to deal with.
Her forgiving me showed more about her spirit than mylevel of groveling. Because of that, our love would never be even. She wouldn’t know it, but I’d always treasure her more. Need her more. Crave her.
I’d hoped to be the man she deserved by quitting, but I should have known I couldn’t escape the life that easily.
“How come you don’t stand up to your crazy ass family the way you took on a killer like youwerea killer?”
She stiffened and made to sit up, but my arms banded about her and held her in place. After a few seconds, she sighed, then relaxed. “You’re right. I don’t know why I let my family walk all over me. I guess it’s always been easier being invisible.”
“Gorgeous, you couldneverbe invisible. If you showed me the whole fridge deadlift thing before you tossed Eyebrows aside like garbage, I wouldn’t have questioned.”
“It’s a newfound skill,” she admitted. “Like the bathroom door at my parents’ house. Pretty sure now it wasn’t termites.”
Right, the door had been off its hinges when I’d joined her in that tiny powder room. She’d escaped to there because she’d been mad at her family.
“I’d say the ability to teleport like the crew fromStar Trekis even more impressive,” I replied dryly. “Can you please tell me how my girl’s got superpowers?”
She turned her head so she was looking at me, her chin on my bare chest. Her palm settled right above my heart.
“At first, I thought… well, I thought I was crazy. Then I questioned if it was because of my brain tumor.”
Panic instantly filled me, remembering that Nitro had footage of her entering a local cancer center.
“Are you sick? Is it back?” I wanted to run my handsover every inch of her to see if she was hurt but knew that wouldn’t help.
I killed people for a living, but Hannah was the one person who I needed to not die. Big Mike had always said in our line of work, we should expect to live short lives. He was pushing seventy, so either Florida was good for his health, or he’d been wrong. Dax and I were hanging in there, but we knew the risks.
Hannah deserved to die in her sleep at one hundred. I couldn’t resist, cupping her face, then stroking over her silky hair. To know she was real and well and whole.
“No. I had a checkup two weeks ago and it was gone.” She absently ran her finger over my tattoos. “I haven’t had any symptoms like before or any radiation side effects. I haven’t felt off, and that’s where my mind goes first thing.”
I never really thought about her worrying if it would return. If it filled her thoughts. If she was scared.
“It’s okay to be afraid,” I told her.
Her mouth slipped into a flat line, and she jabbed my chest. “Don’t mansplain to me about how I should feel after a brain tumor. And you’re the last person who should be telling someone it’s okay to be afraid about dying since you, you know, kill people. I’m sure all of them were afraid.”
Shit… yeah. “You’re right about the mansplaining. I’m sorry. What I meant was, you can be afraid because if you are I will be here, like this, to hold you. You won’t be alone.”
Her muscles softened and she relaxed back into me.
“As for me killing people, can we come back to it? I don’t want a superpowers cliffhanger.”
My literary device use had her smiling.
She sniffed and sounded very much like a prim librarian when she said, “Yes, but I’m not going to forget.”
“I never imagined you would,” I murmured, my voice soft. I hoped she would keep me in line for years… decades to come.
She sighed, then returned to the unfinished topic. “I don’t go to the gym. The heaviest thing I lift is a book. Until this week. I know what you’re going to say, that I should go get checked out again. I went in two weeks ago and everything was good, but it’s not like I’m going to go in and tell my doctor I can now lift refrigerators.”
“Or teleport,” I added.
“Or teleport,” she repeated.
I’d have to agree with her, except theseabilitiesmade no sense. Her doctor would agree and think she was insane, and Hannah was probably the sanest, level-headed person I knew.