Page 2

CHAPTER 2

CUPID

Finishing a job makes me feel alive.

Do you see the irony?

I eliminate a target, and it gives me life. I’m sure Olympia has some Greek analogy they’d love to tie that to if they could get me to sit down with one of their psychologists. Those dorks love putting their nerdy bow on everything.

Tonight is different.

Mr. Scar Under Right Ear is dead. Gone. Target eliminated. It was a clean, easy job. I waited for his driver to depart and ended him inside his fancy Paris home. Nice place, great snacks in the pantry. And that wine collection! I used a knife, in case you’re curious. He received a mostly painless death.

No one will ever know it was me.

I disappeared into the night, got myself a bottle of vodka, and perched up on a bridge over the Marne. The river bled moonlight, and I poured out a bit of the clear liquor for the man I’d just killed.

I did not feel alive.

Even as the vodka hit my lips, the burn in my throat was subdued.

I considered jumping into the river. The water would be cold enough to force some feeling into me. A temporary solution. The real answer is waiting for me on the other side of the glass. She’s been waiting for me for some time now, even if she didn’t know it.

Hera points her pistol at me, standing as still as a gargoyle. Maybe she’ll shoot me? I’m sure I’d feel that.

Open the door , I mouth. My hand presses against the knife wound at my side. Warmth soaks my palm.

Her green eyes search me, scan the wound, the bottle, my face… finally, she lowers her weapon and unlocks the door.

“Evening,” I say before she grabs me by the collar and yanks me inside.

She peers out into the night. “Shut up. Were you followed?”

“By who? The target is dead.”

“By whoever did that.” She gestures to my stomach with her gun.

“Oh? This?” I’d almost forgotten. “Flesh wound. Nothing a drink can’t fix.”

Hera’s out of that sultry dress, cozy in a baggy sweater and shorts. The look suits her. Any look would suit her.

“Did you seriously climb twelve stories with a bottle of vodka and a gunshot wound?”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous,” I laugh and collapse onto the curving blood-red sofa. “I took the stairs to the eleventh floor, picked the lock on an empty room, and climbed up to your balcony. And it’s a knife wound.” I glance around before smiling up at her. “Lovely room. Very let them eat cake. ”

“Well, that makes it so much better. Give me that.”

She tries to snatch the vodka away, but I’m too fast. “You’d take my painkillers?”

“It’ll thin your damn blood. I need to stitch you up and get you out of here.” Hera finally sets the gun down and rubs her temples. “God, I should have never told you where I was.”

“Do you have a headache? Grab a glass.”

“ You are my headache.” She hurries off on her bare feet, rummaging around in the bedroom. “Take off your shirt… and don’t get any ideas!”

I smile, take off my jacket, and start unbuttoning my white shirt. “I’m a tool, Hera. We don’t get ideas.”

She comes back with a little knitting kit. It’s innocent enough, but there’s everything she needs to stitch up a wound. Cautiously, she sits next to me on the sofa and lays out her tools.

As I get my shirt off, I notice her eyes wander. They trace the scars that mark my weaponized body.

She arches an eyebrow. “Not your first rodeo.”

“You look surprised.”

“I’m more shocked by the lack of stupid tattoos.”

“Ink makes you easy to identify. Everyone has scars…”

Hera takes the bottle from my hand, pours a bit on a cotton pad, and presses it to the wound. I suck in a deep breath and exhale the pain.

“That hurt?” she asks, smirking at me.

“Not at all.”

“Liar.”

I shrug. “I’d be a poor assassin if I didn’t know how to lie.”

Hera shakes her head; she takes a look at the bottle before snatching it up again and pulling a swig.

“Oh, God. That is awful.”

“Liquor should feel like a punch to the throat.”

I drop back against the sofa and let her get to work. Hera works the needle in and out through the severed walls of flesh. Her black hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail like a military girl. She has a hard face, unyielding. There’s a hidden softness in her eyes though as she patches me up.

She’s everything I knew she’d be…

“Hera is the goddess of marriage. Did you know that?” I ask conversationally. “She watches over women during childbirth. Maybe that’s why it’s your codename: you’re so motherly and tender.”

She finishes the job by breaking the thread with a yank that makes me curse in Russian.

“Was that tender enough for you?”

“Tough love, I suppose,” I say, examining her work. “Hera is known as a vengeful goddess.”

Hera stands, leaving me on the sofa. I can see her fingers itching to take up her gun again. “Enough mythology, Cupid. I need you to tell me what happened. No collateral, remember? If there were additional fatalities, I need to know about them. Olympia won’t be pleased.”

I sit up and throw my shirt back on, but leave the buttons undone. Blood has dyed a portion of it red. “Oh, the job was clean. Target eliminated. No witnesses. No collateral.”

She stares at my wound as if she’s expecting the explanation to rip the stitches open. I’ve stared killers in the eyes (even looked in the mirror on occasion), and none have compared to the look she’s giving me right now. It’s a look that could kill me.

Finally, I shrug. “I fell.”

“Onto a knife?”

“Perfect stab, really,” I say nonchalantly. “No organs pierced. That knife really knew what it was doing.”

“Cupid…” Hera looks like she might explode. “Is that wound self-inflicted?”

I smile. “I needed a reason to see you…”

This time, I think she actually might shoot me.

“Are you fucking crazy?” She’s pacing. Is it strange that I find her pacing attractive? “Are you insane? ”

“I’m an assassin, Hera. Insanity is a prerequisite.”

“You stabbed yourself!”

“Barely,” I laugh. “It’s a scratch. I just needed a bit of blood for show. It got you to let me in, didn’t it?”

Hera stands at the balcony, pointing her gun out at the night as if she’s going to murder the Eiffel Tower.

“Leave,” she commands. “Immediately. Consider this the debrief. Leave now so I don’t have to report this bullshit to Olympia.”

“What’s the difference between leaving now or in the morning?”

I stand, challenging her.

She doesn’t budge as I close the distance and smell the lavender in her hair. Standing this close together, she has to crane her neck to look up at me. Still, she doesn’t look small.

“Either way, you should report this, no?”

“You want me to?”

“I want to know why you wouldn’t,” I whisper with a smile. “You work by the book. This isn’t protocol.”

“It would be easier for both of us if they didn’t find out. This sort of thing doesn’t sit well with them, Cupid.”

“Or maybe you have a soft spot for me…”

I can sense her tensing.

Her finger sneaks toward the trigger.

“Come on. You feel it.”

“Feel what? ”

Slowly, I drag my finger up her thigh. The way she hisses, you’d think I just sliced her open. Maybe I have…

“ This ,” I say softly, inching closer. “This… tension. I’ve felt it since the moment I first saw you. It’s been drawing me to you.”

“Maybe the Paris air is getting to your head.”

Oh, Hera. I felt this long before Paris… “We’re both too strong to be lulled by that false romance people feel here.”

As my hand rises, so does her gun.

My fingers brave her throat, sliding up until my thumb rolls over her chin.

The barrel of her weapon buries itself under my jaw.

“Don’t push me,” she warns.

The fields of green in her eyes tell me a different story—they tattle on her lying lips.

“Face it, Hera. You’re in just as deeply as I am.”

I hold her gaze as our noses brush together.

Her skin is so soft against my palm, so unlike the hardness she presents.

“One kiss,” I whisper. “Just to see what happens.”

“Kiss me and I’ll shoot you.”

“Worth the risk.”

Our lips seal, but no bullet hits my brain.

Finally, I feel alive.

I feel the thrill like I’ve never felt anything before.

Hera loosens beneath me, welcomes my tongue like she’s been waiting for it her entire life. Breath floods from her nose as the kiss deepens, and she finally pulls back with wide eyes and a desperate gasp.

“I’ll shoot you,” she repeats.

“You would have done it already.”

Something passes through her rigid face. A realization. The moment that everything changes.

She’s in my arms before the gun hits the floor.

I slam her against the wall, greedily clawing at her thick legs as they wrap around me. Hera kisses me like a woman who hasn’t been touched in years—I take her like a man who’s been deprived his entire life.

“We can’t do this,” she pants as I lift her sweater. “This isn’t protocol.”

“Fuck protocol.”

Pinned against the wall, Hera lets me pull her sweater over her head. Perfect, milky tits fall out to meet me, soft against her toned body. No tattoos for her, either. Fingerprints are damning enough.

“This is all I’ve been thinking about since the moment I first saw you.” I speak like a maniac, kissing her nipples, swirling my tongue around them as she moans. “Even during the job… all I could think about was you.”

“You thought about me while you killed a man?” she gasps. “Is that supposed to turn me on?”

“It clearly is.”

“You’re crazy. We can’t do this.” She shakes her head as I meet her gaze. “Don’t you get it? If Olympia finds out, they’ll fucking kill us.”

I cup her face in my palms.

I stare into those deep green eyes and lose myself for the first time in my life.

Nothing about my existence has ever made sense, so why should this?

From the moment I saw her, I knew that a switch had been flipped. I knew there was no going back.

“Hera,” I whisper, desperate to speak her real name. “I’d die for one night with you.”

She laughs against my lips. A tear rolls down her cheek.

“That’s so fucking stupid, Cupid.”

“Stupidity doesn’t keep it from being true.”

As I carry her to the bedroom, Hera wraps herself up in me. She doesn’t fight. She doesn’t speak another word about Olympia or protocol or the consequences that are sure to come.

She lets me lie her down on the bed, pull off her panties, and gaze upon her naked body. The snowy whiteness of her flesh is so pure that I fear I’ll stain in with my blood-stained hands. A goddess lies before me; I’m going to taste her divinity.

“Tell me your name,” I say as I whip off my belt.

She sits upright, guarding herself. “ No . That I won’t do.”

“I’ll tell you mine.”

“I don’t want to know,” she says sternly. Her legs writhe even as she hides herself. “Don’t say it.”

Fine. I’ll peel her back layer by layer. I’ll taste her and fuck her and do anything she wants if it means that someday, maybe, I’ll get to hear my true name leave her lips. There will be more assignments, more people to kill, more opportunities to unmask the woman who’s become the sole object of my desire.

She has no idea what she’s been doing to me, and for how long…

“You would have let me kiss you back at that café.” I step out of my pants, cock trained on her like the rifle of a marksmen. “Wouldn’t you?”

Hera’s gaze drifts. She stops hugging herself so tightly, lets her legs part now that I’m bare before her. It takes her a moment to respond, to stop staring at the raging thing between my legs. “To keep up the act… yes.”

“That’s not why.”

I dive onto the bed, making her shriek and slide back against the headboard. I crawl to her like a beggar, like an animal slinking toward its kill.

“Tell me the truth.” My hand runs up her foot.

Hera nods. “I-I wanted you to… I wanted to kiss you. I still do.”

With all the speed my training has given me, I snap her head back by her hair, loom over her, and growl into her mouth. “Then fucking kiss me .”

Hera loses and gains control all at once.

Her tongue shoots into my mouth, whipping at me wildly.

She moans and growls and cries out, scratching my chest, nicking my wound with her knee. The pain means nothing.

She means everything.

The headboard slams against the wall as I shove her back. I smack her legs open, diving between her muscled thighs and biting hard. She rakes her fingers through my hair, searing my scalp with pain.

“Go on. Taste me,” she sounds so desperately mad with lust. “Fucking have me. I want it. You psychopath. You fucking crazy asshole. Do it. Oh, God—“

My tongue turns her words to mush.

Through her thin bush, I find her clit and lick it like I own it. I’m an assassin, and her pleasure is my target.

It doesn’t take long before she’s screaming my name.

Not my real name, this plaything I’ve been given.

I’m Cupid, and Hera has finally been struck by my arrow.