Angels and Assassins 5: The Shadow Read online

  So did Ant.

  “Ant, I’m not in the mood for your crap right now.”

  “You know I’ve been trying to get at your friend for a minute now,” Ant went on. “But y’all think y’all too good for a cat like me.”

  Even in the dark, Mike could see her eyes roll.

  “Ant, get over yourself,” she warned. “Maybe if you’d stop trying to play Deebo all the freakin’ time, Val would give you the time of day. I don’t understand why you have to put on that whole ‘bad boy’ act when you know Val doesn’t go for those types.”

  Ant laughed, exaggerating his humor by tossing his head back. “Whatever, Xara. Think your momma would like it if I told her you were opening up your legs for the Asians now?”

  She tried stepping around him, to the left this time. Again, he mimicked her movement.

  “What do you want, Anthony?” she all but growled.

  “We grew up together right here on this street.” He pointed to the sidewalk. “I’m here for an apology for your behavior today.”

  Mike made his way down the porch steps toward them. When he was a few steps away, Xara’s hand went up.

  “Thanks, but I can handle this,” she told him.

  He stopped dead in his tracks.

  How the hell did she know he was there?

  Virtually no one heard him unless he wanted them to. It was a trait he’d learned from his father, uncle, and the man who now hunted him like forbidden prey. They’d started training him to be “invisible” at the age of four.

  “Oh, what do we have here?” Ant peered over Xara’s shoulder. “Your boyfriend coming to save you?”

  “Ant, do better,” she spat. “Boys who look like you have enough to worry about in this world and here you are, choosing to act like an asshole. You’ve had a crush on Val forever, and she’d probably give you the time of day if you’d try acting like you matured, even a little, since middle school.”

  Ant took a half-step back like she’d struck him. “Whatever, man.”

  “Don’t whatever me.”

  Mike smiled. She was in full lecture mode now. Her right hand was in the air, index finger pointed upward like a preacher about to deliver a scathing sermon.

  “So, what are you trying to say?” Ant asked.

  “I’m saying ‘do better,’” she repeated. “You’re so much more than this act you put on. You don’t have anything to prove, to anybody. Plus, if you say anything to my mother, I’ll just go to your grandmother. We both know Mama Peoples doesn’t play, and she’ll come down harder on you than my momma will.”

  Ant sucked in a breath and batted the air, but he walked off in the opposite direction without further incident. When he was gone, Xara spun around and faced Mike, her voice a whisper.

  “Oh my god.” She started toward him. “I didn’t think that would wor—”

  The next thing he knew, she was in his arms. He didn’t remember stepping forward but he had, catching her before she fell face first to the sidewalk.

  “Those damn things are going to be the death of you,” he said, glancing at her feet.

  The lowering sun made her brown eyes appear onyx. This close, her heart beat against his. Her breasts were soft against his chest. The faint scent of roses snuck into his nostrils from the pulsing hollow of her throat.

  She looked down at the shoe’s heel, which had hooked against an uneven plate on the sidewalk concrete. “I know.”

  “So why do you wear them?”

  “For fashion.”

  He helped her upright. She winced.

  “They hurt? Why are you out here walking in them then?”

  She returned to that closed in demeanor, warming her arms even though it wasn’t cold outside. “I needed to get out of the house in a hurry.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged, which wasn’t much of an answer, but he didn’t push.

  “It’s getting dark, Xara.”

  Her eyes flickered at the sound of her name leaving his lips. It didn’t feel as foreign as he’d been expecting. In a way, he liked the way it sounded and felt between his teeth.

  “You remembered my name.”

  Mike huffed a sigh, turned, and tapped his shoulders. “Come on.”

  Although he wasn’t looking at her, he still envisioned the look on her face at his gesture, surprise and affront, with a bit of attitude. In other words, cute as fuck.

  “Come on where?” she asked.

  “You obviously can’t walk all the way back home in those.” He tapped his shoulders again. “I’ll carry you.”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “It’s Mike.” He tipped his head. “Come on. It’s getting late.”

  After three wobbling clicks, he felt her hands on his shoulders. They were smaller than his, and not as soft as other girls’ hands he’d known.

  He’d been here only a few days but already knew she loved to design things, mainly clothes and fashion accessories. Needles and thread had probably left their fair share of calluses on her fingertips, and he found he didn’t like thinking of her not having the benefit of smooth hands.

  He bent his knees, and she clumsily climbed onto his back.

  “Can I touch your thighs, Xara?” he asked, ignoring the flush that went through him at the thought of his hands on her skin.

  He felt her nod, and he hooked his hands under her thighs while she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She wasn’t a short or thin girl, by any means, but on his back, as he walked with her, she felt small. Like someone who needed to be protected.

  She wiggled against him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, maneuvering to try to avoid dropping her.

  “Pulling down my dress.” She continued to squirm and twist. “My booty was all out.”

  “Wear something looser next time.” Like that would help. She had a peach of an ass. He’d noticed it on the first day of school and could spot it coming down a hallway.

  “Yes, Father,” she teased.

  He followed her directions until he was depositing her on her front stoop. The minute she lowered onto the steps, she slipped the shoes from her feet and made like she was going to toss them into the neatly trimmed hedge that ran along the porch wall.

  “You might as well,” he told her. “Don’t wear those again.”

  Her head towered slightly above his from her position on the step. “I don’t take orders from strangers.”

  “I’m not a stranger. You know my name now.”

  She quirked her right brow. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “No problem.”

  She dropped down off the step and came close enough for her body heat to cast its warmth over him.

  “What?” he asked, not sure why he didn’t step away. Or why his heart was pounding, hard, in his chest all of a sudden.

  “Nothing.” She dragged down the corners of her mouth. “Are you dangerous, Michael?”

  He avoided showing any evidence she was having an effect on him. It wasn’t an effect he understood or was even familiar with, but it wouldn’t be ignored. Tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead joined the racing in his chest. His throat felt near to closing.

  Fucking teenage hormones.

  “I never told you my name was Michael.”

  “I’ve never met a Mike who wasn’t. Answer the question.”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “The way you fight.” She circled him. “And the way you appear without being heard. Are you dangerous?”

  When she was in front of him, he stopped her circling with an easy grip on her shoulders. It was time to turn the tables.

  “Very dangerous.” He leaned forward. “The kind of dangerous that gets good girls like you wet.”

  She blinked, a quick and nervous flutter of her eyelids.

  “What was that?” He ticked his head to the side. “Did I make you uncomfortable?”

  “No.” She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. “Why would
you?”

  He made the gap between them even smaller, crowding her although being this close was having the same effect on him as it appeared to be having on her.

  “You like bad boys, Xara? You stay up late at night touching yourself to guys you think are . . . dangerous?”

  Even though it was clearly obvious she was rattled, she held his gaze, and he hated what that mix of challenge and innocence did to his dick. His life was complicated, so he would have preferred that if someone wanted to be in it, they didn’t expect much. Xara seemed like the type to expect more than he was capable of. She also seemed like the type who probably deserved it.

  She released her bottom lip and it glistened, making her heart-shaped mouth look even more plump than it usually did.

  Her breaths were slow and shallow and her gaze was so fixed to his, he wondered if she was truly looking at him at all. Maybe “into” him.

  Whatever she was searching for, he hoped she found it. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he saw nothing worth searching for.

  “Xara,” he leaned closer, his face inches from hers, “did I get that pussy wet?”

  Her nostrils flared. “Hmm?”

  “Xara, is that pussy wet for me, right now?”

  They both turned as the front door swung open. Standing in the entryway was a woman who looked like she was out for murder. On her face, Mike could see where she resembled Xara, but there weren’t many similarities. They had different complexions, different hair. Xara’s skin was more dark roast, her face oval, and her hair jet black and silky. This woman’s face was heart-shaped, her skin butterscotch, and her hair long, thick, and medium-brown.

  Xara stepped away from him. “Momma—”

  “That’s what you’ve been doing? Meeting with a boy?” The woman’s attention moved to him. “Get off my porch.”

  “He’s not on the porch, Momma,” Xara countered.

  Xara’s mother raised her hand, but then lowered it and smacked it against her chest. “You stormed out of the house, like a brat, and now you come back here and talk to me like this? What were you doing, spreading your legs for this Japanese boy? Why am I’m not surprised? I don’t know why I ever expect anything decent out of you.”

  Mike thought about correcting her about his ethnic background but realized it wasn’t the time or place for his asshole ways to rear its head. He was more interested in the dynamic between the two women. The minute Xara’s mother stepped outside, Xara shrunk to half her size.

  “Momma, you hurt me with the things you said,” Xara argued, voice low. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. I just wanted you to understand—”

  “I don’t care, Xara.” The woman looked his way again. “If I come back outside and you’re still on my porch, I’m calling the police to beat the yellow off you.”

  Then, she was a blur as she whirled back into the house.

  Xara, after a sigh that seemed to suck all the life out of her, started up the stairs. “Thanks for your help, Mike.”

  “Anytime,” he called after her. “Actually, Xar?”

  She turned half her body toward him, her hand hovering over the knob on the front door. “Yeah?”

  Growing up as the son of the leader of one of the most dangerous clandestine organizations in the world, he knew conflict. He sniffed it like people did fruits at a market, and something was rotten in the Merritt house.

  He didn’t know much about Xara’s mother—nothing, really—and he believed she had an older brother, but the way her posture changed from confident to closed in, only one person in that house had any power.

  “Goodnight,” he said.

  It wasn’t his place to pry, and he wasn’t anybody’s savior.

  She lowered her head in a brief nod and disappeared inside the house.

  He remained standing there, staring into the soft light filtering through the glass on the front door. He wanted to tear the door from its hinges, barge his way inside, and drag her back out onto the lawn. He wouldn’t stop dragging her until she was in the middle of his house behind a door where . . .

  He stopped his train of thought.

  She wouldn’t be safer with him, not even with a mother like that.

  However, as he turned and made his way back home, he realized that maybe a year in Hicktown, USA wouldn’t be as bad as he’d previously thought.

  Mike bolted up in bed and waited. When the sound came again, a knick cascading off his bedroom window, he turned off the bedside lamp. He never slept in complete darkness. The man who killed his parents had done so without even the light of a full moon to guide his way throughout their thirty-thousand square foot Shanghai mansion.

  “Hey, turn it back on!” a voice called.

  He moved to the window and tipped back the curtain.

  She was dressed more sensibly this time in a charcoal gray hoodie, checkered pajama bottoms, white socks, and Nike slides. This time, if someone grabbed her, she’d have more of a chance at escape. However, if she would simply stay her ass inside her house for more than an hour at a time, there would be less of a chance for someone to grab her.

  He clicked the lamp back on, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and made his way downstairs. When he opened the front door, she was still looking up at the window.

  “I see you’re going to be a problem.”

  Her gaze lowered to his. Those lips, like juicy fucking plums, parted and her eyes rounded. Even if it hadn’t been her, he would have still come to the door shirtless with his pants low on his waist, but he would have at least considered putting on a shirt if it had been someone else. Anyone else.

  “Me, a problem?” she asked, walking over. “Why’s that?”

  “Because you’re always around.”

  “And how’s that an issue? We go to the same school. I’m always going to be around.”

  “I know.” He stepped onto the front porch. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  She climbed the front steps and made her way over to him, stopping less than the two customary feet considered personal space in this country. Considering she came across as a naturally closed-in person, he knew that each time she did it, she was purposefully invading his space.

  “Why are you here, Xara? It’s late, it’s a school night, and your mother doesn’t seem to like me.”

  “My mother doesn’t like anybody.” She sucked that bottom lip into her mouth and then released it through her teeth. “Besides, I wanted to see you.”

  His gaze lowered to her mouth. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Suspicion forced his eyes back up to hers. “Why?”

  “I said, I don’t—”

  “Why?”

  A slightly pained expression appeared on her face, and he followed where her attention had gone and realized he had her elbow in a tight grip.

  “Fuck.” He released her arm and drew back. “I’m sorry. Really.”

  “It’s fine. You didn’t mean it.” She peered behind him. “You live here alone?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “That’s how you get to know people.”

  He turned and headed back into the house.

  She followed.

  Once she was across the threshold of the front door, she shut it behind her and all the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. The man who’d killed his parents had tried all sorts of different mechanisms for finding him. It wasn’t like it was the Christian County Sheriff’s Office after him.

  Compared to Fang Jinhai, even the Chinese Triad seemed innocuous.

  Jinhai would know, without him ever mentioning it, that he’d find Xara beautiful. Damn near irresistible.

  Jinhai would know she was exactly his type and that out here, in a new country without a single close connection within reach, loneliness would crush him like a boulder.

  He would know to send someone like her to force him to consider lowering his walls just for the chance to lick her skin.

  Then, he would att
ack when he was most vulnerable.

  “You think your mother would approve of you in a man’s house in the middle of the night?” Mike looked around. “Alone?”

  She waved away the suggestion so quickly, it was almost insulting. “First of all, get over yourself. You’re harmless and what, eighteen? Barely a man.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but she carried on.

  “Second, stop bringing up my mother. I don’t want to talk about her.”

  He crossed the room toward her, and she backed up until he had her caged between his arms against the front door. “Harmless?”

  What was it about her that he found so damn gorgeous? It was like she’d been plucked from his dreams, from her smooth face right down to her nose bridge and a mouth he wanted to kiss. Hard.

  He couldn’t decide what was his favorite trait. Her mouth could be fun but those eyes? Those eyes were weapons. It wouldn’t take much for them to see all the things he tried to hide, and he’d craved the opportunity to open up to someone for years.

  “Please don’t do that,” he demanded, voice at the cusp of going hoarse as she nibbled on her bottom lip. When she released it, he ran his thumb across the tortured flesh. “Xara, why. Are. You. Here?”

  “I wanted to check on you,” she said. “Check on this.”

  She raised her hand to the shiner that decorated his right eye. There were two, but the right one had gone darker, more purple. It came from a cheap shot; he hadn’t been expecting Ant to swing on him when he turned around after Ant called out to him. He hadn’t been expecting a fight at all. Not so soon.

  She lowered her hand to the bruise on his lip. “Do you have any friends?”

  Despite himself, he smiled. “I have one, apparently.”

  While she ran her thumb over the slight swelling on his lip, he kept his attention on her face. She wouldn’t look up at him, not when he was this close, and not when he was looking at her like he wanted to devour her. If she let him, he would, and he would start his meal between her thighs.

  A girl like Xara was definitely a virgin.

  He wasn’t.

  But it wasn’t her innocence that intrigued him. It was the fact that she was here, basically in his arms, when it had been a lifetime ago since someone had wanted to get this close to him.