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  God…I couldn’t…

  I screamed as I forgot where I was. I screamed my pleasure and fuck it felt good to let go. X was right. He was so fucking right I hated him.

  He stiffened against me as his own orgasm spurted deep inside my pussy, his cock filling me to the brim as he pumped and pumped, his thumb circling in my ass, milking every last ounce of pleasure out of me.

  Finally, I slumped over the desk, my fingers slackening their hold. X circled his hips one last time before pulling his cock out of me painfully slow. When he was gone from both places, I felt empty, a strange hollowness settling into my soul. What the fuck was with that?

  Shoving up onto my elbows, I steadied my wobbly legs.

  “Get dressed,” X barked.

  “But-” I could still feel what he left inside me.

  He threw my jeans at me. “Get dressed.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting after such an amazing fuck, but it wasn’t quite this.

  X pulled his boxers on and I found myself staring at his ass wondering if I’d get to fuck him again. Stupid bitch, I thought. You were just a night of entertainment.

  He stepped into his jeans and dragged them up, finally glancing up at me. I was still naked, clutching my clothes to my chest. His eyebrow quirked, but that was the only emotion I got from him. If that was good or bad, I didn’t know.

  “Do I have to dress you myself?” he barked, snapping me out of my daze.

  “Fuck you,” I spat.

  “I did.”

  “God, you’re a pig,” I hissed, turning my back to him and trying to dress myself with shaky hands.

  I yanked my jeans on and let out a gasp as I felt X behind me, his bare chest pressing into my back. He didn’t move to take me, to kiss, or caress. He just towered over me, his hot breath fluttering against my neck, the entire room reeking with the musky stench of sex. Fuck, I was wet again and it wasn’t X’s parting gift, either.

  After a moment he said, “Where do you live?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Where. Do. You. Live?”

  Before I could stop myself, I replied, “An apartment building. Across the river.”

  “Take me.”

  I froze, my fingers fumbling with the button on my jeans. X lowered his head, his lips grazing my shoulder. After such a violent and impersonal fuck on Weiss’ desk, it was such a tender gesture it scared the hell out of me. Did X even have feelings? I seriously doubted it.

  “Mercy.”

  I leaned back into his chest as his hands came up to palm my breasts and my body sparked into life again. X was well on his way to being hard again and all I could think about was going for round two. Three and four if I could take it.

  I was so fucked.

  Chapter 8

  X

  When I enter a building for the first time, there are certain things I instantly look for. Windows, doors and which was the exit that would get me out of there the quickest.

  Usually.

  This time, I followed Mercy up a set of stairs, my gaze firmly planted on her ass. I didn't look for the exits, or the vantage points. I looked at her ass, wondering what it'd be like to fuck her there rather than just sticking my finger in.

  The whole ride over, she sat on the back of my bike, legs spread behind me, arms wrapped around my waist and it was all I could think about.

  One fuck wasn't going to be enough. I couldn't fuck her the way I wanted to on Weiss' desk. Not if I was going for round two.

  Sex was usually an impersonal affair. It was all about the climax and nothing else. I didn’t care what her name was, where she lived, what she liked, what she did. I only cared about releasing the pent up tension in my body. Fucking was perfect for that. It helped that I was handsome and knew it. If I didn’t want to try too hard, all I had to do was walk up to my choice and she would do the rest. Then it was up to me to finish her off.

  Mercy went to unlock her door, her fingers trembling and slipping on her keys. It took her a couple of attempts to slide it home and a moment later the door was swinging open into her dark apartment.

  I walked in behind her, realizing we hadn't uttered a word to each other since Weiss’ office. Somehow, we didn’t need to. We already understood what was going to happen between us, so why ruin the moment and talk about it.

  She went to flip on the light, but I caught her wrist. I didn’t want to see her home. I didn’t want to form a connection with it. I didn’t want to learn anything about Mercy Reid, other than what got her off.

  She stared at me in the dark as I kicked the front door closed with my boot, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight. Dropping her hand, she fisted my shirt and led me through the darkness into another room.

  It smelt like her. Like the spicy vanilla perfume she wore. It was her bedroom.

  I began to undress, the frenzy that had overcome me in the bar was sated for now and this time it was more about savoring the fuck instead of taking it.

  I watched her as she stripped in front of me. I watched as she sat on the bed, her eyes traveling the length of my body. My cock was hard again and all I wanted was her lips around it.

  Standing before her, I fisted a hand into her black hair, curling my fingers tightly against her scalp and forced her toward me. She didn’t fight, she didn’t say anything, she just opened her mouth and wrapped her lips around my crown and sucked. Hard.

  Letting out a sharp breath as her tongue flicked across the tip of my dick, I thrust deeper into her mouth, taking what I wanted. Mercy took me all the way and gagged as I hit the back of her throat. Her mouth was so fucking warm.

  As I pulled back, she bared her teeth, dragging along my hot skin and I groaned, my balls flaring. Fuck, she knew how to suck dick. She knew how to suck it real good.

  Her hands fisted around the base of my cock and she began bobbing up and down my length, her gaze finding mine as I guided her over my dick. She licked and sucked, her eyes watering when I forced myself to the back of her throat. I didn’t care if she liked it, I didn’t care if she hated sucking cock, I was the one in control.

  Shoving her away before she could take my orgasm from me, I pushed her back onto the bed and she spread out. Her fingers found her clit and she began pleasuring herself and I fisted my cock, kneeling over her. How would I do it? Vanilla? Fuck her from underneath? Force her ass into the air?

  Without thinking about it, I slid between her legs, spreading her wide. Her lips parted in a delicate sigh as I rubbed the underside of my cock against her clit.

  Finally, I drew back and pushed into her. I should’ve thrust hard. I should’ve pulled her onto my cock and pounded and pulsed my release into her pussy, but instead I filled her with my cock and held steady, delighting in the sensation of her around me.

  Delighting.

  My heart twisted, my black broken heart, and I pulled out and pounded into her.

  Mercy cried out at the sudden sensation, her fingernails digging into my back, adding more marks to the ones she left earlier. I couldn’t feel. She made me feel. I fucked her mercilessly, chasing away the feeling, fucking it into oblivion. I slammed into her again and again until my name was falling from her lips in ragged cries. Until her pussy convulsed and squeezed my cock. Until my balls tightened and my cum shot deep into her core.

  Until I forgot how to be tender.

  Chapter 9

  X

  I was a killer.

  Simple as that.

  I pointed a gun at somebody's head and I pulled the trigger. It didn't go like that all the time, but they always wound up dead one way or another.

  Did I feel bad? Was I remorseful?

  No.

  I'd learnt how to shut that part of myself off a long time ago.

  Some people had beautiful talents. Art, music, science. I wasn't beautiful. I was dark and twisted...unfeeling. My talent was taking life away. I never got off on it, it was nothing more than a job.

  Mercy didn't deserve to be a part of that life. I cou
ld never care for her more than physically. I wasn't capable of using my heart anymore. Anyway, I was pretty fucking sure it stopped beating with the first mark I did in.

  I was a monster and I'd eat her alive.

  Mercy slid her hand over my stomach, murmuring in her sleep. Her tits pressed into my skin and I resisted the urge to palm my own cock.

  She was close. Too fucking close. She clung to me like a lover, like an attachment I didn't need.

  My balls ached even after fucking her twice more in her bed. I was still coated with her arousal and fuck, she’d been so wet and warm, I’d just slid right in. She smelt like sex and vanilla… My cock began to thicken and I thought about fucking her awake. The look in her eyes when they would fly open as my cock filled her pussy. Good fucking morning.

  I couldn’t do that. It was impossible.

  Why the hell did I think it was a good idea for her to bring me to her home? I knew where she lived, I could see her things, not that she had many, which was an indicator of something a little sinister. Weiss said she was looking to get lost and it pretty much confirmed she was hiding from something or someone. Jilted lover? An asshole wife beater?

  Screwing my eyes shut, I forced my over analytical brain to shut the fuck up. Mercy wasn’t a hit. She wasn’t a project. She was just a fuck that had gotten out of hand. A fuck that should never have gotten this far. I should have left her naked in Weiss’ office and never looked back, just like the rest of them.

  I slept with her.

  I lived and worked alone. I did not need Mercy Reid, no matter how amazing her tits were.

  Warmth. I felt…warm. Asshole. Monster. Murderer.

  Sliding out from underneath her lithe little body, I scooped up my clothes, turning to stare down at her.

  Mercy was a bitch. A stunning fucking bitch with a pussy that I could fuck for days, but when she was deep asleep? She was… Hissing, I padded out of her bedroom and started dressing in the lounge.

  Attachments. I didn’t do them. I wasn’t capable.

  I wasn’t broken. I was made this way.

  I was made empty.

  Hollow.

  I didn’t have a soul. I was beyond saving.

  My apartment wasn’t anything fantastic to look at.

  It was empty, save for a bed in the other room, a sofa and a coffee table in the lounge and a refrigerator in the kitchen. The built in robes in the bedroom were another story entirely.

  Clothes hung in one of the four doors, the other three had an assortment of racks and hangers full of all kinds of diabolical tools of the trade. Guns, knives, chemicals, ropes and toys that caused the most unbelievable pain with the least amount of effort. It was the closet of a madman.

  There were no personal touches, no photographs or keepsakes, no memories. All the memories I needed were locked away deep in my subconscious and they were all faces. The scratched out faces of my victims. Marks sounded better. Less personal.

  There was a reason they called me X. When my mark was dead, when the job was done, I took the photo that had been given to me as visual ID, and scratched it out. Scratched it with deep gouges. X marks the spot. I crossed them out.

  It was a compulsion, nothing more, nothing less. I needed to do it for closure. It was the ultimate full stop.

  Xavier Blood wasn’t the name I was born with. I don’t even remember what I was before this. If I was good or bad, if I had dreams. All I knew was death and blood and that suited me fine. I was good at it and when you’re good at something, you stick with it.

  I sat on the sofa, the contents of the envelope spread out before me. It was an unbelievable puzzle and even I couldn’t get my head around it. Standing, I took the photograph of Alison Crawford and stuck it to the blank white wall across from me.

  Alison Crawford.

  The photo hadn’t changed from the other day of course, but I stared at it with fresh eyes. My balls had been emptied into Mercy’s slick little pussy and now my mind was clear.

  Alison Crawford was the only solid lead and she’d disappeared into thin air. A missing persons was out on her, but so far had never been solved. She was either hanging in a tree someplace with a noose around her neck, or wanted to escape the legacy of her dead family and her fuck up of a brother. Probably had taken up a new identity and a new life.

  If you knew the right people, it was easy to disappear. There were ways around the system that knew everything about you. Numbers, photos...it was all just locked away in a computer network someplace. If you knew the right kinds of people, numbers could be changed and erased.

  My phone began to ring, vibrating across the papers on the coffee table. Glancing at the screen the display read, Blocked.

  Blocked calls always meant business, no one was dumb enough to call the hitman hotline without using a blocked burner phone. Most people, that was.

  Picking up the annoying piece of circuitry I hit the screen, put the phone to my ear and said, “What?”

  “You’ve been slacking off,” Sykes drawled. Cocky bastard.

  Just my fucking luck, but at least it wasn’t Greggor calling to hand me my ass. Weiss chewed me out the other day and no doubt he would’ve reported my comings and goings at The Gambler’s Inn to Greggor. I was a pro, but I still had to answer to higher powers. I was made that way.

  “The job will get done,” I said.

  “It better.”

  “You will have your kill, Sykes,” I hissed. “I work on my terms, not yours or Greggor’s. Mine.”

  “That’s the thing, pretty boy,” he said. “You have no terms to bargain with. Not on this hit.”

  Fucking…

  “I know you’ve been burying your dick in that bar bitch, X.”

  I clenched my fists, my jaw tightening. Of course he knew what I was getting up to. My life wasn’t my own, not until I gave Sykes what he wanted. Until then, my every move was being watched, everything I said and did was being reported back to both clubs. Weiss was my best mate, but he knew not to shit where he slept and right now I was taking a big dump in my own bed.

  Fucking Mercy was an obsession I had to stop. I’d gotten what I wanted from her, now it was time to get back to business.

  “Does she know what you do, X?” Sykes went on. “Does she know you’re a killer? Does she get off on it like you do?”

  “I don’t get hard putting bullets into people’s heads, Sykes. Not like you.”

  “One day,” he said, his voice even, “someone will hold you down and cut out your tongue, then sever your cock and shove it up your ass. And you know who that person will be?”

  Yeah, it’d be him. The sentiment went both ways. I’d do Sykes’ fucking hit and if he took a swipe at me, I’d do all of those things to him.

  There was silence down the line as neither of us spoke, the threat plain and clear. There wouldn’t be a war between clubs if I was successful, but there’d be a war between Sykes and I regardless.

  I’d made an enemy for life.

  Well, he better join the fucking queue and take a number.

  “The next time I see you,” I said evenly, the tone of my voice even chilling my own bones, “it will be when your mark is dead.” I hung up the call and pocketed my phone, my blood beginning to thicken with another kind of arousal.

  Curling my aching fingers into tight fists, I squeezed, soothing the sinew. I needed the game. I needed the thrill of closing in on my mark. I needed the thrill of planning a murder.

  It had been too long since I’d seen the life slip from another human being’s eyes.

  It was time to forget my cock and feed the beast what it needed to survive.

  Blood.

  Chapter 10

  Mercy

  When I woke, X was gone.

  Couldn’t say I was surprised, but I couldn’t say I was disappointed, either.

  I didn’t know shit about X, but the one thing I did know, was the fact that he couldn’t seem to express any kind of feeling. Not the feeling that came with fucking, tha
t was an animal instinct. The basic need to reproduce. The feelings I meant were those that came with the basic human genetic mark up.

  Happiness, sadness, pain, anger, jealousy...

  He knew how to fake it. He was a master at faking.

  The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if that blank space around his heart was actually a mirror for what was within. His heart beat because it was the way his body worked, but it was broken in other ways.

  Shaking my head, I turned as a group of rowdy men pushed into The Gambler’s Inn.

  I could still feel X. Where he’d grabbed me with his hands, where he’d slapped my ass, where he’d bitten my skin. I could feel where he’d put his finger in my ass. I could feel his cock between my legs.

  The men stopped by the bar and I stood to attention. There were five of them, all ugly, mean looking asswipes. So, just the regular clientele then. They all wore leathers, but there was no visible logo on the front of their jackets, but only Royal Blood came here. It was clearly stated on the sign out front.

  “What can I get ya?” I said, putting on my bitch face. They didn’t usually harass me too much if I was a bitch.

  “Well, well, well,” the biggest, fattest, ugliest biker I’d ever seen drawled. His beady little piggy eyes settled on my tits.

  “I’m up here asshole,” I said, pointing at my face. “What do you want to drink?”

  “Nice tits on this one,” one of the other men said. “They’d fit nicely around my cock.” He made a lewd gesture, thrusting his hips back and forth.

  “I haven’t got time for your bullshit,” I snapped, trying not to vomit. “What drinks do you want?”

  “Drinks?” the big ugly one said. “I want a half of scotch, in your pussy.”

  My skin began to prickle. This must be one of those times where I’d have to get the shotgun out from the rack underneath the bar. I hadn’t had to use it yet, but I stupidly thought I didn’t have to. Weiss hadn’t been fucking around after all.