My meetings that had kept me away from my DeLuna were utterly pointless. A total waste of my time and patience. It was a damn good thing I hadn’t attended in person—instead opting to dial in via secure server and going through the motions while pacing my London office like a caged animal. The trouble with wearing so very many different hats was that I had to essentially live multiple lives. I had meetings to attend, people to answer to, paperwork to file on all my identities.
Luckily, I also had a team of acceptably competent tech bunnies in my employ, making sure every base was covered. So much of my survival, of my success, was dependent on my anonymity in several of my identities. As much as I’d rather do it all alone, I needed to free my time up for things I truly enjoyed.
Like her.
Everything about her, not just fucking her. Not just pulling out my gallery of images and jerking my dick so hard it hurt. In the best kind of way.
“Where are you at with that file on Danny DeLuna?” I barked at my most useful employee, Douglas. I had six elite hackers working out of this office in London, and they all thought they were being paid by MI6. They thought they were the “good guys” working to take down foreign threats to the British Government. Each and every one of them would be horrified to learn they were, in fact, mercenaries working for the Guild.
I did love a good deception, and it meant they accepted governmental-level wages rather than the lofty contract fees collected on Guild work. Money may not mean a lot to me—I was already wealthy far beyond anything I could spend in one lifetime—but I also wasn’t fucking stupid. Money made the world turn. The more I had, the easier it was to grease the wheels for whatever I needed.
And failing that, a good bullet to the head always worked.
“Making progress, sir,” Douglas replied with a watery smile. There was sweat on his brow, and he stank of fear. I must not be projecting Leon the approachable tech bunny very well today. Ever since Danny met the real me, I was putting less and less effort into covering my crazy.
Because she hadn’t just seen the insanity beneath my surface. She’d accepted it. Hell, she’d been aroused by it. That reaction had blown my goddamn mind, and I wanted to push the boundaries further. Would she be scared if I admitted to murdering the last two tech bunnies assigned to work with her? Or would she see it for what it was, a romantic gesture because I couldn’t stay away from her?
“About fucking time,” I muttered. “Email me what you’ve found.”
I stalked back to my private office before Douglas could respond, eager to see his information on Danny while in private. Where I could sit back and let my dick harden like I already knew it would, as I read about all the dirty little secrets my woman thought she’d erased from record.
The email hadn’t arrived when I sat back at my desk, and I drummed my fingertips impatiently on the desk a few times while I waited. Fucking Douglas was taking his sweet time, and I was about to start throwing knives, I was so keyed up.
I hated being away from her. Now that I’d admitted the depth of my obsession to her—and myself—it was pure torture not to have her within my line of sight twenty-four seven. I had to remind myself that she was no mere mortal. She was the Danny DeLuna, with a jaw-droppingly impressive kill list under her name. She was entirely capable of protecting herself, so long as no other executioners took the task of killing her. Something I’d taken care of by blasting the entire network with a bloody warning in the form of Bryan’s mutilated corpse.
Anyone below executioner level, she could handle. But that wasn’t the fucking point. I wanted to handle it for her. I wanted to swoop in and save her when the adrenaline was high and her death flashed across her eyes. Goddamn if I didn’t fantasize about torturing and killing anyone who hurt her, while she watched with hungry excitement. Or maybe she would want to help. It could be a real bonding moment between us, carefully and systematically spilling blood together.
“Fuck,” I uttered aloud, grasping my dick through my pants. It was so hard I was at risk of messing up my boxers unless I stopped thinking about her with blood-soaked hands and glittering eyes.
Ordinary vices had never been my thing. Smoking, drinking, drugs… they were all a sign of weakness. Of dependence and an inability to cope with the demons inside one’s own mind. Or so my mother had told me from the moment I could grasp her therapy sessions.
I was quickly finding one thing I couldn’t deny myself, though.
Wetting my lips, I unzipped my trousers and fisted my erection right as Douglas’s email appeared in my inbox. Perfect timing.
Grinning and already breathing hard, I opened the attached file and read through the contents while casually fucking my own hand. The first few pages were the ideal material to jerk off to, as well. Old case files from when Danny had still been under the care of an orphanage in Avignon, France. Back when the Circle had considered promoting her to become an executioner, just after she turned eighteen.
The files had been redacted last time I’d seen them—done by one of the last generation Circle members—but Douglas had done good work removing those black redaction marks. Now there was nothing to stop me reading about her grading missions in explicit detail. Whoever had been shadowing her hadn’t skipped a single thing, right down to her victims’ screams and desperate pleas for mercy. Pleas that went totally ignored as Danny did exactly as she’d been raised to do.
I could see it all clearly in my mind, like I’d been there myself. She was exquisite. Utter perfection, all sharp knives and pouty lips.
Tipping my head back on my chair, my eyes drifted shut, and I imagined it was her delicate hand around my cock. Her big blue eyes peering up at me like she was full of secrets and trouble, ready to fuck up my life. Fuck.
I came hard enough that I splattered my shirt and needed to grab some tissues in my desk drawer to clean it all up. Such an amateur. DeLuna had that effect on me.
Satisfied—for now—I turned my attention back to the files Douglas had untangled. Why had she never become an executioner? Was it her own choice, or—
Ah, there it was. Her promotion had failed Circle approval after the fourth seat had voted against it. Fourth seat was Emmanuel Blanchet, who’d argued that if Danny were to be made executioner, her “considerable assets for information extraction” would go to waste. In other words, he was making too much money using her as a honey trap. He wanted to continue exploiting her body, selling her cunt, rather than turn her into the kind of cold, emotionless, business-only murderer that they seemed to think executioners all were.
The fucking idiot clearly didn’t realize most executioners hid in plain sight under a whole range of unsuspecting jobs. Like me, pretending I was nothing more than tech support.
Huffing a sigh, I clicked through the pages until I found the data I’d specifically requested. Her home address.
“Iceland?” I murmured aloud. “I knew we were made for each other.” I clicked through the evidence and satellite images, committing everything there was to know about Danny’s home into my memory. She was unlikely to return there; Douglas’s notes told me the security had been recently breached.
“How’d you manage to hide this so fucking well, mon cœur?” I whispered the question aloud but found my answer a moment later. “Fucking Carlos.”
She trusted him far too fucking much. It was a complication that I didn’t appreciate. Would she be upset if she never saw him again? Would she cry?
I bet she was a vision with all that black mascara smudged down her face, but I’d rather it be from her eyes watering when I fucked her throat too hard. Not crying over some limp dick drug lord that I disposed of.
With a frustrated sigh, I fixed my clothes and shut down my computer. The whole unit automatically wiped clear on shutdown, so I had no worries of someone hacking my own device, with all my important files saving to an ultra-secure cloud server.
All of my staff eyed me cautiously as I stalked out of the office without a word. They were fairly used to working without me in the building and were always a bit jumpy when I popped in unannounced like this. Not that I gave two shits about their comfort, but I’d rather they focus on doing their work.
My phone buzzed with an incoming call as I made my way out of the building, and I paused to check it. My excitement quickly dashed when I saw it wasn’t my woman calling to say she missed me. Because I missed her. Like I’d cut out a vital piece of me and left it behind in that bloody hotel room a few nights ago.
The number that was calling was unexpected enough for me to answer anyway.
“Mr. Timber,” I greeted the caller with a smirk, walking slowly down the street to where I’d parked. “What trouble has your lovely wife gotten into this time?”
The man on the other end gave a harsh chuckle. “Nothing we can’t handle, thanks. But you might need our help for once.”