Piper swallowed. “I... I’m sorry, but I don’t understand?”

  He turned towards her. His eyes didn’t warm, but he waited for her to ask whatever question she had.

  “I don’t—My fingers aren’t enough. I’m not going to get off like that.”

  He shrugged. “Then torture yourself. If you’re lucky, I’ll help when I’m done with what I’m doing. Or maybe knowing that you’re being watched by someone who doesn’t care how you feel will help. It doesn’t matter to me. But if you stop—” He slowed down and made a deeply satisfied sound. “If you stop, I’ll use my belt on your swollen cunt. And you have no idea how much I will enjoy that. I’ll whip you until I feel better. No matter what you say. And believe me, I love listening to a girl try not to scream.” Another pause and his face broke into a vicious grin. “Maybe I’ll stuff your soaked panties into your mouth and listen to you try to beg around them, hmm?”

  Piper didn’t say another word. She shifted back on the couch, into a more comfortable position, then hooked her feet, just like he had said. She pulled the skirt of her dress up high; it was still under her ass, but her cunt was completely exposed. Her cheeks flushed thinking of how she must look, how wanton. How slutty. Was her cunt really swollen like he said?

  She didn’t have a problem with using her fingers to play with herself; they would just never been enough. But the thought of his belt made her cringe. She didn’t have to come; she just had to be entertaining.

  She reached between her legs and slid her fingers up her slit. She was soaking wet, and yes, she was swollen and thick, from her clit to the bottom of her lips. It was different than she had ever felt. Instead of the dry, just barely full feeling, her hips arched with the brush of her fingers, and she responded with a gasp. He looked up, his gaze cold, but lingering.

  She ran her fingers from bottom to top again as he took each item of clothing out of the suitcases and placed them to the side. There was a level of care there she appreciated. She ran her fingers around her clit and sighed at the gentle sensations that ran through her. Another circle made her arch into her fingers.

  His gaze towards her again made her body heat up. She wanted more, and she teased her fingers around her opening as he continued to go through his suitcase methodically. When he started to pull out pieces of metal that she recognized as guns, her fingers faltered.

  “Don’t stop,” he said without looking at her. “I wasn’t joking about the belt. Unless that’s what you want?”

  He kept unloading things, guns and sights and other things she didn’t know the name of. It was... strange—continuing to touch herself while he held such violent tools in his hands. She wished she could stop, and she found herself wondering how much it could possibly hurt to have the leather crack down on her cunt. The thought of it made her whimper quietly.

  She was teasing a finger inside her aching cunt when Damian nodded in quiet satisfaction. Some sort of stress eased out of his shoulders, and he took a long, slow breath.

  “Everything’s where it should be here,” he said. “Good.” He turned and looked at her, and his gaze was just as cold as it had been. “Stop.”

  Her fingers froze, then slipped back to one thigh. She was left wanting, but in a different way than before. She felt calm, cool. She wanted to come but more softly. With less desperation.

  “Come over here,” he said, snapping his fingers and pointing at the bed in front of him.

  She stood, hesitant for just a moment, then moved more quickly. She sat where he pointed, her knees together and her hands neatly in her lap.

  “We need to talk.”

  Piper nodded. “You said there was another assassin on the boat. That means you’re here to kill someone.”

  Damian sighed. “You thought it was something else?”

  “I thought… Like on that Leverage TV show or something.”

  That actually made the hard-ass crack a smile. She thought it was real, this time. He had a decent smile. One that made him look... something that could pass as kind.

  “I wish it were,” he said. “But no. I’ve done that kind of work, sure, but when I’m hired, usually it’s to make someone disappear. Permanently.”

  “And this time it’s Rich Chamberlain?”

  Damian nodded.

  “Why? He seems like a good man. Does he have some dirty past or some—some hooker with a baby? What the hell is going on?” Piper’s voice was tight, high.

  She didn’t recognize it herself. The need in her clit intensified, as if the conversation, the potential for viciousness was making her hotter.

  “The Santiagos want him dead,” Damian said, the same way that he had mentioned that he had a great cookie recipe from his grandma. “I don’t think past that. They pay me well enough that it’s not necessary.”

  But there was something in his voice that said this was a lie. She couldn’t quite pinpoint the part that didn’t feel true, but everything else he’d said to her, even when he was being someone else, had felt calm and confident. This was different.

  “Why am I here? Is it really just about Fiona?”

  “The Santiagos put me on this boat without a plan. We have a little bit of time before we turn back around to shore. We’ll be in international waters for three days, which makes committing a crime a very different proposition. I’ve got a good reputation. I come up with plans, and that’s not a problem. But this time—this time I don’t have much of a plan. And I don’t have a lot of time. I don’t need complications.”

  “And I’m a complication?”

  He shrugged. “I’m over that. You did good back there—spotting the guy watching us. You’re going to be an asset.”

  “So the complication?”

  “That guy. He left too smooth. And he was watching us in certain ways... It could be that I’m being too paranoid, but I don’t think he was on the up and up. And maybe someone else is here for Chamberlain.”

  “That’s a lot of people trying to kill one decent guy.”

  Damian shrugged again, and there was something about it that made Piper’s guts twist up.

  “Just because you and I don’t know what’s wrong with him, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with him. You have to remember that in this business. Lots of people look fine, but no one’s solid good, all the way down.”

  Piper weighed the benefits of trying to get more information against her real fear that if she pissed Damian off enough, that coldness in him might come to the forefront again, and that this time it might find its release in hurting her. Not like before; the kind he had threatened with his belt; the kind that could kill her if he decided to stray from the kind of sexual play he’d mentioned.

  There were guns on the bed. She had seen him check them, and she was pretty sure that meant they were unloaded, but this was not a time to antagonize him.

  “Is it okay—me asking all these questions?” She made her voice small and a little timid, trying to seem helpless.

  If he didn’t think she was any kind of threat, would that make her safer? Or would he think she was stupid and just dispose of her outright? It wasn’t hard to make her voice shake; her fear was becoming more and more real with every breath.

  He made a vague gesture with his hand. He had gone back to the weaponry laid out in front of him. There weren’t just guns; she saw knives and the length of wire with hand grips that people got choked with in James Bond films. She also saw other things that she hadn’t expected: a tiny box of electronics that looked like it might be some kind of—it was either a bomb or a computer, it was hard for her to be entirely sure; a leather roll that, if movies were ever true at all, would hold lockpicks; and other stuff she couldn’t even guess at.

  “At least that fucker got my whole kit here.” Damian glanced at her, and a little more of that coldness had faded.

  He reached out and pushed her legs apart, sitting down next to her. He didn’t trace his fingers up her thighs or bother with any kind of romance. He didn’t play with her to see if she was wet; he pushed three fingers inside of her cunt and made her whimper with the sudden pain of it.

  “Go ahead,” he said, shifting his fingers inside of her, spreading them, adding to the pain of the invasion with a harsh stretching. “Ask your questions.”

  It hurt, and she was scared. She wanted to pull away, crawl up the bed and beg him to stop. Grab his arm and try to shove him away. But her hips weren’t listening to any of that. They were shifting with his tiny thrusts, eager and begging for more of his rough treatment. Being scared and being desperate for him to fuck her hard and sore mixed, leaving her with a potent emotional stew that burned her up inside.

  He gave her a light slap with his free hand.

  “You have questions. Ask them.” His voice was kind, soft. Conversational. His hands were the only brutal things.

  “The Santiagos—” As soon as she started to speak, his hand moved faster, twisting more.

  She felt him push another finger inside of her and she tried not to scream. It hurt so much, she was too full, and her hips were bucking wildly. On the couch, she had felt a strange warmth against her own touch that had surprised her. She’d never played with herself much, just occasionally used a cheap vibrator to rub out a quick orgasm when she was watching a movie that made her wet, or when she read a book that made her squirm and push her thighs together. This was something entirely different, bigger, more, and she wanted all of it.

  “You stop, and I stop,” he said with that same conversational tone. “And then I whip your ass black and blue. You’re going to come on my fingers because it hurts, or I’m going to come on your bright red ass. You fucking pick.”

  “The Santiagos,” she started again.

  She forced her attention on forming her words, and not the swirling need that was moving down to her clit. She was going to come like this if he kept this up, and she tried to feel shame about that. Instead, she just felt want. If talking were what kept him moving, then she would talk.

  “I know they’re—crime in the city. They are behind—fuck—things like the drugs and the—I don’t really know what else. But wh —”

  He slammed his fingers into her hard, this thumb strumming her clit, and her whole body convulsed as she let out a little cry. She had to force herself to keep speaking, no matter how much she just wanted to ride the pleasure and scream until it crested.

  “Why do they give a shit about this one man?”

  Damian didn’t answer; just finger-fucked her harder while she writhed, trying to get more leverage. The angle was awkward, and after a minute, he shoved her down, spreading her out on the bed. He knelt on her thighs, one arm bracing himself while the other slammed into her harder and harder. She was meeting every thrust with a little scream now, forcing herself to wait as long as she could. The pleasure built and built and built like water behind a dam, and then he snarled.

  “Come for me, you pretty bitch.”

  She couldn’t wait another second. She felt her body lock down around his fingers, her hips arching up against his weight. She couldn’t scream, she knew she couldn’t, but she couldn’t be quiet. She clenched her teeth and let only the most strangled sounds out of her mouth.

  He kept fucking her through the crest, and kept fucking her and flicking her clit even as the orgasm passed and the spasms of pleasure rolled through her and started to settle. He kept doing it, even when she cursed and whimpered and tried to get away from how much it hurt.

  Damian eventually pulled his fingers free from her with the most whore-ish wet sound, then ran his fingers over her lips.

  ”Taste yourself,” he said, and she opened her mouth without considering whether it was what she wanted.

  She sucked them as thoroughly as she would have sucked his cock if he had shoved it in her face at that moment. She tasted salty and warm, and underneath the musk of her cunt, she tasted something different. The flavor of his skin.

  God… She liked that.

  “To answer your question,” he said, sitting back as if he hadn’t just finger-fucked her until she was desperately forcing back screams, “it’s hard to say. Like I said, I don’t get a lot of information when I get a job, just what I need to complete the assignment. Of course, I did independent research, but I wasn’t given anything like the lead time I needed to make this happen as clean as I want.”

  She was floating on a cloud of lust and relaxation; if she wasn’t stretched out next to a man who was completely comfortable with his profession as a contract killer, she might have considered a brief nap. That wasn’t an option though. She pushed herself up to a sitting point and folded her skirt back down over her knees. He raised an eyebrow at her primness; he was definitely laughing at her.

  “So what do you know?”

  He sighed, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “I can’t find details. But I wouldn’t be surprised if one of Chamberlain’s business interests is backing something political that will mess with the Santiagos’ business. There have been more of those lately. The crime world has changed—it's not all loan sharking and intimidation and buying politicians now. There are cyber currency and long cons and payday loans and, well, it’s all the same crimes, but they’re dressed up in different ways. The Santiagos aren’t evolving, and they’re getting left behind. I know Chamberlain supports the kind of politicians who are more difficult to buy. The kind who mean it when they say they want to clean up the city.”

  “Supports them and donates to them?”

  “Yeah, seems like that.”

  She shrugged. “I’m no criminal mastermind, but it seems like that’s enough of a reason to off someone when you’re a, you know, known gangster.”

  Damian nodded. “It’s just such a bad move. Killing politicians because they’re against you is so... 1920s. Nowadays, you engineer a scandal, you use dark money against them, you... do one of a million other things.”

  Piper raised an eyebrow. “Must be hard for an honest mercenary to make a living.”

  “A man uses what talents he has to make what living he can.”

  “And you have a talent for killing.”

  Damian sighed and flopped onto his back.

  After a moment, Piper gathered herself and rolled onto her side, watching him.

  “No,” he said. “At least, it’s not as simple as that. I’m ex-military. Not, I imagine, a surprise. When I got out, I went into private security—that’s where the money is for guys like me. And I took some side jobs because everyone takes side jobs. But then my sister got sick, and I needed a lot of money, fast. I called in some markers to get a couple of contacts, did a few jobs, but there wasn’t enough insurance, and never enough money. I’d done work for the Santiagos before, but once Todd got his hooks into me...” He sighed.

  Piper shivered. Todd had always seemed so plain and boring to her. At first, that had been part of his appeal. Someone strong, stable, and reliable. She would come home every night, and he would be there. Thinking about the life he could have pulled her into... Of course, he already had done that, hadn’t he?

  Bastard.

  “What about you?” Damian asked, looking at her differently.

  It was funny. Even though she was a complete, fucked, silly mess, he was looking at her like an… actual person.

  “Before you got pulled into all of this, what were you doing?” he added.

  Piper shrugged. “I’m kind of a consultant. I work with businesses—helping them get set up with crowdfunding stuff, trying to help them be more successful, give them a better chance to succeed. Todd thought it was boring, and that I should do something that would earn more money?”

  “Did it do good? What you were doing?”

  Piper thought over her clients. So many of them were women who were trying to get together capital to start or expand businesses, or crowdfund art projects, or do other things that the rest of the world wanted to keep them from doing. It sounded silly to the rest of the world, but it had never felt silly to her.

  “I think it did,” she said. “I think it helped some people get the start they wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

  “Then Todd was even more of an asshole than I thought.” Something in Damian’s eyes darkened, and he reached for her hand, pulling it over to rest on his cock. He hadn’t ever bothered to zip up again after before, and she shivered at the way he felt—velvet over steel, hard as a rock. “Tell me something, baby. Did he have a hard cock like this?”

  Piper shook her head. She traced her hand lightly over him, and he pressed her hand down firmer, arcing up into her touch with a little hiss.

  “Say it,” he said.

  “What?” Piper knew what he wanted to hear, but she wanted to tease, just a little. “That he had a useless little pecker?”

  “Yeah. Did he ever fuck you right?”

  “Not once.” Piper stroked her hand harder, and he shifted his hips under her hand.

  He shoved his pants down and out of the way, then pulled his shirt up over his head. He reached for her. She went to unzip her dress, and he slapped her hands away. He pulled her over him, took a moment to position himself at her entrance, and then pushed up into her so hard that she let out another little cry.

  It didn’t matter how wet she was; it hurt every time he thrust into her. After the last time, she was tight and sore, and it hurt to have him inside of her again, but she could see by the look on his face that he didn’t care. And she couldn’t have convinced herself to ask him to stop anyway.

  “Is this how you like to be fucked?” He shoved himself up into her more, and she moved her hips to take him as deep as she could, even though it made her cry out.

  “Yes,” she said, biting back a scream.

  “Good.”

  He slammed her down again and again until she felt his balls tighten, and then the convulsions of his cock as he came inside of her. She almost wished she would come with him, yet her cunt was so sore and aching that she wasn’t sure it would have been possible.

  He moved her off of him with more gentleness than she might have expected. He traced her cheek with one finger, smiling just a little. “Clean up if you want, then get some sleep. I’ve got work to do, and I’ll be gone most of the night. If you’re spending time with Fiona tomorrow, I need you bright eyed and bushy tailed.”