Assassins in Love by Kris DeLake Read Free Book Online Page A

dirty. And angry. And used. If she was an impulsive woman—which she usually was not (last night’s proof to the contrary)—she would go back into that room and give him what for.
    But it was better to stay away from him.
    No matter how much she wanted to go back in there and kick his (really sexy) ass.

Chapter 6
     
    Misha stared at the door. He shouldn’t have let her go. For her own good, he shouldn’t have let her go.
    But he couldn’t move. He still sat at the large table, eggs cooling in front of him, bacon looking soggy, a slight frown making his forehead ache. She was willing to let someone else take the blame for her work. And it apparently didn’t matter who.
    So someone, some innocent someone, who didn’t have an assassin’s card or a proof of hire or even a partial justification, might actually go to prison because of someone she killed.
    And some of the prisons in this sector—hell, in most sectors—were horrible places.
    He stood up. He was shaking, and not because he needed to eat. He did, though. He was spent and tired and a bit achy, but in a tingly way—and he wrenched that thought out of his head. He couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t think about her like that, particularly now, now that all of his fears had been confirmed.
    She really did have no ethics. She didn’t care about anyone else. Just like he had suspected when he started tracking her down.
    Last night, he had thought she would be different. Last night, he had known she was different.
    Naive, he told himself.
    Confused.
    Incompetent.
    He’d even thought she was funny, the way she staggered under Elio Testrial’s weight, the curses she uttered as she tried to open that airlock.
    Naive, confused, incompetent, funny —and beautiful.
    He had found her attractive the moment he saw her on this ship, noting how she moved when he followed her, watching her laugh in the ship’s casino, watching her flirt in one of the ship’s bars.
    And then he had touched her. At that moment, he had stopped thinking. He had gotten her out of her terrible little mess—which he had thought so cute. Amazing —he had thought, his arm around her shoulder, her body pressed against his, that scent of hers filling his nostrils— how someone so incompetent had managed to complete so many jobs .
    He had actually thought she had bungled her way toward success, and as he led her from corridor to corridor, airlock to airlock, controlling her every move, he had two concurrent thoughts: first that she would be grateful he had rescued her, and second that she would beg him to teach her how to do the job right.
    Beg him. Yeah, that had worked. He hadn’t expected the mad, no matter how it made her eyes flash and animated her face. He hadn’t expected her utter ruthlessness.
    He hadn’t expected that passionate, passionate woman he had touched the night before to be so very cold.
    He made himself sit back down. He took the eggs and shoved them into the heater behind the table. He put the bacon into the recycler, and made himself eat some of the fresh fruit while he was waiting for the eggs to warm.
    Assassins Guild Rule Number 65: An assassin’s body is his first weapon. Therefore it must be in the best possible condition at all times.
    He believed in the Guild. He believed in the rules. They had kept him alive. They had kept the other assassins alive. Assassins, like any other profession, formed a community. They had gotten most of the organized sector governments to agree, allowing the profession to proceed with honor. Ethics were a big part of that honor. Ethics made certain that random people didn’t die unnecessarily, that civilians didn’t get accused of a crime for which they would have no defense, that everyone—from the assassin to the client to the victim—understood the rules, even in the abstract.
    The profession was an old one. It had existed as long as human societies had existed, and was sometimes legal and sometimes not. Throughout this