Ripped
Authors: V. J. Chambers
Ripped
A Hitman Romance
by V. J. Chambers
Cade “Ripper” Davies
I don’t do attachments. I don’t do affection.
I do my job, and it’s all I need. I’m a contract killer, and I’m a bad man.
But this girl, Shell, she’s getting to me. She started out as a convenient hostage, a means to an end. But for some reason, I’m keeping her safe, even though it means turning against a man I once considered my best friend.
There’s something about her, and not just that she’s sexy as hell. I can’t get her out of my head, and I can’t let her go.
Shell Birch
The first thing I notice about Cade is that he’s ridiculously attractive. The next thing I notice is that he’s pointing a gun at me. I’m not one of those girls who gets hot for dangerous men, but let me tell you, the shoulders on this guy… Looking at his hard, broad body makes me warm in all the wrong places.
He’s got a filthy mind and clever fingers, and he makes me dizzy when he touches me. I’m at his mercy, completely and utterly.
And then I see another side of him, something unguarded and honorable. That side of him takes me and makes me his. But I can’t be his… not with the kind of life he leads, not with the kind of demons he has.
And I think I might be pregnant.
RIPPED
© copyright 2016 by V. J. Chambers
http://vjchambers.com
Punk Rawk Books
Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won’t get mad.)
I backed up instinctively, all the way into the wall.
He closed the distance between us.
Now I was trapped. I clutched at the wall, wincing. “Go sit down and look through your files. I’ll be quiet. I promise.”
He leaned over me, settling one hand on the wall, so that his arm was blocking my path to the doorway. “You do want me.” His voice was quiet.
I shook my head, biting my lip.
He seized my chin, holding it in place. “You do,” he insisted. He kissed me—quickly taking my lips, invading my mouth, and then pulling back.
I gasped and reached out to touch his chest.
“Say it,” he said.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes,” I managed, “I want you.” It felt difficult to get air all of the sudden. My hand flattened against his rock hard chest. I could feel the shape of his muscles through his shirt.
“Good.” He put his forehead against mine, and for just a second, I saw a vulnerability in his eyes, as if—for all his bravado—he hadn’t really been sure of me. “Because I have wanted you all goddamned day.” His voice was rough.
I put my other hand on his chest.
He kissed me again, hot and wet, assaulting my mouth.
I moved my hands lower, to his stomach. It was just as firm as the rest of him.
He put his hands on my waist, skimmed it, and then let them move higher, to my breasts. He cupped them, rubbed his thumbs over my nipples.
They stiffened under my shirt and bra. I let out a little moan.
The sound seemed to galvanize him. One of his hands moved down my body, thrusting under the waist of my pants, finding the center of me.
Ripped
A Hitman Romance
by V. J. Chambers
CHAPTER ONE
Cade
I pushed open the door to Prince Larbi Hassan’s office. Really, I didn’t think he conducted any actual business besides rerouting large sums of money to terrorist organizations, but he had an office anyway.
Little Larbi was well known to be a playboy and party prince. Though his lifestyle was diametrically opposed with the morals of the extremist groups, they took his money anyway, probably even lied to him and told him that his gifts made up for his sins, that he was a holy man.
Crazy people had been doing that to rich leaders for centuries.
Prince Larbi looked up from his massive desk. He was typing something on his computer, staring at his razor-thin monitor. “Who are you?”
I smiled. “They call me Ripper. I’m here to kill you.”
Larbi pushed up out of the desk, the look on his face telling me that he wasn’t quite sure if he should take me seriously or not, but he was halfway towards screaming for his life anyway.
I strode across the room to meet him, casually pulling out my Browning Hi-Power and pressing it into his stomach. “It’s nothing personal,” I said. “Well, I personally
do
think you’re a waste of space who only uses people and funds mass killers, but I’m not the one who wants you dead.”
Larbi drew in a lungful of air.
I put the gun in his mouth. “Don’t scream. It’ll make you look like a lily-hearted pussy. Aren’t you people supposed to be trained to face death bravely?”
He tried to back away.
I snatched him by the collar and held him close. “You want to know who wants you dead? I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but since you’re going to be dead soon, I don’t suppose it matters. It’s the U.S. government. Not that they’d cop to it if anyone asked. This is all on the down low. But they hired me to kill you because they can’t touch you legally, not with your diplomatic immunity, and they know that you’re giving money to their enemies. They don’t like you very much.”
He swallowed.
I sighed. “You know, I don’t know why I bother. But it does seem to me that every man deserves to know why he’s being killed. So, now you know.”
Larbi made a noise, around the gun, something like a word.
I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Nothing he said would excuse him. And besides, nothing he said would unhire me to kill him. In the end, it was a job like any other. If I didn’t deliver what I advertised, I’d go out of business.
So, I pulled the trigger.
It was loud.
Larbi’s blood spattered the wall behind the desk. He toppled to the floor.
People would be coming.
I tugged a small spray bottle of bleach water out of my pocket. I sprayed down the gun. I dropped it. I wore gloves to avoid fingerprints, but the bleach was just extra protection. I advertised the fact that I provided a clean crime scene and there wasn’t any call for leaving my DNA all over the place.
I didn’t have a lot of time.
Striding past the desk and the body, I headed for the door behind the desk. I had found it in the building’s schematics earlier, when I was planning this out. The plan was to go out this door, go through Larbi’s personal rooms, hit his private elevator, go down to the bottom floor and leave through the back entrance.
It was a good plan.
But when I opened the door, I came face-to-face with two girls. One was wearing a lot of makeup and an expensive-looking robe. The other was in a t-shirt and jeans. Her eyes widened when she saw me.
The girls looked a lot alike.
But there was something about the girl in the t-shirt.
Maybe there was just something about the t-shirt. It was clingy, and I could see her nipples sticking out of the fabric. Either she wasn’t wearing a bra or it was a thin one.
Funny thing to notice when fleeing a crime scene, but killing sometimes gets me worked up.
Not that I had time to worry about that.
But there I was, staring at the chick’s tits, standing there, wasting time.
And the girl in the robe screamed. “What did you do to Larbi?”
* * *
Shell
The whole reason that I was at the home of Prince Larbi Hassan of Nemekistan was that I was trying to convince my sister to leave his harem. I didn’t make a habit of hanging around with foreign princes. I wouldn’t have even been allowed in under normal circumstances.
But Starling, my sister, had somehow managed to worm her way into the prince’s graces and she was now his number two girlfriend or something. The number one girlfriend was from Russia. Her name was Nadia.
Which isn’t important or anything.
What’s important is that I was trying to tell Starling (yes, our parents gave us weird names, and yes, I could slap them for it) that she didn’t need to sell her body for money, that she was better than that, that she was smart and sweet and talented.
But Starling was trying to tell me that the money was wicked good, much better than she’d ever get for any other job with her education and experience, and that Larbi was pretty much the greatest guy on earth.
Which was why we were going into his office. She was going to introduce me to him, and I was going to realize what a peach he was, and all my concerns would be erased. Whatever. Like that was going to happen.
But when we opened the door to his office—the back door, the one that came in through his bedroom—there was this guy standing there.
He was wearing a security uniform, but it didn’t fit him very well. The button-up shirt hugged his lean torso and strained to meet the pants that were cinched around his narrow hips.
He was hot. Like, ludicrously hot. He looked like one of those models on the front of those bear shifter romance books I’m always reading. Well, except for the fact that he was clothed.
I was so busy looking at the guy, whose gaze seemed to be lingering on my body as well, that I didn’t even notice the fact that Larbi was dead.
Not until my sister was screaming and throwing herself down on his body and shaking him. “What did you do to Larbi?” she screamed.
The man spread his hands. “Would you believe he was like that when I got here?”
“No way,” said Starling, and she stood up, picking up the gun that was on the desk, and pointing it straight at the guy. “You killed him.”
The man furrowed his brow. “Oh, come on, now. Put the gun down.”
“No,” said Starling. “You killed him, and I loved him, and now I’m going to kill you.”
“Loved him?” I said. “He was paying you for sex. He
hired
you.”
“It wasn’t like that at all,” said Starling, tears streaming down her face. “You don’t understand anything.”
“I understand that you have no respect for yourself,” I said. “I understand that you aren’t yourself. You’re my sister, and I would do anything—”
“He’s dead!” Starling screamed.
Well, there was that. I guessed it was a bad thing that he was dead. I mean, sort of. It wasn’t as if I thought he was a real nice guy or anything. This harem of his had upwards of thirty girls in it, and just because he was paying them bank didn’t mean that what he was doing wasn’t disgusting.
“Put the gun down,” said the man again.
Starling’s finger tensed on the trigger.
The man rolled his eyes. “All right, well, I want you to remember that I gave you a chance to put the gun down.”
Starling looked confused. She had the upper hand in this situation, right?
I was kind of confused too. But before I could really even make sense of that, the man grabbed me. He pulled me against his body, my back pressed into his chest, into his pelvis.