Free Seducing the Bodyguard by Capri Montgomery

she shook her head. “He could have just taken what I was arranging for him. The new identity, the new face, the new life, and he could have lived in the Cayman Islands without anybody knowing he wasn’t dead. But he didn’t want that. Dropping his lifestyle wasn’t what he wanted to do, not even to spare me the pain of having to destroy what was left of what we had.” She felt the recollection of memory stabbing her from within. He was the first hit, the only hit, that she was ready to ignore. She planned to fake his death and give him a fresh start even though that meant they couldn’t be together. But instead of taking it, taking what she was offering, he decided he wanted to keep walking the line between good and evil, between dedication to America and dedication to his role as a double agent. What he was doing had killed hundreds of innocent people in that train bombing in Spain, and he didn’t even care. He knew she was going to kill him. He knew about the hit before she even walked into the room.
    “So this is how it ends,” he said smoothly. For the first time ever she had tears in her eyes because of a kill. She had killed without conscious before, but she couldn’t do it then.
    “It doesn’t have to,” she had said.
    “You’re too honest to let me go on like this.”
    She told him of her plan, of what she wanted to arrange for him if he would just go along with it, and he laughed in her face. He challenged her, telling her that he was the better assassin, the better fighter, and that before he gave up a lucrative profession he would kill her. She loved him, was willing to sacrifice everything for him and he would kill her. He had to know that if it got out that she didn’t carry out a hit then she would probably be the next person on the list, but instead…instead of realizing just how much she loved him he decided to try to kill her. What he didn’t realize, what he didn’t know, was that she was, and would always be, better than him when it came to executing a kill—when it came to fighting. He hadn’t seen all her skills. They were together for five years as partners and nearly as long as lovers, but she had always held something back from him. She had always kept a part of her skills hidden. Part of that was because she knew it was dangerous for anybody to know her weakness, and to know all of her strengths. The other part, and she realized it now even if she didn’t then, was that she just didn’t trust him enough with her secrets. In the recesses of her mind she always knew that one day it would come down to betrayal. After she killed him, her status went from an assassin to be moderately feared to one that was dreaded. Even the men who hired the Angel of Death knew not to cross the assassin behind the code name, but very few of them knew she was a woman. Only three people knew of her real identity, three people outside of her family that is. Those three people included herself, the middle man Ray Capshaw, and her partner, her lover, the man she thought she would spend forever with—Darryl Pekensy. Darryl was now dead and Ray, who was like a surrogate father to her, had bowed to her request and he let her out—on one condition, if ever there came a time when he needed her skills to stop a massive catastrophe she would make herself available. She agreed. She continued her intensive training with her father, and she stayed abreast of any changes in the game so that she would be ready if that time ever came.
    “I’m sorry,” Harrison leaned forward and took her hand in his. This was the first time when they weren’t in public where she allowed him to continue to touch her.
    She sighed. “That was my life. I dealt with it.”
    “Did you?” He spoke softly. “Because right now I think it’s still haunting you. You refuse to let yourself get close to anybody outside of your family. You refuse to let love in. You refuse it because you’re afraid that what happened with Darryl will