Free Shadow Hunter (The Execution Underground) by Kait Ballenger

most of the blood out of their clothes. He glanced down at his own threads. He was covered in blood and dirt, but there was no point in changing before he finished cleaning up.
    He reached under his kitchen sink and removed a mop and bucket, a sponge and a gallon of bleach. It was times like these when he wished he wasn’t too paranoid to employ a maid.
    Not that your average housecleaner could handle a kitchen resembling a horror movie.

CHAPTER 6
    A N HOUR LATER he’d thoroughly scrubbed down the kitchen, returning it to a near sparkling clean. He would give it another going over later. Right now he needed a shower. Using the downstairs bathroom, he scrubbed all the blood, guts and debris from his body. When he finished, he wrapped his hips in a towel, threw his own clothes in the washer and padded up the stairs to his bedroom.
    Water from the shower pummeled the tiled floor, sounding like heavy rain. He didn’t blame Tiffany for the extra-long shower. When you washed the blood off, no matter how clean you got, sometimes you still felt dirty.
    He finished drying off and threw the white towel into the laundry bin. He slipped on a pair of old loose-fitting jeans, zipped and buttoned the fly, then reached into the top of his closet for a black shirt. Tiffany cleared her throat from behind him.
    Still shirtless, he turned around. The breath caught in his throat, and every inch of him stiffened. His erection was immediate. She was standing in the middle of his bedroom, still slightly damp from the shower, one of his towels wrapped around her. It took all the strength in him not to rip the towel from her body and take her on top of his bed. Thinking about what was underneath that towel would be the death of him.
    He watched as Tiffany scanned the length of his body and a look of hunger filled her eyes. She inhaled a deep breath, and he admired the rise and fall of her chest. Her every movement exuded raw sexuality. If she looked at him that way much longer...
    Her gaze dropped to the floor. “I knew you were with the Execution Underground.”
    He nearly swore. Damn. She’d seen the E.U. brand on his shoulders, a variation of the symbol Mark and every other hunter had. It marked them as humans with something more—their incredible strength, their speed, their fighting abilities. Each member was branded with his own unique symbol upon graduating the Execution Underground training.
    A sad smile crept across her lips. “I like your design more than the one my brother, Mark, had.” She continued to stare at the floor. “The first time he came home after he got his, he flaunted it as if it were a badge of honor. The purple heart of tattoolike brandings.”
    Damon froze at the sound of his best friend’s name. He let out a long breath through his nose. She couldn’t know he was responsible for her brother’s death—and worse. His jaw clenched. She couldn’t know that he was going to have to kill Mark all over again.
    She shifted from one foot to the other nervously. He admired the sway of her hips and immediately cursed himself. She was Mark’s baby sister. It didn’t matter if she was twenty-two, or that she was her own independent woman, that he’d known her for years—he owed it to her brother’s memory to stay away, to keep his hands off. Not to mention that he needed to stay objective, detached from his mission if he was going to complete it successfully. And how could he be detached while sexing up the sister of the man he was avenging?
    The sound of a car horn down in the street brought him back to reality. He would have to gouge out his eyes and break his eardrums to avoid wanting her. Her looks, the sound of her voice, her scent... She drew him in like a siren.
    She broke the silence. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it awkward, like I was being creepy and sneaking a peek at your emblem. I know your vow to the Execution Underground is kind of a personal thing, so it’s none of my business. Anyway, uh...do