Page 12 of Ivy’s Poison

Relief flowed through me when her tense shoulders eased in surrender, and her voice softened. “I miss his protection.”

Protection? My skin appeared so dark compared to her back as I touched her ivory glow. She cat-curled into my palm. I wanted to apologize for killing a man who she thought she needed, and I wanted to tell her that she would soon be free of her dad. I understood the grief but said nothing. I only got out of bed to slip on my boxers. I never slept naked anywhere but home.

Crawling back into bed, I couldn’t help but give Ivy space. Guilt had me believing I didn’t have a right to hold her. Nor did she ask me to. As her breathing slowed and deepened, I felt it was safe to fall asleep. So, I did.

It was the click of the gun that woke me.

It was the betrayal that held me still, not opening my eyes. I could smell all the leather surrounding me, but I couldn’t smell my Ivy. She was gone. She had set me up after all. The stench of beer told me they had been at the bar waiting for her call. Now, it was time to fight my way out of the mess I had walked into for sex. Boots creaked as I pretended to roll over in my sleep. Slowly gripping the knife under my pillow, I cussed myself for being such a fool, unaware of how deep that stupidity truly went.

With stealthy speed, I pushed off the mattress, sure to use the blanket over me to my advantage. Shocked yells and commands didn’t even have a chance to take place before I forced the blanket over the head of the biker closest to me. With him wrapped up, I used him as a shield. He took one bullet intended for me right before I wielded my knife to the left to kill the man standing there who was too slow to react properly to my speed. I wanted the corner of the room clear so I could better protect myself. As the slower moving man held his sliced gut, I shoved him into the biker rushing forward to attack me.

It was eight devils I faced in that room. One dead, one dying, six to go.

The biker that caught the gutted man, fell into the bed I had just sprung from. Another bullet ricocheted into my human shield. As I shoved him forward to stall the next approaching biker, I quickly stabbed the one on the bed. He screamed as my knife went so deep, I felt the mattress before yanking my blade free, sure to cause as much damaged as possible.

Blood was such a beautiful color…

Three bikers were no longer a threat.

The one who dared to try and get around me to attack my back was stunned as I spun, shoving my knife into his side, then ripping it upward until his ribs stopped me.

Four bikers down.

The two men that charged me next were enraged. I could see it all over their faces. But they hadn’t been fucked and used in the past couple of hours and had no idea that I was killing them all to get to her. I was going to find pleasure in torturing that redhead.

I knew the faster I could meet these two head-on, the better chance I had against their guns. Face to face confrontations had my knives at my advantage. And, since this room was far too small for so many large bodies, they barely had space to aim with straight arms. It didn’t matter in the end. I was too fast. They were too drunk.

My right hand jutted to the left, slicing two throats, one after the other, with such precision they both stared at me as their guns dropped to the floor. Before they had a chance to grab at their gaping wounds, I smiled, switching my blade to my left hand. I swung right to be sure the necks were properly cut. Blood sprayed all over me before the two bodies hit the floor.

A bullet fired, but I was already rolling forward to take out the second to last man in the room. As my roll came to an end, I slammed my knife down, pinning the leather boot to the floor. He was screaming while I removed the knife and shoved it up between his legs to really give him something to yelp about.

Slowly standing, blood dripping from my head and body, I faced the one I had been hired to kill. The president’s cruelty, which had rolled off his stance in the alley, now was obsolete. He kept shifting his weight, announcing raw fear. Nervous sweat dripped, and his hand trembled. It was mindboggling to witness this change in his behavior, but I had no time to contemplate it further. A gun was at my forehead. A knife to his gut. It was a standoff I had every intention on winning, but that’s hard to do when mentally kicked in the balls.

“Stop,” said Ivy as she entered the room, a little girl sitting on her hip.

Tiny little hands clung to Ivy’s brown tank top. The little girl’s tan skin had my own tingling as my heart seized in my chest. Ah shit. Every lonely night as a child in numerous foster homes ran through me like a high-speed movie at a drive-in theater. Then, in my head, I heard Sister Mary’s voice. “Let your mind be open to seeing God’s signs…” Even though, before she was murdered, she spoke of this God at all times, swearing he was with me, I’d never felt him. Not until in that rundown motel-from-hell.

How do you control the uncontrollable? How do you gain the upper hand over an assassin? It’s easy. Show him a kid he never knew he had, never knew he wanted, but would do anything for in a blink of a tiny, adorable, innocent grey eye.

Yeah, Ivy needed to talk to me all right.

Fucking devil.

I ran. He chased… and found my only weakness.

Bors

Flashes of the murdered girl in the back seat of the Mercedes kept pelting me. The attack she had undergone and not survived had me experiencing instant fear for the child—my child—Ivy was holding. I couldn’t let another innocent experience such hell, especially my own. I knew what the men around her were capable of.

There is loathing someone, and there is absolute disgust. What I felt for Ivy was the latter. As my hands were tied behind my back by a still shaken president, I stared at her, silently telling her that she was nothing but filth.

The little girl was crying with such terror, her face too contorted for me to see what she actually looked like. Gunshots tend to scare kids. The environment she must have grown up in so far, and what she may have witnessed, had me upset, too. I wanted to reach out and touch her but assumed the sight of me, one that probably scared her the most, would only inflict more discomfort.

Trying to calm her child with a reassuring embrace and pats to the back, Ivy snarled to me, “Where are all your hidden knives?”

I could feel my nostrils flare as I continued to stare pure hatred at her.

Rearranging the kid on her hip, she shrugged. “Fine. Let the cops have ‘em.”