Cruel Paradise (Beautifully Cruel Book 2)

When I dive onto the floor behind the driver’s seat, it’s a reflex. No screaming, no panicking, just an action born of muscle memory in response to something I practiced repeatedly as a child.

I curl into a ball, cover my head with my arms, and close my eyes.

Meanwhile, the bullets keep flying.

The car swerves hard left, away from the direction of the gunfire. Liam shouts something to Declan in a foreign language—Gaelic, I assume—and the car lurches forward, accelerating, tires squealing against the asphalt.

Though we’re under heavy fire, the windows don’t shatter, and the bullets don’t penetrate the car’s steel skin.

Thank you, god, for armored vehicles.

Liam throws his body over mine and curves into a protective shield around me. “Just stay down, lass,” he shouts. “Try to remain calm. We’ll be to safety in a moment.”

I shout back, “Unless this is only the opening act, and they’re intentionally driving us toward something worse.”

I feel his attention shift from the gunfire to me. “Have much experience with diversionary tactics, do you?”

Yes. And handling edged weapons, rappelling from tall buildings, and escaping from locked rooms. Grow up as a mob boss’s only daughter and you’re taught all kinds of useful survival skills for when you’re inevitably kidnapped by daddy’s enemies.

Men, for instance, like you.

Instead of saying any of that, I say, “I watch a lot of crime shows on TV.”

“Oh, look, she’s lying again. Seems to be a compulsion.”

“You’re not half as smart as you think you are, gangster.”

“It occurs to me that you’re unnaturally calm, considering the circumstances, yet you squawked about me killing you non-stop, despite my continued assurances to the contrary. Care to share?”

“No. Do you always talk like you ate a dictionary for breakfast?”

He puts his mouth close to my ear and lowers his voice. “No. Sometimes I talk like I fuck: dirty.”

Without slowing, the car makes another hard turn around a corner. I tell myself that’s what makes me red-faced and breathless.

Then, out of nowhere, another car slams into us from the passenger side.

The noise is deafening. The SUV spins in a half circle, then comes to a jolting stop when we hit another object on the driver’s side of the car.

From there, it all happens so fast.

Liam is still on top of me, shouting at Declan in Gaelic. My door is yanked open from the outside. I lift my head and see a man dressed in black tactical gear and a ski mask. He gazes down at me with emotionless eyes. A semi-automatic rifle is gripped in his gloved hands.

He raises the rifle and points it at me, and my heart stops dead in my chest.

So here it is. Finally.

I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life. I always knew it would come. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I’d have to pay for being born into the family I was born into. For this tainted blood that flows through my veins.

No matter how much good I try to do, nothing can make up for the rot inside me. My father’s sins have stained me to the bone.

The gunshot is painfully loud.

I flinch instinctively, but instead of a bullet ripping through my brain, the gunman’s head explodes in a wet red burst from the back of his mask. He topples sideways, lands on the pavement, and doesn’t move again.

Holding a smoking Glock in one hand, Liam jumps over me and out of the car, turns and grabs my arm, and hauls me out. He pushes me to a sitting position with my back against one of the SUV’s big wheels.

Leaning down so his nose is inches from mine, he stares me straight in the eye.

“Stay down. Don’t move from this position until I come for you. Understood?”

Though more gunshots ring out through the night and what sounds like several dozen men are shouting nearby, his tone and expression are calm.

He saved my life. The mob king just saved me.

When I don’t respond, he raises his voice. “I’ve gotta go kill some people now. I promise no one is going to hurt you. Stay here until I come back. Nod if you understand.”

I nod.

“Good.” His tone gentles. “You’re beautiful, by the way. I know you think I’m cocky and overbearing, but it’s only because I’m relentless when it comes to getting what I want.”

His dark eyes tell me in no uncertain terms that what he wants right now—other than shooting some pesky dudes who’re trying to kill him—is me.

He presses a soft kiss to my forehead, then straightens and disappears around the rear of the SUV.

Liam Black saved my life…and he wants me.

I broke into a warehouse owned by the head of the Irish mafia, stole a shitload of stuff from him, donated it to charity, then sassed him non-stop when he caught me.

And, for some bizarre reason, all that turned him on.

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.

“Get it together, Jules,” I say faintly, dazed. “If you’re still breathing after tonight, there’ll be time for a breakdown later on.”

The dead gunman lies sprawled on the pavement to my left, a dark pool of blood widening around his head. I lean over, grab his discarded rifle, and quickly huddle back against the wheel, cradling the weapon against my chest. It’s bulky, its weight unwieldy, but holding it makes me feel safer.

I’m still carrying my knife in my coat pocket, but knives are useless in a gunfight.

I sit for what feels like a long time with a clenched jaw and a stiff spine, clutching the weapon like a life vest as gunfire and men’s screams echo in my ears.

Then everything falls still.

He reappears like a vision from a dream or a nightmare, seeming to move in slow motion as he rounds the back of the car and strides smoothly toward me, a huge figure in a tailored black suit carrying a gun in each hand.

His intense gaze is trained on me. His dark hair is haloed in moonlight. Smoke swirls in misty gray eddies around his feet, and the devil wishes he were that beautiful.

Shoving the weapons under his belt buckle at the small of his back, he kneels down, removes the rifle from my grip, and tosses it aside. Then he wordlessly picks me up in his arms.

I stare at his handsome profile as he strides toward another SUV, one of the ones in his entourage. It’s undamaged, idling with the driver’s door open several yards away.

“Is it over?”

“Aye,” he says, his voice low. “For now.”

Off in the distance, sirens wail. I look over his shoulder to the street behind us. It’s littered with bodies.

I close my eyes and swallow, banishing the image from my mind.

I’ve got too many similar ones stored in my memory banks already.

We drive.

Away from the massacre into the darkness, city streets flying by at warp speed. Liam is silent, but I sense his attention as he expertly navigates the roads, every so often glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

He’s wondering why I’m so calm. Why I’m not screaming. Crying. Reacting with hysteria to having a gun pointed at my face and violence erupting all around me, like a normal person would.

If he asks, I’ll tell him it’s shock. The truth is too dark and far too dangerous.

He can never know who I really am.

We enter the downtown district. When we pull into the parking garage of a modern black glass building so tall it disappears into the clouds, I realize where we must be. My calm erodes around the edges.

Because he seems to notice everything, he notices that, too.

“You’re in no danger from me,” he murmurs.

“But you’re taking me to your home.”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

I moisten my dry lips, feeling my heart pound, wishing it wouldn’t. “I can’t…I don’t want to have to—”

“I know, lass. I’ll be on my best behavior.”

What would that be, I wonder? For a man whose daily agenda includes murder, extortion, racketeering, and god only knows what else, what would good behavior look like?

Kicking his cat instead of skinning it?

He says, “What was that snort for?”

“You don’t own a cat by any chance, do you?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.”

Liam pulls the car to a stop in front of a bank of elevators flanked by a group of hulking men in dark suits. He hops out of the car, leaving it running. I unbuckle my seatbelt, but before I can open my door, he’s there, opening it for me. He pulls me out, his big hand curled possessively around my upper arm.

He keeps me right next to him as we walk to the elevators.

One of his men has already hit the call button, so the doors slide open as we approach.

Liam gives a sharp command in Gaelic. The men snap to attention, bristling like they’re about to go to war.

Which, I suspect, they are.

The doors close behind us. The elevator hums as it lifts.

Then I find myself flattened against the back wall staring up into a pair of blistering dark eyes. His heat and bulk close in on me until our bodies are only inches apart. One big hand slides around my throat.

When I make a small sound of panic, he murmurs, “Easy.”

“You keep saying that. I don’t think you understand the definition of the word.”

“Just breathe.”

“I am.”

“You’re hyperventilating.”

“It’s a normal response to abnormal situations.”

“You weren’t hyperventilating on the street. Bullets flying all around, and there you were, Sarah Connor gripping an AR-15, calmly lying in wait to blow off the Terminator’s head. The picture of composure. All you were missing was a cigarette dangling idly from your lips.”

He waits for a response, gazing at me with unblinking eyes, his thumb moving gently back and forth over the throbbing pulse in my neck.

I almost—almost—say my unnatural calm during the gunfire was shock, as I’d planned, but something stops me.

I hope it isn’t the fact that I promised him I wouldn’t lie to him, because that would be downright pathetic.

Looking up at him, I say quietly, “Can I ask a favor?”

He replies without hesitation. “Anything.”

“I’d like to have the option of not answering every question, if that’s okay.”

When he’s silent too long, examining my expression, I add, “Since we’re only supposed to be truth telling. And, um, I’m not really comfortable talking about myself.”

The corners of his mouth lift in a wry smile. “I didn’t ask a question.”

“Don’t be an ass. It was implied.”

Back and forth that gentle thumb sweeps over my skin as he gazes at me thoughtfully, most likely fully aware that my nipples are hardening from his touch on my neck, and that I’m so angry about that, I’d like to smack myself in the face.

“Should we have a code word for when you’d rather duck my question than lie?”

His expression is neutral, but faint laughter underscores his words.

“Sure. How’s this: up yours.”

His lips twitch. “That’s two words.”

“Call it a code phrase, then.”

His lips twitch again, and I realize it’s because he’s trying not to chuckle. He says, “Maybe something more respectful, considering you might have to say it in front of my men.”

“Right. Can’t tarnish that shiny alpha male glow. Aardvark?”

He wrinkles his nose in disapproval.

“Quadrangle? Collywobbles? Maltipoo?”

“And you accuse me of eating a dictionary for breakfast.”

“I was only joking then. I’m sure what you really eat for breakfast are the souls of everyone who’s displeased you.”

He stares at me with a look I can’t quite figure out, until he says gruffly, “Do you have any fucking idea how much I want to kiss you right now?”

After a moment, when I can catch my breath, I whisper, “Yes. Please don’t.”

Very slowly, he exhales. When he speaks again, his voice is thick. “I won’t. At least not until you ask me to.”

“That will never happen.”

His gaze drills into mine. His thumb lazily strokes the pulse in my neck. “Aye, lass, it will. You’ll hate yourself for it, but it will happen, because you want it as much as I do. Don’t you.”

The last part isn’t a question, really. It’s more of a dare. But he’s got me trapped in the heat of his stare with his hand on my throat and all my nerve endings singing, and I don’t think I could lie even if my life depended on it.

I turn my head and close my eyes. “Aardvark.”

The elevator slows to a stop. A bell dings. The doors slide open.

Liam leans down and whispers hotly into my ear, “For the record, I’d burn down this whole goddamn city just to hear you admit it.”

He’s a criminal, a ruthless, heartless, overconfident SOB, but dear god this is the sexiest man I’ve ever met.

There is something very wrong with me.

He takes me by the hand and leads me into his house. Excuse me—his penthouse. We wander through the living room, vast and silent, and past an equally vast formal dining room, until we reach the kitchen. It’s also huge. And, like everything else, decorated entirely in shades of gray and black.

He guides me to a counter stool at the big marble island and helps me into it, making sure I’m comfortable before rounding the island and opening a cabinet above the sink.

He removes a bottle of bourbon and two crystal glasses and pours a measure into both.

Then he shucks off his jacket, removes his cufflinks, rolls his shirtsleeves up his forearms, tugs on the knot in his tie, pulls the tie off over his head, and drops it onto the counter. For the final act, he loosens the top three buttons of the shirt, exposing a strong, tanned throat decorated on one side with a tattoo.

Of what, I can’t tell. I’m too busy staring at his other tattoos, all along his muscular forearms.

Holy…how many more are there? And where? And do they all ripple like the ones on his arms?

“Penny for your thoughts.”

I glance up from my awed inspection of his forearms to find him smirking at me.

I refuse to say “Aardvark” and give him the satisfaction, so instead I deflect to something still true, but much safer than what I was thinking. “I was wondering if your interior decorator got a good deal on all this black marble, or if she thought you were part bat.”

His smirk turns to a genuine smile. “It is a bit monotone, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no, it’s fantastic,” I say, looking around. “If you’re blind. Or clinically depressed. Or undead.”

Chuckling, he slides one of the bourbons over to me, then downs his own in one swallow. “I have to agree with you, there.”

“Then why did you go with it?”

“It was like this when I moved in.”

The answer is smooth, but he dropped his gaze to the empty glass in his hand when he gave it. I don’t think he’s lying, not exactly, but there’s a lot more to his words under the surface.

Mimicking his dry tone from the car when he was commenting on how calm I was despite the circumstances, I say, “Care to share?”

His gaze flashes up to mine. He holds me in it for a moment, a fly caught in amber, then murmurs, “Aardvark.”

We gaze at each other across the island, both of us knowing we’ll soon be wearing out that word.

I take a breath and ask the question that needs to be asked. “I’m not sleeping with you, Mr. Black. So why am I here?”

“I think we can dispense with the formalities of surnames, considering you watched me shoot a man in the face.”

His logic passes the sniff test, so I start again. “Okay, Liam, why am I—”

“Killian.”

The forcefulness with which he interrupts me is startling. “Excuse me?”

“Call me Killian.”

I wait for him to provide an explanation, but he doesn’t. “Why would I call you that, when it’s not your name?”

His jaw works. He gazes at me in silence so long I almost start nervously laughing. Then he says, “It is my name.”

I open my mouth, close it, then open it again. “So Liam is like a nickname or something?”

“No.”

“Is it…your middle name?”

“No.”

We stare at each other. Finally, I sigh. “You don’t want to tell me.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I can’t.”

“Uh-huh.” I narrow my eyes and peer suspiciously at him, but it feels as if he’s telling me the truth. Since the situation is ludicrous anyway, I decide to roll with it. “Okay, fine. If we’re going by other people’s names, I want you to call me…Sophia. No, wait. Seraphina. That sounds kind of badass.”

He says softly, “But you’re already going by someone else’s name, little thief.”

I was picking up the bourbon to drink, but freeze with the glass halfway to my mouth.

“Aardvark?” he inquires, sounding amused.

I set the glass down carefully on the marble countertop. My heartbeat picks up, my hands turn clammy, and a knot forms in my stomach.

What the hell am I doing? This is dangerous. This is insane.

Looking at the glass instead of him, I say quietly, “I’d like to go home now.”

After a tense moment, he says, “Look at me.”

When I do, eyeing him warily, he shakes his head. “I don’t care if you have secrets. I don’t care if you call yourself Cinderella or Mary Poppins or anything else. What I care about is that you understand there’s nothing more important to me than my honor.”

“Meaning?”

His eyes burn straight through me. “Meaning I gave you my word I’d never harm you. That stands no matter what.”

I don’t understand him at all, and that frustrates me. My father could give his word you’d be safe with him, then five seconds later turn around and shoot you in the back.

I’m not exaggerating. I’ve seen it happen.

Because that’s what gangsters do. That’s what they are: liars.

“I believed you when you said you wouldn’t hurt me, Li—Killian, but you can’t promise the no matter what part.”

“Aye, lass. I can.”

Thunderclouds are gathering over his head, but I’m feeling reckless. “Even if I tried to kill you?”

His answer is swift and unequivocal. “Even if anything.”

We stare at each other until he adds, “And the reason you’re here is because there’s nowhere safer for you.”

I can’t help but laugh at that. “A bunch of men in riot gear carrying military-grade weapons just tried to kill you. I don’t think being near you is safe for me at all.”

He pauses, his gaze dark and unreadable. Then he says softly, “I’m not so sure it was me they were after, Juliet.”