Mr. Too Big: BWWM Hitman Romance Novella Read online

  “Okay, men. We're done here today. If Esposito doesn't want to listen to reason, I'll just take things into my own hands. I'm done playing games with such a goddamn child. Now, take me the fuck home, I need some rest. I haven't slept a fucking night clear through this entire goddamn week.”

  So much of the time I kept my cool so well. Now, though, I let myself get too excited. I leaped up from my chair without meaning to, keen to follow after my target, even though there was no imperative need to do so just now. I knew where he was going. I should have waited a while instead of trailing them too directly, but I wasn't thinking.

  Across the street, Philips didn't notice me. Nor did the large, thuggish bodyguard opening the back door to the Mercedes for him. The one at the driver's side did, however.

  Through two lanes of heavy evening traffic, my eyes met those of the driver through his shade, making my heart skip a beat.

  Damn it... Damn it... Damn it! I thought to myself, freaking the fuck out that my cover was about to be blown at best, and that at worst I was about to wind up with a bullet in my own head.

  I thought fast, though, trying to minimize the damage.

  I stretched, as though my eyes meeting those of Philips' brute had been nothing more than a coincidence. Then I took the last sip of my coffee, and laid some money on the table, as though I'd become totally oblivious of all that was ensuing on the other side of the street. I sorted out some change from my pocket and left a far too generous tip for the young woman who'd brought me my coffee- if this worked like I hoped it would, it might have just been her that ended up saving my life.

  Then, keeping up the charade, I set off down the street, away from the Mercedes, away from where my bike was parked nearby, striding as though I knew exactly where I was going, and why I was going there. I really had no clue, except that I needed to get as far away from Philips as I could, as fast as possible.

  I didn't dare look back over there again, back over to the building where Philips had been. I did, however, squint into the glass windows of the building I passed on my side. The knot in my stomach unclenched at the sight of the Mercedes pulling away, the bodyguard's suspicion of me evidently minimal enough for him to let me off the hook.

  I let out a sigh of relief and decided I would circle the block once for good measure.

  There was no rush to get to Philips this instant. I would wait until tonight when conditions were more favorable, and then I would end this, once and for all.

  I could almost taste the fresh air of freedom on my lips...

  _____

  Midnight.

  I'd parked my bike in the woods outside Philips' mansion several hours ago, then hiked over to a spot overlooking his place. I'd watched his house through the scope of the rifle I carried with me until every light had gone out, and a vehicle had pulled away out the driveway- the vehicle, I hoped, of Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, his bodyguards.

  I couldn't be certain that Philips was the only occupant in the place but now felt like as good a chance as any. At that moment, it honestly felt like my only chance.

  I crept down to the house like a phantom, switching instantly into combat mode. I'd learned to turn off all of my inhibitions, to cast aside all of my doubts whenever the moment of truth arrived. I was no longer a human being anymore. But a machine. My actions swift and decisive. My decisions, my responses, purely rational. Dedicated to getting a job done, and nothing more, nothing less.

  I pushed a fist through the glass panes of his front door, and made swift work of disabling his security alarm- I'd cracked the code the previous week while he was away one afternoon. I stepped through the door with soft, but speedy footsteps, and glided my way up the spiral staircase for the second floor, heading for his master bedroom.

  I was normally so good about all of this. So skilled at making an entry, and doing my job, and disappearing without a trace. As I made my way down the hallway, however, and the door to his room came closer and closer, and so did my freedom, I felt my blood pressure rising. It all seemed too good, too perfect to be true.

  And suddenly, I realized that it must be.

  Something wasn't right...

  I stopped, dead in my tracks.

  I didn't know what was off. But something was. There was just a sense of it. A feeling in the air, that I couldn't quite seem to put my finger on.

  And then I heard the sound of a footstep, trying to be lighter than it could manage to be from around a corner.

  I spun on my heel, whirring back around in the opposite direction.

  I saw the flash of light before I heard the sound.

  BAM! BAM!

  I hurled myself down to the ground as the bullets missed me by nothing greater than a few millimeters. Once I was to safety, I didn't even think about it. I lifted my gun up to what I calculated to be the man's knees in the darkness, and I fired.

  “Jesus Christ! Motherfucker!”

  He shot at me again as he was falling, but only managed to hit a vase atop the stand beneath which I'd taken cover. He hit the ground like a timbered tree and was already rushing to point the barrel of the gun back up at me, but I was too fast for him.

  I pointed at his head and fired, and that was the end of him.

  He lay there, motionless in silent in the middle of the hall. I waited, for just a fraction of a second, long enough to be sure that he was as dead as a doornail. Then I sprang up, and rushed over to him, and saw that it was the man from the Mercedes. The one who'd locked eyes with me across the street.

  Clearly, the place hadn't been left as unguarded as I'd hoped.

  I'd largely been suspecting that, though.

  I let out a light sigh, not wanting to let myself be too relaxed just yet. My gut told me that this was the only guard in the place, but I still had Philips left to go. And something told me he would be on a high alert after I and Tweedle-dee had just made enough noise out here in the hallway to summon up the living dead.

  I hastily weighed my options at that moment.

  Retreat? Fuck no.

  I was getting this job done, dead or alive.

  Wait? For what? For Philips to have more time to get his guard up? To call the authorities? Not that I imagined he would, given the many dirty dealings he was connected to in some way or another. Still, though, the principle was the same. The longer I let that son of a bitch stay alive, the longer he had to come up with a plan to stop me.

  Time was of the essence here, and whether I liked it or not, I was all out of time...

  I stepped up to his door, staring at it for a moment with dread, instead of the naive optimism I'd allowed myself to feel at the sight of it, only a few short moments ago.

  I lifted my hand to the knob, and almost made the mistake of stepping inside. But then I checked myself. I twisted the knob, just enough to get it started. Then I stepped off to the side so that I was no longer positioned directly within the doorway. I lingered for a moment, then pushed my foot against the door's lowest panel, kicking it open from off to the side, still standing next to the hinges.

  Immediately once the door was open, a mad volley of automatic gunfire exploded through the door, the bullets pelting wildly against the opposite wall, tearing the drywall to smithereens.

  I heard Philips yelling over the sound of the bullets, his battle cry the sad mimicry of a middle-aged man who's never been in combat but who's watched Rambo on TV at least a dozen times.

  He moved slowly out into the hall, still firing, too blinded by the pulse of the gun to see that he was hitting nothing whatsoever, save for his own house.

  I waited until my shot was clear, then I jerked my gun up, and aimed it right for the side of his head. He became aware of me just as I started pulling the trigger, and started turning in my direction.

  BAM!

  “FUCK!”

  The bullet raced clean through his head, but he was facing too me way too much as he fell, and the gun was still going off in his hands as he fell. Streams of bullets whipped and whizz
ed through the air in my direction, seeming to leave these white hotlines in their wake like miniature chemtrails, fading only very slowly from my field of vision.

  And then I felt something hit me, in spite of my very best efforts to avoid the barrage.

  I yelled out in pain and was sure in that moment that this spelled the end of me. The impact had been against my head, and no sooner had I felt it than I watched my life flashing before my eyes. All the horror. All the carnage. All the mayhem, and all the heartbreak.

  No! No! Fuck! Fuck! Please, please, don't let this be the last thing that I see before I'm ushered in through the gates of hell! I'll have all eternity to look at all that... Just please, don't let this be the end!

  I was lying on the ground by the time it dawned on me that I hadn't been mortally wounded. A scalding teardrop was rolling down along my cheek, thick and viscous. It seeped in between my lips, and I felt it on my tongue, and I realized that it was blood from my wound.

  I touched my cheek, and it stung but realized with relief that I'd only been grazed.

  I wasn't about to die. Not yet, anyway.

  It took a while past the ringing in my ears to recognize the sound of voices ringing out in the background. I leaped back to my feet, instantly on my guard again, and the adrenaline of survival the only thing that was keeping my legs from collapsing.

  I held my gun pointing into the room but thankfully didn't fire. The afterimage of gunfire finally faded away from my field of vision, and I could see that there were two naked women, cowering in fear in the opposite corner of the room.

  I sighed and lowered my pistol. Then I looked down into Ray Philips' wide eyes, the gaping red hole in his temple a sure sign that it was over at last. I'd done my job. And I was finished.

  “You two could really do better,” I said to the two of them, with a last look inside the room. Then I pulled the door shut again behind me, and took off down the hall at top speeds. I should have felt victorious, elated, freed at last from the shackles of this line of work.

  Instead, though, I just felt sick. My blood pressure was high. My pulse was skyrocketing. I never felt great after a kill, but this was something different. I wondered whether it was the fact that I'd come so close to death, or maybe that I'd taken a life I hadn't intended to take when I'd signed up for this job.

  I didn't think it was either of those things, though.

  I think, somehow, my body was trying to warn me. I think it was a sense of foreboding, to let me know what I had no way of knowing yet, but that I probably should have anyway- by instinct, if by nothing else.

  That, quite simply, this wasn't really over. It was only just getting started...

  Right now, though, I ignored all of that. I rushed into the woods, and hopped onto my motorcycle, and took off down lightless back roads like a bat out of hell, increasingly on edge. I could hear the sound of sirens blaring like mad from the highway, and could see the red and blue lights flashing toward the crime scene as I made my escape- Philips might not dare have called the cops when he was alive, but I was sure the two women he'd probably paid to sleep with him would have.

  I told myself I didn't give a damn. That there was no way in hell I wasn't getting away with this.

  I just kept going and going, the momentum perversely soothing, as all the while the whole world seemed to be crashing in around me.

  _____

  I started taking my clothes off the instant I stepped through the door of my apartment, and I was naked in the shower within a minute, the water cranked up to full heat, filling the bathroom with steam.

  I leaned forward against the far wall, panting so deep and so hard I thought I was hyperventilating. I didn't know what the fuck was wrong with me. As often as I'd done this, I'd never reacted to the way that I was now. Was it the girls maybe? Was it that glimpse of something I could never have in my life, making me feel so guilty, so paranoid?

  I still couldn't say for certain.

  I looked down at my feet, gasping, and watched the blood of Ray Philips and his bodyguard swirling down the drain amidst the scalding whirlpool of water. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. And then, without totally being aware of it, I noticed my hand finding its way between my legs, grabbing a nice, firm hold on my cock.

  I'd been hard ever since I put the bullet through the head of the bodyguard.

  It sounds terrible. I know it does. Like I get off on killing or something. But that's not it.

  Ever since I'd started doing this, I always got rock solid from the danger of a hit. I think it was something to do with survival, and biology, and all that shit. Like my body just knew, instinctively, that it was in danger. That its chance to reproduce was drawing to a close, and it demanded that I give it one last shot before I turn my back on life.

  I always had to cum after a kill. And right now I was aching for it like I'd never ached before.

  I wrapped my fist around my rock hard cock and started rapidly pumping myself beneath the shower, grunting as my hand slammed back into my balls, needing so badly to get this out of me, thinking that once I did it would finally be enough for me to be able to react. I jerked my growing inches of solid manhood with a vengeance. Like the job wasn't actually finished until I'd completed this crucial, cleansing ritual. I was pulsing so hard, and my tip was getting unbelievably swollen, and I wanted to get this heat out of me so fucking bad.

  But the pressure wasn't building. No matter how hard, how relentlessly I pumped myself, how desperately I needed to see this through to completion, my mind wasn't where it needed to be. I closed my eyes and tried to think. Tried to conjure up whatever it might take to get my rocks off, but couldn't figure out what the hell that might be.

  I tried picturing the two girls back at Philips' place- taking both of them at once- but of course, that only made matters worse. Then I tried thinking about Julia, my ex-fiance, who I'd dated all the way back before enlisting. Sometimes, she did the trick for me. That woman knew how to screw a man like it was nobody's business, and sometimes I could still taste her on me if I concentrated hard enough. Still feel the tight, rhythmic pulsing of her tight slit around my cock as she rode me.

  But then I would start thinking about everything she'd done to me. How badly she'd broken my heart, once I came back from combat so profoundly changed, so different, like she hadn't known what she was signing up for when I enlisted.

  This took me in the opposite direction. I started feeling bitter, and resentful, and about as far away from turned on as it was possible to be.

  And so I thought again. I shifted my focus. I tried to draw forth a name from depths of my mind. A name, and a face, of anyone who still filled me with any sort of tenderness. Instead so much pain. All the crushing heartbreak that had been inflicted on me by nearly everyone else in my life.

  And that was when someone strange came to mind.

  Keisha Hillary.

  It almost caught me off guard at first.

  I certainly hadn't been expecting it.

  Keisha, the daughter of my boss, Marlon Hillary. The two of us had only met a handful of times over the years that I'd ben in Marlon's employment. There had certainly never been anything between the two of us, as such- Marlon probably would have had me killed if he even caught me thinking about it. But the couple of times we had run into one another, there had been something unaccountably striking about her.

  Poise, and graciousness, and of course beauty. There was something mature about her, for a girl who was only twenty-one years old. A bit young for a blondish silver fox in his mid-forties? I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

  But on the occasions I'd seen her, I'd thought I saw some glint of those rich, mahogany eyes of hers. An expression of longing, unspoken, but very clear, and very present. I want you, she seemed to say, without speaking, and at that moment, beneath the boiling water, and with the last of Philips' blood draining away beneath my feet, something seemed to click.