Married To My Target

COLE

F*ck, why is my pillow so hard this morning?

I frowned against the warmth beneath my cheek, too comfortable for those first few seconds to care about how strange that warmth actually was. Then the pillow moved, and my whole body went rigid before my mind had even caught up to why.

My eyes opened slowly, and the first thing I registered was a chest underneath my face. A very broad, very warm, very naked chest. For one beautiful, stupid second I actually considered closing my eyes again and pretending I hadn't noticed, like if I just went back to sleep hard enough this would sort itself out without me. Then the chest breathed, rising slow and steady under my cheek, and that fantasy died on the spot.

Oh. Oh, hell no.

I lifted my head carefully, like moving too fast might make whatever this was more real. The first thing I saw was a jaw, stupidly perfect, the kind that looked sculpted rather than grown. Then a mouth, full and relaxed in sleep. Then a nose that seemed built specifically to ruin the confidence of every ordinary man unlucky enough to stand next to it. And finally, eyes. Closed, thank God, because I didn't think I had it in me yet to survive whatever color they were going to be.

The man was asleep. I stared at him like staring might explain anything, but he stared back at me in absolutely no way, because again, his eyes were closed, and I was apparently losing my mind quietly and alone.

That was when I noticed my arm. It was wrapped around his waist. His arm was wrapped around me in turn, and my face had been sleeping on his chest like I paid rent there, like this was somehow a place my body had decided belonged to me.

I moved to pull away immediately, but his arm only tightened around my waist in response, and I stopped breathing entirely. What the f*ck. I looked at his arm, then at his face, then back at his arm, my heart doing something frantic and unfamiliar in my chest. The man pulled me closer in his sleep, unbothered, unaware, and I nearly screamed.

I was not a screaming man. I had buried men who screamed. I had made men scream. I had once taken a bullet to the shoulder and calmly finished a conversation before I let anyone near a hospital. But this, somehow, was different in a way that made all of that discipline feel useless.

Because I had absolutely no idea who the hell was holding me, and that terrified me more than any of it.

I made myself look around the room instead of at him, hoping the details might ground me. Luxury hotel. Floor to ceiling windows framing a ridiculous view of Las Vegas glowing gold under the morning sun. Black curtains pulled halfway open. A half empty bottle of expensive champagne sweating on the table, two glasses beside it. A black suit thrown carelessly over a chair. A white shirt hanging off a lamp like someone had flung it there without a second thought. Another shirt crumpled on the floor. A pair of black trousers dropped beside the bed. My shoes were near the door, at least, small and stupid proof that some version of the night had made sense.

My gun was underneath the nightstand. Good. At least one thing in this room still made sense, still felt like mine.

I reached for it slowly, carefully, trying not to disturb the arm still curled around me, and the moment my fingers closed around the grip, the man beside me spoke.

"You're awake."

I froze completely. His voice was deep and smooth, far too calm for a stranger who had apparently spent the night using me as a human pillow, and something about that calm unsettled me more than if he'd sounded surprised.

I turned my head slowly. His eyes were open now, and they were green, not the ordinary kind but the kind that looked almost unfair on a human being, vivid enough to make the rest of the room feel dimmer by comparison. He studied me with an expression that made one thing painfully clear.

He wasn't surprised to see me.

That bothered me more than the arm around my waist ever could.

"Who are you?" My voice came out steadier than I felt, which I counted as a small victory given the circumstances.

He smiled, and it wasn't nervous or awkward the way it should have been. He smiled like a man who had woken up beside a complete stranger and somehow still believed he held the upper hand, like nothing about this situation had caught him off guard even a little.

"That's a funny question."

"Why?" I asked, even though some small, panicked part of me already didn't want to know the answer.

"Because you're wearing my ring."

I looked down. There was a gold band on my left hand, sitting there like it had always belonged, and I blinked once, then twice, staring harder as if enough concentration could make it disappear through sheer will. It didn't move. It didn't waver. It just sat there, cold and solid and undeniably real.

"What the f*ck?"

He laughed, and I didn't, though the sound of it only seemed to make him find the whole thing funnier. I pulled my hand away from him and sat up too fast, and my head immediately punished me for the decision, pain exploding behind my eyes so sharply I had to press my palm to my forehead just to keep the room from tilting.

"Jesus Christ."

"That's what you said last night too."

I looked at him slowly, dread pooling low in my stomach. "What did I say?"

He smiled again, softer this time, almost fond in a way that made my chest tighten for reasons I refused to examine. "You said you had never believed in marriage." He let that sit for a second, watching my face, before he added, "Then you proposed."

I stared at him. He stared back. The silence between us stretched long enough to feel physical, and somewhere far below the window a car horn sounded, sharp and distant, the only proof the rest of the world was still turning while mine had apparently come completely unglued.

I looked around the room again, slower this time, cataloguing it like evidence. Champagne. Clothes scattered everywhere. Two glasses instead of one. A hotel room I didn't recognize. A ring I had no memory of choosing. A stranger who somehow already knew things about me that I didn't. My skull throbbing with every heartbeat. My memory of the entire night gone dark somewhere around what I assumed was a very poor decision.

I looked back at him, bracing myself. "Did we sleep together?"

He laughed again, and I genuinely didn't understand what part of any of this he found amusing. Apparently everything about my morning was a joke to him.

"No."

Relief hit me so hard I nearly sagged with it. Then he added, almost lazily, "You passed out before anything could happen," and I closed my eyes, because of course I had. Of course, out of every possible way this night could have gone, my life had decided that getting blackout drunk and waking up married to a beautiful stranger counted as a reasonable Tuesday.

I opened my eyes again, forcing myself to focus, to be the version of me that handled things instead of falling apart over them.

"What is your name?"

"Adrian."

"Adrian what?"

"Vale."

The name hit me like a bullet, and every ounce of composure I'd managed to scrape together in the last five minutes evaporated at once. My entire body went still.

Adrian Vale.

I knew that name. Everyone in my world knew that name. The Vale family owned half the casinos on the Strip and most of the illegal business quietly running underneath them. Adrian Vale was the youngest son of Victor Vale, the golden boy, the heir, the man people still whispered about because he had vanished from public life three years ago after his father's assassination attempt. The man who had supposedly inherited everything that mattered. The man my employer had described to me in a voice low with warning as dangerous.

The man I had been sent to kill.

My gaze moved slowly over his face, and for the first time since I'd opened my eyes that morning, I understood exactly how much trouble I was actually in.

COLE

God d*mn it. I muttered staring at my tattered reflection in the mirror.

I cannot believe I am married to the man I was sent to kill. Married. To my target. The literal reason I bought a plane ticket to Vegas in the first place, packed a bag with exactly one dress and one gun, and told my handler I would be back within forty eight hours with the job done and my receipts filed. I did not come here to fall in love, or whatever this catastrophe is supposed to be called. I came here to end a bloodline, not join one.

What came over me. That is the question looping on repeat in my aching skull right now, over and over, like my brain got stuck on the world's worst remix. The last clear memory I have from last night is landing at the airport, tired and focused, running through the plan one final time in my head. Get close. Get invited up. Get it done quiet, get out before anyone even knows I was in the building. That was the whole plan. Tha