Cold Light: Assassins
Criminal Delights Series, Book 14
Michelle Frost
Dark M/M Romance, Assassins, Motorcycle Club
Release Date: 06.03.19
Blurb
Being an assassin wasn’t something Lexington Campbell ever envisioned for himself, but after spending eight years doing just that, he’s prepared to take his place at the table of his father’s motorcycle club, The Iron Heretics.
Arden spends his nights dancing on stage at Spritz, one of St. Louis’s hottest night clubs, and waiting for Lex to pass back through town. After being orphaned young, he fears letting himself get too attached to the distant, bearded Lex, even after three years of inviting the man into his bed.
When Lex finds himself with a price on his head, he unknowingly pulls Arden into the darkness with him. When things aren’t what they seem, and enemies abound, will they find themselves still standing together in the cold light of day?
Warnings: attempted sexual assault, blood, graphic violence, morally dubious characters
Arden smacked his lips in his sleep and rolled, pressing his face against Lex’s throat and breathing out a little sigh before settling again. It still amazed him how they fit so well together. He was a big guy, not overly muscular, but tall at six-foot-four and solid. He’d taken up CrossFit when he’d been training with Mace and never looked back. It made him strong and fast. Perfect for his line of work. And Arden…had the epitome of a dancer’s body. Beautifully muscled in long, lean lines. Strong, but compact at only five-foot-seven. When he pressed against Lex as he was now, though, there was no question it was exactly where he belonged. Like the concaves of their bodies had been perfectly tailored to fit together.
He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he knew he didn’t want to give this up. Deciding he needed to quiet his mind and rest so he could dissect his options with a clear head, he let his eyes slip closed and pulled Arden closer.
It was only moments later he heard the first scraping sound. Metal against metal. He held his breath, listening intently. When it happened again, the door knob jiggled. There was only one way in or out of Arden’s apartment. The bed they were laying in centered in the bedroom “area” on one side of the apartment while a couch, TV, and kitchenette took up the other. The only other door was for the bathroom and it stood open not three feet from the bed.
Carefully, he pulled himself from Arden’s embrace, rolling out of bed and landing on silent feet. He grabbed his pants and pulled them up his legs. He didn’t have a gun with him, never bringing one when he visited Arden because talking about what he did outside of the time they spent together wasn’t something they did. The knob jiggled again. Whoever was trying to get in, they weren’t very adept at picking locks, and Lex took it for the opportunity it was. He pressed his hand over Arden’s mouth at the same time he gave his shoulder a shake. Arden’s eyes snapped open in panic, a muffled grunt escaping him, before he settled into confusion when his eyes focused on Lex. Moving the hand he’d had on Arden’s shoulder, he pressed one finger to his own lips, calling for silence and then pointed to the bathroom. Metal scraped again, the door rattling slightly, and Arden’s eyes went wide with panic.
Lex pulled him to his feet and pressed his lips against Arden’s ear. “Get in the tub,” he whispered, then pushed him toward the bathroom door. As soon as Arden cleared the threshold of the bathroom, the main door to the apartment opened a crack, and Lex moved quickly to get on the back side of it so whoever was coming through the door wouldn’t see him until they were in the room and turned around.
There were two of them. They stepped fully into the room, sweeping left and right, but not behind. Amateurs. Bruno was the farthest from him, spider web tattoo glaring in the moonlight, and a cold wash of anger filtered through Lex’s body. They each had handguns, suppressors protruding from the ends. Stalking forward, his bare feet silent on the carpeted floor, Lex came up behind the man closest to him. He gripped the man hard, one hand grabbing the man’s jaw and the other reaching out to grip the back of the gun and extract it from the man’s hand. He spun them to face Bruno, using the man as a human shield when his yell alerted Bruno, and yanking the man’s head to the left—snapping his neck.
The body in his grasp jerked twice when Bruno lifted his weapon and fired. Lex brought up his other hand and fired on instinct, catching Bruno with three bullets in the chest. When he fell, Lex let the body drop and stalked forward, never moving his gun from Bruno’s twitching form. A deep stain of blood grew beneath Bruno’s body, and Lex kicked the gun away from Bruno’s hand before kneeling over him.
“Who sent you?” he growled while Bruno gasped, blood splattering out of his mouth and onto his chin. The pool beneath him spread as his eyes went glassy. He stilled.
Goddamnit. Lex pushed a harsh breath out of his nose and using the hand not holding the gun, he felt along Bruno’s pockets until he found his phone. He pushed the home button, only to be met with a lock screen asking for Touch ID or Passcode. Slipping the gun into the waistband of his pants, he lifted Bruno’s still warm hand and pressed his thumb to the little circle on the phone. Bingo.
He tapped the screen to get to the messages and found a text thread from Restricted. There wasn’t much there. No indication of who was on the other end, and the last message which had come in mere hours ago simply stated send confirmation when it’s done.
Someone had taken a contract out on him.
Rifling through the rest of Bruno’s pockets, he came up with his wallet. He pulled out the driver’s license and slipped it into his pocket. It was probably a fake, but it was all he had to go on. He couldn’t risk taking the phone with him, so after looking through and finding nothing in the call log or email app, he stood to find something to wipe his prints away, only to spin toward the bathroom when a startled gasp sounded behind him.
Stories have always been Michelle Frost’s escape. Even as a kid, she can remember writing stories featuring her favorite cartoon characters. Now, her characters are a little more grown up, as are the stories she likes to tell. A self-proclaimed coffee addict and a bit of an introvert, she can most likely be found at any given time, on any given day with her hands on a keyboard or her nose in a book.
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Thank you for the excerpt! Congrats on your book release!