Bad Decisions

•SEVEN•

Aurora lay in her bed that night, after she came home and showered again, washing away all of her makeup, sweat and alcohol and attempting to cleanse herself of Noah's mouth, his touch, the press of his body against hers. It didn't work, because the scent of him still clung to her skin and mixed in with her hair. She skipped getting dressed, and slid into her soft, Egyptian cotton sheets naked.

Her mind replayed over and over again what Noah had whispered into her ear, the seductive tenor of his voice as his fingers fucked her. And how quickly she came, and how he had kissed her after licking those same fingers clean.

Her skin was too sensitive, too tight over her bones and muscles. She flipped over, and swished her legs against the sheets trying and failing to get comfortable.

Aurora had no idea what his angle was, why he was toying with her like he was, flirting with the danger she posed to him... but she knew she liked it. Her body liked him.

And if she were to examine the depths of her heart, she knew he was right, that she didn't really want to kill him, not anymore, but still, it was her job. And Layton was expecting her to get it done, like every other time she had been tasked with eliminating a threat to M.I.N.D Labs Inc.

How many people had she killed at that point? Twenty? Forty?

She had the sinking feeling that Noah would not be forty one, or forty two, or even make her list of people eliminated at all.

But there was no option for her. He wouldn't quit or give up his cause, and neither would she abandon her task, or her target. Or her life.

She rolled back onto her back and sighed at the dark ceiling.

It was the quiet part that bothered her, the part that Layton wouldn't say out loud. When she was offered this job, she was told her predecessor had failed to eliminate a target, and then her predecessor himself that was her first target to take out.

She remembered doing it. How does one kill another assassin, someone trained in the art of killing, trained to also be a spy, a soldier, a weapon? She found his faults, found that he liked to get drunk alone in his apartment a few times a month, to get rid of the demons, to forget, or to otherwise numb his existence.

He took a tumble off his balcony, and the death was ruled an accident, his flattened body scooped up from the pavement, and Aurora slid into his vacated job. And for three years, she did it with ease, never questioning, never getting attached, never learning more than she should about her target, always obeying.

And yet that all got tossed out the window when Noah came around, which meant...

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, and turned again in her sheets. It was well past three in the morning. She groaned into her pillow, and flipped over yet again.

Noah had come in like a tornado, swept her up in his cyclone, and tossed her perfect life into shambles.

Hours later, her first workout missed, she sipped on her coffee; it was just four shots of espresso over milk, a light caramel drizzle over the top to add a bit of sweetness. She walked into the office, her jeans pressing too tight against the sore apex of her thighs as she went.

Kate was missing, and she passed by her empty desk to set everything down in her office, and then immediately left and walked into Layton's office without knocking or waiting for him to wave her in.

"The group is called Artificial Suicide," she said, her eyes meeting his. "They don't like the clinics, and won't stop until they are destroyed. Said something about being a maggot in the feed and not wanting to be a commodity."