Oleander's Kiss: Black Roses, #1

One, Oleander

The bare lightbulb above me sheds both too much, and not enough light on arms scored with cigarette burns and thin stab wounds. Shock must be setting in because I hardly felt the last two. The pain bloomed bright, before leaving me terrifyingly numb.

"Oleander, don't look at me like that." Asphodel grins, looking for a reaction. But if there's any other way to look at a man who's just spent four hours cutting into your body—a body he'd been fucking senseless not six hours earlier, mind you—I don't know what that look would be.

A thousand pains and burns, and I still can't take my eyes off him. With almost colorless blond hair, and amber eyes, he's more lion than man. He ducks his chin, and his hair falls forward like a mane. If my hands weren't cuffed to the chair, I might reach up, tuck it behind his ear.

If I beg, if I plead, he'll only hurt me worse. Not because he likes the sound, mind you, but because he'll see it as a sign of guilt.

A decade on the prowl together, fighting at each other's backs, and now I'm the one in his sights.

A door slams somewhere in the safehouse, and Asphodel—Asp, as he mostly was to me—looks up. I didn't want to be interr—

Sorry. But Foxglove says she heard sirens, saw them turn toward the safehouse. We've gotta get out.

He looks at me, his brow knitted in irritation. I would ask you why, Lea, but I don't think I'd believe you if you answered.

He fingers the gun at his waist, pulling it from the holster. My heart almost stops. Besides—closure's for pussies.

No, no, no... He's not gonna shoot me. Not after a decade together, fighting and fucking. Junebug.  He tips my chin up with the gun's muzzle, and kisses me. My lips taste of blood and silent tears. His taste of cigarette smoke.

I glare at him, for all I'm worth. I don't have your mone—

The bullet bursts through my chest, and before the black spots have faded from my vision, I'm alone, waiting for the police to come make the biggest bust of their pathetic little lives: the body of Liselle Norris, code name Oleander, formerly of the Black Rose group of contract killers.

Two

Eighteen Years Ago...

The summer air stirs the wispy hairs on the nape of my neck. "And you're sure he's not a pimp or something."

"Yeah, I'm sure. He's a friend of Eddy's. Eddy's worked with him before. Says the money's good. Real good." Jenna glares at me, as though wounded. Her hair's pulled into a French braid, and it only emphasizes the dry patches and acne that blotch her cheeks. Still, she's got a look about her that's attractive, in a don't-fuck-with-me kind of way. Sometimes I'm jealous of that confidence. I may not have acne as noticeable, but I never pull my hair back. I need the ability to make it a curtain I can retreat behind. I hate how people look at me. And that brings me to my next point of worry.

And he doesn't care that I've got a record? I bite my lip. A nasty one?

"Nope. Think that'll help. Think he's in with a tough crowd. Or knows them, or something. Your rep's a good thing."

I sigh. I'm not sure about this. They said—

"I know, I know. Keep your nose clean, or it goes on your adult record. Serious jail time, too. But what else are you gonna do? Move back in with your parents?"

I shudder bitterly. Yeah, that ain't happening.

A car pulls up slowly.  A car that's most of the way to being a limo. Completely out of place for the neighborhood. What did Jenna sign us up for? I rub my arms to smooth away the goose bumps.

"That's our chance. Look—I know you're skeptical, but please don't embarrass me? Eddy said they just need a few sets of eyes for a gig, and that's it, unless they like us." She squeezes my hand, and hauls me to my feet.

Yeah, whatever.

The car door opens, and Jenna gets in. I slide in behind her, tugging my shorts a little lower over my thighs.

There's one man in the back seat, and when I see him, my breath stops. My mind's screaming danger, danger, as his fierce amber eyes catch mine. But despite that, when my heart speeds up, it's pumping yes please, yes please, yes please into my bloodstream, a thousand dangerous drumbeats that crowd out my better judgment. He's maybe a decade older than me, tops, so not out of the realm of logic, though maybe out of the realm of good sense. A bad crowd, Jenna said. I can smell it on him, but being bad has never sounded so appealing.

Everything about him is riveting. Smoldering. And violent. His jacket bunches around a gun holster. Thinking that's what has me on edge, Jenna squeezes my fingers reassuringly.

Jenna and Liselle?

I duck my head, unable to speak. How's a seventeen year old whose butt's still covered in summertime grit supposed to handle a guy like this, anyways? He can't be older than his mid-twenties, but he wears authority like it was a winter coat.

His eyes are knowing, almost laughing at me. I narrow mine at him, just daring him to make me feel like more of a stupid kid. He offers her his hand, then me. His palms are calloused and scarred. Who is this guy?

I think Eddy mentioned us... Jenna starts, and he nods, acknowledging her but waiting for her to fall silent. She obeys quickly.

I know. My boots on the ground. I—

Something's so very wrong here. Something about him is familiar. That's why I can't take my eyes off him. I cut him off. Do I know you?

His look steals my breath. It’s harsh, so much so that I should be afraid of his response. But there’s also something protective in it that soothes any sting left by his abruptness. No, I don't think so.

Only later will I find out how much of a lie that really was. Only later will I wish I'd known his tells, how his fingers playing along his jawline were a deflection, so I'd miss the bobbing of his Adam's apple. Only later will he tell me just how well we knew each other, even then.

But hindsight's twenty-twenty. And on that day, the timeline of my life changed, shifting from pre-Asp to post-Asp.

Later, I'll wish I could tell myself to run. I'll wish I could tell myself it wasn't worth it.

But that afternoon, as his lips shape his name, and I lose myself in their fullness, and the way his hair falls across his forehead... as he asks me and Jenna if we understand our role in things. What we could do for him... what he could do for us...

All I can do is whisper yes.

Three, Present

After five years locked up, my release date finally comes. I'm a kid in a candy store as they release me back into the world on parole, despite my admittedly bleak prospects.

I hitch the bag with my belongings a little higher on my arm as I start up the path away from the correctional facility. I don't have a ride into town, not having anyone to pick me up. Joys of the life I've had. Once upon a time, I had Asp. But he's dead to me—and I hope he's outright dead, after what the bastard did to me.

I still remember the way those fleeting moments stretched to interminable hours, as I tried to breathe through the blood filling my lungs. As I tried to force air into my ribcage, no matter how my bones groaned with pain.

I still remember fighting to get the breath to let the police officers know I was alive—the safehouse's previous occupants were dead in the bathroom, with my fingerprints on the gun that killed them, as I found out later. At first, they thought I was dead too. But I struggled for breath, and finally coughed up enough blood to groan. Spat it all over myself, actually.

I still remember the way the ambulance jolted, and the almost-electric pain that ricocheted through me with every bump in the road. The memories are seared into me like the scars branded into my flesh.

But mostly, I remember the image burned into my eyelids in the muzzle's flash: Asp looking back at me, my blood splattering his face, and his eyes half-lidded with hate. The last emotion I ever thought I'd see on him.

Five years since I saw him. Five years since he ended my life, in more ways than one. Perhaps he thought it would be more—or Cicuta, really, since he was the one who pulled the trigger on the people the police say I killed.

I lucked out. Even though Cicuta used my gun and it had my prints, they tested my fingers for residue, and determined they couldn't prove I'd shot it. So they couldn't push for a much longer sentence. Especially not with me in the courtroom, still barely able to talk, wheezingly, as I healed from my injuries. Hard to paint an invalid as a cold-blooded menace to society. They hardly managed to paint me as an accomplice, even. I know how to play for sympathy.

Perhaps Asp thought I'd still be rotting away incarcerated, and that's why he never sent anyone after me. He never worried for a second I'd roll over and spill on everything I've learned after well over a decade doing bad guys' dirty work. Certainly some prosecutor's gotta be kicking himself. I've lost track of the amount of assignments Asp gave me, the amount of investigations my name's popped up in.

It's not something I care to dwell on, either.

See, I've thought about this day, for a long time. I've wondered if I'd leave, play nice, kowtow to my parole officer. If I'd get a job waitressing or serving the food at weddings, or some other minimum-wage excuse to keep busy.

But no. I'm good for one thing. Stalking. Killing. Maiming, when needed. And I'm not gonna let Asp chase me away from my fucked-up calling.

Here's where things get tricky. My accounts are hidden well enough that they probably weren't frozen or seized with my arrest and incarceration. But I have no doubt that Asp has an alert on them, and the moment I withdraw money for bubble gum, he'll have a Black Rose on my tail. After all, his name is on them, too, a holdover from the days when we shared a home and a life. I've gotten new accounts for the commissary, but there's hardly anything in them. I wouldn't put it past him to watch those, too.

No matter what, he'll know I'm out soon. But I'm not in a hurry to rub his nose in it. I've gotta gather my strength, first.

See, Asp wouldn't have been shy about murdering me. He and his would have talked it up. Hit man so cold he shot his future wife. One of the top assassins in the world, and he put her down like Cujo. Killed a woman so dangerous they named her Oleander because even to touch her was death. It's a myth, and a joke the Black Roses told to outsiders. Oleanders aren't that poisonous, except to small children. Not unless you gorge on them.

He named me Oleander because cerbera odollam, or the Suicide Tree, was too much of a mouthful. He later told me that was his runner up, and I nearly pissed myself laughing. I let him name me Oleander, because an oleander, though not the most universally deadly of plants, is so common, so invisible, that we put it around children's playgrounds. Let the other Black Roses stylize themselves and posture. Let them joke that he named me so because I'm pretty and attention-getting, but less likely to kill—indiscriminately, I would always argue—than any of them. I was there to listen to Asp's heartbeat and share his smiles, build a life in his arms—and still the heartbeat of whoever he chose. That's it.

I never gave a shit about my reputation. Never cared who had the highest kill counts. Who commanded the highest bounty. Never wanted a context for my violence.

I did it because he needed me to. And that was enough reason for me.

But now it's not. I'm back from the dead, and the only way I'll get my reputation back is by shattering his, and then taking a warm, steaming shit on its wreckage. The moment he raised a hand to me, one of us had to die. He's had five years of pretending it's not gonna be him.

By the time this is over, I'm gonna kill Asp, and every member of the Black Roses.

I don't say that with hate, mind you, just honesty. I'm going to pick them off one by one, or in whatever numbers they stick together. And then, when he's got no more devoted saps to take a bullet for him, he's gonna get one from me.

It's everything that I'll do to him before that point that I haven't decided yet.

Four

Seventeen and a half years ago...

With nothing else to do on one of the rare days off Asp gives us from training, I find myself in the little studio on his property, laying into the punching bag for all I’m worth. I’m not even sure where I got the energy for it; Asp pushes us to exhaustion almost every damn day. But it’s not like I have anything else to do.

My knuckles ache from my blows—Asp insists we train without gloves or guards whenever possible, as we won’t always be able to wear protective gear in the field. I pause to clench and unclench my hands, seeking some way of easing the aching flesh.

Having fun? Asp’s quiet drawl comes  from behind me. My whole body jerks to attention. I didn’t even hear him come in. Sorry about that, he says, but he doesn’t sound apologetic.

I