"Oh, shut up, don't make me laugh."

Jack walked closely behind of Scarlett Nolan - his "boss" and maybe something more - as she responded to his compliment on the view from his angle. He cracked a cocky grin and lifted his gaze to meet hers.

"Why? You're cute when you laugh."

It was so easy to forget who he really was when he's with her. His task had been simple enough when he'd been assigned it - get close to one of Coen Reynold's best underlings and take them from beneath him. Cripple his organization so the police could swoop in and take him down while he was weak. The more he got to know Scarlett, the less he stopped reporting in to his contact.

It didn't help that his superiors no longer agreed with his methods. On some level, Jack knew they'd sent him in so that they wouldn't have blood on their hands when he ultimately got himself killed. After the last job, he really couldn't blame them. He was the one with blood on his hands, and, if he was right about this, he was about to have more.

The way Scarlett was dressed didn't read collection visit. Her skintight leather boots ran all the way up her legs, and everything about her outfit emphasized her curves in a way that made him unable to take his eyes off of her. His eyes shifted back to her backside as they climbed the few steps to their unlucky guest's apartment.

"This will only take a minute," she said courteously, and he had to bite down on his tongue to keep from laughing.

Jack stood back as Scarlett knocked, smart enough to remain silent and let her control the show. He crossed his arms over his chest once they were inside and watched her grin while greeting the man. He couldn't stop a slight smirk from forming on his own lips.

Within seconds, the man pulled a gun on Scarlett. Before Jack's eyes could widen in reaction, he'd already reached for the piece he put underneath his coat before leaving the restaurant. Scarlett beat him to it, and the loud bang of a gun firing filled his ears. The man screamed out in pain.

In a move that surprised even himself, Jack laughed. Maybe this was the unpredictability his colleagues had often complained about in the past. "I would've gone for the knee myself," he said calmly.

The man immediately started to beg for more time, for mercy, and Jack kept his gun aimed on him, trying his best to look out for Scarlett. Of course, she didn't need looked after, which is part of what he liked so much about her. Before the pleading man could say much else, she re-aimed her gun and shot him right between the eyes.

As surprised as Jack was to see her take a life, he didn't let it show. He barely paid attention as she called for a cleanup crew and paid even less attention as he stepped over the body to go to her side.

He reached to put a hand on her back, and she walked into it as she turned around to leave. Jack pulled his hand away and ran it through his hair, trying to play it off. What surprised him more than not being phased by what he's seen is the fact that seeing her in this capacity was driving him absolutely wild. He'd always found her attractive, but this went far beyond that. As fucked up as it was, she'd let him in on a secret not many were privy to, trusted him enough not to run to the police. The irony of that was not lost on him, though to identify as a police officer these days was more of a joke than anything else. He hadn't talked to his contact in weeks, and he hadn't seen a paycheck in more than that. The only thing keeping him tied to them were the badge and gun carefully hidden away in his apartment.

Scarlett was, in good reason, surprised to discover how calm he was about everything. To her, he was a chef and nothing more, but she seemed to relax when he fed her the cover story about being a gun for hire. It wasn't completely false, as he had actually killed people outside of the line of duty, and it was those mistakes that had him on such thin ice.

Jack knew that he had what he needed to get Scarlett into serious trouble - hell, he'd seen her murder someone in cold blood. But he knew then and there, as they walked back to Lolita, that he wasn't going to do anything to betray her.

He definitely knew he wouldn't as he stopped in his tracks and kissed her firmly on the lips, and he definitely knew when she returned the gesture, aggressively.

"Your place or mine?"

"Yours," he said without hesitation. This woman had a hold on him, and he knew then and there that he would always pick her.