But Reggie had Lenny on her mind. “Where’s Lenny?” she asked Hammer. “What did you do to him?”
Amelia frowned. “Why would Lenny the Butcher matter to you so much?” Amelia asked her.
“Shut the fuck up, bitch!” Reggie yelled at Amelia with hatred in her voice.
Hammer grabbed Reggie by her blouse again. “What did you say to my fiancée?” he asked her angrily.
Instead of responding with the spite she was known for, Reggie stared at Hammer. “Your what?”
Hammer realized he had let Reggie know in an inartful way. And given what she might have tried to do to Amelia, he was glad he had let it out. “My fiancée,” he said, and released her blouse.
Reggie looked at Amelia with shock in her eyes. Amelia smiled and flashed her ring. “I’s getting married now,” she said in her best Shug Avery imitation.
Reggie looked at Hammer angrily, and then slapped his face.
Amelia was shocked. She waited for Hammer to slap that bitch right back. But he didn’t. It was as if that promise he made to Reggie’s mother all those years ago haunted him still and he could only go just so far in hurting her. Or he just wasn’t the type to strike a woman. “What was your relationship with Buckner?” he asked Reggie instead.
All of the fight appeared to be gone out of Reggie. But she responded. “I told you already. He was going to be my date for the evening.”
“When you thought I was him, you said did he do it. What was he supposed to have done?”
Reggie started not to respond, but Hammer moved toward her, as if to jack her up again. She responded quickly. She knew it was all over. She knew it. “He was helping me,” she said.
Amelia looked at Hammer. Was she really going to come clean, she wondered?
Hammer was wondering the same thing too. “Helping you do what?” he asked.
Reggie looked Hammer dead in the eye. “Extinguish your fiancée,” she said as if she dared him to do something about it.
A sadness appeared in Hammer’s eyes. She was the monster he created, he thought. “You ordered Amelia’s assassination?” he asked, unable to mask his disappointment in her. “Are you telling me you ordered that man to murder Amelia? The mother of my child?”
“I should have been the mother of your child,” Reggie admitted, and Amelia was shocked. Tears were in Reggie’s eyes. “I should have been your fiancée, not her! You were supposed to look out for me, Hammer. You promised my mama on her deathbed. But you didn’t. You abandoned me for Amelia.” She said the name as if it was a contaminant.
“But why now?” Hammer asked, unable to erase the frown from his face. “Why would you all of a sudden want Amelia dead when she’s been my number one for years?”
“I wasn’t going to do it. Lenny agreed to do it.”
“That didn’t answer my question,” Hammer said.
“Why are you asking me all of these questions? And what have you done to Lenny?” She was crying. “What have you done to the only man who cared about me, because you didn’t care. You pretended you cared. But you never cared about me. It was always her. As soon as you met her, you forgot about me.”
“How could you love Hammer,” Amelia asked, “and order Lenny to kill his own son?”
Reggie looked at her. “What are you talking about? Nobody tried to kill JoJo.”
“Yes, Lenny did, and you know it,” Amelia said.
“That’s a lie!” Reggie proclaimed. “Hammer, she’s lying. He was going to take her ass out, but I didn’t tell him to touch JoJo. I’d never do anything like that. I was going to get rid of her and become his . . .”
Like hell she was, Amelia thought, because she knew what the last word of Reggie’s sentence was going to be. She planned to get rid of Amelia permanently and become JoJo’s mother. Was that idiot insane?
“I still ask you the same question,” Hammer said. “Why now? What’s changed?”
Reggie looked away. “I knew you were going to do it.”
“Do what?”
“I knew you were going to ask her. I knew, when you left my side at that airport and ran to her, that you were going to commit your life to her and marry her. And I couldn’t let that stand. I couldn’t--”
Reggie suddenly stopped talking and looked toward the back of the house like she heard something. “What?” Hammer asked her.
When she realized she had reacted, she pretended she hadn’t. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all. Now what were you asking me?”
Amelia looked at Hammer. Hammer looked at Amelia. “Wait here,” he said, and with his gun drawn slowly made his way toward the back of the house.
But that was just the reaction Reggie was expecting. Because as soon as Hammer disappeared down the hallway, Reggie didn’t wait a second. She immediately grabbed the gun she kept on her person, stood up and turned and fired it, dead aim, at Amelia. She, like her parents before her, was a trained assassin. She knew how to hit her target without wasting a single bullet. One shot was all she needed. And one shot was all she got.
Because when she turned, expecting that element of surprise, and expecting Amelia to be exactly where she had seen her just before she pulled out her gun, she was the one taken by surprise.
Because Amelia wasn’t there. She and Hammer both knew that pretending to hear something in the back of the house was a ruse. Hammer only pretended to go to the back of the house. He was in the hallway just as Reggie was turning toward Amelia, too, with his gun drawn on Reggie.
Amelia had the same idea. Because as soon as Reggie moved to pull her gun out, Amelia had run to Reggie’s blindside. That was why, as Reggie was turning and firing at what she just knew was a dead-aim shot at her archenemy, Amelia was pointing her gun at Reggie’s head. Reggie fired in the exact right location. But Amelia had already left that spot, and was right beside Reggie. Amelia cocked her trigger. “If you actually believed we were going to fall for your I hear something in the back act,” she said to Reggie, “you need to go back to assassin school. Now drop it!”
Reggie blinked. And she dropped her weapon.
But as Hammer stood there looking at the woman he had been obligated to help most of her adult life, he knew he couldn’t let it stand. Because just as sure as there was a Reggie Dell, there would be another day, another hour, when Amelia wouldn’t be paying attention, and Reggie’s expertise as a marksman would be on full display. And she wouldn’t miss.
“Amelia?” Hammer said.
“Yes?” Amelia answered him. She could see the changed look on his face.
“Wait for me in the truck.”
Amelia was surprised. She started to ask him why. Then she realized why. And she realized the truth of their plight too. Reggie Dell, as long as she walked the earth, was a clear and present danger, not only to her, but to their child as well.
Amelia couldn’t let that stand either.
She withdrew her gun from Reggie’s head, and walked out of Hammer’s beach house.
Reggie, terrified, turned toward Hammer. And he was walking toward her. “You can’t harm me, Hammer,” she said, hopeful but terrified too. “You promised my mama. How can you harm me when you promised my mama?”
“I promised your mother I would protect you for the rest of your life,” Hammer said. “Until you tried to take my life, in the name of Amelia and JoJo, away from me. That’s when the deal ended,” he said, and even as Reggie was saying more, and begging more, it didn’t matter. Hammer fired one shot through her heart. A shot he knew would be fatal.
And Reggie, still staring at him as if she couldn’t believe he’d do that to her despite all she’d done to him, slowly, dramatically, dropped dead.
Hammer stumbled backwards, against the sofa. He never thought it would end that way. But he knew it had to.
It had to.
He pulled out his phone, and called the agency.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
That next morning, after the emotions of the night before when that ever-lurking
threat called Reggie Dell was finally neutralized, they woke up in the throes of passion.
Hammer was on top of Amelia, kissing her with a new sense of urgency that overwhelmed them both. So much so that he moved down her body kissing her. He moved down until he was between her legs kissing and licking and sucking her. Amelia was squeezing his hair, as the sensations met his passion and could hardly be contained. They both were moaning. They both wanted more. It was the first time they were making love as an officially-engaged couple, and they weren’t fucking around.
Hammer couldn’t get enough of Amelia. His entire body was strained with passion and emotions and love for the woman he could have lost forever. And he was determined to give her all he had. He was determined to never let her regret loving him, and saying yes to him.
He wanted to stay where he was, making love to Amelia down under, but his penis wouldn’t cooperate. It was begging to enter her. It would not be denied a moment longer.
He moved back up her body, kissing her as he moved up, the way he kissed her when he moved down, and he kissed her on the breasts and began squeezing and sucking her breasts with that same heightened passion. And his penis slowly and without assistance, guided itself to that entry into wonderment. But then Hammer, unable to restrain himself any longer, thrust it through.
Amelia lifted her upper body in an electrifying sensation that caused her head to roll backwards when she felt that hard entry. She felt it to the roots of her hair. And her naked body wanted it all from his naked body. And Hammer’s big, muscular body and big, muscular penis gave it to her. He wasn’t holding back.
He lifted up, on the palms of his hands, so that he could watch every minute of her reaction as he fucked her with a slow but extremely hard and deep fuck. He was sweating in every pore of his body he was doing her so hard. And she was reacting with a kind of sexy, hooded look that made him know he was taking her there.
When it became too wonderful to him and he was going to cum before she came, he leaned down, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her on the lips as he kept doing her. His ass was squeezing as he moved deeper inside of her. His balls were slapping against her thighs as he felt the sensations of being completely inside the woman he loved.
And when Amelia lifted her knees on either side of his big, naked, sweaty body, and began rocking her little body in a way that made his penis gain even more penetration, Hammer thought he was going to lose his mind. Because she was putting it on him! She was giving as good as she was getting, and he lost it.
Hammer banged her. He couldn’t help himself. He wrapped her even tighter into his arms and pounded her with a ferociousness that overtook them both.
Amelia, loving every second of that pounding, came and came hard. She held onto Hammer and kept rocking her body and was determined to be able to take everything Hammer slung at her. And he was slinging it. And it felt magnificent.
But it was too much to take. He was going too hard. Her head was telling her she needed to make him pull out of her that instant or she would have a heart attack. That was how wonderful it felt.
But she didn’t listen to her head. She listened to her body. And her body was all-in with Hammer. She was smiling as she came. She wasn’t about to make Hammer do anything but keep on fucking her just the way he knew how to do.
And when she kept rocking as she came, and then started smiling because it felt as good to her as it did to him, his own willpower broke, and he came too.
Hammer poured into Amelia with an explosion of cum. He couldn’t stop cumming. He drained himself inside of Amelia, straining every muscle in his muscular body, as he came.
And by the time he was drained out, and her pulsations had finally settled back down, they both crashed against each other.
Hammer rolled off of her, and then rolled her on top of him, and held her in his arms. He looked at her, and she looked at him, and wow was on both of their faces. Hammer had been with more women than he’d ever claim, but that morning, with Amelia, was the best sex he’d ever had. Bar none.
It was the best Amelia had ever had too. But every time she was with Hammer, it was always great. She’d been with her share of men in her day, too, and not one of them ever put it on her the way Hammer put it on her.
She smiled as they looked at each other with pure joy. And she gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “See what happens,” she said to him, “when you make an honest woman out of your girl.”
Hammer laughed. Then he placed his big hand on the side of her face. And that look of merriment on his face slowly dissolved into a look far more serious. “I’m so sorry, baby,” he said to her.
Amelia stared at him. Was he about to confess to some new indiscretion? “Sorry about what?” she asked him.
“I am so sorry I put you through all that nonsense I put you through in our relationship. We were broken up all the times I messed up,” he made clear, “but I knew my decisions didn’t help our reconciliation. I understand you were hurt by my actions, and for that I apologize. But more importantly,” Hammer added as he rubbed her hair, “I’ll never hurt you again.”
Amelia smiled, but he could tell she was still doubtful of him.
“You’ll have to see it to believe it?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Afraid so,” she said, and then looked at him. She was so hopeful, but she knew she had to keep her wits about her too. With Hammer, it was going to be risky. She laid her head on his chest.
Hammer stroked her as they laid quietly together. The house was quiet, too, as JoJo, with Rowena, were still at Trevor Reese’s house in Boston until further notice. And the thought, of Hammer all alone with Millie, and how they were able to make all the noise they wanted to make during their incredible coupling, caused him to become horny again. Just like that.
He placed Amelia on her back again.
And entered her again.
He began making slow, wonderful love to her all over again.
He laid on top of her, with his arms on either side of her face, as his penis stroked her with slow, wonderful gyrations that caused both of them to close their eyes in anticipation of another magical round.
Until Hammer’s cellphone began to ring. And the ringtone let him know it was a call he couldn’t refuse to answer.
He stopped all movement, and Amelia opened her eyes. “Sorry, babe,” he said, already grabbing for his phone. “I have to take this.”
Amelia understood his profession. That hadn’t changed.
Hammer looked at the Caller ID. It was Ozzie. “Talk,” he said.
“I’m heading your way,” Ozzie responded.
“And I gave you permission to come my way when?” Hammer asked.
“It can’t be helped, Boss. They ordered me back to DC to question me about what I knew about Reggie’s death, which was nothing, so I’m here in DC now. And then Bellamy springs it on me, like it’s an afterthought. He says he has orders for you to get to Wyoming. The president changed his mind. But the terms have changed, and he wants you to make it happen. And you’ll need me. I’m leaving DC now. I’ll be there in an hour.”
Hammer leaned his head back frustratingly. “Damn,” he said, and then ended the call.
“What is it?” Amelia asked.
“I’ve got to go to Wyoming,” Hammer said.
“Ah, Hammer,” Amelia said, disappointed. “I thought we’d have at least a day or two alone.”
“I know. But it’s orders straight from the president’s desk. I have to go.”
“When?”
“Ozzie should be here within the hour. And we’ll take my plane.”
“For how long?” Amelia asked him.
“I’m going to try to make it as quick a turnaround as I possibly can,” Hammer said. But it all depended on what deal was on the table now, he knew, and if Cordoba would accept it.
Amelia smiled. “Try hard,” she said, and Hammer smiled too. Then they both realized he was still deep inside of her, and the more he looked at her the harder
he was getting deep inside of her.
And soon his fully erected penis began moving again, stroking her in all the right spots again, and they were holding onto each other, experiencing that wonderful feeling again, and making long, sweet love all over again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I still can’t get over what happened,” Ozzie was saying, a little over an hour later, as he drove Hammer, in his own Lincoln MKZ, out of Reggie’s driveway. “Reggie behind that shit? And then to hear that news and that fool. Why didn’t you tell me, man?”
“Tell you what?” Hammer asked. “I didn’t know she was behind it, either, until yesterday. I mean, I had my suspicions that she could have had something to do with it, but I didn’t believe it until she told me so herself.”
“I’m talking about Big Dee. Why didn’t you tell me Big Dee was out?” Big Dee was Oscar Dell, Reggie’s father.
But Big Dee was the furthest name from Hammer’s mind. He looked at Ozzie. “What are you talking about? Big Dee still has years on his sentence. All the people that man murdered, hits that weren’t even sanctioned by the agency, should never see the light of day in my opinion.”
“He had good lawyers because he’s seeing the light of day,” Ozzie said. “They let him out for good behavior. When the agency bothered to mention it this morning when they were trying to find out what I knew about Reggie’s death, I said damn! That shit ain’t no coincidence. Reggie’s dad just happen to get out of prison at the same time she’s trying to take Millie out? And Big Dee is an agency-trained assassin too, just like Reggie and just like Reggie’s mother were? I said damn.”
Hammer was floored. “That is surprising,” he said. Big Dee was out? “Damn is right,” he said.
But then Hammer thought about that name. Big Dee. And he suddenly remembered what Millie had said when they were at the beach house. He remembered she had mentioned that the words the b.d. was written on that calendar of Reggie’s. Amelia had assumed those initials meant the big day because it was written in on the day of that attack at Amelia’s house. Hammer looked at Ozzie. “And he was released when again?” he asked him.
Amelia Sinatra: What Hammer Wants Page 12