Take Me

by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin

  “How about you blow me first?” I suggested as I pulled back a bit and loosened my belt. “It’s been a while, and I want to be able to concentrate.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Take all that off first,” I said with a flick of my finger towards her clothes. I flipped the buttons of my jeans open and slid them down my legs along with my boxers. “Leave the stockings and shoes, though. That’s hot.”

  “Whatever you want,” she said with a smile. Her eyes tightened a bit as she looked at my cock, and I knew what she was thinking. I wouldn’t push her though, and she smiled up at me again like I didn’t scare her.

  She faked it all well. I hoped she’d get something out of it, too.

  I sat back against the headboard, and Bridgett crawled over between my legs. My fingers ran through her hair as she leaned over and took me in her mouth. Warm and wet – just what I needed. She licked around the head first, and then tried to go down too far. She gagged a little and moved back, refusing to meet my eyes as she tried again.

  “Look at me, sweetheart,” I said, and she complied. “How long you been doing this?”

  “I…um…”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “Since Monday.”

  “Shit, are you serious?”

  She nodded.

  “You want to stop?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I gotta make a living.”

  I looked at her for a long time and wondered why I was even asking her. Since when did I care how much experience a hooker had? Even if she had been turning tricks less than a week, she might have already had more partners than I ever did.

  “Go slow,” I told her. My hand moved over her cheek, and she nodded slightly before wrapping her lips back around the head of my dick. I spread my arms out across the headboard and let her make the moves. “You don’t have to take it all – just use a lot of tongue. That’s it…look at me…show me how much you love my cock.”

  Her dark eyes stayed on mine as she sucked, licked, and ran her hand over what she couldn’t get in her mouth. I didn’t try to hold back, just let her work on me as my thigh muscles tightened along with my balls. The tingling sensation rose up, circled the base of my dick, and then focused through the tip of my cock as I let out a muted grunt and poured into her throat with a single thrust of my hips.

  “Fuck, yeah,” I muttered. My hand passed over her hair again as her throat worked to swallow it down. She moved me back and forth in her mouth a couple more times before I placed my hand on her cheek again. “You’re good…come here.”

  I gave her one of the water bottles and watched as she drank half of it down while I got my breathing under control. Maybe the asshole pimp wasn’t taking care of her like he should. That shit didn’t make sense to me. Why have expensive pieces of merchandise you can sell over and over again and not take care of them?

  At least this one wasn’t strung out. I hated junkie hookers.

  She placed the bottle back on the edge of the nightstand, and I pulled her to my chest. For a minute, I held her to me. Feeling her weight on top of me was kind of nice and made me feel warm and sleepy. Maybe I didn’t need the sex as much as I needed the company.

  “I’m gonna sleep a bit,” I told her. “You can sleep with me if you want, or there’s a TV in the other room, cable and everything. There’s pizza in the fridge, too.”

  “I could use a little sleep,” she admitted. “I don’t usually get much.”

  “Hard to sleep during the day?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  I shifted around until I could pull the comforter and the sheets down enough to get our legs underneath the covers and then pulled her back to my chest. She settled her cheek on my shoulder and closed her eyes. My fingers stroked through her smooth hair, and she blew warm breath over my skin.

  Sleep came soon, and with the warmth of another body next to mine, it came without thought or dreams.

  There was just no substitute for a good hooker.

  Chapter Two

  Annoying Rival

  “That’s custom.”

  Jonathan Ferris tapped the police report on the laptop’s screen right above the bullet hole I left where the board member’s eye used to be. I wasn’t sure how he managed to get into classified information online, but he always had all the same info the Chicago Police Department had in its system. I wasn’t sure if the CPD realized how many people ended up with all their classified records, but Jon was the kind of guy who was brought up sharing.

  “That’s what you always say,” I reminded him.

  “It’s always true,” Nick replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you actually missing. Well, sometimes you might kill a few extras, but who’s counting, right?”

  Nick Wolfe had a way of putting a lot of emphasis on various words in a sentence for no particular reason. It gave him a hippie-stoner vibe, which wasn’t totally inaccurate, but didn’t completely fit, either. The guy was a classic chick-magnet, too – both in looks and the ability to get a group of women around him and listen to him tell stories. He’d always leave with at least one of them, sometimes two. He was completely uncockblockable at a club or a bar, but that would be a whole other story all by itself.

  He could also get away with shit other people couldn’t, like bringing up the reason for my exile without me smashing his face in. I had no idea what he actually did for Rinaldo, but even with all the bullshit, I liked the guy. Everyone liked him. I did narrow my eyes at him, which made him smile and laugh a little.

  “Just saying, dude.”

  I rolled my eyes and looked back at the computer screen.

  “You’re the fucking master, Evan,” Jonathan said, and I thanked him.

  It had been a pretty nice hit.

  “It’s good to know you didn’t lose your touch out in the desert, Arden.” I turned towards the voice and watched Rinaldo Moretti walk into the plush office where he conducted a lot of his business. He wasn’t much to look at, my boss – average height, mostly bald, mid-fifties, a bit of a gut on him – but what he lacked in looks, he made up for in power. The man could make shit happen with a couple taps of his finger.

  He was nervous about something today. Even though he walked with confidence and showed nothing in his face, there was something bothering him. The vein near his temple was beating rapidly, and his left hand kept clenching into a fist.

  Behind him were two other men – Mario Leone and Terry Kramer. Mario was a huge guy – towering over my six-foot-two frame by a good five inches with enough muscle to deter most anyone from taking a stab at the boss. Of course, that was exactly why he was hired. Terry was a little wiry guy who looked like a dwarf next to the massive pile of muscle. If Mario fell over, Terry would get crushed, and it would suit me just fine if he did, too.

  Leone was okay – he would sit down and have a beer with you when he wasn’t working and just shoot the shit. Terry was a whole other story. He was an obnoxious kid who rubbed me the wrong way even before he started trying to take my job.

  None of them looked unusually concerned about anything – just Rinaldo.

  “No, sir,” I responded automatically. I gave Mario a nod but ignored Terry completely. I took a long breath in slowly and silently, hoping we weren’t going to spend the entire afternoon reminding me of where I had fucked up. I’d already paid my dues as far as I was concerned.

  “Good to know because this next one’s going to be a little more challenging.” He dropped his ass onto one of those big, leather executive chairs and leaned back.

  “Whatever you need, sir.”

  “Show him the picture.” He huffed a quiet breath through his nose and glanced away from the desk. He was annoyed with this person he wanted me to kill, no doubt about it.

  Leone walked over and dropped a magazine on the desk in front of me. On the front page was a man I recognized immediately – I’d seen him in at least a dozen Bruce Willis style action films.

  “Brad
Ashton,” Jonathan said. “I saw him in that terrorist movie with the chick with the boobs.”

  “Angelina Jolie,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah – that one.”

  “He’s got round the clock surveillance and never goes anywhere without a guard,” Rinaldo said. “Paparazzi follow him everywhere, too. The guy is never alone. He even fucks in pairs.”

  “Makes him harder to hit,” Terry said.

  Like I needed his fucking opinion.

  “It’s gotta be close,” Rinaldo said as his eyes turned to me. “In his face, you know? Up close and personal.”

  “I’m a sniper, sir,” I reminded him.

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said them. My eyes closed a little longer than a normal blink as I tried to reset and get my head back on straight. If I didn’t, it was likely going to get knocked from my shoulders. There was no doubt that most of my work was from afar, but I had done plenty of hits up close and personal, too.

  “Whatever, dude,” Nick snickered.

  Rinaldo glanced at him, and he replied with a toothy grin.

  “You tellin’ me you don’t know how to shoot a handgun?” Rinaldo raised an eyebrow at me as he leaned forward a bit in the chair. “Because I happen to know you’ve done that once or twice before.”

  “No, sir,” I responded. I hoped the tension I felt in my body wasn’t outwardly visible. I didn’t think it was – I tended to stand up pretty straight anyway. I didn’t miss Rinaldo’s jab – the reason I had been sent into temporary exile months ago had to do with putting someone down with my Beretta. Like Nick bringing it up wasn’t bad enough.

  I had never heard of James Carson prior to killing him, but he was apparently pretty important to his cousin, Miss Fiona Carson. When the wife wasn’t around, Fiona happened to be sleeping with Gavino Greco, my boss’s primary competition. Her cousin had been a witness to an assassination where Rinaldo had ordered the hit, and I had made it happen. I hadn’t known who the guy was; I only knew he had been behind the dumpster when I killed Robert Franco, the idiot who dared dip into Rinaldo’s casino profits.

  I thought I had cleaned up the scene, but it was a bigger mess than a witness, according to Rinaldo.

  “I’ll take care of it for ya, boss,” Terry piped up. “I took care of plenty for ya while he was on vacation.”

  Vacation.

  Asshole.

  I was sorely tempted to show him just how accurate I was with a shorter-ranged firearm.

  “That you did, Kramer,” Rinaldo said with a nod. “That you did.”

  I stood there and watched the exchange in silence. Showing any kind of annoyance at this point wasn’t going to get me very far. Rinaldo Moretti was watching me and watching me closely. I wasn’t going to let that stupid little shit Terry get to me.

  “So this one’s mine,” Terry said with a big, toothy grin on his face.

  Rinaldo cocked a half smile at the kid, who beamed back.

  Idiot.

  Nothing good ever came of that smile.

  “Not this time,” Moretti said. “I need Mister Arden for this one.”

  “I’m just as good as him,” Terry hissed back. He started to say something else when Mario placed a hand on his shoulder, effectively silencing him.

  I tried not to smile as the boss turned back to me.

  “The fact is,” Rinaldo continued, “he knows I’m gunning for him. Anyone who knows I’m gunning for them knows they can’t walk out into daylight, or they’re gonna have a bullet in their brains. Now I have you to thank for that, and I’m grateful, but don’t give me a line of bullshit. Let’s be perfectly clear, now – you are familiar with other firearms, are you not?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “This needs to be done quick, easy, and quiet,” he continued. “This isn’t your usual where you don’t give a fuck who sees you, Arden. Nothing can lead back to my organization. You got me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now you go collect your short-range, in-your-face weapon of choice and kill that motherfucker.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Everyone was dismissed from the office except for Nick and Mario. I tried to get the fuck out of the building before Terry could catch up with me, but it didn’t work out that way. I maneuvered to get a bit ahead of Jonathan to put some pace between me and Terry, but Jonathan was a quick walker.

  “You want me to help ya scope him out?” Terry asked as he ran up beside me. He reminded me of those hyper little terrier dogs, and I kind of wanted to kick him.

  “No,” I replied. I knew exactly where that would end – the little fuck would either get in the way and screw it all up or take the actor guy out himself. Though it would ultimately piss off Rinaldo because it wasn’t Terry’s assignment, credit was credit.

  Actually, he’d probably try to take me out first. The credit would be a lot higher then. Not only would he have eliminated the target, but he would have done it when I couldn’t. Just taking me out would give him a reputation that wouldn’t be easily matched.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you, Arden?” he yapped.

  “You’re annoying,” I replied.

  “And you’re an asshole!”

  “Whatever.” I passed Jonathan and shoved the door that led into the stairwell and began clomping down the stairs. As much as I wished Terry would stay where he was, I heard two sets of footsteps behind me.

  “You think you can treat everyone like shit,” Terry babbled.

  “Just some,” I countered.

  “You think you’re better than everyone else,” he continued, “just ’cause you were all military hero and shit.”

  “Not a hero,” I muttered under my breath. I quickened my pace as Jonathan moved in a little closer behind me – separating me from the little shit trip-trapping down the stairs in my wake.

  “Like it takes a hero to get himself captured.”

  I stopped in my tracks, just at the bottom of the second landing. Jonathan had to veer to the side to keep from running into me. I turned slowly, my narrowed eyes finding the smirking little fucker standing just a few steps above me.

  “Crack in that armor, hey Arden?”

  “You shouldn’t speak shit you know nothing about,” I said. My hands were shaking a little but not enough that anyone would notice except for me. “Mention it again, and maybe I’ll go dig a hole and show you what it was like.”

  Turning on my heel, I quickened my pace down the rest of the stairs.

  “Fuck you!” Terry called out as I clomped down the steps and out the back door with Jonathan still beside me. The heavy metal door slammed with a bang.

  “You all right, brotha?” Jonathan asked as we walked across the parking lot to his white F150 Ford Pickup.

  “I’m good,” I replied. “Why?”

  He furrowed his brow a bit, looked back towards the closed door, and then shrugged. He knew me pretty well and knew when to change the subject.

  “Because since you got back, you’ve been a little off,” he finally said as he pulled a pack of Marlboro’s out of his shirt pocket and fished out a cigarette. He shoved it between his lips as he hunted around in his pants pocket for a lighter. “You were gone a while.”

  I just shrugged as I climbed into the passenger seat. Jonathan tossed his Luke Skywalker style hair out of his eyes as he maneuvered himself into the driver’s side.

  “I think that would drive me nuts,” he said, “sitting in some piece of shit cabin for half a year by myself.”

  “It was just a little over three months,” I corrected. “Not a half year. It wasn’t that bad, and I had Odin with me.”

  “Still…” He whistled low and shook his head. “Three months without pussy would suck balls.”

  I glanced sideways at him and raised my eyes at his choice of words.

  “Just sayin’ it would suck,” he said with a shrug. He turned the key and rolled down his window to blow smoke back past his shoulder. Reaching forwar
d, he fiddled around with the radio controls until he tuned it to a classic rock station.

  “Well, you know me,” I said, “I always find a way to get shit done.”

  “You got blisters on your hand?” he snickered as he put the truck into reverse.

  “Nope.” The corners of my mouth turned up a bit as visions of that long, dark hair spread over the creamy skin of Lia Antonio’s back filled my head. I could almost feel her pussy gripping my cock as I thought about it.

  Jonathan blew smoke out the open window, shoved the gear shift back into park, and turned to look at me.

  “No way,” he exclaimed.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You were out in the middle of fucking nowhere and you still got laid?”

  I smirked.

  “Now that’s custom!”

  Jonathan had worked in an auto shop prior to his first stint in prison for dealing. He specialized in tricking out people’s cars with all kinds of shit, so anything remotely out of the ordinary was always “custom.” It was mostly his code word for anything he thought was worthy of his admiration.

  “I need some deets, brotha!”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “You that interested in what my cock does?” I asked.

  “I just don’t understand how you manage to get pussy to fall into your lap no matter where you go.”

  “It’s a gift,” I replied.

  Jonathan shoved the truck back into gear and started backing out.

  “So who was she?” he asked.

  “Just some chick lost in the desert,” I told him. “Her boyfriend, or whatever, was an asshole and dropped her off on the road when they were fighting. She didn’t have anywhere to go and it was getting late, so she spent the night riding my cock. That’s it.”

  “Custom.”

  “Worked for me.” I leaned back and let the smoke from his cigarette waft around me. I didn’t indulge anymore myself, but I liked getting some second-hand every once in a while. As much as Jon lit up, I probably smoked a couple cigarettes worth any given hour I was with him.

  “How was she?”

  “Fucking fine!” I responded.

  We both had a good laugh until Def Leppard started playing, and Jonathan quickly turned up the volume and started air jammin’ at red lights. I stared out the window at the line of people waiting for Garrett’s Popcorn and tried not to let thoughts of Lia invade my head too much. If I did, I’d start regretting shit, and I tried not to do that.