Hunter: Perfect Revenge (Perfectly Book 3)

by Alice May Ball

  I started, “Vassily…”

  “Okay, okay.” He raised a hand from the table. “It is true what I said. I like you. Both of you. But, also,” he paused to look at us both, “If either of you wanted work, if both of you especially wanted work, I have admired your skills. I would like to offer you both employment.”

  “Vassily, as crooks and racketeers go, I kind of like you, too.” I looked directly at him, “But you don’t have any work for me. And I’m not going to do any work for you.”

  He didn’t miss a beat before he turned to Horse.

  Right away, Horse said, “I’m not freelance now, Vassily. Vesper is my new boss. What she says is what I’m going to be doing.”

  Horse’s apartment wasn’t going to feature in Architect’s Journal or Wallpaper, except maybe as a ‘before.’ Of course, it wasn’t really the decor and soft furnishings I was there for.

  When he offered to take me to his cabin for a few days, I looked around his bare floors, the bare walls and out of the clean but bare windows at the view of a gray wall. I asked him if the cabin had furniture. He told me it did.

  “Well, it will be a step up, then.” I told him, “Let’s go.”

  Horse’s car was a Toyota Land Cruiser in battlefield colors. It could have been fun to feign surprise but I didn’t think of it. It looked like it had come directly from a war zone. Climbing in I asked him, “Did you buy this from a Somali warlord?” He grinned slowly in reply.

  Manhattan is such a small island but it always surprises me at how long it takes to drive out of New York. The drive to his cabin in the Adirondacks wound on for long enough for the light to change from afternoon to late evening.

  On the way, we talked, chatted easily about all kinds of things. Like two childhood friends, like we knew each other from way back. Like we hadn’t seen each other in ages and were just picking up where we left off.

  We talked about movies and TV shows. About music. Our tastes weren’t the same but they fit together, like pieces of a puzzle. Like his tastes and the things he knew about would fill the spaces, complete the pictures of mine.

  I asked him, “Will you ever change your wicked ways?

  “All of them?”

  “Okay, no. I don’t want you to change all of them.”

  “Only the more wicked ones?”

  “Mm, those probably not so much. No, most likely the less wicked ones.”

  “When we get to the cabin, maybe I’ll run through the wicked ways for you, one by one. See if we can run through all of my evil ways. You can say which ones you want me to keep and which ones you don’t.”

  HEN WE GOT to his cabin, it was almost dark. The mountain air mixed with scents of old wood and worn leather. It had chairs and books, rugs, curtains. A kitchen with cupboards and crockery. A fridge that was clean inside. The cupboards even had food in them.

  It was one of those places you step into and it feels like you’ve known it all of your life, even though you’ve never been there before. It had a familiar way of hugging you inside.

  He stood behind me on the deck. I leaned against the rail and looked out over the snow covered trees on the slope before us. His heat rose against me.

  His hand was on my arm. I took hold of him. “We don’t have to go back tomorrow, right?”

  The anarchic rumble of his laugh set me alight inside. “We don’t have to go back ever.” His big arms wrapped around me. “We can stay up here. Eat all the deer and rabbits. Start on the squirrels I guess.”

  I felt safe here, wrapped in his arms.

  “I wonder how long it would be, before we had to start on the farm livestock. Before we had to start rustling sheep and cattle. Taking bites off the herds.”

  “You always have to be an outlaw?”

  “What choice would we have?”

  “Well, I know it’s a crazy scheme but, we could try buying some of them. A sheep maybe. Or a cow. Just for the larder. It would save the inconvenience of the life on the run.”

  “Would it be as much fun, though?”

  “That would mainly depend on how we spent the long evenings.”

  His body felt like a wall. A shield that would keep me safe. Safe from the world. Safe from invaders. Bandits. Hostiles. Hunters. What was I thinking? I had nothing to worry about up here. But it made me feel good. Thinking about how this man, this big mountain man, would protect me. If I needed protecting.

  We could stay here. Forget about my job. And his.

  “There could be something for you, you know. Something like, I don’t know, you do some contracting, maybe?”

  “With my background?”

  “Do you have any other convictions?”

  “I’m hopelessly in love with you and devoted, too.”

  “I meant criminal convictions.”

  “Couple of weeks ago, I’d probably have said that was a criminal conviction.”

  “But do you?”

  “No. Only the murders of the Bonaventura twins.”

  “We can get that overturned.”

  “You’re reaching a long way, Vesper.”

  “You could get a private investigator’s license. Do some contract work?”

  “Does the bureau use contractors?”

  “Not for investigations, no. But plenty of attorneys do… Won’t you even think about it?”

  “It has to be me making the adaptation. Is that the only way that this can go?”

  “No, not necessarily.”

  “Oh,” I turned to see the flash of his teeth as he grinned, “You’d come over to the dark side?”

  “Well, I’m not sure that I would be totally opposed to that.” I was teasing and he knew it. Somehow that was more comforting than I can say, “Only…”

  “Hmm?” he held me tighter, “Only?”

  “Only I’ve been told I might not be, you know, I might not be very good at it.”

  “I heard that.”

  “I lack something. Apparently. ”

  “The criminal mind?”

  “Something to do with my motivation.”

  I held onto his arms. It still made a silly thrill of surprise inside me how strong he was. And how big. He made me feel like a teenage girl. “Mm.” I nuzzled my head back into his chest. “Something along those lines.”

  “Not having the necessary streak of venal self-interest?” His hug was getting me hot now. And wet “The opportunistic hunger?”

  “I believe that was mentioned.” His bulge pressed insistently against my ass. My hips rolled against him. I said, dreamily, “That sort of a thing, at least.”

  “Mm. Not sure if there’s an easy cure for that situation.” I thought I felt one, rising behind me.

  “Nothing you can suggest? Nothing to recommend?”

  “Well, in some circumstances…” he held my throat. His thumb traced my chin.

  My voice was trailing “Yes?”

  “It probably wouldn’t work for you, though.”

  “Mmm?” I clawed behind me. Squeezed and pulled his ass. Pushed my head back into his chest.

  After, in the cool moonlight, on his huge brass bed tangled in the mess of damp sheets I asked him, “Your name isn’t really Horse, is it?”

  “Mm?”

  “Do you trust me enough to tell me?”

  “My given name? Nobody knows it.” He pulled me closer. “I haven’t uased it since I was in school.”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “I didn’t then. I thought it was stupid. I kind of dropped it.” He looked into my eyes. “It’s ‘Hunter.’” And there was a catch in his voice.

  Propped up on my elbow, I looked in hs face. “So instead you went with the perfectly sensible ‘Horse.’ Makes sense.”

  His grin spread wide. Was that vulnerability I saw in his eye? Probably not.

  I laid my head back on his chest. “Hunter.”

  © Alice May Ball, TzR Publishing, 2017

  Cover Design by Signs of Desire for TzR Publishing

  This is
a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, or to any actual events is purely coincidental.

  All the people and places are portrayed in this story are fictional. All characters are over the age of eighteen, and entirely imaginary.

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  PIERCE

  PERFECTLY BAD

  A MAFIA BAD BOY ROMANCE

  EXCERPT

  Alice May Ball

  The wet eyes of Adelina Bontempi, the stunning young woman and wife of his business partner, blazed up at Pierce Agostini. Seeing her in public, you’d think she was a fashion model, probably a little aloof, well-behaved and most likely quite prim and proper.

  Well, the first part would be right. Adelina Kean had been a model and she still made appearances as a brand ambassador and at charity functions. She didn’t seem too aloof, though, on her knees in the back of Pierce’s Bentley.

  While he had her by the hair, she showed no sign of being unwilling to do what he wanted, and it was hardly what a well-behaved girl would do, much less someone else’s prim and proper wife.

  She knew that Pierce wanted a copy of a document on her husband’s computer. She told him that she knew how to get it. Oh, but wasn’t there something that he could do for her?

  Didn’t matter how beautiful she was, how many fashion magazine covers those full, wet lips had pouted on or how many double-page spreads her long legs had sprawled over, all of that cooing and simpering grated on his ear.

  He could respect a woman who would just tell him straight, ‘I want your hard cock to fill my mouth and stretch the length of my throat, to rev up the soft heat between my tits. Then I want you to spread my thighs and split me wide, prise me open and pound me over the edge of endurance.’

  Why couldn’t they ever just say what they meant? ‘Rip through the clinging wet velvet of my hungry walls and ram into the backs of my thighs with the ridges of your rock-hard abs until I bite and scream and gush.’

  That was what she meant and they both knew it. In the cozy hush in the back of his sapphire Bentley, she hadn’t waited five minutes to slip her tongue between his lips, to nuzzle down the ridges of his chest and all the way down his perfect white cotton shirt. Then to flash her dark eyes and shimmy out of her expensive satin dress.

  After that, she panted as she slid her silky lingerie and her soft, peachy flesh all over his suit, over his shirt, inside his jacket. Snuck her fingernails in the gaps between his shirt buttons and shoved her eager hands into his pants.

  She didn’t care about people on the street who could maybe see in through the tinted windows. She didn’t even care about Callaghan and Calhoun, sat up front both staring rigidly straight ahead.

  She stretched and squeezed and cooed against the rising heat in his suit pants and then she peered up into his eye as she hauled his zipper down. Her hot breath made him so hard it hurt.

  Her cool fingers trembled while they gripped him, as she leaped up to get her tongue down his throat. He smelled her perfume and her own scent as she blew and flicked her tongue in his ear.

  Her soft, warm mouth made a slow journey down the side of his neck, over his chest and his stomach until her lips were sliding over the head of his aching pole.

  He knew if he didn’t do something, she’d be there all night, so he flung her face-first into the upholstery. He could tell that she’d like that.

  She howled like a drunken schoolgirl as he reamed and rammed her, doggy style, and slammed her sprawling into the deep softness of thick black leather. All she did was mewl and whimper when he stopped. By the time they got to the club, she’d got her breath back and started to beg for more.

  Watching her shamelessly buck and roll along the hard length of his hot cock as she brimmed and burst took him up to the edge. He yanked her hair, and the cheeks of her bare ass rippled as he slapped them.

  When she whimpered his name, his anger propelled him on to pump and fill her in hot, pulsing bolts. When he finished, she slumped, exhausted, and crawled to rest her head in his lap. She made it awkward for him to pull his clothes together and he resented her very presence.

  Still, he needed her husband’s plan. He drew a slow breath, thinking that he might have to fuck her again to get it. He’d avoid that if he could. However much he wanted a woman when he first saw them, as far as he was concerned once he had them they were all used up. He hadn’t found one yet that he could stand to be around afterwards.

  Like this one, the more he tried to get rid of them, the more they wanted him again. Each time he nudged her out of the way, she crawled back into his lap like a stray cat that slinks in out of a freezing cold night.

  She was beautiful, like they all were. Sexy as hell, but they all were that, too. And looking at her reminded him, as they all did, of why his rule was such a good one, ‘One time and one time only. No exceptions.’

  He thought she was going to follow him out of the car naked, but somehow she got herself covered and tottered behind him into the club. The nightclub was part two of the plan.

  Princess loved almost every part of her work, except while she was actually doing it. In the dark and discrete basement off Wall Street, which was her daddy’s nightclub, she greeted the guests by name. She waited tables and knew all of their tastes.

  The clientele were mainly rich men in the financial sector, and sometimes their egos would get the better of them. That was how she put it to Ethan, her BFF, and she especially described it in those—or even milder—terms to her daddy.

  The members, almost all of them men, treated Princess with a respect that she enjoyed, and while she had more than her share of compliments and admiring looks, the men understood that whatever else went on in the club, she was off-limits. There were always some who still had to test the theory.

  However big the tips, the explosive testosterone of an overweight and over-intoxicated man in his fifties could be a challenge to deal with. The more so because Princess walked a diplomatic high-wire. If she didn’t, the club could run out of customers fast.

  Daddy tried and tried to persuade her to go away to college, to learn other skills, meet different people, but she was determined to stay in Hotsteppa’s.

  Princess had grown up among the explosive mix of bankers, jazz musicians, and the women who flocked to cluster around them. It was the life she was born into.

  Her neat black blouse and skirt, the seamed stockings, and the black stilettos were her suit of power. Her battle dress. Her simple makeup, pale tan foundation with ruby red lips and nails, were her armor.

  In Hotsteppa’s, Princess felt strong and in charge, even though Daddy was the law there. The outside world always seemed to her like a dull second best.

  He told her she could learn and gain some experience of life, travel some, then come back if she wanted to. As far as Princess was concerned, there was more than enough education and experience to be had in the nightlife right here. The streets and neighborhoods of the financial district were all the travel that she craved, save for an occasional journey to Coney Island or up the Long Island Expressway.