His eyes glittered in dark.
CHAPTER NINE
Odin and Thor and I were sitting out on the bank two days later, squished together in the front seat, when Thor’s phone rang. He stared at the number, perplexed, and then answered, somewhat standoffishly. “Yeah?”
Not a lot of people had our numbers.
“Oh, right. Yeah,” he said. The caller went on and on—you could hear the rambling tones, though not the words. Thor thanked and him told him he’d courier over some money, and then he cut the connection. “Our panther guy,” he said, “from the university. The results on the feather.” The feather was over seventy years old, apparently, and from an eagle. The panther guy and his colleagues thought that it might be from an old taxidermy piece, judging from the dust and dirt pattern.
“That’s weird,” Odin said.
“What’s weird?” Thor asked.
Odin frowned. “There was no taxidermy in Travis’s place. Or his mother’s.”
“Maybe it was there and you didn’t see it,” Thor said.
“No, there wouldn’t be any,” Odin said. “Ever. All the dirt and dust? Those two wouldn’t let a stuffed eagle within a hundred feet of their place.”
Thor furrowed his brow.
Odin swore under his breath.
Zeus and Odin had paid a visit to Travis in the prison hospital the night before.
Travis had denied being the stalker, but Zeus and Odin had expected him to deny it. I’d asked them if they were convinced. “He was drugged up,” Zeus had said simply.
Odin hadn’t liked it. “You can see so little in a drugged man’s eyes,” he’d said. But the circumstantial evidence was there. The paper was in his dumpster. He bought the shoes. He’d done that type of crime in the past.
Odin stared out at the bank steps. It was nearly eleven; almost time again for my deposit. “On one hand, it makes no sense he’d use such a dirty object when he’s practically germ-phobic, judging from the many hand sanitizers. But I could make a case for it.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“That he keeps a fucking-g vice grip of sterility over his home and thoughts, that he associates functions of the body, and in particular anything sexual, with dirt and sin. Therefore, he would seek out something horribly besmirched as a gift to you.”
“And as we know, there’s no better way to a girl’s heart than a horribly besmirched gift,” I said.
“Or else it wasn’t him,” Thor said.
“We didn’t get a confession, it’s true,” Odin said. “But in any investigative work, unlike police shows, it typically is the obvious that is the solution. And since he’s been inside, Isis hasn’t had any contact from her stalker. There were two communications from the stalker within twenty-four hours, but nothing for two days now. That’s a clue in and of itself.”
“Should we wait to be sure?” Thor asked. “Considering the day after tomorrow…” We hit the Prime. He didn’t have to finish that sentence. We were eating, breathing, and sleeping the Prime.
Odin watched a pair of blonde women in pink track suits cross the road. He considered this for some time.
“When I was a boy,” Odin said, “my brother and I used to fish in this lake in the High Atlas Mountains. Right off the shore.” He went on—the color of the water. The smell of the air. The fishing poles he and his brother had made.
As discreetly as I could, I slid my eyes to Thor, just to check his expression. His face was perfectly neutral, but I suspected he was just as surprised as I was—and not only about Morocco having lakes. Odin never talked about his childhood. Zeus and Thor had figured out that Odin’s mother was crazy and his father had left, but nothing much beyond it. Odin’s using the term my family made me think this story could be from before his father had left.
“My brother and I dipped our lines into a patch of dark water and waited,” he said. “But then we heard the loud splash of a massive fish jumping some thirty paces down the shore. We pulled out our lines and ran to that spot and put in our lines to fish there. Soon after, we heard a large fish, perhaps the same, jump in the water near where we had first been. We pulled out our lines and ran back to our original spot and fished there, hoping to catch this fish. And then it happened again. The sound of a fish, jumping in the new spot. We were running back and forth like fools.”
“Somebody throwing rocks,” I guessed.
Odin regarded the bank with a dark look. “My mother throwing rocks. Making fools of us. We didn’t realize it until we heard her screeching with laughter.”
“That’s mean,” I said.
“Not at all,” Odin said. “It was one of the few valuable lessons she taught us. Proceed with confidence. Know that you chose the path you chose for a reason. Don’t let the plunk of stones down the shoreline distract you, or you will forever be running back and forth like fools.”
Thor and I sat silently. Sure, okay, it was a good thing to bear in mind, not to chase willy nilly after every passing notion, but it seemed a horrible thing for a mother to do. And then laugh.
“This taxidermy information. Perhaps it is a stone,” Odin said quietly.
“I don’t know,” I said.
He turned back to meet my eyes. “An island in Tunisia. That is a stone.”
“You made your point on that,” I said.
“Did I?” he asked.
I gave him a look. “I need to do my deposit,” I said, gathering my things. I slipped out the back and onto the sunny sidewalk.
Making a bank deposit is far easier when you don’t have vibrating implements along for the ride.
Less fun, but much easier. I guess this made me the horse running on dry land now.
I went in and out as I had on so many days, wearing my wig of fabulous long blonde hair with a fabulous outfit. The fifteen-minute window was still as soft as ever. The guard flirted with the far-end teller. The desk clerks checked their phones and everything loosened up as soon as the evil overlord took his break. I thought unfondly of my old bank boss, an unfortunate cross between a gross perv and a greedy megalomaniac, and I realized I should be thankful for him. If it hadn’t been for his lecherous and greedy ways, I wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with my guys. Maybe I would’ve tried to defend the bank against robbers instead of helping them.
Sure, I didn’t like that the Prime Royale would be so difficult and possibly dangerous, and I definitely didn’t like this new tattoo idea, but my guys needed me, and I would do anything for them.
I stepped through the open doors, past the doormen, and out into the sunshine, feeling suddenly hopeful. My guys were so fixated on vengeance, but maybe pulling off a robbery of the Prime would quench it, like a big glass of bank robber lemonade hitting a parched throat. The Prime was the ultimate prize, after all. Unless you counted something like Fort Knox.
Needless to say, I quickly banished that thought.
The rest of the stakeout went like clockwork. And Lupe, our expectant mother and criminal sister in Santa Rosa was feeling good. The midwives hadn’t turned the baby, but she was doing well otherwise. Everything was looking up. Odin was even talking about playing chess later, which made me think that maybe he’d abandoned his plans to complete our non-life-positive tattoos.
Wishful thinking, as it turned out.
That evening, Thor and Zeus took off to grab takeout and champagne for our two-nights-before-a job-celebration, and a few minutes later, Odin strolled into the kitchen where I was flipping through a fashion magazine. One of the great things about being in a bank robbing gang is that you can afford the outfits in the fashion magazines. The real ones, not the knockoffs.
“Tattoo time,” he said.
“You’re finishing it now?” I asked.
He smiled his beautiful and dangerous smile. “You have a problem with that?” He came and spun me around on my stool, standing between my legs.
I had a problem all right—with a tattoo like a curse. But at the end of the day, if my guys were getting it, I wanted it. Showing that
I was a true part of the gang was more important than the specifics of some tattoo.
He kissed my neck. “Are you ready?”
“Sure am,” I whispered, reaching down and pressing my hand to his cock, hoping to bypass his mind by communicating directly with his libido. I wrapped my fingers almost all the way around it in a way that I hoped was saying, Can’t you think of something better to do?
He removed my hand. “Go sit on the couch, goddess.”
Sigh.
I cast around for a delaying idea, but without sex, my bag of tricks was pretty empty.
And, after long hours of getting the angel holding the scrolls, I was used to sitting still for the painful little needles without being tied down, and I didn’t need erotic distraction. “Timing seems a bit much.”
He spoke close to my face. “I want us to have them complete for the Prime.”
“You mean to finish them all tonight?”
“And tomorrow. As much as I can.” He pulled me gently to him, kissing me. My heartbeat kicked into double-time as he pushed his tongue into my mouth, body hard and good up against mine, and the swivel stool was just the right height.
“I’m ready to start the lettering,” he said as I wrapped my legs around his waist. Maybe this was just an elaborate game of chicken. Maybe he really did want to fuck.
“It’s a dark wish of somebody else’s,” I whispered.
He slid his hands under my butt cheeks and pulled me off the stool then, putting me on the floor in front of him. “Stop trying to control the group.”
I snorted. As if I was controlling the group.
“Go into the living room and wait for me.”
I stood there. Did he really mean to complete the tattoo then and there?
“Is that a Mississippi?” he asked.
I turned and walked into the living room and sat on the tattoo chair in my tank top and yoga pants.
Five minutes later, he was walking in with his box of tattoo gear. He brought over the other chair he always used, setting it next to where I sat, facing away. He had me hang my arm over the back of the chair, which he straddled.
When we were all set up, he began to clean my arm with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball, all cool and bitey. I tipped my head back, staring at the ceiling. He did the tattoos by stages. We all had the angry lightning clouds on our ankles from before, of course. Now we all had angels on our arms. The angels were beautiful—very gothic with curly scrolls. It seemed like such a shame to inscribe that message.
“This will be so glorious,” he said, running his hand over my upper arm. “You must stop trying to control the group,” he said again.
“Why?” I looked over, straight into his eyes. “Because that’s your job? To control the group?”
He looked at me from under dusky lashes. Just that look and I knew I was right. “Are you ready or not?”
“Not that I’m saying I don’t want whatever tattoo everybody else gets, but haven’t you ever heard of the power of positive thinking? What about that?”
He caressed my arm, admiring his work some more. “How about I take the fucking-g power of positive thinking and crush it into a little ball with my vengeance?”
“There you go, that’s the spirit.”
He got suddenly serious. “This is important to me, Isis.”
“A tattoo is forever,” I said.
“Precisely,” he said softly. “Precisely.” There was something about the wistful way he said it that put my intuition on red alert. Something more was going on here—what exactly, I didn’t know. Was he still worried about my quitting?
“Of course I’m with you,” I said. “But just because I’m dedicated one hundred percent to you doesn’t mean I’ve lost my ability to form my own opinions on things like tattoos.”
He whipped out a scarf and tied my arm to the slats of the chair back it hung over.
“What are you doing?”
He stood and walked around to the back of the chair I sat on and tapped the top of my head. “Other arm.”
I looked up. What was he up to? He waited. “Fine,” I said. I put out my non-tattoo arm and he took it and tied it to the back of the chair. “I already said yes on the tattoo. What more do you want?”
He said nothing more, but he wanted something more. What?
He came around to the front of me and straddled my lap, squishing my legs onto the hard, wooden chair. His dark hair brushed his brows. Odin was devilishly handsome, especially when he was being devilish. He toyed with my tank top strap, just a little bit dangerous, a little bit off the rails.
“You don’t have to tie me up for a tattoo. How can you even work on my arm like this?”
“Maybe I like you like this, goddess,” he said softly, letting his fingers drop to my hardened nipples. “Helpless.”
Maybe I liked it, too.
He rolled a nipple gently between his fingers, sending ripples of pleasure through me. I watched his beautiful eyes, attempting to maintain my calm even as warmth intensified in my core. I was sure something was up, and I needed to know what it was and not be distracted by sex. What was he not saying about the tattoo?
“High emotions always make you so much more sensitive,” he whispered. “As does immobility.”
I really was immobile with him heavy on me like that. He flicked the nipple, and it was all I could do to not gasp with pleasure. He said, “I’m going to give you this tattoo of hate and vengeance, and then maybe I’ll fuck you.”
“Every girl’s dream,” I said.
He kissed down my neck to my collarbone.
“My question is, where does it end?”
He fingered the underside of one breast, lifting it and suckling it through the fabric of my tank top, creating an exciting roughness on my nipple. “Where do you think it ends?”
My voice went husky, but I would not be swayed. “Nowhere, that’s where. The three of you were screwed by your own people, I get it. But an agency can’t suddenly be horrified at its own mistakes and cry and beg for mercy, right? You can never feel satisfaction of vengeance from an organization. It’s stupid to try.”
He pulled away and traced my lips with his fingers. “Stupid and smart has nothing to do with it. I wish you could hear that. I wish you could be with us in that.” He invaded my mouth with a kiss, just because he could. Letting me know he’d take me how he wanted. It was a mad turn-on. “You think anybody is really operating on stupid versus smart?” he asked between kisses. “You think you are?”
“Of course.”
“You do?” He kissed me long and strong, tongue like a rough snake.
My breath sped as he smoothed his hands down my neck, down to my breasts. He closed his fingers around my nipples and squeezed, sending bolts of feeling through to my pussy. I shut my eyes, teetering on the knife-edge of the unknown. “Odin—”
“Look where you are right now,” he whispered. “Look at your life—you’re a fugitive. You let three outlaws have sex with you whenever they please.”
“I like it like that,” I said.
He trailed his fingers down my belly, down into my yoga pants and to my drenched panties. He shifted and pushed the fabric aside, touching me with just one finger, sliding it gently in between my folds, amber eyes fixed on mine. I drew up at the feeling of his finger, which he slid back and forth. “Most people would think it’s stupid, how you’re living.”
“I don’t care,” I gasped as he circled his finger around on my sensitive nub now, like the nub was his to do what he wanted with. Which, okay, it was.
I sat there under his control as he stroked gently. I fought the feeling, but I was losing my train of thought a little. There was something I was trying to find out!
He added a finger, lengthening his strokes. “So you would say that it is objectively smart, Isis, to become what you have become?” He pushed two fingers fully inside me now.
“Probably,” I gasped as he curled and moved them in a diabolically delicious way. “Oh, God,�
� I said.
He took over the stroking with his thumb and fucked me with his fingers, taking me in a lewd, hot way. “Would all of this seem smart to an outside observer?” he whispered into my ear, and then he pulled his face away and watched my eyes as he continued to pleasure me, blotting out my thoughts with his clever fingers.
It was a little unfair, him carrying on this conversation with me while he was getting me off.
“What do you say, Isis? Do you prefer to operate on stupid and smart, or something else entirely?”
“You’re not being fair,” I gasped.
“You love a good power imbalance,” he whispered.
He loved it, too. He loved when I was melty and helpless. And this new twist now, simultaneously asking me hard questions while destroying my train of thought. It was the intellectual version of being bound and helpless and fucked by a fully clothed man.
“Would even this seem stupid to an outside observer?”
“I don’t care,” I gasped, belly lit up with feeling.
“Because you just want it,” he added.
“Yes,” I gasped.
“You just fucking want it.”
“Yes,” I repeated.
“Precisely,” he whispered. And he finger fucked me in a new way, thumb playing on my sensitive clit, owning me, controlling me.
I tried to focus, knowing I’d just conceded some sort of point, but my entire being was too busy melting under his clever fingers, and finally I broke apart in a thousand-star orgasm, and all I could do was ride it, panting, shattering, as I came.
When I focused my eyes, I saw him standing over me, cock visibly hard in his jeans. “Sometimes you just want what you want, even if it doesn’t seem smart. We want vengeance. The Prime.” He went back to the empty chair and used another scarf to bind my wrist even more firmly to the slats.
So all of that had just been to drive a point home? “That’s one technique they never taught us in debate class,” I said.
He didn’t think that was funny. He kept tying me up. He wanted me all roped up. He still had that hard-on going, and I guessed he was on some sort of jag.
“You and your ski jumps and things,” he continued. “Do you see us infantilizing you by telling you what you should and shouldn’t want?”
The Deeper Game (Taken Hostage by Hunky Bank Robbers Book 3) Page 11