The Hard Way
Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers 5
Annika Martin
Contents
Welcome to The Hard Way!
Psst: are you getting my newsletter?
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
16. before you go…
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Annika Martin
The kinky bank robbers thank you for reading.
Copyright ©2017 by Annika Martin
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Please don’t use file sharing sites—those sites screw authors like me. If you love books, you shouldn’t screw the authors who write them (unless you’re a kinky bank robber!)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover art: Hang Le
v0000002262017
Created with Vellum
Welcome to The Hard Way!
-Three hot bank robbers all to herself: check
-A fabulous Italian holiday: check
-Enemies long gone: check
-Amazing food, clothes, and sex: check, check, and f&*king check!
The gang is in full vacation mode, and Isis has never been happier…until tragedy strikes the farm she had to leave behind.
People are dying. Her sister might be sent to prison for something she didn’t do. The farm is in trouble.
Isis is desperate to help, but how can she? It’s too dangerous for her sisters to find out she’s still alive, too dangerous for the gang to return to the scene of that crime. At least that’s what Thor and Zeus think. But Odin’s nightmares are back. And he has other ideas…and those ideas might be more dangerous than anything.
Psst: are you getting my newsletter?
Don’t miss the news, freebies, prizes, fun stuff, early reads and other exclusive bits of madness!
It’s all in the newsletter, my friend!
Chapter 1
Rome, Italy
* * *
Sitting with my guys in an old alley café in an even older part of Rome, I drained the last drop of champagne from my glass and held it up so that the festive strings of light would perfectly illuminate it.
This wasn’t the tall American stem-type champagne glass I was used to; it was the short Italian kind with filigree designs all around the outside.
“I love how the designs on these glasses are worn away in spots, like maybe people have been sipping from them through the decades.” I was feeling sentimental, and a little bit tipsy. “Celebrating, commiserating…even these glasses have a rich and beautiful history.”
“Or an overzealous dishwasher,” Zeus said.
I gave him the side eye. Guys.
Our favorite waiter came by. “Another bottle?” He looked from me to Zeus to Odin to Thor and back to me. Another bottle would put us on the one-bottle-each plan, of course.
“It is our honeymoon,” Zeus said, beaming at me.
“Ah, congratulazioni!” The waiter seemed uncertain now, wondering, perhaps, why, if it was our honeymoon, did we bring our two friends along every single night that we dined out? What kind of honeymoon was that?
Thor winced. Odin stiffened.
Zeus could get a little, um…passionate when people assumed the four of us couldn’t possibly be a romantic unit. He cleared his throat like he was going to say something.
“Thank you,” I said, way too brightly, with a quick warning glance at Zeus.
I loved this little café, and we’d been this guy’s favorite customers all month, ordering expensive drinks and leaving crazy good tips. We’d been well-behaved, too—no hand jobs under the tablecloth. No outrageous drunkenness. Nobody playing the yeah-that’s-right-all-four-of-us-are-married-WHAT-THE-FUCK-ARE-YOU-STARING-AT? card.
“So here’s the thing…” Zeus began.
“Yes, here’s the thing, we’ll for sure get another,” I interrupted. “Because we want to have a beautiful night.” I set my glass on the table. “Yes, for sure another bottle!” I gazed at him with a look that hopefully suggested extreme need for another bottle at that very instant. “Another would be amazing!”
“Bene.” The waiter nodded placidly. If he thought I was acting like a total freak about more champagne—and let’s be clear; I was—he didn’t show it, professional that he was. He nodded and headed off.
Odin narrowed his eyes at me. “Should we be jealous of that champagne?”
“Maybe.” I exchanged glances with Thor, who sat across the table, all innocent blond hotness. He shifted slightly, and suddenly I felt his foot touch mine underneath the table. He hooked his foot around my ankle and guided it up to his lap. A shiver went through me as his fingers settled onto the bare spaces between my shoe straps.
“I wasn’t acting fucked up. Was I acting fucked up?” Zeus adjusted the cuffs on the ultrafashionable Italian shirt I’d picked out for him. It was dark purple with fancy gray detailing under the button and collar, made of whisper-thin fabric that draped over the contours of his muscles like a yummalicious second skin. His short brown hair had been getting to a grabbable length over the past few weeks. “Was I?” he continued. “No. But there are four people at this table with wedding rings. He should’ve noticed that.”
“Right, that’s the automatic thing he would think,” I said. “If all four of us have rings, we must be married to each other.”
“He’s been waiting on us all month,” Zeus said. “You think he hasn’t seen you sitting on each and every one of our laps? I’m just protecting your honor.”
“I don’t know if telling him I’m married to three guys protects my honor.” Not that I cared. I was with the three hottest, awesomest guys on the planet. I gazed happily up at the spatter of stars in the slash of sky bracketed by ancient building tops.
According to Thor, some of the buildings around here had been constructed in the seventh century. Which explained the weirdly narrow, horse-sized streets. This entire neighborhood was a maze of alleys with more alleys off it. It reminded me of the corn mazes they used to cut out in the cornfields in Wisconsin. My bank robbers liked a good maze-like neighborhood. Lots of getaway options.
“Me sitting on the other guys’ laps, maybe he sees it as avuncular,” I added.
Thor nearly snorted out his champagne. “Avuncular?”
Odin’s eyes glittered. “Do you, goddess? Is that how you feel?”
“What?”
“As though we’re your three uncles?” Odin said. “You feel married life is making us tame? Like Mr. and Mrs. Santa?”
The waiter came back with our new bottle.
“Grazi,” Odin said, followed by something in Italian I didn’t quite catch. The waiter replied in rapid Italian and left, and that was that. As ex-covert operatives, Odin and Zeus—not their real names—were fluent in most languages. I was fluent in the language
of looking like I was following along. I was equally fluent in staring off into space and not really giving a shit.
“Claus,” Zeus said, pouring more champagne.
“What?” Odin shot back. He’d been on edge. Distant. His nightmares were back lately—worse than ever. I felt so helpless. We were a team, but Odin suffered alone at night, not wanting people near him because of them.
I wished he would let me near. I would suffer with him. We all would, if only he would let us.
“It’s Mr. and Mrs. Claus,” Zeus said again. He was fairly drunk, I noticed. It was actually a wonder he hadn’t pulled the foursome card with the poor waiter. “Mr. and Mr. and Mr. and Mrs. Claus.”
I sighed contentedly, wishing I could keep the snapshot of this in my mind forever. The four of us happy and safe together, vacationing in a fun and glamorous style. Not being chased. It felt too good to last.
As soon as I thought that, I banished it from my mind. I hated that thought. Mentally I whacked it over the head with a replacement thought: We were too badass not to last.
Too badass not to last, motherfuckers!
Thor moved his fingers over my ankle where I had one of our gang tattoos, a cloud and four lightning bolts. The lightning bolts were us. “I can feel it,” he said softly, tracing the edges. It was getting me kind of hot.
“Here’s me,” he said, sliding his finger around—presumably around one of the lightning bolt. “Here’s Zeus. Odin. You.”
I leaned back. “Do it again.”
He gave me an evil smile and again traced the tattoo, or at least pretended. Each of us had our other gang tattoo, You WISH we were dead, motherfuckers, on one arm.
Odin frowned at Zeus. “Claus. Fine.” Odin was from Morocco, and they really didn’t have Christmas. I realized here, though, that his frown wasn’t about Zeus drunkenly correcting his cultural knowledge. He wasn’t in a joking mood. He was in…a different kind of mood.
Gulp.
Thor slid his fingers around the very sensitive flesh of my foot. “You could kill a man with the points of these heels,” he said.
I was about to complain how much they sucked on the cobblestones, but I stopped myself. Thor had a good thing going on with my foot right now, the latest installment in his recent foot-fantasy jag. “I suppose I could,” I whispered darkly.
I could feel Odin’s eyes on me, glittering dangerously. He’d worn a fine black Italian suit tonight, not trying to work against his innate gorgeousness for once. His olive skin glowed in the candlelight, and his voice was deep and smooth. “Did I ask you a question?”
“A question? You asked me a question?” Okay, maybe I was tipsy, too. Maybe we all were…except Odin. As I reviewed the night, it came to me that he’d barely drank much at all.
And now he’d fallen into that slightly dangerous type of mood that I should really know better than to like. Even Thor looked a little intrigued. You never knew what Odin was up to.
Thor had his strong hand around my foot, three fingers shoved between the bottom of my foot and the insole of my shoe now, but Odin held me far more tightly with just that darkly glittering gaze.
He was unpredictable when he got like this, and not always in the best way. My heart began to hammer. I totally loved it.
“The question was,” he began, “do you see us as somehow avuncular? Mama and her three papas?” He spit out the word papa like it was somehow distasteful.
“Is that so horrible?” I said. “Is mama and three papas so fucking awful?”
Odin tilted his head, keeping me pinned with that gaze, but it had changed. Now the gaze was like, I cannot believe you even just said that. Though Odin was far too cool to put it that way. “Oh, Isis,” he said sadly.
A bolt of excitement shot through me, up my front and down my back, settling between my legs to sizzle deliciously.
Odin flicked two fingers at Thor. “Take her into that alley down there. Bring me back her dress.” He settled his evil gaze on me, then continued, “You’ll wait for us there, in nothing but your bra and panties, Isis, shivering in the night. You’ll wait there until we’re ready for you. Because we are not your uncles or papas or three Santas in Santa suits.”
“Excuse me?” I gave him my most stunned look, setting down my glass on the worn wooden table. “What do you have against Santa?”
Odin intensified his stare. “And her panties, and her bra.”
“Um—” I looked around. This was a business area, not a residential area; it was pretty deserted at this time of night. Still…
“Will you protest again? Should I ask for your shoes, too?” Odin continued.
My mouth dropped open. He was like an unreasonable dictator. This group had two alphas, I suppose you could say—Zeus and Odin. And right now Odin was stepping up.
Again he turned to Thor. “I want her all up on the alley wall. Make her ready for Zeus and me.”
I felt torn between excitement and fear. It seemed risky; that was the fear part. But…an alley. Sex in a dark, lonely alley…rough walls…role-play possibilities…
Zeus drunkenly poured himself more champagne, almost missing the glass, but not actually missing it. I’d come to understand that as one of those ex-operative talents. Even your drunk moves were awesome.
“Hmm,” Thor said, deciding to be the voice of reason. “Not sure that’s a good idea.”
Odin snorted. “You will strip her, and you will make her feel the wall with her entire body. If you don’t, I will, and it won’t be nice the way I do it.”
I sat up, really wanting to feel that wall in a not-nice way. Odin and I were on a wavelength suddenly that Thor and Zeus were missing. I was glad. He’d been so distant and troubled lately.
“What if it’s dirty and gritty?” I asked hopefully.
Odin raised his eyebrows at my hesitation. “Is that a Mississippi?”
“Mississippi” was my safe word. “No,” I said. Meaning, GOD, NO.
Odin’s eyes sparkled as he found my thigh under the table, as he pushed up my dress. “You will push yourself right up against that wall and feel it all on your naked body. Do you know why?”
A thrill of heat went through me. “No.”
“Because your body is a thing to be used for our pleasure. Ours to be used in whatever way we see fit.”
Between Thor’s bawdy foot explorations, Odin’s deliciously dangerous mood, and now his hand on my thigh, I wasn’t sure I could make it to the alley.
“We’ve earned the respect of this fine establishment,” Odin continued. “It would be wrong to abuse it by fucking you here on the table, and my preference really is toward that alley. A little bit dirty. A little bit degraded. Just like you will be once we’re done fucking-g you in whatever way we please…” He squeezed my thigh, sending waves of heat through me, all the way up to my face. “But if you refuse to go…”
My sex felt slick. I looked over at Zeus. He seemed to be following along, but he apparently wasn’t in the mood to put the brakes on Odin getting a little crazy.
“Don’t look at Zeus. He’s in vacation mode. In fact, I think that’s a lot of the problem here.” Odin lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’ve gotten soft, haven’t you, goddess? We’ve been treating you like a queen, but sometimes you’re not a queen at all, are you?”
My blood raced. They had been treating me like royalty…not that I was complaining, but I’d forgotten how much I loved this old feeling, like being at the top of a rollercoaster—that momentary pause before the screaming descent starts.
“Sometimes you’re a whore—a dirty, dirty whore who waits naked in alleys for men to come and shamelessly use her body, aren’t you?”
I stared into the middle distance, eyes widened, which could be loosely translated into, um, yes please!
“I want to find you up against that wall. Quivering.”
I imagined myself up against a rough wall, naked, vulnerable to strangers in the night. Aka my guys.
Odin moved his hand to my s
ex. My panties were thoroughly soaked thanks to all that talk of his. And yes, they had been treating me like a queen. So gentle and sweet. We’d been recovering from a lot of hell.
“But don’t think you can press your mound against the wall and get off that way or even get any little bit of pleasure, because this—” He squeezed my pussy. The bolt of pleasure that went through me rocked me. “—this is for us. Only for us. You understand? It’s for the use of our cocks however we see fit.”
“Okay.” What else do you say to a statement like that? Oh, Odin was in a wild mood. I couldn’t wait to see what he’d do next, say next.
He kept his eyes on mine and his possessive hand on my pussy. It would feel amazing if he massaged it right about now. I moved against his hand.
Odin widened his eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I moved again, and Odin tightened his hand, stopping me right in my pussy-grinding tracks. “Is that appropriate? When a husband gives you a command?”
“Guh,” I squeaked.
He let me go and leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs, gazing at me imperiously from under chocolatey eyelashes. A scar bisected his cheekbone—more deep than dainty. Odin had a lot of scars elsewhere on his body, too—deep, horrible scars he never wanted to talk about. To some they might have been ugly, but to me they operated like flaws in diamonds, the way flaws can make diamonds unique, priceless, wildly beautiful.
Some of his scars were from fighting, but the worst ones had not landed there by chance. They were deliberate. Parallel. Darker in origin.
“In fact,” Odin continued, “I want you against the wall, waiting. Perfectly ready.” He pulled out a small bottle of olive oil from his satchel. Had he picked it up on the way here? We’d stopped at a few stores. “I want that ass perfectly prepared for what I have planned. Thor, you will need to prepare her tight little asshole thoroughly. Very fucking-g thoroughly.” He turned his amber gaze to me. “Ice, I want you waiting pressed up against the wall with your ass a little bit out, so that we know you haven’t been rubbing against it.”
The Hard Way: Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers 5 Page 1