“Oh,” I said. I didn’t need to say it out loud. Mahfoud the Sadist. The man who ran the prison Odin was kept in. The place his nightmares came from.
“So let’s just keep Odin close. I don’t need him paying a visit to Hank Vernon. It won’t be good for Hank, but it’s Odin I’m worried about.”
I nodded.
“It’ll be hard from here,” he added.
“If we have a little more evidence, I bet we’ll be able to make Nancy tell.”
“Why would she tell? There’s no way she doesn’t do time if she’s the one who fed him the cheese. Without a lot of pressure, anyway. And Hank won’t confess. He’s a stupid, sneaky asshole, and that’s the hardest kind of guy to get a confession out of. These are things Odin knows.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, thinking about my beautiful sisters—especially Vanessa. Even a day in prison would be unimaginable…but twenty-eight years? “It isn’t fair. They did nothing wrong. Vanessa can’t go away—she couldn’t handle prison.”
“We won’t let her go away,” Zeus said.
“Over my dead body does she go away,” Odin growled, strolling out of the shadows.
“But we’re going to exhaust our death-free options first,” Zeus said. “Because if we start doing professional fucking hits and extreme interrogation, that shows Denko we’re involved.”
Odin didn’t address this last bit. “Door open, alarm off. Come on.”
We headed into the dark store. It was weird. I’d never been in there all alone.
“Here we are inside the Pig,” Odin said.
“At the Pig,” I said.
They both snickered.
“Hungry?” Zeus asked.
I groaned. I was still stuffed from dinner. “We have to stop eating those steaks!”
We headed over to the cheese area.
“Fuck,” Zeus sighed.
“What?”
“No cameras.”
“Crap,” I said.
“But they have them up front. I saw them when we talked to Warren. Let’s at least see who came in when. We know somebody walked the cheese in. Somebody walked in with a bagful of cheese and walked out with no cheese. Let’s see if that somebody was Hank.”
We headed back through the silver door and up a small staircase to the offices and computer area. It was quiet, computer screens glowing softly, one with a bouncing Mickey Mouse screensaver.
Odin got down to business to see how to access the video files. Zeus and I worked out a time frame. We decided Hank or whoever did it would have had to sneak in the cheese during a twenty-four-hour period between Wednesday morning, when the cheese was tossed, and Thursday morning, when the first purchase of tainted cheese was made, according to the FDA report. That first purchase was made by Gwen Schuster, who worked at the movie theater up in Dieter’s Corners. I kind of knew her—she had a daughter Candace’s age.
“Bingo,” Odin said. He hit a few buttons, and the screen split into four squares. The top two squares showed views of checkout lanes, and the bottom two squares showed the entrances—one on the west side, one on the east.
“Let’s focus on the entrances and look for just Nancy,” Zeus said. “Then we look at who came in the half hour before Nancy. If our theory is right, that somebody took them out of the garbage and heated them up or whatever and brought them to the store, then there were only a few toxic cheeses in that case, right? They had to make sure Nancy could find the right one. Either they marked them or set them somewhere.”
“Right, Nancy would need to not buy the wrong cheese,” I said, impressed by all this strategic thinking. It was like a chess game in reverse.
Odin hit the buttons. We watched people going in and out of the store three times as fast as they do in normal life.
“We should take turns,” Odin said after a while. “This’ll take a few hours.” He turned to Zeus. “I could use more dessert. Did I see some chocolate sauce down there?”
Zeus rose. “Don’t mind if I do.”
He left, and Odin and I zoned out in front of the most boring TV show ever.
“You’re sure you don’t want anything?”
“You guys are seriously going to make me fat.”
He came around behind me and rubbed my shoulders. “I could make him confess,” Odin said.
I twisted around. “Odin!”
“Eyes on the screen,” he said.
“We haven’t exhausted our nonbrutality possibilities.”
He continued to rub my shoulders. I couldn’t believe how tense I was, how good it felt. “If we do exhaust our other possibilities, there is that. I make him confess.”
“It’s not just about the morality of it, or the violence,” I said. “We can’t be public about helping my sisters like that. I mean, you use whatever medieval interrogation tactics on Hank you have, Denko will eventually find out and put it together. I want to keep Vanessa out of jail and save the farm, but not if it puts all my sisters in danger. Or you guys!” My eyes began to cloud with tears. “I’m not watching. I can’t see.”
Odin set his chin on my shoulder. “I can see, goddess. I’m watching for you.”
“Thanks,” I whimpered.
“It wouldn’t have to be obvious,” he said. “Men make confessions for a lot of reasons.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’ll go dark for you, goddess. The others won’t, but I would. I’ll always go dark for you.”
His words chilled me, and I knew suddenly it was about more than that. I didn’t know what he had in mind, but I knew we’d lose a little piece of him. Maybe all of him. “You can’t.”
He stroked my hair. “Sometimes that’s all we have left.”
“Not yet,” I said. “We haven’t lost yet.”
“I would.”
I slammed my finger onto the pause button and looked up at him. “I don’t want you to. It’s not who we are, to execute somebody or really fucking destroy them or whatever you have in mind. It’s not who we are.”
His eyes looked so tired. My Odin was so weary. So troubled. “It’s who I am.”
“No! Not anymore. We’re all together, and we’re making a new life.” I didn’t want to lose a piece of him. I was scared, though. I felt my eyes heat with tears again.
“There’s no such thing as a new life,” Odin said. “You have only the one life, and your past is part of it.”
“Fuck that. Today is a new day,” I said.
He watched my eyes. He didn’t have to say anything, because, Today is a new day? I heard it for what it was: a cheap, meaningless platitude. It was as if Odin was one of those huge, beautiful paintings we’d seen in Italy, all drama and tragedy and human suffering and emotion. Muscles and togas and flesh and gods and sky. And all I had to compare was a dime store trinket.
Today is a new day. Whatever. Even so, I went on, “Together we can be anything. We can do anything.” More platitudes.
“We can’t repair souls,” he said.
I was crying for real now. For Odin, for my sisters. I shoved a hand into his hair. “I love you. I don’t want you to go dark.”
“I already am dark, goddess.”
Zeus came in. “You see something?”
“It’s nothing,” I sniffled, sitting back down and hitting play. The last thing I needed was for the two of them to get into it.
Zeus unwrapped a packet of biscuits and opened the jar of chocolate sauce and started dipping them in and eating them. “Most. Boring. Show. Ever.”
“Right?” I paused it again on a Nancy-like lady, but no. Not Nancy. I hit play. “So boring.”
“You’re bored, goddess?” Odin started untying his shoes. I thought maybe he was getting comfortable, but then he pulled the laces clear out of the shoes.
“What are you doing?”
“Eyes on the screen. It’s your turn to be watching.”
“We need to stay alert,” I said.
“We’ll help you stay alert,” Odin s
aid. “So alert. Zeus, does our goddess need help with her business suit coat?”
Zeus pulled me up and helped me out of my Jackie Trent suit coat and shirt and then my bra. “You guys!” I whisper-yelled. He used my bra to tie my hands behind my back. “Are you kidding me?”
“Eyes on the screen,” Zeus barked.
I stood there in the cool, dark office, eyes on the screen.
Zeus slid up my skirt so that it was bunched around my waist, then he slid down my panties. “Oh my god.”
“Perfect attention,” Odin said. “You’ll be punished if we find you’ve missed our Nancy sighting.”
They worked together until they’d pulled off my clothes entirely and sat me back down in front of the screen.
Fuck. I was naked on a chair in the Piggly Wiggly office. Odin started tying my ankles to the chair legs. “This is me hoping the Pig isn’t getting any midnight deliveries,” I said.
“Only one person is getting a midnight delivery,” Zeus said.
“Seriously, you guys! What if somebody comes?”
“You like when there’s a frisson of danger,” Odin said.
I caught his eye. “I think there’s more than a frisson of danger going.”
“We’re fucking-g international spies. We can tell a frisson of danger from actual danger. Now spread your legs and stop arguing. We need to use your body for our pleasure now. For dessert.”
“You already had dessert,” I said.
“We need extra dessert,” Zeus said. “And when we need extra dessert, we take it.”
“Was that in our wedding vows? I can’t really remember.”
Odin had moved behind my chair. He grabbed my hair and pulled my head back, looked down at me. “I can’t believe nobody recognizes you. No matter how we try to hide your face, your beauty blazes through.”
“Um…I can’t see the screen.”
“We’re tag teaming,” Zeus said.
Okay, so he was watching the screen. That’s good, I thought.
Then I felt something cool on my nipple, and I realized it was the chocolate sauce. “Um…ahhh.”
“You may not be hungry, but we are.” Odin moved around to kneel in front of me. “Pay attention to the screen. You’ll be punished if your attention wavers.”
I watched the screen as best I could, gasping as Odin’s tongue made contact with my Nutella-covered nipple. He sucked it, like really sucked it.
I was so turned on, so wet, I could barely think.
“Nutella is very clingy to skin,” Zeus said, stroking my hair. “He has to suck really hard to get it off, I’m afraid.”
I focused on the screen, looking for Nancy as Odin sucked madly.
“Are you more alert now?” Zeus asked.
I gasped as Odin started on the other breast.
Zeus painted my newly cleaned breast with more Nutella. “You’d better not close your eyes,” he said as he leaned over my shoulder and sucked my other breast.
A hand traveled between my legs—I couldn’t tell whether it was Odin’s or Zeus’s. I kind of liked it when I didn’t know whose hands were whose. It made things scary and wild. This particular hand started stroking my folds, teasing my clit into frenzied sensitivity.
Zeus was in ultrahard sucking mode. It was madness having them both sucking on my nipples.
“I’m about to come,” I pleaded.
Odin paused. “Concentrate on the screen. Are you watching?”
“Yes,” I whimpered.
He went back to sucking. The hand went back to rubbing my clit.
Another hand shoved my legs wider.
Yes, I was watching with razor-sharp focus now. It was the only way to keep from erupting in a chaos of pleasure.
Focus, focus, focus!
Fingers penetrated my core.
It was from the insistent way those fingers moved, the way they curled, that I recognized Zeus. He always had reliable rhythm, a steamship, slow but sure. And merciless.
“I can’t,” I gasped as the pleasure built. “I’m not watching it!”
Odin growled. I redoubled my efforts to watch, but then I threw my head back and moaned.
“You’re on the verge, goddess,” Zeus said, kissing my neck. “You are so beautiful like this. You’re so beautiful when you’re broken.”
I felt broken. Broken in lust, in love. And utterly lost in that zone of almost orgasming. My men held me in their hands. My whole being fit into their hands, and I was fine with it. Feeling slid through me like color.
I was putty. Gasping, turned-on, pre-orgasmic putty.
“You’ve lost your will,” Odin growled.
“Yes,” I gasped, exuberantly, happily. “Punish me, do anything to me, just let me come.”
“Oh, goddess, the wind could blow through you when you’re like this,” Odin said.
Zeus knelt in front of me, sliding his fingers in and out of me. “I need her.”
“I’ll do anything you want,” I said, or more, begged.
Odin moved behind me again. He kissed the top of my head and pulled my hair so I had to look up at him. “I have you,” he whispered. “I have this.”
I smiled up at him. I know he saw it even though his eyes were on the screen.
Large hands fumbled at my ankles, freeing me from the bottom of the chair.
“I have this,” Odin said again, and I understood it as something different suddenly. Something dark.
I’ll go dark for you, goddess.
He’d do anything for me—he really would. It meant the world, but at the same time, I wanted to tell him he didn’t need to. That I’d love him either way, but then he spoke—“Kiss me,” he said.
“I need to watch the screen.”
He gazed down at me. “Fucking-g kiss me. Because I fucking-g love you, and you’re going to kiss me.”
I smiled up at him. “Yeah?”
Something new came into his eyes right then. Something deeply familiar and connected, and it brought me back to that alley in Italy where he’d touched some ineffable part of me. We’d come together in a way that was more than physical.
Thor had been joking about our mystical butt-fucking for the past two weeks, but it wasn’t a joke to me, and not to Odin either.
He slid his hands along my throat, down and then up, landing under my chin, making me stay looking at him.
Zeus was pushing his fat fingers into me again, touching my clit.
I was trapped on the knife edge between pleasure and torment, waiting for Odin’s kiss.
Finally he took my lips with a desperate sound that was pure Odin. He was all warmth and tongue, lips consuming mine, sucking mine. Even his breath had a specific quality and sound to it that was pure Odin, familiar and welcome as coffee. He kissed me on and on, tongue tracing around inside my mouth—lewdly, invasively, as if to outline all he owned. Waves of excitement flowed through me.
The kiss went on, the pleasure of it merging with Zeus’s fingers. The three of us were going somewhere together.
He pulled away. “Now I have to fucking-g rewind.”
I smiled up at him. “Then fucking-g rewind.”
“Oh dear.” He smiled—finally. “What did you just say?”
“I said, fucking-g-a-rewind,” I repeated, happy to see the darkness move out of his gaze for once.
He stood. “I’m not going to fucking-g rewind. You know what I’m going to do?”
“What?” I asked, panting.
“I’m going to fucking-g pause that thing. Zeus—” He pointed at a small metal file cabinet in the corner. “Bend her over the cabinet.”
Zeus groaned and hauled me up by my upper arms. He bent me over the cabinet, clasping my hands together with one of his. He held my hair with his other hand and pressed my cheek against the smooth metal. “What have you done, goddess?” Zeus asked sadly.
I closed my eyes and whimpered, as much of an answer as that question needed.
Odin drew something smooth over my naked ass. “Do you kn
ow what this is?”
“No,” I said.
He drew it along my butt again. “Try harder.”
“Something wooden?”
“Good. It’s a plaque. Do you know how it feels to be hit with a plaque?”
“No,” I said.
“Don’t let her put her legs together,” Zeus said, gazing into my eyes. “She needs to feel this one.”
Yes, please, I thought.
Odin nudged my legs apart, then drew his finger across my seam. I whimpered, right on the verge of coming.
“This is what he needs, goddess,” Zeus whispered.
Odin was right there, of course. He heard the whisper. He probably understood both levels of it, too: Odin needed this as retribution for my teasing him about his way of saying fucking-g, admittedly a fun game of ours. But also, he needed this kind of contact. Most of all, he needed to feel my absolute trust in him.
“He needs to do this.”
Whack.
I cried out from the sting of it. It always hurt at first. It was a hard thing that always turned good.
“Count,” Odin said.
“What am I counting to?”
“Five,” Odin barked.
“What?”
“Ten now.”
“Ten?”
“Twenty.”
I said nothing. It was a lot. Whack.
“Two,” I gasped.
Whack.
“Three.”
Odin smacked on, and I counted. The hits were starting to get vibrate-y. The pain became an intense sensation. Little by little, the pain and pleasure centers inside me were getting confused. Little by little, these really sharp spanking sensations started feeling like tiny orgasmic bursts. I wriggled under the hits. My mouth seemed to be saying fifteen.
“Do you know what it’s like to fuck you after you’ve had a good spanking?” Zeus asked me.
“No,” I said, floating. Was I even counting anymore? Whack.
“You feel extra soft and warm inside. And more alive. Because you feel everything we do afterwards.”
Whack.
“Seventeen,” Zeus whispered.
“Seventeen,” I called out.
Zeus looked back at Odin. I don’t know what he saw, but it made him frown. “Wait. I’ll finish.” He stood and pushed Odin back to me.
The Hard Way: Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers 5 Page 12