“What?”
“You can’t count anymore. It’s pathetic,” Zeus said, but I knew that wasn’t it. “You need to suck Odin’s cock.” He shifted me so that my cheekbone was right on the edge of the cabinet.
“I’m fine,” Odin said.
“Shove your cock into Isis’s mouth—now.”
Odin came and stood next to the cabinet. He reached down and stroked my hair. “Goddess.” He unzipped his pants and pulled out his dusky cock.
“Take it deep and hard,” Zeus said.
“Hold on here,” Odin said playfully.
I looked up at him. The darkness was gone, and he had a certain look to him, like the wild lust from before we’d fled to Italy. He brushed my hair back and touched the putty around my fake nose, then peeled the thing right off.
“What are you doing?”
“The fake nose wouldn’t survive the way I’m going to fuck your face. Because I won’t be gentle. Open.”
I opened.
He laid a heavy hand on the side of my head, then he shoved his cock into my throat.
I’d never done a sideways BJ. I nearly gagged.
“Take it, Ice. Feel me own you.” He began to pulse. I softened my throat.
Whack.
I gagged a little. One of those good gags.
It was nice to have the nose off. Dimly, I realized it also enabled me to breathe while he rammed his cock down my throat.
Because my guys were always thinking.
“Shit,” Odin said. “I can feel it in your throat when he strikes you.”
So could I. The feeling was blowing what was left of my mind. He struck me again at the same time that Odin thrust into my face again. They were coordinating, of course. This is what you got from seasoned criminals fucking and disciplining you—wicked coordination.
Tears streamed out of my eyes sideways.
My tears made the cool metal of the cabinet that my cheek was squished against slippery.
Everything was dark and slippery and wild in the empty office of the Baylortown Piggly Wiggly.
Odin cried out suddenly and thrust into me deeper still, cock pulsing with pleasure, warmth coating my throat.
He cried out in some other language—the dialect of Arabic he’d grown up with, swearing, I guess, feverishly petting my hair. He might have been saying I love you. I kind of think it was that.
I stilled, too, feeling only the postorgasm quiver of his cock in my mouth, alive and electric.
“You took off her nose,” Zeus grumbled a few minutes later.
“I would’ve fucked it off her,” Odin said, pulling out.
Zeus pulled me up and off the cabinet. I was shaky on my feet, but he held me tight and wiped my mouth with something soft, and then he kissed my neck. Like he was having a love affair with my neck.
“Yeah,” I said stupidly as Zeus moved his ravenous kissing to my cheek, then my lips.
“I need to fuck you now,” Zeus said. “I need you to take me deep.”
“You can do anything to me you want.” I was a soggy noodle, warm and good and needing desperately to come, which is to say, not the kind of soggy noodle you’d find on the Olive Garden menu.
“I thought I needed to fuck you before, but I really, really need you now.” He backed me into a wall. “I couldn’t stop even if you asked me.”
Me asking him to stop. Let’s just say, a Mars invasion was more likely. “…won’t be asking that.”
“We’ll be okay.” He pressed into me deliciously, sliding his hands up either side of my neck.
We’ll be okay.
He meant Odin. He’d seen the trouble, too. I shook my head. I wasn’t so sure. He growled and pressed me to the wall harder. He lifted my thigh with one hand. “I want you ready.” Suddenly his fingers were inside me, a thumb making circles around my tickly nub.
“I was ready a zillion spanks ago.”
“Oh, you feel good. You are going to feel good.”
I sucked in a breath. “You have to be inside me to know that for sure.”
He pulled his massive fingers from me and pressed his forehead to my chest, fumbling his large cock into my hole. “When you’re like this…” He pressed in, little by little, filling me slowly. “When you’re like this…”
I loved the way he filled me, pressing me to this wall in this shabby office where we weren’t supposed to be.
“When you’re so hot like this…” He pressed in a little more. I felt my body collapsing under his invasion. My eyes drifted closed.
“Look at me. Look at my eyes,” Zeus said.
I looked into his eyes.
“I’m your husband. And I love you. And I’m having you. Look at me.” I looked harder, more than the bleary looking that I had been doing. I really looked into his green eyes, and when he finally pressed all the way into me, filling and stretching me inside with his impossible thickness, his eyes changed. They went unfocused. Like they saw everything in the world.
I clutched his back, pulling him to me, and he grabbed my hair with the hand that wasn’t holding up my leg. I kept watching his eyes, watching him fight through the haze of pleasure he was experiencing to get to me.
“I will always find you,” he grated.
I kissed his lips. When he could focus no more, he threw back his head in pleasure.
I kissed his neck. “Fuck me, baby. Have me all.”
Rhythmically, he thrust into me.
Uh-uh-uh, he said.
And right there I broke apart, unspooling so completely into a mad orgasm that he had to hold me up. Eventually he was gone, too, ramming me into the wall. It hurt in the beautiful way I loved.
When we emerged from our postcoital haze, I noticed two things. One, there was a small monitor on the upper shelf that showed the parking lot outside. My guys weren’t that reckless after all, I guess—they’d had a view of the outside that whole time. And two, more important, Odin had found two key frames. He had them side by side. One showed Nancy Zietlow, and the time stamp said 3:12 p.m. The other showed Hank Vernon himself. The time stamp there: 3:04.
“Motherfucker,” I said.
Odin tossed me a napkin, and I cleaned up.
“If we had a camera on the dairy case, we’d probably see her watching out for anybody looking while Hank put the bad cheese rounds in. Then she’d move over and pick one up and put it in her basket. She’d know it was one of the ones Hank brought because it wouldn’t be the same temperature as the others.” Odin called up two other frames. Them leaving. Hank was out of there about ten minutes ahead of her.
I pulled my clothes back on and put my fake nose in my pocket. It was late. Hopefully we wouldn’t get stopped by the cops.
“You have to put it back on,” Zeus said.
“Gah.” I sat at the desk and pulled out my gross gluey makeup and set up my compact mirror.
“Maybe that cooler really was deliberately unplugged,” Zeus said as he wiped the place down.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Odin said. “How hard is it to get into your cheese-making area?”
“Not too hard. It’s locked up tight, but there’s no alarm on it. And there are crank windows up high on either side. They don’t lock them.”
“Large enough for a man to get through?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You think Hank actually did that?”
Odin said, “If he’s smart. It’s how I’d do it. The less people who know about this kind of crime, the better. I mean, you start hiring somebody for that, and they have your balls in a nutcracker.”
“So if Thor can get them together at a motel, then we have them, right?”
“Not good enough,” Zeus said. “What we have is a shitload of circumstantial evidence.”
I grabbed the paper towels and the Windex from Odin and wiped the top of the cabinet furiously, as if I could erase my anger and frustration with vigorous cleaning.
Chapter 9
Zeus and Odin and I sat in our bed, surrounded as usual by w
atchful cupids, reading like an old married couple, which I suppose we were. It was still hard to get my mind around that, and it never stopped being wonderful.
A soft knock at our bedroom door. “You guys up?”
It was Thor, back from his motel odyssey.
“Come in,” Zeus said softly.
Thor walked in and threw his coat on the bed. “Pay dirt. Six Winks Motel,” he said.
I groaned. The scummiest deer hunter motel ever!
“What kind of man conducts an affair at Six Winks?”
“Hank Vernon,” I said. “I should’ve told you to start with the grossest place.”
“Yeah, well, we have it now,” Thor said. “I even got security footage.”
“The noose tightens,” I said.
“It’s not a noose yet,” Zeus said. “It’s still just circumstantial evidence. All we have is an affair and a suspiciously timed visit to the Piggly Wiggly, which could be explained by the affair.”
He updated Thor on what we’d found.
“It’s an excellent crime,” Thor said. “If Hank did the break-in himself, it’s nearly flawless. Yeah, we have him on the affair. That just means he’s a terrible person, which everyone already knows.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“We won’t give up,” Zeus said.
I sighed. “That’s the kind of thing somebody says when all hope is lost.”
“You’re wrong,” he said.
But I suspected I wasn’t. “It’s like one of those signs that says ‘drug-free zone.’ You would never put a ‘drug-free zone’ sign somewhere where there’s a drug problem.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Thor said. “We always do.”
“I could get us physical evidence,” Odin said. “It’s out there. Hank could tell us.”
“Through extreme measures,” Zeus said.
“Her sister could do time for a crime she didn’t commit,” Odin bit out. “That’s pretty fucking-g extreme.”
“Even so,” Zeus said. “Think it through. You know Denko came through here after our robbery. You know he knew it was us. You think he didn’t leave his card and ask Hank to report anything unusual? Thuggish insurance investigators are one thing, but a black-ops-style interrogation by three armed men over a food safety dispute? You think that’s not going to draw Denko’s attention to Baylortown? And how long until he looks at the Sunny Sisters?”
“I could make it work,” Odin said softly.
“It’s not how we roll,” Zeus growled.
Odin glanced at Zeus. It was just a glance, but it had Zeus climbing over me and hauling Odin right out of bed. He pinned Odin to the closet door.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Both their faces were glowing, and it wasn’t the good kind of glow. “Tell her what you’re proposing.”
Odin glittered at Zeus.
“I’m with Zeus,” Thor said. “That’s a no-go.”
“Are we talking about intestines like ropes again?” I said.
“That and more,” Zeus growled. “He’s talking about kidnapping Hank and making him give us evidence. Guys like that, there’s sometimes a chance that they fucked up somehow, maybe threw something away wrong, left some physical evidence, but they know they can’t go back. Or there’s a money trail. Or maybe we get a confession on a tape. Better yet, written. Right? And then what? We’d need to keep him quiet. How would that happen, Odin? How would we get the evidence and confession and keep him quiet?”
A chill went over me. He was actually serious about this. “We don’t torture and then execute people in cold blood. That’s not who we are.”
“It’s who I am,” Odin said softly. “Hank could kill himself. He could leave a confession in writing that could be verified. Add that to the circumstantial evidence…” I could feel my heart breaking. “Nancy would plead out. This is how we save your sisters, Ice. It’s the only way.”
Zeus jerked him again, and a cupid fell off the built-in shelves and broke. “We don’t do that. Especially when we haven’t exhausted all of our options.”
“We don’t—” Odin clarified.
Zeus slammed him against the wall. “You don’t either, goddamnit. Because we are together in this, and like hell if I’m letting you give up some fucking piece of your soul after how far we’ve come. Like fucking hell. There are still other options open to us.”
Odin and Zeus were like two wolves, staring into each other’s eyes, challenge thick in the air. Odin was allowing himself to be pinned for the moment—but this thing could end in a flash of fists. In a battle between Zeus and Odin, I couldn’t say who’d win, but I knew who’d lose—all of us.
Thor drew near, intending, maybe, to separate them if they went at it. A risky and probably futile plan.
Coolly, Odin said, “So her sister just goes to jail? We let Hank take the farm?”
Zeus’s nostrils flared. “We don’t do either. Option C—try to do it the right way.”
“You go ahead and enjoy your fantasyland with your detective games, then. I say Ice deserves better.”
I hated that Odin was so bereft of hope that he just wanted to go for the dark option. Or was he the only reasonable one?
Either way, the sight of my guys at each other’s throats freaked me out. “Let him down, Zeus,” I said.
No reaction. My guys got very hard of hearing during fights—especially if you were speaking in the vocal range of calm reason.
“We haven’t even broken into the man’s home yet, Odin,” Thor said. “Let’s case the place. Let’s get in there and go fishing.”
Zeus kept his hard, sinewy arm across Odin’s chest; not on his throat, but pretty near. The testosterone in the room was spiraling off the charts. I looked helplessly over at Thor. He was worried. Had he ever had to break up a fight between them, or was this new?
“Come on, you guys,” I pleaded.
“New rule,” Thor tried, “nobody get brutally tortured and murdered.” Again. Deaf ears.
I moved near and grabbed Zeus’s arm and Odin’s shoulder. I wouldn’t stop them like this, but they’d hurt me if they fought. “This is not cool.”
They weren’t hearing.
“Please.”
Nothing.
My heart pounded. I didn’t know what happened with Odin in that prison, but I knew that the whole thing was really alive in his mind right now, and I knew for sure that a man pinning him to a wall was the opposite of what he needed. My heart was breaking for these guys I loved so much, fighting each other. Fighting for the soul of the group.
Finally, Odin spoke. “Fine. We’ll case the place.” And then, in a deeper tone, in a no-fucking-around-yo-I-mean-business tone, he said, “You’ll wanna let me down, now, brother. Right. About. Now.”
Zeus let him down, but they kept glaring at each other.
I stared at the broken cupid on the floor, feeling scared for us all.
We’d never been in this place. Fighting. I didn’t know what to do, so I went over and picked up the pieces—two large pieces. “We should glue this,” I said.
Chapter 10
I turned onto the county trunk road, and the old ski jump came into view. “There it is!” I said to Odin. Not that I needed to.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Odin said.
“What?”
“What? It looks like a rollercoaster made by hillbillies!”
It did look kind of dangerous. Even from a mile off, the construction looked superrandom, with boards crisscrossing here and there.
I sped the car down the dip, as we used to call it, the road like a ribbon tracing the base of a bowl. Trees blurred by on either side as we headed toward the abandoned ski jump, which was basically a rural ruin at this point, standing in the middle of an abandoned park. A mile up and I pulled onto the shoulder next to a half-crumbled shed. Carefully, I drove around to the back of it. “The cops used to troll up and down this road to catch kids coming out here to drink and climb that t
hing. It’s morning, but just to be safe…”
We got out, and I took a look from the road to make sure the car was hidden. It was warm for April. A perfect day for a hike.
“Come on.” I set off on the path, which was really grown over and a bit mucky from a recent rain. “What the fuck,” I said. “Are kids not coming out here to get drunk anymore? What is wrong with the youth of today?”
Odin said nothing. He was still really off from his fight with Zeus last night.
The four of us had had an awkward breakfast at the table with the Texans as well as Margie, who I’m sure thought I was utterly depraved, what with the sexual demands I apparently made on my three employees.
After breakfast, Zeus and Thor had set off to case Hank Vernon’s place. I’d suggested Odin and I visit here. He was a little growly about it, but nobody was letting him anywhere near Hank at that point.
We emerged from the bramble into the partial clearing around the jump, which rose up to roughly the height of a five-story building. Up close you could see that some of the wood supports had rotted away, hanging like earrings from other wood supports. The old chain link fence was still around it, but the authorities had posted giant KEEP OUT! DANGER signs every few feet. “As if it wasn’t attractive enough before,” I said.
“You were actually climbing this with skis not two years ago?”
“It looks sturdier when it’s covered with snow.” I pointed at the field in front of it. “It’s overgrown now, but people would actually clear it. It would be this snowy landing spot.” I smiled over. “What?”
“Snow’s hard when you go at it from any kind of height.”
“I wasn’t the only one who used this thing. There were other people. I’m not crazy.”
“Did those other people come out here alone?”
“Probably not,” I said.
“That’s not thrill-seeking, Isis. It’s a death wish.”
“Come on, let’s climb it.”
“Are you fucking-g crazy?”
I turned to him with a mock frown. “You’ll stay down here?”
He cast his eyes up.
“There’s steel supports,” I whispered.
The Hard Way: Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers 5 Page 13