Mark (The Mallick Brothers #3)

by Jessica Gadziala

  "Fine," she snapped, arms raising suddenly, catching me off-guard enough for her to be able to plant them dead-center to my chest and shove me hard enough backward that my back slammed into the unyielding side of the shack. Before I could even register that surprise, or the surge of desire it would bring with it, her body crushed into mine, all straight lines and subtle hint of soft curves. Her hands framed my face almost aggressively a split second before she went up on her tiptoes and seared her lips into mine.

  And again, it was so unexpected that I didn't react soon enough. I didn't wrap my arms around her, slide them down her back, sink them into her ass, whip her around and change positions, take control, get her to the point of oblivion without having to use anything other than my lips on hers.

  I didn't get to do anything but feel her lips press into mine, hard, hungry, demanding.

  Because as soon as it started, it was over.

  She was back on her flat feet; her hands were on her sides.

  "I want you," she admitted, chin lifted, feeling no shame in saying those words, something uncommon and all the hotter. "But it is never going to happen."

  With that, before I could reach for her, she turned and fucking ran down the street.

  I might have been willing to charge up and catch her off-guard. I was not, however, the kind of man who would chase a woman down the street.

  So I took a long, deep breath, had a heart-to-heart with my dick telling him to take his disappointment elsewhere, that this wasn't over, then made my way back across the street, throwing myself back into the work as a much-needed distraction.

  One thing was for sure, if she didn't do the chickenshit thing and skip town, me and Scotti, yeah, we had some unfinished business.

  Quite frankly, my curiosity was piqued.

  Not just because she was beautiful.

  Not even because there was sexual chemistry that neither of us was even going to pretend to deny.

  No.

  I wanted to pull her apart and see how the pieces worked. I wanted to know what made her tick the way she did. Then I wanted to put her right back into her own particular, perfect working order and enjoy the fuck out of her until the both of us were just piles of sweat and orgasm-sated, numb, tangled limbs.

  Then we could go from there.

  That seemed like a good jumping-off point.

  All I knew was, me and Scotti, yeah, we were just getting started.

  FOUR

  Scotti

  Okay.

  Alright.

  At least it was over.

  To be perfectly honest, there had been this strange, weighted feeling on me all week like something was going to happen, something I didn't plan for.

  So walking out to be confronted by Mark Mallick standing at the backdoor, well, it might have been startling and arousing and unsettling, but at least it seemed to alleviate that strange black cloud following me around.

  I mean, not that the whole interaction didn't bring with it a whole new rush of things to think and obsess about. But that was neither here nor there.

  What I said was true.

  I wanted him.

  I wanted him in a way that shouldn't have been possible so soon, in a way that was completely irrational, wholly uncontrollable. It was pure, raw, primal, animal attraction. Our pheromones just... liked each other. It was as basic as that.

  Sure, we were both attractive and were not legally blind and picked up on that as well, but hormones were the only explanation for what was going on with us from just two very short interactions.

  He smelled good again too, damnit.

  Couldn't he just smell like BO or Cool Water and ruin it for me? Or, better yet, BO trying to be masked with an over-abundance of Cool Water.

  Oh yeah.

  Pure libido killer right there.

  That would have made life so much easier.

  But no. Of course not. He showed up smelling like concrete grit, sweat, and just the oddest hint of that lubrication stuff they used on metal objects.

  What can I say... I have always been sensitive to smells.

  It was why I couldn't tolerate a house that used those godawful plug-in scent things or aerial sprays. Smells should be organic, case closed. There was nothing organic about Tropical Vanilla Rain Storm or whatever the hell names they slapped on the pretty, bright containers.

  But I liked the way Mark Mallick smelled. Like a working man. Like someone who wasn't afraid to get dirty. Like a man who would be all too happy to get dirty with you.

  Oh yeah.

  Okay.

  God, I needed to stop letting my mind run away with itself.

  To be fair, I had tried to shut it down. I had been a royal bitch and used every tool in my kit that was quite well-stocked from having grown up around four teasing, pain in the ass, older brothers. Most guys would have backed right down.

  But Mark Mallick was apparently not most guys.

  Sure, my words landed like blows, true and brutal. But he took the hit and recovered, confronted me again. That was unexpected. Really, I thought I was going to get away before anything escalated.

  I should have known better.

  Then I went and kissed him.

  You know, because I needed that to stress about every waking moment after it happened. Hell, I didn't really even get to enjoy it. It was kind of just... making a statement. It was over before I could really even appreciate it. Which sucked. Especially since my brain had been full of nothing but Mark Mallick sexy thoughts since then and I didn't even have anything juicy to focus on.

  Because, you know, like I said. It was never going to happen. So since that was true, it would have been nice to have at least a kiss to think about before we could finally skip town and maybe I could find me a man somewhere to relieve my sexual frustration.

  We were already in Navesink Bank longer than I liked, longer than we ever stayed in town after a job. But the guy we had washing the money was dragging his feet and there was nothing we could do about it. Apparently, he had some bigger job for some hotshot cocaine dealer or something that he needed to handle first. And since our pull was just a couple grand, we were low down on the priority list.

  See, that's the thing most people don't know about stores; there isn't that much money in the registers. Most people paid with cards now a day. And we didn't skim card numbers. We didn't have anything against the shoppers at the stores. It was the stores themselves that had to pay. So if the registers started with around five-hundred a piece in the morning and doubled that throughout the day, if you robbed at peak times when all registers were open, but before shift change, you were banking between ten and fifteen grand. Not chump change, but not the take from a bank robbery either. Not the kind of money that would set you up for life.

  That wasn't our plan anyway. Sure, we needed a nice nest egg to travel and set up a life in a new country, but we were all planning on getting normal, straight jobs once we did. We had been criminals long enough. It was almost time to retire from the career field as a whole.

  Three more jobs.

  That was all we had planned.

  Three more and almost a decade of our lifework would be behind us.

  There was no denying that the relief was also countered with a strange, nagging uncertainty. Maybe it was as simple as feeling weird about going to another country, learning the language, learning the customs, figuring out how to survive there. But I thought an almost equal amount of the trepidation inside was that, by stopping the work, we would be leaving a huge part of ourselves behind. Not the criminals per se, but the reason we were criminals in the first place, the mission that led us into that life, the bond that kept us tight through every sleepless night, through every misstep that could have sent us to jail, through every careful drive out of town, praying we could get away.

  Not being worried about ending up in a cell would be a wholly unknown feeling for me. That was a constant idea that kept a knot in my stomach. Not so much for me. I would be okay in prison
. Women could be awful, but in general had less violence than the men. I worried for my brothers. They were all their own kinds of badass. They were all strong and confident. And while they were technically criminals, they weren't murderers or rapists or people who assaulted other people for no reason. They certainly had no gang affiliations.

  That and, quite frankly, the idea of being separated from them was actually physically painful. Not that I didn't want a little space after so long in such close proximity, but space meaning separate apartments in the same town, not separate prison cells in different states.

  Just three more jobs.

  Three more months to complete those jobs.

  Then a couple more months laying low while we worked out transportation out of the US.

  By the next year, we would all be out of that life, away from that worry, desperately trying to learn how to call one another 'useless twats' and other insults in Russian or Chinese.

  And, after a while, that life would become our new normal.

  It would take some time, but it would happen.

  Then we could sit around and reminisce about the times we did the wrong things for the right reasons.

  "You could just come out with us," Rush said, shrugging, obviously still not approving of another of my little concessions. Gyms. I needed a gym. I needed a treadmill, a stairclimber, an elliptical, a bike, and the machines that tell you how to do the moves. To my brothers, apparently, that was for "chicks" and guys who "need to flex." They didn't do gyms. They did military-style training in parks or woods or wherever they could find that had hills and flat areas and places to run and do the ever-loathed burpees they liked so damn much.

  "Still not my style," I said, reaching for my gym bag.

  "You can stay in shape without all the bells and whistles, Scott."

  "With you guys yelling at me to pick up the pace and stop stretching between exercises? No thanks."

  "The stretching is for the warm-up and cool-down," Rush said, rolling his eyes.

  "The stretching is to keep my muscles long and lean instead of compact and bulging like you want. See? This is why I need the gym. You adamantly refuse to accept that there are different workout styles for different desired results. Sorry I don't want to have the muscle-y arms of a Navy Seal. I like to be long and lean like a yogi. You know, without having to do actual yoga. I'll be back in two hours."

  With that, I slipped into my gym shoes and moved out onto the street, making my way on foot. We had the car, but we tried to avoid driving whenever possible since we weren't legally supposed to do it. Any little thing we could do to avoid suspicion was good.

  The gym was on a street called Willow, a good twenty-minute walk from the shack, but it was additional exercise and a way to try to clear my head.

  I was being overly sappy about the Mark thing. Again, I was blaming pent-up sexual frustration, a lack of contact with any people outside of my family, and the fact that he was sexy as could be. I was only a woman after all.

  Fact of the matter was, there was a part of me that was desperately in need for connection, for human contact. Our lives, while purposeful, while full of support from one another, was still very small. I couldn't claim to have had a friend since I was seventeen years old. I had never been able to hold down a boyfriend. We moved too much. We were involved in too dirty a line of work. Close personal connections weren't just ill-advised, they were genuinely risky.

  So we did the work. We were there for one another. And we tried really hard to pretend that was more than enough.

  When we were younger, maybe it even was. None of us wanted roots. No one was ready to settle down and pay a mortgage and come home to the same person every night. We were too busy getting high off the adrenaline rush of what we did, gassed up on the righteous anger that allowed us to do what we did. We genuinely liked a new town every month. We liked seeing what living conditions we would be dealing with- be it a shack in the woods or a nice furnished rental. We liked seeing the country, building stronger familial bonds.

  But as we were all getting older, it was clear it was starting to weigh on us all in our own ways. Kingston was tired of the act of the robbery itself, tired of worrying about all of us like he always did. Atlas was sick of the new crash pads. Nixon was tired of all the intricate, minute planning. Rush was sick of the rules we had to live by.

  And me, well, I was sick of not being able to have friends or a man. I never thought I would be the kind of person to say that, but it was definitely a dominant thought on my mind the past several months. I wanted a girlfriend to go to get my hair done with, to drink coffee with and talk about girl stuff. My brothers were great, but try to bring up the red devil or nail polish colors, and they glazed over in the eyes.

  On top of that, I wanted to be able to date. Not just find a man in my travels and makeout with them, or more if the mood was right. Not just exchanging small talk that sounded promising but all the while reminding myself not to get my hopes up because it was doomed from the beginning.

  I wanted to share a meal with a man. Then I wanted to wait for him to call. Then I wanted another date. Maybe a makeout session. Then another date that might end up in a tour of his bedsheets. I wanted the possibility for more than just physical touch. I wanted to know what it was like to find comfort in a man, to have trust and potential, and to be with one long enough to start getting sick of them. To be with them past that six months when you realize they are human beings who do ordinary, unsexy things like trim their toenails and pick at scabs.

  Maybe that didn't sound romantic to normal people, but it was like a bouquet of flowers, box of chocolates, and giant diamond earrings to me.

  Some day.

  I would have that some day.

  And since today was not that day, I was going to take my visitor badge and work off all my restless energy on a treadmill turned up to eight.

  The gym was nice. I had been in my fair share of lawsuits-waiting-to-happen, so I knew a good one when I saw one. There was a certain pride of ownership in the new, unscuffed floors, the fresh paint on the walls, the very updated machines in abundance, in the safe, clean locker room, in the quality of the sound system filling the place with upbeat music.

  After thirty minutes on cardio that didn't give me quite the punch of endorphins I had been counting on, I made my way down a level toward where the weights were situated.

  And I promptly froze on the bottom step.

  Because there, reflected in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors for aforementioned gym-flexers to admire their bulging muscles in, were five, yes five, very tall, very dark-haired, very light-eyed, very classically handsome men.

  The Mallick brothers.

  "You've got to be kidding me." In my mind, that was meant to come off as a whisper of disbelief to myself. In reality, it was said loud and proud for all around me to hear. Including, judging by the smile tugging at one particular Mallick brother's lips, Mark.

  Great.

  That was just fantastic.

  "Fucking knew you made a move, you shit," one of the others said. Of the five, he was the broadest. He definitely spent a nice chunk of his time in the gym picking up and putting down heavy things.

  Beside him to the one side was Mark in black basketball pants and a black tee. To the other side was another brother with mostly the same look as his brothers, but there was something more serious, more mature about him. He reminded me a bit of Kingston. So likely the oldest, I would assume. To his side was another brother very much so a human canvas of some very nice ink. And lastly, there was one just the slightest bit thinner than his brothers, with eyes that somehow seemed deeper, kinder, yet haunted. I don't know what made me think it, but there was some strong urge I had to know his story.

  Weird, I know.

  "Angela, darling," Mark said, lips twitching hard and he didn't even try to mask his amusement as he looked me over.

  Thank God I didn't just wear sweats and a tee to the gym. True, my hair was back and my face was ma
keup-free, but my leggings were a pretty blue and pale yellow floral pattern, and my tank top was deep blue, everything formfitting and somehow sexy even though I was sweaty.

  "Still following me around like a little lost puppy, I see," I said, trying to mask the fact that even being halfway across the room from him was somehow affecting me in a less than PG kind of way.

  "Honey, this is my Wednesday ritual. Has been for years. You're the one who doesn't belong here. So it would go to follow that you're the one stalking me."

  "Right, because I'm oh so into you," I said, raising a brow in a haughty way I knew men hated. It usually worked in ticking off my brothers.

  His brothers, I might add, were clearly loving this interaction judging by four almost identical smirks playing at their mouths.

  "Well, you know... you were the one to shove me against a wall and kiss me."

  Damn. I should have guessed that might come back to kick me in the ass.

  "Only to prove a point," I countered, chin lifting higher.

  "And what point was that, honey?"

  "The point, honey, was that you're not nearly as irresistible as you think you are. And now if you'll excuse me, you kind of ruined the appeal of the weight room," I said, rushing to move around the curve of the wall and down the hallway that I thought led to the locker rooms. But I must have gotten turned around somewhere, because I was standing in front of a door that said it led to the pool instead.

  Maybe a bit paranoid about being followed and him proving that he was, in fact, every bit as irresistible as he thought he was, or more, I moved toward that door, deciding I could likely use my exercise bra and panties as a makeshift bathing suit. Plus, it would workout my muscles too which was good. Especially now that I was all wound up again.

  I mean seriously, it wasn't like Navesink Bank was some small town. In fact, it was pretty sprawling to be honest. It had a bunch of different pockets to it, different cultures, different house types. I should have been able to walk it freely without running into him again.