“The last property manager?”
He leaned against the front edge of the desk. “Went by Preston, but his name was Todd. Cops came in and got him three weeks ago, Wednesday. Feds. That’s why that door’s so hard to open. They busted the old one off the wall, frame and all. New one fits like a saddle on a pig. That’ll be your first project. Get someone to fix that.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“Wow’s right. I come in this place maybe once a week, and I’ll be dipped in chocolate and rolled in roasted nuts if I wasn’t standing right here when that screaming bunch of bastards came bustin’ in here. Blew one of those flash-bang things right there where you’re standing. Made me blind and deaf at the same damned time. Peed a little, too, but it was unintentional. Next thing I know, there’s thirty angry fuckers in here with machineguns.”
The thought of standing in the exact spot where the flash-bang grenade went off was pretty awesome – the machineguns and screaming feds only made it better. I wondered what Preston-Todd had hidden in the old desk, and wished they hadn’t hauled it off yet.
“Holy crap,” I said. “Kale didn’t tell me that.”
He stood up straight and stretched. “Suppose not.”
“So, I work in here, and you don’t? I’m here alone?”
He looked me up and down. “Don’t seem like the type that needs your hand held.”
“I’m not. I was just--”
“I drop by once a week. On Wednesdays, unless you need me for something. Kale owns about ten times this much property, and I’m the senior manager of it all. Shit. I go from Chino Hills to Chula Vista, and everywhere in between. I’m the guy you call if you can’t figure out who to call. Doubt you’ll need much, though. We’re at ninety-nine percent occupied now. Only place left to lease is the one Todd was in. 3-A.”
“It’s in this building?”
He pointed at the ceiling. “Right above us. Had the door fixed on it, too. Busted it at the exact same time they busted this one. Guess that’s how they do it. Keep a fella from gettin’ past ‘em, I suppose.”
“I imagine so,” I said, my tone dry. Police tactics fascinated me. I could have talked about the raid all afternoon, but I guessed he didn’t want to.
“Andy your real name?” he asked.
“It is. Is Mort yours?”
“Everybody asks. Sure is. Weird, huh?”
“Your name?”
“Yeah.”
“I like it,” I said.
He scoffed. “Makes one of us.”
I was quickly coming to like him. His personality did what his features never would. It made me smile. I decided to categorize him with the father from A Christmas Story, and Clint Eastwood’s character, Walt Kowalski, from Gran Torino. He was funny without trying to be, and I really liked him so far.
We spent the next two hours talking about my duties, what to expect, and how to resolve any issue that might come about.
When we were finished talking, he gave me an old-school Rolodex that he’d listed all the important phone numbers in, and then brushed his hands against his faded jeans. “I’ll see you next Wednesday,” he said. “Won’t bother coming day after tomorrow, you’ll be fine. Call me if you need anything.”
I was pleased that he seemed to trust me, and that he didn’t make me feel stupid for being a woman. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure you will, too.” He yanked on the door twice before it opened. “See you Wednesday.”
I took a seat in my new office chair. In no time, a chairgasm set in, and my eyes fell closed. I got up and looked it over. It was an awesome looking piece of furniture as far as chairs were concerned, but it didn’t appear to be as magical in appearance as it was in performance.
I lowered myself into the cloud-like mesh, and swept my hand over the thick wood of my new desk. Irregular, yet smooth, the surface was cool to the touch. I glanced around the office. One wall was painted white, two were vintage brick, and one was nothing but windows. I wondered if decorating was allowed, and got lost in the possibilities.
After deciding that black and white prints would look best, I walked to the glass wall and peered over the stone ledge. Across the street, a few people were walking in each direction. I watched them until they escaped my view, and wondered if they were fixtures in the neighborhood.
A dull thud against the door caused me to turn away from the window. Then, it flew open and hit the brick wall with a whack!
Just like Mort, I about shit myself.
Not because of the door. Because of who stood there staring at me.
Sex. On. A. Stick.
5
BAKER
When I’d seen her in the bank, it was through the eyeholes of a rubber Donald Trump mask. Having an unobstructed view from ten feet away shed a much different light on her appearance.
She was attractive, no doubt. But her body was built for one thing, and one thing only.
Fucking.
We stood facing one another with our mouths agape. I swallowed a lump of sexual tension and blindly reached for the door.
“The sign says manager’s office.” I pushed the door closed. “Are you the manager?”
“I uhhm. Yes. I’m the manager. How can I help you?”
Despite my desire to pull her pants down around her ankles and bend her over the desk, I maintained a somewhat professional posture. I raised my index finger. “I’ve got a few questions.”
She was wearing wide-legged black dress pants, conservative heels, and a flowing white top. She wasn’t a tall woman, but the high-waisted pants made her legs seem unreasonably long. They also drew attention to her shapely hips. My eyes scanned the length of her body. From her dark gray toenails to her remarkably attractive face, she was very well put together. Her sun-streaked hair was off her neck and clipped into a bun.
A bun that wasn’t quite centered.
The hair bothered me, but her shapely body forced me to make note of every curve. My eyes shifted from the askew sprout of hair to her perfectly shaped hips and then back.
Repeatedly.
I had faults. Many of them, to be honest. Most I could conceal, leaving those who encountered me to be of the opinion that I was relatively normal.
I wasn’t.
I was somewhat of a perfectionist. There were many things in my life that could be out of order, but her bun didn’t appear to be one of them. Despite my attempts to dismiss it, I simply couldn’t keep my mind focused on anything else.
She reached for it. “Is there something wrong?”
“Wrong? No.” I tore my eyes from the disaster that sat atop her head and met her gaze. “I had a few questions about the availability of property.”
She lowered her hands.
My eyes shot to the bun.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
I needed to have a conversation with her. I knew myself well enough to realize doing so would be impossible if she didn’t fix her hair. I gestured toward the unsightly mess. “It’s not…” I waved my finger to the side. “It’s crooked.”
“My hair?” She shrugged dismissively. “These things are impossible to get perfect, so I just wing it…”
There was no way I could carry on any facsimile of a meaningful conversation with her hair in its cock-eyed state. I took a few steps toward her and raised my hands between us. “May I?”
“Awk-ward,” she said jokingly.
I raised my eyebrows.
She let out a playful sigh. “Sure.”
I opened the clip that held her hair in place, moved the mound over two inches, and clipped it in place. A quick inspection satisfied me that it was as perfect as it could be. As I stepped away, a wisp of her perfume caused me to falter.
Hypnotized by the scent, I offered a compliment and a suggestive grin. “That’s wonderful.”
She returned a confused look. “My hair?”
“Your perfume.”
“Oh. Thank you.” She curtsied. “It’s shaunce. It’s
spelled C-H-A-N-C-E, but it’s French. It’s by Chanel.”
I took every inch of her into view, taking time to pause at the parts that interested me the most. She was far too attractive for me to simply walk in, press her for information, and walk away. As much as I realized I needed to, keeping my hands off her would be difficult, if not impossible.
I drew a slow breath. “It fits you well.”
“Thank you.” She gave me a quick look. “You had questions about property? Here or somewhere else?”
“Here. Do you manage other properties?”
“Have a seat.” She gestured toward the chair positioned in front of her desk and turned away. Her ass was as remarkable as the rest of her. I fixed my eyes on it as she walked around the corner of the desk.
As she sat down, I did the same.
“We have other properties, yes.” A lock of hair fell into her face. She twisted her mouth to the side and blew it out of the way. “I’m not sure where they are. Not all of them, anyway. This is my first day.”
After seeing her outside my office, I had every intention of finding her, determining what she was doing in the neighborhood, and then somehow coerce her to leave before Cash – or any of the other men – saw her. I hadn’t been in her presence five minutes, and I’d altered my plans. Her round ass, narrow waist, perfect tits, and remarkable scent convinced me getting rid of her wasn’t the answer.
I wanted to fuck her into a coma. Afterward, I’d find a way to convince her to ride her bicycle back to wherever she came from.
“Are you here permanently?” I leaned forward. “In this office?”
“Don’t worry,” She grinned. “I’m fixing the door.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “What?”
“Is that what you meant?”
I looked at her as if she had two heads. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You said this office. Like you couldn’t believe I was in this particular office. It’s a really cool office, so the only reason I could think that you’d say that was because of the door. It’s pretty jankety, huh?”
If she was going to be working in the building beside our clubhouse on a permanent basis, the door was the least of her worries.
There were very few assurances in life. If she worked next door to the clubhouse, however, a few things were certain. Sooner or later, Cash would see her. When he did, he would recognize her. From there, it would get ugly. That much I could guarantee.
The ugly part. It was inevitable. I needed to convince her to fuck me before she ended up in a dumpster with a bullet between her eyes.
I glanced at the door. “It doesn’t fit the frame very well. My guess is that you’ll need to replace it.”
“They just replaced it.”
“Have them replace it again. There’s not much that can be done to adjust a steel door.”
“I’ll get them to come take a look at it.” She rubbed the back of her hand with her fingertips. “I like the eyeball tattoo, by the way. It’s pretty cool.”
I sighed silently. “Thanks.”
She twisted the loose lock of hair around her index finger as if it were a nervous habit. The corners of her mouth curled into a grin. “What do you do?”
“Pardon me?”
“Don’t take this wrong, because I like them. A lot. But I always wonder when a person has so many tattoos. Where do you work?”
“I’m an entrepreneur.” I relaxed into my chair and crossed my arms. “Of sorts.”
“Really? What kinds of risks do you take?”
“Excuse me?”
“Risks. An entrepreneur takes risks. What kind of businesses do you have?”
“I’ll invest in anything that makes me money.”
“It’s tough for me to invest in anything,” she said with a laugh. “I lost my job six months ago. Until I found this one, I was flat broke. Well, I’m still flat broke, but at least there’s promise of income.”
I wondered if the job she lost was the one at the bank. I needed to get our conversation back on track, but curiosity got the best of me.
“What happened with your last job?”
Her gaze dropped to the middle of her desk. She shook her head and then looked up. “I worked at a bank. It got robbed. After they reviewed the recording of the robbery, they said I didn’t follow the bank’s protocol.”
“Robbed?” I straightened my posture. “Like, robbed? While you were working?”
“Uh huh. Robbed. Gun in my face, the whole enchilada.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
I did my best to act surprised. “That’s insane.”
“I thought the same thing. I hadn’t worked there for six months. It was my first real job after college. Assistant manager.” She gazed beyond me, shook her head, and then met my gaze. “And, really. Who robs banks?”
I refrained from answering, deciding that pushing the conversation in another direction was better for us both. “You said you didn’t follow protocol. The bank has a protocol you’re supposed to follow? During robberies?”
“Yeah. We’re not supposed to resist.” She shook her head and shrugged. “They said I did.”
“Did you?”
She grinned. “Maybe a little. Not really. The guy was wearing a Kim Jong Un mask, and I wasn’t sure he could hear me, so I kept repeating myself. They thought I was being argumentative. And, I may have cussed at him. And threatened him. Then there was the entire gunshot thing.”
“Wait a minute. A what mask? And he shot at you?”
“Kim Jong Un. The Supreme Leader of North Korea.”
“The guy with the hair?”
“The hair and the attitude.” She wrinkled her nose and then leaned forward. “Do you think guys like that have, you know, little dicks?”
I coughed out a laugh. “Guys like what?”
“Guys with the big attitudes. I think big attitude equals little dick.”
If she was right, Cash’s cock would be the size of a peanut. Her theory was amusing. “It’s possible.”
“I think it’s probable,” she said. “Highly probable.”
Her personality was proving to be as – or more – attractive than she was. I leaned over the edge of the desk and locked eyes with her. “What about the gunshot thing? What happened there?”
“He shot at me.”
“Who?”
“Kim Jong Un. He told me to shut up, and I didn’t. I was trying to distract him, so I could give him the packet of money we’re supposed to give them when we get robbed.”
“The dye pack?”
“No. Bait money. It’s money that we’ve logged all the serial numbers down. If they get caught with it or spend it, it’s easy to trace.”
“So, the Supreme leader of North Korea was onto your plan?”
“Obviously, it wasn’t his first bank robbery. He pointed the gun at me and said, ‘Leave that stack over there, sweets’, and he nodded toward the other drawer. I tried to slip it in there anyway. That’s when he shot at me.”
I decided to make her aware of Cash’s theory on the incident. “Maybe it was an accident.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The barrel moved before he shot.” She pointed her index finger at the center of my face, and then quickly moved it to the side. “Boom!”
I was shocked that she picked up on such a thing. “You noticed that?”
“I watch a lot of Netflix. You’d be surprised what you can learn from NCIS.”
If she was right, Cash’s accident wasn’t an accident at all. It was intentional. I stroked my beard. “Interesting.”
After deciding Cash’s accident was nothing of the sort, I looked her over. She twirled her hair innocently and gazed beyond me. I took a quick glance into her blouse’s cleavage. Her voluptuous breasts hung heavily into the cups of her bra, heaving with each breath she took.
My mind jockeyed
back and forth between figuring out a way to get rid of her and devising a way to keep her around long enough to fuck her. In a matter of seconds, my cock began to rise against the worn denim of my jeans.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I said, hoping that the change of subject matter would lessen my level of arousal. “It sounds awful.”
“It’s not that big of a deal. It got me here, didn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” I studied her, and then faked having an epiphany. “Are you the girl that chained the bicycle to the rack this morning?”
She smiled. “That’d be me. Why?”
“I own the building next door, and I saw someone ride up this morning. I just put two and two together.”
Her eyes went wide. “You own the entire building?”
“Primarily for business reasons.”
“You don’t live there?”
She was too smart for her own good. “I do, but I’m starting renovations. I need a place to stay for six months or so. I was considering uptown, but if there’s something here, I might be interested.”
She pulled her desk drawer open and removed a ring of keys. “Would you like to see it?”
I glanced at her breasts, and then met her gaze. I didn’t want to see it. I’d seen it before. Multiple times.
I wanted to shove her full of dick. Doing so in her office wasn’t the best of ideas, but fucking her in Preston’s loft was a fabulous idea. I stood and motioned toward the door. “I’d love to. I’ll follow you.”
6
ANDY
Sex on a stick was standing so close to me that I could reach out and touch him. Overflowing with anxious energy, I unlocked the door and gestured into the open space. “Go right ahead.”
The apartment was over two thousand square feet of living space. The concrete floors had been stained to resemble brown marble, and the walls were painted an off-white. In one corner was the kitchen. In another, a large bedroom that overlooked the street below. The remaining floorspace was open, giving the tenant the freedom to decorate it into whatever he or she chose.
He stepped into the center of the room and promptly turned around. From head to toe, he looked me over, taking his sweet time to do so.
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