“The man who murders people for a living is casting aspersions on my morals?”
I winced at this statement. Liam did not.
“I would bet my number is pretty modest in comparison to yours, Crixus. How many did you kill in the arena for the emperor’s pleasure?”
So he was a gladiator. When had they gotten around to that conversation?
A brief ripple of unease passed across Crixus’s stony face. “I did what duty demanded.”
“As do I,” Liam said.
The air between them could be ignited by less than a spark. “So who’s for drinks?” I asked with false brightness.
“I sure am!” Rolly came up behind Crixus and stopped short. His eyes widened into saucers as he looked at Liam, and then me. Chubby fingers sought a walkie talkie no longer clipped to his belt. Finding nothing, he searched the bar for someone to alert.
“Rolly, it’s okay,” I assured him.
Mixed emotions competed for control of Rolly’s face. Fear. Disbelief. Panic. Anger.
This last was a surprise.
Indignation hardened Rolly’s blue eyes to glass. “But Dr. Schmidt, he kidnapped you! He should be arrested!”
“I didn’t press charges, Rolly. It was all just a big misunderstanding. Right, Chris? You were there.” I sent a warning glare to Crixus who looked like he might be on the point of backing his chubby protégé.
“That’s right, Rolly,” Crixus said grudgingly. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
Rolly backed away from the coat closet like dog begrudging a bone he couldn’t keep. “Sure. Okay. Really I just came to ask you a question, Chris. But it can wait.”
Crixus shot an irritated glance at Rolly. “What?”
“I was just wondering if the midget on our table was part of your plan. I mean, he’s getting a lot of attention and all. But not from any of the ladi—er women you were pointing out earlier.”
“Fuck!” Crixus hissed. “Frizzy McWhipple must have woken up!”
“Felicitous McWhiskeybottom,” I corrected.
“Whatever. Gotta go.” The crowd parted for Crixus as he stalked toward the bar.
“Felicitious McWhiskeybottom?” Liam parroted. “What kind of name is that?”
“A leprechaun name,” I said. “And are you really in a position to judge, Liam Whatshisface?” As he had explained shortly after escorting me out of my office with the muzzle of a gun to my spine, Liam’s mother had been more interested in acquiring chemical inspiration than she was in keeping track of her brood of assorted children.
Or their fathers’ names. Whatshisface had been her idea of a joke when presented with the birth certificate to fill out.
“Not judging,” he said. “It’s just not a name you hear every day. He your next case then?” When his gaze fixated on my breasts, I glanced down to find myself sporting an impressive set of high beams. A result of the wet dress chilling against my skin, or so I told myself.
“One of them,” I said, glancing in the direction of the bar.
“The security guard too?” Liam raised a dark eyebrow at me.
“Not for long.” I scanned his face to monitor for any changes that might present as a result of my next question. “What about you? Las Vegas is a hell of a long way to come just to let me know yet another crime boss has my number.”
“I don’t think you understand how serious this is, lady,” he said, using something of an unofficial term of endearment between us. “Whoever left that note is still around. Following you. Watching you. Waiting. Once you’ve been given a target with a deadline, you stick around.”
And then I understood. Liam wasn’t just guessing. He knew. He was describing exactly what he did when he had a target.
Gooseflesh shrank my skin. Air vanished from my lungs as the walls pressed in around us. “Where’s the coat attendant?” I asked, looking directly into eyes only a breath lighter than charcoal.
Liam glanced downward, where I saw the edge of one black wingtip poking from the bottom row of coats. “Relax,” he said, seeing the horror freeze my face. “I didn’t kill the guy. Just think of it as a power nap.”
“For God’s sake, Liam!” I hissed. “You can’t go around rendering people unconscious just so you can talk to me!”
“Would it help if I told you he was a pedophile?” he asked.
“Is it true?”
“It could be.” He shrugged. “People are pretty sick, you know.”
“I’m leaving now,” I said.
I only made it a couple steps before hands seized my hips and dragged me backward. In a blur of moment only incrementally slower that Crixus could muster, my back was shoved against the wall, pinned by Liam’s long body. I felt certain he could feel my heart slamming against the ribcage he held captive.
He bent to glide his lips over my temple, down my jaw. “You’re right,” he admitted, the words tickling my skin. “Las Vegas is a long way. It’s not just the Westies I came to warn you about.”
Words were hard to conjure amidst the maelstrom winding around and over me. “What else?” I finally managed.
“Me,” he growled. His lips found mine in the darkness, and with their searing heat came the memory of every whispered demand, every guttural moan he had drawn from me.
If Crixus conquered, Liam persuaded. Each expert movement of his tongue, his fingers, his body was a missive designed to elicit agreement. He absorbed every detail, every sigh, every moan, and adjusted his approach.
His tested my lower lip with his teeth before following it with his tongue.
“Not fair for a therapist to have lips like these,” he mumbled against them. “How’s a man supposed to pay attention to the words coming out of them when he can only think about what he wants to slide between them?”
The insinuation softened the joints in my hips and knees.
A hand slipped under the hem of my skirt, his fingers following the edge of my panties. “I like this dress,” he said, nipping my neck. He shoved his palm against me through the fabric, adding heat to the already sensitized flesh beneath. “I’ve thought about fucking you at least five minutes out of every seven.”
A moan escaped my lips as he began a rhythm that kindled fire in my veins.
“Should I fuck you right here? Against this wall?” He ground his hips into my body, casting in my flesh the indentation of his ardor.
Conversations floated past as other patrons made their way toward the restrooms. We could be discovered at any moment. Fire crept down my thighs at the thought. “We can’t,” I whispered.
“We can.” His fingers pressed into my flesh, a mere shadow of the depths he’d already known. “You’re wet. I can feel it through your panties. And those hazel eyes go golden when you want it.”
“Liam,” I panted. “I—”
“The rainbow ends here, you ginger fuck! No one talks to my bitch!” The half door to the closet burst open as two bodies fell through it. In the flurry of limbs and fists, it took me a moment to notice the body on top was about a third of the size of the one on bottom.
When the redheaded midget whinnied and pawed against the chest of his combatant, recognition dawned. The leprechaun. Apparently Cupid wasn’t the only one who could change size at will.
Flick shook a mane he didn’t possess and bucked, kicking his abbreviated legs as the man beneath him tried to right himself.
“The kelpie!” I shouted, recalling Flick’s description of a magical river horse.
When an errant non-hoof jammed into the prone man’s crotch, he grunted and doubled up in pain. “Get him offa me!” he pleaded.
Liam brushed past me and pushed Flick into my waiting arms. “Shh,” I hummed against the small, hot body wrapped in a restraint I had learned in my summers volunteering in a ward of violent psychotics.
My gentle movements were a direct contrast to Liam, who grabbed the man rolling in pain on the floor and hauled him up by his shirt. I could feel his impact against the wall through the souls
of my shoes.
“You fucking pussy!” Liam roared. “You don’t pick on things smaller than you. You understand me? You want me to show you how that feels?”
Glassy eyes bugged out as Liam’s hand tightened over the man’s throat.
“Liam!” I insisted. “Stop!”
The chubby body slid down the wall and congealed in a puddle on the floor. Liam kicked the puddle’s ribs and a gin-scented rainbow of vomit splattered the carpet.
A gun emerged from Liam’s pocket and found the spot where Flick’s opponent’s head met his spine. “I’m going to be watching you. You’re going to be extra nice to everyone around you. And so help me, if you so much as piss the wrong way, you’ll beg me to kill you around a mouthful of your own dick. Now get the fuck out of here.”
The blubbering form crawled out of the door and disappeared.
The wave of arousal rocked me—and Flick with me—half a foot backwards. “Where were you when I was in school?”
Liam’s chest puffed like a bellows. “Which grade?”
The leprechaun in my arms began to snore, his body shrinking. His clothes resized themselves as he did, to my surprise. “All of them,” I said.
“Let’s just say that by the time you were in seventh grade, anyone who fucked with you would have gotten a ride home in an ambulance.”
“I’d like to ride you home.”
Liam’s wide-eyed expression could have charmed the knickers off a nun. “What did you just say?”
“I said, I want—”
“What’d I miss?” Crixus stumbled into view, lips swollen, shirt unbuttoned, zipper half open. The sheen on his neck and jaw suggested a close encounter of the lip-gloss variety.
“Really?” I asked, shifting the sleeping leprechaun to a more comfortable position. He was small enough now to stretch out across the length of my forearm. “We’re here breaking up a fight between a leprechaun and some barfly and you’re off screwing the waitress?”
“I didn’t screw the waitress,” he said, dragging his finger over where his heart—or whatever resided in the chest of a demigod—might be. “Swear to the gods.”
“Well that’s progress, at least,” I muttered.
“I screwed her friend,” Crixus added.
Irritation needled up my spine. “And you expect me to believe what you said earlier?”
“What exactly did he say earlier?” Liam asked, his brows lowering over his dark eyes.
Crixus leaned into the doorframe and folded his arms across the expanse of his chest. “You didn’t mention our bargain to him, Doctor?”
“What bargain?” Liam asked. “What is he talking about?”
“That’s not important,” I said. “What’s important is that we—”
“It’s important to me,” Liam interrupted. “I need to know what you owe to whom if I’m going to protect you.”
“I’m afraid that position has already been filled,” Crixus informed him. “The good Doctor has engaged my services in that capacity.”
Liam glanced from me to Crixus.“You fucking this guy?”
“No!” I objected. “Absolutely not!”
“Not yet, she means,” Crixus cut in.
“You agreed to have sex with this walking mattress in exchange for protection?”
“No.” I glanced down at Flick, who nuzzled into the crook of my elbow. “It was for looking into the note.”
A volume of judgment was scribed into Liam’s silence. I felt a momentary pang of guilt before remembering the wingtip in my peripheral vision. “You kill people!” I reminded him. “For money! How is that not a million times worse?”
“Not always,” Liam said. “Sometimes I just scare them. Speaking of which…” he flicked his eyes over to the shoe, which was beginning to twitch. “We should probably make our exit.”
“On that we agree,” Crixus said.
“You want to take him?” I asked, looking down the little body draped over my arm. His legs pedaled in his sleep, perhaps galloping across Ireland’s emerald fields in a simpler time.
Crixus held out a cupped hand.
I gently slid Flick into it.
With a tenderness contrasting his open arrogance, the demigod slid the sleeping leprechaun back into his pocket and patted it. “Safe and sound,” he declared.
I couldn’t help but compare Liam and Crixus as they shouldered ahead of me. Exactly the same height they were, which made appreciating their glutei maximi in stereo not only possible, but mandatory. Where Crixus was broad and muscled like a titan, Liam’s concealed strength would be felt before it was seen.
An asset in his line of work, I suspected.
We found Rolly stationed at the table just as he had been before I had excused myself to see to my dress. Somehow it felt like it had been days since that moment.
Crixus and Liam sat opposite each other, leaving me to take the place across from Rolly, who glanced at my cleavage and returned his eyes to the table.
“Any luck?” Crixus asked.
Rolly picked up his glass, pinched his nose, and took a sip. He looked for all the world like a bulldog as he shook his jowls and snorted. “Not yet,” he reported.
“Maybe you should stick to beer, for the time being,” Crixus suggested.
“I would,” Rolly said. “But it gives me the burps something awful. And sometimes, the gas—”
“That’s good.” Crixus held up a hand against any further revelations.
“This table just gets better and better,” drawled Destiny, licking her over-glossed chops as she drank Liam in. She lowered her tray to her cleavage height. “Get you something?”
“Tap water,” he said, draping an arm around my shoulder. “Room temperature. And she’ll have a double scotch,” he added, glancing at me, his nostrils flaring for the briefest of moments. “And just because she’s wearing a cocktail dress doesn’t mean the fabric can drink. Think you can land them on the table this time?”
Destiny’s face fell like someone had let the air out of it. “Sure.”
“Nothing for me,” Crixus said. “I’ve had my fill for the moment.”
She re-inflated a fraction under his appreciative gaze. “Back in a flash.”
I found myself looking at Liam with undisguised wonder. “How did you know?”
“Mopped a few drinks out of the carpet in my day.”
My mind constructed images of the boy he must have been. Dark-eyed and earnest, cleaning up after his drug-addicted mother and her innumerable friends and acquaintances. It had been some of these friends who had introduced him to a career in extra-curricular tasks.
“Beginner’s luck,” Crixus muttered.
“Say, that’s pretty good,” Rolly commented. “You think you could teach me to do that?”
Liam’s expression said not even if I had a million years and access to a direct neural information download system. His lips said, “sure, buddy. We’ll work on it.”
For the second time in one night, my heart fell victim to a painful contraction. Could words really do that?
Crixus rolled his eyes. Parlor trick. Can’t you see the murderer only wants what’s in your pants?
And you? I countered. What do you want?
His full lips spread into a satisfied smile. Everything you have. And then some.
I re-crossed my legs to send cool air to my heated flesh below the table. You just screwed a complete stranger.
And you would have fucked a hit man in the coat closet if you hadn’t been interrupted by a fight. We’re more alike than you think.
When Destiny arrived this time, I found myself grateful for the intrusion. “Double scotch,” she said, setting the glass down in front of me. “And a tap water.” Her red-lacquered nails lingered on Liam’s glass a touch longer than they had on mine.
“You’re sure you don’t need anything?” she asked, eyeing Crixus.
“I’ll let you know if I do.”
In the time it took Crixus to wink, I drained the scot
ch.
A jet of fire burned its way to my belly, tunneling sunlight through the cloud of confusion occupying my insides.
“What’s that?” Rolly’s voice bounced through my head like a rubber ball.
“What’s what,” I asked, my voice husky from the smoky liquor.
“On your napkin.” One thick, stubby finger pointed to the white square on the table in front of me.
Conscribed in the amber circle left by my glass were handwritten words. I read them three times in my head before my voice sent them across the air. “I changed my mind. You have twenty-four hours. See you soon.”
*****
“No one is going to fucking touch you.” Liam’s voice floated back to me as we hiked up the stairs to my apartment. I followed behind him with Crixus bringing up the rear. Mostly, I suspected, because this would afford the perfect opportunity to look up my skirt.
And he did.
Black panties, Doctor? I wouldn’t have thought you the type.
Further threats left Liam’s lips, dissolving into night air pregnant with spring. And which head is responsible for generating these thoughts?
The one that keeps me from fucking you right here on the stairs.
I would never consent to that, I fired back.
Oh, you would. And it would embarrass you how quickly.
“Okay?” Liam said. We had arrived at my door, and a question had been asked.
“I’m sorry. What was that?”
“I said I’m going to make some calls. Try to find out who they have on you. That’s the first step in trying to clear you. Until then, I’m not leaving your side.”
“Me neither,” Crixus added.
“Really, I’ll be okay,” I said, glancing between them. “You don’t have to do this. I have at least twenty-two hours and thirty-three minutes before they kill me.” Such had my life become that I measured awkwardness against death.
“That’s not a chance I’m willing to take.” We had arrived at my doorstep, and Liam held his hand out for the key. “You have no idea what might be waiting for you on the other side of this door.”
“But I do,” Crixus said. “And you won’t like it.”
Instead of handing it over, I slid my key into the lock and clicked the deadbolt open. With the trepidation of a horror movie heroine, I turned the knob and inched the door ajar.
Unlucky: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist Page 5