The Deeper Game (Taken Hostage by Hunky Bank Robbers Book 3) (7 page)

Good price, then.

She led us to a hallway lined with doors, eventually stopping at one that was covered with cartoons that looked like they were cut out of a newspaper. Most of them were about mountain lions.

“He’s a panther guy,” she explained, “but he knows birds. You have to know birds as a panther guy because panthers eat birds.”

Thor seemed amused by that.

The door was opened by a wiry, outdoorsy looking kid who appeared to be no older than sixteen. “What’s the blood on this?” he asked, examining the feather through the baggie.

“We’re running it. Pig’s blood, we think,” Thor explained. “It was left as a prank, so to speak.”

The guy put the feather under a microscope. “Huh. Not…entirely common.”

“I need everything interesting you can tell me about it.” Thor pulled out a wad of twenties and shelled out $300 to the panther guy and another bunch of money to the woman who found him for us.

“This is really generous,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You need your answer in a hurry or something?” the panther guy asked. “I’ll have to run a very specific round of tests on this one. How does seventy-two hours sound?”

“Can you give it to us in the next forty-eight hours?” He slapped a few more bills onto the table.

The panther guy smiled. Nothing like doing business with bank robbers.

There was no sign of Zeus or Odin when we got home. But on the upside, no package on the front step.

“Pull out your piece,” Thor said as we stepped out of the car. The guys liked to call their guns pieces.

I pulled my silver pistol from my purse; Thor had his Sig pointed down by his leg.

“From now on, we clear the place all around,” he said, “and clear every room before anything else. No surprises. You know how to do this.”

“Yup.” We’d been training.

Together we headed around the outside of the place, through all the shrubbery and scrub trees that grew on the rocky terrain around the house, a one-story rambler that was two-stories in the back due to the hill. We crept around the tiles of the lower patio, around the sunken hot tub, which was covered at the moment, and past the rustic outdoor shower.

The wind blew fiercely, shifting Thor’s bright blond hair all to one side as the sun flashed against the intense dark of his gun. Between him looking like a Viking Rambo and me with my silver revolver and platinum hair, creeping after him like a mountain goat on high heels, I’m sure we made quite the picture. Luckily, the foliage was thick enough that our neighbors couldn’t see us unless they were really scrutinizing.

We slid in the back patio door and went from room to room, always with our backs to a wall and guns out, ensuring each was empty.

By the time we’d cleared the farthest bedroom, we heard a crash up front.

I stiffened.

Another crash. Like something breaking.

Thor and I exchanged glances.

“Should we sneak out the back way?” I asked.

He frowned. “The God Pack doesn’t run,” he said. “Steady and smart,” he said. “Come on. You take low, I’ll take high.”

This meant that we’d appear in a doorway when he gave the signal, me crouched, him standing, both our guns pointing in.

We crept into the side hall. My pulse raced as another crash sounded. Somebody was trashing the place! I caught Thor’s blue gaze. His jaw was set, and he held the gun pointed upward in front of his face. He wasn’t an agent by training like Odin and Zeus, but a life of vicious takeover robberies tends to give a guy certain skills, let’s just say.

We reached the entrance and he nodded. We spun in. I crouched and pointed just in time to see Odin, arms crossed, watching Zeus hurl a vase at the fireplace.

It exploded into a shower of shards.

“Christ!” Thor stood.

“We’re home, honey,” Odin said.

Zeus spun around, green eyes shining as though he were possessed. He still had his blue HVAC contractor jumpsuit on, but even a bulky one-piece couldn’t hide the angry flex of his muscles. “Somebody has the gall to fucking threaten her? Some motherfucker
threatens
her?”

“Oh, they’ll wish they hadn’t soon enough,” Thor said. “Any location on Bolo?” he asked, wincing as Zeus drove a fist through the wall.

Odin looked on grimly. “No location on Bolo. Yet.”

Thor grunted and holstered his Sig, and I slipped my gun back in my purse, feeling a little freaked out about Zeus, who pulled his fist from the wall and punched again. Why weren’t they stopping him?

Suddenly he swung his gaze to me. “Baby!” Zeus stomped over to me and wrapped me in his strong arms. He smelled like sawdust, motor oil, and man, I hugged him back, pressed against his massive chest, feeling the rapid rise and fall of his breath. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he rasped, kissing my hair. “I didn’t mean it.” He pressed gentle hands onto my cheeks and looked into my eyes. “You okay?”

“Of course.”

“God damn.” He kissed me, and suddenly it was like a kiss with his whole body, meaty hands roaming and holding me everywhere, as though he had to touch every inch of me to ensure I was okay. He moved to planting feverish kisses on my cheek and neck.

“I’m okay,” I whispered, enjoying his warm hands and lips on my skin. “We’re okay.”

“This guy goes down,” he growled, pushing me up against a wall, kissing me, mauling me. It was unspeakably hot to be totally taken over by him in this state.

“I know,” I said.

He forced my lips open in a bruising kiss, invading my mouth with his tongue, his heat, his lips, grinding the back of my head against the wall.

“I know you will,” I said again, holding onto his rock-solid waist. Part of me was scared by his brutish protectiveness.

And part of me wanted him to take me wild.

With a groan he lowered himself slightly and pressed the outline of his rock solid shaft between my legs, thick and hard as a fist. My belly tightened as he bore upwards, pressing himself into my sex, humping relentlessly.

“I have to…” He panted between kisses, seeming to forget what he was going to say.

“Yes,” I whispered, clinging onto him, riding him as the electricity between my legs mounted. “Everything, baby—bring everything.”

“I need to…” he moaned, practically fucking me right through my skirt. “If you like these clothes…”

“Do it,” I whispered.

He stilled just long enough to grab the sides of my blouse and rip it asunder, pulling the stray pieces off me like tissue paper. Feverishly, he yanked my bra down, letting my breasts pop up, one of which he took into his sucking, panting mouth as he demolished the waistband of my skirt, stripping me the rest of the way with harsh efficiency.

The snaps on his jumpsuit clacked as he tore it clear off and rid himself of his underwear. “Yes,” I whispered as he came back onto me, flattening me with his heat and bulk. He kissed and nuzzled my neck, abrading my skin, setting my libido on fire.

Somewhere nearby I heard the clink of glass and then the sound of a bottle cap coming off a bottle. Odin, or maybe Thor, signaling we had an observer.

Fuck, yeah.
I nearly came right there.

A thick, meaty finger slid into my crotch. “Be ready, baby,” he gusted. “Be ready.” It was more a prayer than a command. Because he so didn’t want to wait. Maybe he couldn’t.

“Fuck me so hard,” I whispered as he plundered me with his finger. I grabbed the back of his neck. “Take me right here. I’m crazy wet for you,” I added, stating, what was no doubt, quite obvious to him.

Two firm hands gripped the bottoms of my thighs and he lifted me with a gust of breath and pressed me against the wall, kissing me.

I wound my legs around him and reached down to take his huge cock, wrapping my fingers around his steely shaft and pressing the bulbous tip of his cock into me. He sighed and drove into me the rest of the way, filling me mercilessly.

“Yes. Fuck me.”

At first he fucked me slow and strong, all full of pent up emotion. It was all the sweeter knowing somebody was watching me be completely taken and pleasurized, like the watcher was fucking me a little, too. Thor, I guessed. I could sometimes tell who was watching by the way their eyes felt all over my naked skin.

Zeus drove into me, holding me, owning me. I grabbed on.

He breathed in his rhythmic pant—
uh, uh, uh
.

“Everything,” I whispered incoherently, meaning what I wanted and what he was and maybe a million other things.

He began to go harder, pistoning me into the wall, filling me with a dark, sparkly pain that spiraled the pleasure up to crazy heights until I almost couldn’t stand how beautiful it felt.

“God, Zeus!” I cried out as something fell off a nearby shelf and shattered on the floor. On he went. More glass stuff fell off and then my mind exploded apart in a wild orgasm that spun on and on.

“Goddess,” he cried out, thrusting into me anew, crying out, and finally stilling.

Odin’s phone rang.

We all stood by while he had a conversation that consisted of grunts and a thank you. He clicked off. “Bolo’s at IHOP on Clister Avenue.”

“Load up, we’re going to the IHOP,” Zeus said, stomping out of the room.

Odin opened the gun cabinet and strapped on an ankle holster. Thor got out a double shoulder holster.

“I’m going, too?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Odin said. “Hell if we’re leaving you alone. What if he’s not there? We stay together until this threat is handled.”

Zeus returned in big black boots and cargo pants and a black T-shirt, short brown hair still mussed from sex. He looked hot and scary.

“Hey,” said Odin, who was wearing the same thing. “You make us into
fucking-g
twins?” It was kind of a joke. My guys were always wearing T-shirts and cargo pants. They were very into cargo pants because of all the shit they could put in the pockets.

“Come on,” Zeus said, not in any kind of mood for humor.

Twenty minutes later, Thor and I were waiting in the back seat of the SUV, which was parked in front of the International House of Pancakes just off Santa Monica Boulevard. Its steep chalet-style roof and giant wall of windows afforded a great view of Zeus and Odin storming into the place.

“There he is. Guy in the Dodgers cap at the middle table,” Thor said.

I spotted him. The place was busy. Dinner rush. It was kind of like a silent movie, watching Zeus and Odin walk up. Watching the terrified cringe form on the face of Bolo, unmistakable even from outside.

“He knows he’s fucked,” Thor said. “He thinks Zeus would have no problem shooting him in the face right there in the restaurant. Zeus wouldn’t do that, of course, especially not in front of kids, but that’s the rep that Zeus has. He’s not above exploiting it.”

“I don’t want some guy hurt if it’s not him. I mean, creepy proposition, fine.”

“Don’t worry,” Thor said. “They’ll figure it out. This is their thing.”

Bolo rose. The three of them were talking. Bolo gesturing.

“‘
I’m innocent
,’” Thor said. “That’s what Bolo’s saying. Look at his hands. His shoulders. ‘
I know nothing
.’”

“Then you
fucking-g
prove it,” I said, taking Odin’s part.

Thor smiled.

“Isis is so beautiful,” Thor said, playing Bolo’s part now. “I lost my mind when I said that thing about watching, but I didn’t send the box.”

I snorted. “You prove it or the clouds will
fucking-g
weep as we gouge out your eyes with a small, shit-covered stick.”

“Odin would never say that,” Thor said. “A shit-covered stick.”

“I know.”

“Bolo will try to prove his innocence, though,” Thor said.

“Guilty until proven innocent,” I said.

“Man insulted you mightily,” Thor reminded me.

We watched Zeus walk Bolo away from the table. Odin flicked a bill onto it and followed.

“Here is your
fucking-g
money,” I whispered.

They headed out the doors and across the parking lot. Bolo was a big guy, but he was dwarfed by Odin and Zeus, who both stood well over six feet. They seemed to be heading toward our SUV. I wasn’t sure how I liked the idea of actually having to talk with Bolo, considering his indecent proposition.

Zeus came around, pulled open the driver’s side door, and got in. Odin opened the passenger side door and shoved Bolo in. His hat fell off onto his lap.

“Eyes on the front,” Odin said, getting in and squishing him to the side. “You don’t get to look at her.”

“I didn’t fucking leave anything,” Bolo said. “I was in Vegas until the morning. I was just back today. Thor—”

“You’re not dealing with Thor, you’re dealing with me and Odin.” Zeus started up the truck. If you’re telling the truth, I’ll find out.” He peeled out of the parking lot.

I felt a little sorry for Bolo. You could practically smell the fear on him. Was this the kind of man to leave a threatening package?

Twenty minutes later, we were all traipsing up to Bolo’s long-term room at the Hampshire Hotel. Bolo swiped his key card and swung the door open.

The place was a sty.

Odin sat Bolo on the couch. “Babysit him. And Isis sits here.” He indicated a chair across from Bolo, which was pretty much the last place I wanted to sit. “And if you so much as look at her, Thor will break your fingers.”

“How about if I sit here?” I indicated a chair off to the side.

Odin growled his grudging assent, not in the mood to argue. “Be grateful for her benevolence.”

Thor pulled out his Sig and set a foot on the arm of the couch, gun in hand, looking every inch the mercenary himself, while Odin and Zeus looked around. They were looking for the paper, the markers.

“Ask Double D,” Bolo said. “He was with me.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Odin said. “Double D never lies.”

Zeus grabbed a pizza box and opened it up. Empty except for crusts. He smelled a crust.

“That was from before I left,” Bolo said. “I swear! You can call PizzaMiza.”

“I don’t need to,” Zeus said, smashing it between his fingers, creating a small stream of crumbs that fell down to the floor. “Wednesday.”

“Yes! Which is when we left. See?”