The Hostage Bargain (6 page)

Soon we were back on the road, with Zeus driving again, and me in the back with Thor. I felt like I was moving far away from reality, from my troubles. I liked it.

Odin threw us each a small bag of Doritos.

“Ranch,” I said, my mouth watering. “Thanks.” I was ravenous.

“We can’t stop until Chicago. But we’ll stay somewhere nice,” Thor said with a little smile.

“Is that where you’re from?”

“A few ground rules,” Zeus said suddenly. “Don’t ever ask us where we’re from or how we got into this, and you can never know our names. Don’t try to get that information, understand?”

“Okay,” I said.

“We took a leap of faith to trust you,” he continued, “and as you can imagine, it’s not something we would have done normally, just pick up a stranger. But you were in a position to help us and you came through, and that means something. We’ll hold up our end of the agreement by taking down another of your boss’s banks. Right afterward, we’ll send you home with a plausible story that I don’t want to have to work on right now. And we’ll send your cut of the money to you somehow. And if you deviate from the story we develop for you or the rules for the money we set, we’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

The
kill you
made a little twang in my chest. Zeus didn’t say a lot, but his words had serious heft. This wasn’t a man to make empty threats.

It came to me then that he wasn’t a man to have empty sex, either.

“How long until our heist?”

Odin snorted. “
Heist.
”

“It’ll happen when it happens,” Zeus snapped. “You have to be cool with not knowing the future. That is what this life is.”

It sounded like the voice of experience. “And then you eject me?”

Zeus watched the road again, not deigning to answer.

“It’s better for everyone that way,” Thor explained. “The longer you’re with us, the less plausible it will be that you don’t know anything and didn’t see our faces.”

“Right,” I said, feeling suddenly upset at the prospect of being ejected—I’d only just become Isis! And, sure, I worried about my sisters, but I’d been dying on that farm. “It’s just that, as long as I’m away, they won’t take the farm.”

“Don’t you care about people who might be worried about you?” Zeus glared at me in the rearview mirror, which somehow seemed to amplify his disapproval of me.

“Of course I care,” I said.

“Danger, subversion, and Hedonistic pleasures, it’s fun for a while, but at some point you’d hit a low where you feel homesick. You don’t want it to be too late to go back when that happens,” he said. “We’re doing you a favor by dumping you. In the meantime, don’t even think about getting a message to your people. You have to come to us with that sort of thing, and we’ll decide what’s smart for all of us. You think you’ve given the finger to every rule you’ve ever had to follow? You think you’ve seized a week of freedom for yourself as Isis? No. You’ve traded in one set of rules for another. You’ve given up your freedom to the good of the group. We all have. That is how we stay strong. This is our power. It is a power beyond what you can imagine. Do not fuck with that power.”

The silence in the van seemed almost thunderous after he finished this little speech. This was more than a gang. More than bank robbers, I thought.

Also, what was up with the
danger, subversion, and Hedonistic pleasures
bit? Who said that? Who
were
these guys?

Thor’s cheekbones looked slightly pink, possibly from the sun, and he had blond scruff on his cheeks. He looked more like a tennis player than a soccer player, I decided. He said, “As far as you’re concerned, we started our life of crime five hours ago when we hit your bank. We don’t have a past or a future, okay?”

Odin looked back at me. “We’re the fucking hive mind of crime,” he said.

“Like the Borg?”

Thor gave me a heated look. “More like one for all and all for one.”

My breath caught in my throat. “I never thought of that as dirty before.”

He sat back. “This is an ideal time to start.”

I rested my head against the back of the seat as the scenery zoomed by, drowsily wondering what my sisters were doing. Probably entertaining police at the farm. Did they think I’d be ransomed? Maybe I could get a message to them. Zeus hadn’t said I couldn’t.
You have to come to us with that sort of thing
, he’d said.

More scenery zoomed by. I closed my eyes. The next thing I knew, I was face down on the seat with my cheek glued to the vinyl, with a hand gently shaking my shoulder.

We’d arrived.

I pulled myself together and we walked as a group across a parking lot and into the lavishly gold-gilded and palm-treed entrance of the Regal Hotel.

A lot of the money they’d stolen, I presumed, would be spent at the Regal Hotel—I’d never set foot in a place so fancy. Thor and Odin and I lingered in a stand of marble pillars and potted tropical plants in a corner of the lobby while Zeus went to the desk.

Thor and Odin had even put their ties back on. I supposed we looked like a group of business people. Aside from my rip-hemmed mini skirt. They were the businesspeople and I was the businesspauper.

“They don’t need our IDs?”

Thor shrugged. “Nah. We’re special.”

“Gods?”

Odin sat in a posh velvet chair. “That’s right, baby.”

“So we lie low for a while?” I asked. “Is that the idea?”

Thor got a devilish look in his eyes. “That’s one way of putting it.”

My cheeks heated, and I didn’t have to look under my jacket to know my nipples were hardening like two eager bullets.

“I love when you blush,” Thor whispered. “I haven’t even told you what we’ll do up there, and you’re already blushing. This is very good already.” He closed the distance between us, touched my jacket, then my neck.

I shut my eyes—it was like his fingers were magic wands, but instead of fairy dust, he seemed to be sprinkling me with shivers of apprehension. Good shivers. Crazy good shivers.

“Did you have something specific in mind?” I asked.

“Well, it’s safe to say that first, you’ll take off all your clothes,” Thor said.

“Slowly,” Odin grumbled from the chair, gaze cool on me. “Slow and one thing at a time.”

“Is that so?” I said it a little bored, but oh, I loved their dirty attention on me.

“Yes, Isis,” Thor said. “It is so.” He drew closer and kissed me, right there in the lobby, pressing me up against the marble pillar. Every nerve in my body lit up, especially where Thor’s hard cock pressed between my legs. It was strange exhilaration, this sudden, intense contact, and I wound my arms around his neck, enjoying the hardness of his body against mine, glad for the potted plants in the vicinity. Also, I enjoyed the idea that Odin was right there watching.

Thor pulled away. “You know you want to.”

I took a deep breath. I wanted to feel more of this exhilaration. I wanted to feel more of his hard athletic body. As he kissed and nibbled at my neck I made a mental note to ask him if he played soccer or tennis, but then the mental note ripped itself to shreds and drifted away and I just closed my eyes, wonderfully lost.

He whispered in his rough and silky voice, “Say you want to.”

“I want to,” I said. “What was the question again?”

He snickered softly. “Does it matter?”

“No.” I gripped his necktie and looked into his eyes, face heating, pulse racing.

“But to recap,” Thor said, “we’ll tell you when you can take off all your clothes, and you’ll do it. Slowly, or Odin will be extremely wrathful.”

Odin glowered from his chair.

“You’ll bare yourself to us completely, Isis, and you must not try to cover yourself, even if you want to. When we’re ready, you’ll come to us. You will let us touch you everywhere we please. And don’t think we weren’t paying attention to your shameless display in the van. We’ll spread your legs open wide just like that. Wider, maybe, and touch you just as you touched yourself, but more. Far more. Because we have extra hands to use on you, don’t we?”

He paused, seeming to want an answer. “Right,” I said, wondering how many hands. I had the feeling it was just the three of us under discussion here, or would Zeus join in? I very much wanted him to. Or would he watch, a silent mountain of a man with blazing eyes?

“Can you think of how extra hands could be an advantage?”

“Yes.” I breathed.

“And what else do we have?”

Cocks
, I thought. Did he really want me to say it?

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You have such a degenerate imagination,” Thor whispered. “What will we
impart?
What did we discuss in the van? I know that your mind was completely in the gutter, even then.”

I smiled. “Skills.”

“Skills you can’t imagine. You would be shocked. And I have to warn you, we are relentless with our skills. Gods have no shame.”

“
Thor
has no shame,” Odin grumbled from his chair.

He didn’t have any shame. I sort of loved him, right then. Him and his dirty talk.

“And this necktie you’re clutching so hard?” Thor continued. “Can you think of what we might do with that? We each have one, you know. Ties are very strong material. Have you ever been in a position to find out exactly how strong a tie is?”

My mouth went dry. “No.”

“Well, let’s hope that you won’t have to find out,” Thor said.

Odin simply smiled his evil smile. Thor could get a certain mischievous grin, but Odin had an evil, glittering-eyed smile that made you feel like he was gazing right into your deepest, darkest secrets—and lewdly violating each and every one of them.

I realized here that I was still gripping Thor’s tie, knuckles quite white.

I let go.

“Why, thank you.” Thor smoothed it against his chest without taking his blue eyes from mine. Even the way he smoothed the tie was suggestive. Then he brushed a chunk of hair from my forehead and placed a hand on the pillar next to my head. His gaze made me feel naked, and I had the impulse to look away, to stop looking at both of them, like that would cover me, make me less exposed. Yet…I enjoyed it, too. So kept my eyes on Thor, I let myself be pinned by his gaze. Let him know he was pinning me with his gaze—that he had me.

And he knew. It was a total rush.

“A tie has several uses for a squirmy goddess, you know,” he continued huskily.

My breath sped at the tone of his voice; it seemed that it was a rush for him, too, the knowledge of his control. And the idea that in this mad, mad universe of bank robbers and god names, we fit together sexually. I had the sense that he fit with Odin in some way, like Odin was the sexual overlord of him somehow. Even now, Odin was sprawled in a most princely way upon the lobby chair with Thor doing all the talking. How Zeus fit, I had no idea. I imagined him as the silent overlord of everything.

He continued, “A tie is very useful on a squirmy goddess whose body we are using for our
complete and utter satisfaction
.”

Naturally he managed to infuse the phrase
complete and utter satisfaction
with darkly dirty significance. I stood there, pinned like a helpless butterfly to a cool marble pillar in the center of that posh hotel lobby, pinned by his deep blue eyes and his dirty talk.

“Do not forget about the hot tub,” Odin said. “Hot tubbing has its many aspects.”

“Oh, yes,” Thor continued. “Many aspects. Have you spent much time in hot tubs?”

I shook my head.

“You’re in for quite a surprise. But we’ll see what the layout is like. Things sometimes have to flow organically from the layout. We let the layout speak to us. I’m sorry, but there’s not always a lot we can do about it.”

Flow organically from the layout? Let the layout speak? I stifled a grin. “Are we going to fuck or do feng shui up there?”

“Oh, dear,” Odin said. “Sounds like Isis is getting a bit out of line already.”

My blood raced. I swallowed and glanced toward the front desk just in time to catch Zeus striding across the lobby, briefcase in hand. And my impulse to grin fled.

Zeus moved his brutish bulk casually, even gracefully in his fancy bank-robbing business suit. To the patrons clustered here and there I’m sure he appeared every inch the cosmopolitan traveler but it was my gaze he held—he held it because he could, I thought. The press of his silent dominance grew ever weightier as he closed in. But there was something else as well—a cold light in his gaze that felt like accusation. Did he really not want me there? Or was I imagining it? He looked away only when he reached us. “Come on, party people,” he said.

I followed the three of them to the elevators, knees weak.

Zeus punched the button for the top floor and we rode the elevator to our room, like normal business travelers and not three bandits and their hostage about to engage in a wild menage. Or maybe this was how bandits about to engage in a wild menage rode an elevator, all stern and silent before the event. How would I know? I was a raised on a sheep farm.

Odin caught my eye and smiled knowingly. I looked away from him, just stared ahead at the button panel with what I knew to be a dorky expression, trapped in this state of suspended erotic animation. None of us were fucking or even touching, but I was so aware of these men, wound so tight with horniness, even the elevator bell tweaked my nerves.

Then the doors slid open.

Thor set a hand on the small of my back and guided me out the elevator and down the hall to our room.

Zeus shoved the key card in and out of the slot and yanked the door open.

My pulse raced as we walked into our room—Zeus, Odin, and me, followed by Thor.

Or make that, walked into our
rooms
. A mammoth suite really, with two wings of rooms— bedrooms, presumably—and in the center, a posh and rambling living area with velvet and marble furnishings, velvet curtains, and a massive hot tub.

Zeus went immediately into one of the side rooms and slammed the door.

I stared after him. “Is he okay?”

“You have to leave him to himself. He needs to work out and be in his cave a while.” Thor dropped his bags and came to me. “Zeus has his own timetable.” He slid his hands over my shoulders.