Page 22 of The Hard Way (The Kinky Bank Robbers #5)

Chapter Seventeen

I turned onto the county trunk road, and the old ski jump came into view. “There it is!” I said to Odin. Not that I needed to.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Odin said.

“What?”

“What? It looks like a rollercoaster made by drunken clowns!”

It did look kind of dangerous. Even from a mile off, the construction looked superrandom, with boards crisscrossing here and there.

I sped the car down the dip, as we used to call it, the road like a ribbon tracing the base of a bowl.

Trees blurred by on either side as we headed toward the abandoned ski jump, which was basically a rural ruin at this point, standing in the middle of an abandoned park.

A mile up and I pulled onto the shoulder next to a half-crumbled shed.

Carefully, I drove around to the back of it.

“The cops used to troll up and down this road to catch kids coming out here to drink and climb that thing. It’s morning, but just to be safe…”

We got out, and I took a look from the road to make sure the car was hidden. It was warm for April. A perfect day for a hike .

“Come on.” I set off on the path, which was really grown over and a bit mucky from a recent rain. “What the fuck,” I said. “Are kids not coming out here to get drunk anymore? What is wrong with the youth of today?”

Odin said nothing. He was still really off from his fight with Zeus last night.

The four of us had had an awkward breakfast at the table with the Texans as well as Margie, who I’m sure thought I was utterly depraved, what with the sexual demands I apparently made on my three employees.

After breakfast, Zeus and Thor had set off to case Hank Vernon’s place. I’d suggested Odin and I visit here. He was a little growly about it, but nobody was letting him anywhere near Hank at that point.

We emerged from the bramble into the partial clearing around the jump, which rose up to roughly the height of a five-story building. Up close you could see that some of the wood supports had rotted away, hanging like earrings from other wood supports.

The old chain link fence was still around it, but the authorities had posted giant KEEP OUT! DANGER signs every few feet.

“As if it wasn’t attractive enough before,” I said.

“You were actually climbing this with skis not two years ago?”

“It looks sturdier when it’s covered with snow.” I pointed at the field in front of it. “It’s overgrown now, but people would actually clear it. It would be this snowy landing spot.” I smiled over. “What?”

“Snow’s hard when you go at it from any kind of height.”

“I wasn’t the only one who used this thing. There were other people. I’m not crazy.”

“Did those other people come out here alone?”

“Probably not,” I said.

“That’s not thrill-seeking, Isis. It’s a death wish.”

“Come on, let’s climb it.”

“Are you fucking-g crazy? ”

I turned to him with a mock frown. “You’ll stay down here?”

He cast his eyes up.

“There’s steel supports,” I whispered.

“And I trust that?”

“You can trust it. We’ll go shake it and test it. Come on!” I jutted a toe into the chain link fence and climbed right over like the little trespasser I used to be. I certainly had come a long way in the property crimes department!

I headed on in, happy when I heard the clink of Odin jumping the fence behind me. I went to the base of the structure and pulled out my gloves. “Did you bring yours like I told you?”

With a dark and utterly hot look, he pulled his gloves from his pocket and put them on.

I smiled. We’d had hot experiences with gloves before. But fucking was not what we were here for. We were here for climbing and being away from Hank.

“We’re not going all the way,” I said. “See that platform thingy?” I pointed to a platform roughly two stories up. “There.”

You could see for miles from that perch, but it was about more than the view. It was about perspective. It had always been my power spot, I guess you could say, and I wanted Odin to experience it. I wanted him to be fortified by the possibility and freedom I used to find out here.

I grabbed hold of one of the supports and shook it with all my might. “Seems stable still. What do you think?”

Odin came and inspected it, then walked around and pushed on a few places I wouldn’t have thought of testing. “Yeah, that’s stable enough.”

I started to climb. “You have an engineering degree I don’t know about?”

“Actually, yes,” he said from below.

“Whaaaaat? Are you serious?” I looked down. “You have an engineering degree? ”

“Mechanical engineering.” He grabbed a horizontal board and hauled himself up below me.

I continued on. “Wow.”

Halfway up, my muscles were starting to feel it. I was out of shape for this. Finally I reached it and pulled myself up.

The platform was metal lattice with wooden boards over most of it, except where they were rotted away, allowing a view of the structure and the ground below.

I brushed off some leaves and acorns, careful to aim them away from Odin, who was still coming up. It was a good perch, well supported, unlike the top, which, admittedly had been a questionable place to climb around on, even two years ago.

Odin arrived, and I moved over to make room for him.

“There used to be a rail around this. In the olden days, I think people would stop off here on the way to the top,” I said. “Or maybe people who chickened out up top came back down here to get their shit together. While other people took their turn.”

He stood up. “Wow.”

I rose up next to him and gazed out the rolling hills. This was the view I loved, a view that stretched for miles, trees all brown with a mist of brilliant green—the budding of the leaves. The sky was a vivid blue.

“Wow,” he said again.

My heart expanded a little that he liked it. “Amazing, huh?”

“I never thought of Wisconsin as pretty,” he said. “It seemed like just cornfields. But this area—”

“It depends on where the glacier went through in prehistoric times,” I said. “The glacier flattened some stuff out and made the soil nutrient-dense, but it left places like this hilly.”

“So many trees.”

“We have a hell of a lot of trees. Or I should say, they have a lot a trees.”

“This place is still yours, still part of you.” He traced his finger along my forearm, up and down, tracing a feather-light design.

I loved when he touched me sweetly like that.

He was usually the one bossing the others, delivering on the dark, sexy drama.

It was easy to forget how tender he could be.

“When I used to come here…it wasn’t a death wish, Odin—not at all. It was more of a life wish. Like somehow, doing this, getting up all of that speed, it was about touching something greater.”

I looked over at him, expecting him to be still taking in the view, but instead he was staring at me.

I smiled. “What?”

“Because it showed you that you could fly.”

It was a startling thing for him to say, such an Odin thing, and so fucking true. I’d been a girl trapped on a sheep farm, longing for something more. With every breath I took in, now, I could taste that old longing.

And here I was, two years later, sitting with one of the men I loved more than anything.

It would feel great if not for the dark reality at the edge of it all.

What if we couldn’t solve this mystery? My guys hadn’t said it, but it wasn’t hugely likely that they’d find an amazing clue in Hank’s home.

Hank was a crafty man. He’d probably thought things through really well.

I’d learned to fly, to soar, but I’d let my sisters fall. And maybe Odin, too. Letting him torture and kill Hank would hurt Odin more than it would hurt Hank. I don’t know how I knew this; I just knew it with every fiber in my being. If Odin went dark now, we might never get him back.

“What thoughts, goddess?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

I shook my head, feeling like if I started talking I might start crying.

Odin put an arm around me and pulled me back against him. He spoke into my hair. “I’ll get your sisters out of this. One way or another. ”

“I don’t want you to go dark. I won’t let you.”

“You can’t stop me, can you?”

Helplessly, I gazed out at the valley, so sharp and sad with beauty. “Odin. I mean it.”

He put a finger under my chin and turned my face to his. We gazed at each other for a wildly long time, and then he kissed me, softly, his lips like butterfly wings brushing mine. The kiss took my breath away. “I love you, Ice. There’s nothing I won’t do for you.”

“Except you can’t do that .” I pulled away and sat.

He squatted down to my level and kissed me again.

My whole body felt warm and good when he kissed me like that.

He settled in next to me and pulled me onto his lap so that I was straddling his legs.

Again we kissed, this time harder and longer.

His fingers felt good in my hair and sparkly on my neck.

I shoved my hands under his sweater and enjoyed how warm he was.

I felt like I was in high school again, making out by the ski jump, all the pleasures of excitement and discovery.

We kissed on and on until I pulled away.

“Why does this feel like the wildest thing we ever did?”

Odin’s smile sparkled. He reached up and took off his glasses—slowly like I loved.

I straddled him, rolling against his erection. He felt huge and hard, like a bowling pin, though obviously he wasn’t that big. Odin was the perfect size. Odin was always perfect. I rolled on him again.

“Stop!” he whispered.

I froze.

“Move again like that and I’ll explode.”

“Oh, looks like the leather-padded tables are turned,” I joked. “You can see what it’s like now. Maybe I’ll sexually torture you some more and not let you come.”

And then there was this moment where neither of us wanted a game.

Like this need, this desire, this knowledge passed between us.

“Or how about not.” I stood up, looming over him. He reached up and started unbuttoning my jeans. I pushed them down along with my panties and stepped out of them, and then, just for the hell of it, I peeled off my own shirt and sweater, so that I was utterly naked before him.

His gaze turned warm. “You like being naked up here.”

“I like being naked with you. I always want to be naked with you.” I meant it in every way possible, and the warmth in his eyes told me he knew.

He reached up. “Come here.”

I knelt down, straddling him again, kissing him sweetly. He groaned and freed his cock, shimmying his pants off underneath me as I kissed him mercilessly.

“God, Ice. I think I’ve never wanted you more.” He positioned himself at my sex.

“Wait,” I said, stilling. “Go slow.”

“What?”

“I always love this part. When you’re not in, but I feel you there. And I need you in me so bad, and I know you will be. It seems like the most perfect thing. Like a miracle to want you so bad and then have you.”

He rubbed the head of his cock around and around on my clit. I started panting, so turned on.

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I lied. I don’t want to wait anymore.”

He grabbed my hip with one hand and guided himself in with the other. He wouldn’t make me wait. That’s not what this was.

“Oh,” I gasped when he was fully sheathed in me. “Okay, maybe this is my favorite thing.”

“Maybe it’s mine,” he said hoarsely. Slowly he churned and circled underneath me, guiding me loosely as I moved on top of him, sliding our bodies together so deliciously.

I thought he might bite my nipples, admittedly one of my favorite things to have happen when fucking, but instead he held me tight to him. I pulled back just enough to look into his eyes, to gaze into his eyes, this man who’d do anything for me .

And I’d do anything for him.

“I love you,” I whispered, clinging to him, taking him in.

We got into a rhythm that seemed to come from both of us and neither of us, like it came from the stars or from the valleys that stretched out so big and wide.

Eventually he closed his eyes. That was Odin; he sometimes couldn’t go past a certain point, couldn’t let you see too much.

I loved that about him, too. He shifted and hit a different part of me.

It was like he was spearing me all over again. I groaned with the pleasure of loving him, moving along with him until I felt my orgasm building, and I could barely wait.

I opened my eyes.

“No waiting, goddess. Take what you will.”

But I was already going, spinning, stars shattering in my head. I felt him vibrating and pulsing inside me. He cried out, gripping my back, pulling me into him so tight that I didn’t know where my pleasure ended and where his started.