Page 11 of The Most Wanted (The Kinky Bank Robbers #4)

“That’s Len over there,” Thor said to me, indicating the bald man. “High-priced muscle.”

“Huh,” I said.

I felt eyes on me and I looked over to meet Odin’s gaze.

“What?”

Odin flicked his glance at Len.

I widened my eyes. “Stop it!”

Odin slung an arm around me and whispered in my ear. “Imagine if we tied him up. And he’s stern and powerful, but the way we tie him up, he wouldn’t be able to move.”

I rolled my eyes.

Odin drew his lips close enough to touch the shell of my ear, evilly using his knowledge of the little places on my body that always got me hot, and continued, “He’s tied up, and he can only feast his eyes on your skin as we undress you.

All that gravity, caressing your skin with his gaze as we mercilessly use your body for our basest pleasures. ”

I closed my eyes. I could feel my nipples hardening .

“And you know you shouldn’t enjoy it as a stern man watches,” he continued, “but it’s no use, Isis. Eventually you give over to your pleasure, as you always must.”

“Oh, is that so?” I whispered, feeling awkward at how turned on I was, and kind of scared to even look at Len. He wasn’t even my type for watching, but closer than Nico.

“You know it’s true,” Odin said. “You are helpless to us. He, too, would be helpless. And he would watch you give yourself over to us and to the unwelcome intrusion of his gaze,” Odin said. “The stern, heavy, uncompromising gaze, penetrating you.”

I kept my expression perfectly placid, but my breath sped.

“We would put our hands all over you, and you would shamelessly enjoy it as he watched, helpless as the pleasure builds between your legs?—”

I laughed and shoved him away. “You are too much.”

“What’s going on?” Zeus said.

Odin said, “I think Ice would like us to tie up Len and fuck her in front of him and?—”

I gasped.

Zeus had him pressed to the wall before he even finished the sentence.

“—we know now that she likes somebody stern and statue-like,” Odin continued.

“We are not playing that. You understand? Do you?”

What was Odin thinking?

“Gentlemen.” Handsome Jack came out in a black ball cap and a mustache to match. “What can I do you for?”

Zeus let Odin down. “I assume Nico told you we were coming.”

Handsome Jack smiled suavely. “That he did.”

“So you know we’re looking into a certain accident. He says you’d vouch for him being here Tuesday night, all night. Though I can’t say I love that he called ahead to warn you. Makes a man feel like he’s getting something rehearsed.”

“You won’t have to take my word.” Handsome Jack turned and led us through the booth- and fern-filled place to an unfinished back room with pipes zig-zagging across the ceiling.

The floor was brown, and the walls were painted a kind of hunter green with portraits of show horses hung here and there.

Handsome Jack moved around his desk to a computer and hit a few computer keys.

“Tuesday night,” he said. “Four feeds. Take a look.”

Sure enough, the screen was split into quadrants with Tuesday’s date and time stamped at the bottom. He pointed. “There’s Nico.”

The footage showed Nico drinking at the bar alone at 9:09:57 pm. Jack sped it up and we watched Nico drink and do things on his phone while people walked back and forth behind him. A few stopped to talk with him.

“How long do you keep your records?” Zeus asked.

“I back up a couple months,” Jack said.

“Jack’s a bookie,” Zeus said to me. “Sports.”

“That explains the big TVs,” I said. And Len, too, but I didn’t dare say his name.

“Is Nico still playing?”

“Nah. But he made a lot of friends here when he was. He still likes the sports.”

“You do a lot of cash through here?” Odin asked.

“Get in the twenty-first century, man,” Jack said. “You think I do cash? I almost never do cash. Strictly PayPal. Pay taxes and everything.”

“What?” Odin said.

Jack grinned. “Don’t you know? I’m a website designer.”

“What the fuck?” Odin said .

Jack grinned and hit a few other keys and up came a website advertising his services. A Google keyword search was a hundred bucks. Site consult was two-hundred.

“Jesus,” Zeus said.

“When somebody loses big or consistently, I farm out a simple site to my guy in Romania. They actually get a domain and a site. Keeps things on the up and up.”

“This site is sad!” Odin said. “You have flashing shit all over it. Who’s gonna fucking believe you’re a website designer with a site like this?”

Jack snorted. “You should see their sites.”

We got out of there, passing Len on the way out. I could feel the tension rise between my guys, and not about the mystery.

“It’s not going to happen,” Zeus said out in the parking lot.

“It happens if Ice wants it to happen,” Odin said.

“I don’t want it to happen,” I said.

“You just don’t want us to fight,” Odin said. “But you would enjoy being fucked in front of a stern, somber man full of gravity. We’ve established this.”

“Is Len your type?” Thor asked.

“No,” I said.

“But more than Nico.”

Zeus swung into the driver’s side and slammed the door.

I took the passenger seat this time, just to separate Odin and Zeus.

I could see Zeus visibly trying to cool off…

.and failing. He took a centering breath as he shoved the keys into the ignition.

I put my hand on his thigh, feeling shitty for him and the picket fence he’d never get.

He turned to me. “Would you really like that, Isis?”

I wanted to wrap my arms around Zeus, around all my guys. “What I like is all of us happy and in love,” I said.

Thor spoke up just then. “Did he seem too compliant? Like he laid his hands on that a little too fast?”

“Yeah,” Zeus said. “But Nico did call him. And why would he cover for Nico? Nico has no pull with him. And Jack is good with the Galvanos. Everyone knows that.” He started up the car.

“Well,” I said, “you have to rule out the dead ends to find the live ones.”

A ding sounded, and Odin pulled out his phone. “A text from Herk. Shit.”

“What?” I asked.

“Galvano just bought Maria her plane tickets. She leaves the day after tomorrow.” Odin looked up. “Two days.”

“Damn,” Zeus said.

“Don Galvano doesn’t want us to solve this,” I said, feeling outraged on behalf of Herk. “We should run down the wig places around here.”

Odin put away his phone. “Where are we?”

“Twenty-seven-hundred block.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“Tophatter’s is on this side of downtown, and they were held up recently. Wigs and cash. Unsolved. I found it when I was researching. It’s worth a shot. Head north and right at the light, Zeus.”

Zeus pulled out and headed north. The four of us rode in silence, in an unspoken agreement to pretend to focus on the mystery, but we were doing no such thing. The watching thing hung heavy in the air.

I needed to talk to Odin and get him to stop baiting Zeus, even though Zeus had no business making new rules. There was a certain code to how the gang operated, and it didn’t include Zeus making up new rules. But Odin needed to stop pushing the watching thing.

I felt scared, like we were on the edge of a whirlpool that had the power to sweep us away.