I looked hard in Declan’s face, not understanding.
“I mean, is there anything you want to tell him or ask him now? You’ll not see him again.”
“Really?” I had kind of known it all along but still it took a moment for me to take it in. It was there from the start, but so long as I didn’t look at it directly I could pretend that it was something else, or it wasn’t really there. Or that I didn’t know.
I stepped forward, “Then yes, there is,” and I slapped his face hard with my open hand. “That’s for the lousy, selfish, brutality that you call sex,” and I slapped him again, “That’s for the beatings,” and once more, “And that’s for all the times you sneaked off to fuck that little slut Kylie when you thought that I didn’t know.”
“Wha-what do you mean, she won’t see me again?”
Liam’s voice was low, “How many ways are there to read it, blubberman?”
“Okay, okay. It’s a shakedown. Alright, I’ve got money. But you knew that, right? What do you want?”
Declan sounded weary, “We just want to do the job that we came here for.”
“Oh, right. I get it. I ask you how much the first half was short, you tell me, I double it and then double it again. Would that be about right?”
“No.” Liam said slowly, “You ask us whatever the hell you want. We don’t tell you, then we take you away and do our job.”
Hollis was trembling. It reminded me of how he’d made me feel, cowering in the corner of a dark room, time and again. It didn’t give me much pleasure to see him that way, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t give me any
He said, “It’s alright. I mean it. You tell me how much you want. Say what you want in total and I’ll double it.”
Declan asked me, “Are you going to mind us taking your husband away, ma’am?”
“Now?”
“About now, yes.”
“Could you wait about fifteen minutes?”
“Sure we could. Why?”
“I have a hair appointment. I’ll be in the salon down on Main Street with half the women of the town.”
A cruel grin stretched across Declan’s face. I almost came. “So,” he said, “you’ll be all alibied up?”
“That’s right.” I was impressed by how calm my voice was, by the calmness I felt, thinking of sitting in the salon, acting like nothing in the world was wrong. That was something I’d done plenty of times, but for completely different reasons.
Liam asked, softly, “And then will we have to worry about what you’re going to say?”
“Depends.” I said. “On whether you’ll both be here when I get back from having myself pampered and beautified.”
Declan sounded like a cat that just spotted a bowl of cream. “You look pretty pampered as it is.”
“Are you going to be here?”
“Sure.”
“Then you’ve no need to worry about what I’m going to say.”
Declan said, “We’ll wait ten minutes while you get to your appointment, then we’ll go for a little drive.”
“The three of you?”
“That’s right, Mrs Cullen.”
“And you’re coming back?”
“Yes, Mrs Cullen.”
“All of you?”
Liam and Declan were silent. There it was.
Chapter Thirteen
LIAM SAID, HE’D drive, “Declan,” he told me, “You get in the back with our boy there.”
Hollis sat in the back. On the way there, Hollis told me, kind of confidentially, “I know that this is about the money, alright. I get it. I’m sorry.” And he said, “Look, I saw you looking at Courtenay.” And he held up his hands, “If she’s what you’re into, a woman like that, hey I won’t judge you.” And he leaned a little closer. “Why don’t you let me go. I’ll give you a nice bag of cash and, if you want, take her with you.”
He saw the way I looked at him, but I think he misunderstood it. “Doesn’t matter, man. Take her. You can do what you like with her, you know?” and he winked.
The barn was on a ridge, no-one around as far as the eye could see.
As we stepped into out of the sun I told Liam, “I’m feeling a bit personal about this one.” He gave me a nod.
He said quietly, “After, we’re going to have to go back and see about that lovely little bundle of fun.”
“You mean the wife?”
He nodded. “We’ll have to do something.” Then Liam laughed as he asked the man, “Will you be brave to the last, Hollis?” It wasn’t a very nice laugh.
I told him, “I don’t think he will, Liam.”
“He’s hardly been brave from the first, has he, Declan?”
“Nope. Nothing you’d really even call ‘bravado,’ I wouldn’t say. A bit of bluster maybe.”
Hollis’s face drained white.
The last one, the one with the petrol and the pills had been Liam’s, and now Hollis was mine. I’ve never been one for all those theatrics, all the setting up and meticulous planning. All I want is to get the job done, get gone. Get outside a drink and inside a wriggling beauty.
He saw me coming with the baseball bat. He moved, but I swung it wide and low to connect in a wet crunch with his knee. You can duck your head out of the swing of a bat, swerve your body even. Moving a knee out of range is harder, and Hollis didn’t make it.
Supposed to have been a football star. Quarterback, offensive team captain and all. From a distance, he could maybe look like he was wearing the padding, but as soon as you saw him move the illusion would blow away like a puff of mist. And the pain of a smashed knee is a powerful distraction.
He lurched forward and my hand went fast and hard into the doughy flesh of his neck. His eyes popped wide open as I hit his windpipe, and his mouth froze as I squeezed it. It was tough to get purchase through all the flab but after a moment’s strain I heard the gristly crack as well as I felt it with my hand.
Waving his arms at me the dumb lunk was still trying to fend me off. He was dead but he was just too stupid to know it. The only questions now were, how long would he shake and convulse, and could I keep him quiet?
I had a grip on the bent remains of his windpipe and I pinched my thumb hard against my balled fist, snapping the pipe further and jamming it shut at the same time. His thighs shuddered and the gurgle started up in his throat.
His jaw flapped and his arms flailed, impotently trying to beat me away. Like there was any point. Nothing would steer his course around now, he was headed for the big well. He just hadn’t adapted to it. I guess he didn’t know anything much from that point on.
Hidden in a pile of daddy’s money, this doughboy grew up never having to learn one sure thing, and now he was going to escape from his useless life with his learning cherry unbroken.
The club clattered when I dropped it to clamp his nose and mouth in my hand. His chest pumped air and he would have been making an awful squawk if I hadn’t wrecked his larynx. As it was, it was just a loud wheezing sound like a muzzled cow slipping into quicksand.
Still too noisy. I could have put a pillow on his face but it wouldn’t have done much good. Luckily I keep an eight inch spike for emergencies.
I let go of his nose and mouth and pulled the spike out from inside my jacket. It’s a hell of a whack to get it through the ear and into the brain. You need to be accurate, as the skull’s pretty thick around the ear.
The other problem is, you’d think that with an eight inch rod going into a man’s brain that he’s going to be dead right away. Turns out, it’s still amazingly likely that he can survive. Less likely if you give the spike a vigorous stir, though.
One moment Hollis was wheezing, waving his arms and writhing like a salmon in a net. One hard jab with the spike then a clockwise gouge later the light went out of his eyes. From then on Hollis was just waves of trembling and limp flesh.
If you’re unlucky with the spike, it’s pretty easy to hit a major blood vessel in the brain, then you’ve got a gusher. Fo
rtunately I got it right with Hollis and he just let a out little dark crimson trickle into his ear. A piece of art, if I say so myself.
He fell onto his side on the wood floor, still twitching . That would go on for thirty seconds or more. The nervous system fights to resist the inevitable. At that point, though, Hollis had most definitely left the building.
We’d scoped out a silo by the farm buildings on the way into the little town. It would have been for Hollis’s intended victim, but it would do the job just as well for the man himself.
All that remained now was to clean up and then for the two of us to decide what to do about his gorgeously plump little wife.
Chapter Fourteen
IT WAS A comfort when Liam’s arm rested on my shoulder as he told me, “He’ll not bother you any more, Mrs Cullen.”
Declan sounded serious. “Only we weren’t expecting you back quite so soon.”
“I wanted to be sure and see you. Before you left.”
Liam said, “Ah, now we have a problem, Mrs Cullen.”
He came and stood close behind me. Close enough that I felt the bulge in the front of his pants. Tight, hard and hot. Pressed against my skirt. Against the soft cheeks of my ass. He leaned down and said, “You could be a witness, Mrs Cullen,” into my ear. My skirt rode up. Tightened around my hips.
Now very close in front of me, Declan said, “We can’t leave a witness.” I was trapped in between them.
Liam’s breath was hot as he leaned down into in my hair. “We don’t,” he said, “Ever.”
The scents of the two men filled my head. An insistent throb in my wet panties made me squirm. My hips tilted and rocked back and forth. The two men pressed nearer. Squeezed me between them.
My voice was scratchy. “No need.” I said.
“How so?” Declan’s voice sparkled with amusement
“Don’t leave me,” I reached my hand up to press on Declan’s chest. The hard thrum of his heart weakened my knees as I said, “Take me. Take me with you, I mean.”
“Is that what you mean?” Declan had that sarcastic smirk when he looked past me at his partner, “Do you think that’s what Mrs Cullen meant, Liam?”
With Liam pressed even tighter up behind me, it was getting hard to breathe. “No,” he said “I don’t think that’s what she meant. Not at first when she said it.”
Declan was so near now that my breasts squashed against the crisp linen of his shirt. His dark, sweet scent excited my nose. My nipples were hard and sore and they scratched against the inside of my bra.
His hand went to my throat and I gasped. His other hand was on my thigh. I peered for his eyes through the dark shades. His bulge throbbed hard against my stomach. I bit my lip.
He lifted my face towards him, with his fingers around the back of my neck and his thumb pressed up at the point of my chin. My lips parted and my tongue moistened them.
I rose on my feet. My breath was clogged in my throat. From behind, Liam began to lift my skirt.
The sound of a chainsaw echoed from the woods. I always hated the buzzing rattle.
Declan pulled me nearer. The ridge in the front of his pants pressed and rubbed against my blouse. My knees shook and wanted to give way. Liam held my sides, stroked down to my waist, then he cupped the cheeks of my ass and squeezed. A sigh squeaked out of my throat.
The two hard men had me where they wanted me. Where they could do whatever they wanted with me. I could be made to do anything, anything at all. Pressed between them, I was loose and light-headed.
Thoughts jumbled. Images of what could happen. What I wanted to happen. I had been held so long under Hollis’ hand, kept under the rod, that the sense of freedom set my imagination wild, like a caged animal seeing an open door.
Caught between the two ruthless, powerful criminals, there was very little I could do to protect or defend myself. They could take whatever they wanted. For me, I would have no choice but to submit to their wants, to whatever awful desires they might have.
For all the time that I’d been married, I hadn’t wanted a man. Not really wanted one, not once. Now I wanted two men, and I wanted them more than anything.
Declan’s voice rumbled and I felt the vibration through his hard abs. It tingled against my chest and made my trapped breath rise. He said, “We could, you know, Liam. Take her to a Hilton.”
As Liam spoke and I felt the resonance through the cheeks of my ass, I could hardly even focus on what he said. “How do you think this lovely little housewife, this respectable lady member of the community would take to having our depraved and base desires forced upon her?” I was so wet that my scent invaded the air, “Could she endure being used like a whore?”
My panties were drenched and spilling out to the tops of my thighs. A gasp dragged itself up my throat.
“By the both of us, Liam, the two of us at the same time. Could she take the ridges of your pulsing girth into her wet throat while my meat stretched her hot pussy wide?”
The bulge of Liam’s cock shoved against my ass. “Could she take one in the front and one in the rear?”
“I would love to see the look in her eyes while I buried my cock between her luscious tits.”
Their hard bodies pressed me so hard I could barely breathe. Both of their cocks twitched against me. The heat felt like it would burn through their clothes and mine.
“So,” Declan’s voice was thick, “Should we risk another hour here in Blankville, or should we get the three of us into a Hilton, pronto?”
Chapter Fifteen
LIAM DROVE AND Declan sat up front with him. I was in the back. “You’d better stay down,” Liam told me, “Keep behind the seat while we put some distance between us and your former home.”
“Won’t one of you keep me company?”
Declan looked across at Liam. Liam’s lips pursed as his jaw tightened, but he let a smile crinkle around his eyes and he gestured with his head towards the back.
Declan wasted no time climbing into the back. “Now, remember what Liam said, Courtenay. Get down, like a good girl.” I quite wanted to slap him again then.
From the edge of my vision the town that I knew and every awful thing slipped backwards and into the past. The few cars there were on the road were just ordinary people going ordinary places dragging their ordinary lives along behind them.
My old life was over. It had been a cocoon. I was emerging, reborn, transformed and new.
There was a quiet in the car for the next couple of miles. I hadn’t particularly noticed it until Declan’s cell phone trilled and all three of us jolted at the loud intrusion. He looked in the mirror at Liam as he fished out the phone and opened it to read the text message.
“Our lord and master?” Liam asked without waiting.
“Who else?” said Declan still looking down at the text. “A candidate in Bedford Hills.” He put the phone away.
Liam’s eyes widened, “Do we know anyone there?”
“Well, if we don’t then we be needing to widen our social circle pretty fucking pronto. He’s not sounding all that whimsical or relaxed about it.”
“There’s a surprise. Is there a time?”
“Sure. The same time it always is. A S A P.”
They both looked at me. Through the mirror, Liam asked me, “Do you know anyone in Bedford Hills?”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s in Bedford,” Declan said, “Westchester County.”
“It’s the New York State maximum security women’s prison.”
A spontaneous laugh rose in my chest. I thought they must be teasing. Telegraph poles flashed by the windows as I said, “She won’t be going anywhere in a hurry then.”
Liam looked at Declan again. Liam’s head turned as he said, “That is something. You’re not wrong there.”
The sardonic smile was still on Declan’s face. He was making fun of me and I didn’t know how and it still made me want to slap him. I lunged forward and kissed him instead.
His arms
drew me close, wrapped me and enfolded me. He stroked my hair, my body. His breath ignited me. With my hand on the back of his neck I pulled him to me. I grew and came alive in his embrace. While our mouths got to know each other, my other hand was on his thigh.
Soon his cock snaked along under his pants and stretched to introduce itself to my fingers. His fingers had found the buttons on the front of my dress and were beginning to undo them.
Two Hitmen: A Double Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Lawless Book 1) Page 5
