by Naomi West
I can barely catch my breath. Maybe he’s not going to take us to Esposito after all? My heart plummets to my toes. Or maybe he’s just not going to take me to Esposito, and he doesn’t care what happens to my father. If my father has any hope of not getting murdered by Esposito, it’s only if he gets his way and I’m there too. I resolutely make up my mind in that second. I don’t care what Kennedy is cooking up in his head. If he takes my father to Esposito, he’s taking me too.
I hear him say goodbye on the phone and then door unlocks from the outside. I slam my eyes closed and make my breaths deep and even, hoping I look like I’m deep in sleep. He pauses next to the bed and I’m worried he’s not buying it, until he just brushes the hair back from my shoulder. I hear him kick off shoes and then clothes hit the ground. The covers behind me are lifted and his weight depresses the bed. He slides neatly into my back, clicks in like a puzzle piece. The cool night air still clings in an aura around him, but it feels nice, refreshing. His hand comes under the t shirt. To my belly, and then upwards, to my breast.
I can feel his thick erection pulsing against my ass. But he doesn’t do anything else beyond that. His hand stays still on my breast. And soon his breaths become even. I can feel his heartbeat against my back. My worries circle my head but soon, even they fall away as I drift into sleep.
***
I wake up the next morning with the sun streaming through the cracks in the blinds. The first thing I think is, God I could use an egg sandwich and a cup of coffee. The second thing I think is, Holy Adonis.
Kennedy is laid out next to me, the sheet pooled around his hips, his chest bare. Though he’s not bulky, the man is seriously built. Dangerous. The slanting sunlight shades the dips and valleys of his muscles. One hand is over his head, gripping the pillow and his face is turned to one side. His hair is rumpled, almost blonde in the morning sun. He looks… boyish. And it alarms me. Last night he was completely dominant. A ruler. Simply someone to be heeded at all costs. This morning he seems so young. Someone so lovable.
Nope. Nope. Not going there. I need to keep my head above water here. For my father’s sake and my own. Step 1: Stop gazing adoringly at the man who fucked my brains out last night. Step 2: Go pee.
I go to slide out of bed, but I don’t get very far. I lift the sheets and look under. I gasp in indignation. This motherfucker tied my left foot to his right foot in the night. I slam the sheets back down. This is insulting. And aggravating. And not hot. Not hot at all. So not hot that I’m absolutely not getting wetter by the second just thinking about it. I huff out a breath. I remember my decision in the middle of the night last night.
I can’t deny the evidence anymore. It’s not going to get me anywhere to pretend that the way he treats me doesn’t turn me on. It does. Completely. So, I just have to accept it, move on, and not let it cloud my vision. I take another deep breath, this one is much more calming.
I hear a deep chuckle coming from next to me and Kennedy is stretching and blinking awake.
“You need something, professor?”
I want to tell him that I need him to shove this rope up his ass. But I also really need to pee. “I need to go the bathroom, if you would be so kind as to untie this motherfucking rope.” My tone of voice is sugar sweet and the words make him grin.
“I sure do love that Cajun accent, Quickdraw,” he chuckles. The man has about a hundred nicknames for me at this point. And it’s not cute. Really not cute. It definitely doesn’t make my heart skip. It definitely doesn’t send a wave of heat through me. Definitely.
He unties the rope, tossing it on the covers, and I’m into the bathroom like a shot. I’m on the toilet and peeing like a racehorse before I realize that I didn’t even take the time to close the door from him. Apparently it doesn’t bother him very much because he saunters in, naked as Adam, and starts brushing his teeth. I’ve never peed in front of a man before, but as he leans forward, studies himself in the mirror, I realize that he doesn’t find this a big deal at all. I guess a man as into the female body as he is, isn’t very easily grossed out.
In a moment, I flush and join him at the bathroom sink to wash my hands. He easily moves aside, giving me the space I need. His eyes watch my every movement in the mirror like a cat watching his own tail.
“I want to go check on my father.”
Kennedy nods and talks around the toothbrush. “I checked him an hour ago, moved him up to the bed. He was doing fine. But if you wanna see for yourself, we can go down.”
I open my mouth, ready to argue my points, but am instantly deflated when I realize that he’s already acquiesced.
Well, that’s fine. I have a list. “And I’ll need to go back to the dig site today. I don’t suppose you even care, but there’s countless priceless artifacts at the site. If we abandon the site, we condemn them to the fate of being pilfered by grave robbers. Additionally, if neither my father nor I show up today, it’ll be cause for my crew to be very suspicious. So it’s in your best interest.”
“Of course,” Kennedy shrugs. “I figured you’d want to. Though I couldn’t give a fuck about your crew or their ‘suspicions’. But we’ve still got some time on the clock, and it seemed like you and your father had really put in a lot of work at the site.” He spits and rinses out his mouth. “You gotta wrap it up today though, we don’t have unlimited time.” He turns to me, and I try to hide my dumbfounded, flabbergasted look from him. One of his hands lands on my shoulder, slides lightly up my neck and comes to grip my chin. “But if you try to give me the slip or tell anyone about what’s going on here, all these little leniencies disappear. You’ll be sedated just like your father. And when you wake up you’ll be halfway around the world.”
His eyes sear into mine and I feel like there’s goldfish swimming in my belly. I nod, but can’t help but defiantly add the last two things on my list. “And I want those assholes removed from my bedroom, so I can have access to my stuff. And I want breakfast.”
A touch of humor mixes with the ferocity in his eye, like a drop of milk into coffee. “Done and done.”
He gestures out to the main room, where I see there’s a platter of food and a pot of coffee. Again, I try to hide my dumbfounded expression from him. He’s a kidnapper who likes rough sex and works for a known mob boss. Why the hell is he being so accommodating?
“And the men in my room?” I ask, though at this point, I’ve worked out the pattern. I am a Ph.D. after all.
“I took care of them this morning when I went down to take care of your father.”
My blood slows, sluggish and cold in my veins. I know I shouldn’t ask, but I’ve never been able to help but to ask my questions. “They’re dead?”
He barks out a laugh. “No, not unless they succumbed to diabetes in the last hour. Did you see the weight on those guys? It was a bitch and a half to get them into the car.”
“Ok,” I say lamely. I honestly have no idea what to say next. I feel like I’m racing over what I thought was cement but it ended up being one big trampoline.
He puts more toothpaste on the toothbrush he’s just finished using and shoves it into my mouth. Just like he did last night. I absently brush my teeth, studying him in the bathroom mirror as he slides some athletic shorts on and starts pouring coffee out of the pot.
Thirty minutes later, I’m fed, washed and dressed, stepping out of my own hotel room in the clothes I’m going to wear to the site. Kennedy leans against the pillar outside my door, sunglasses on, reading a folded newspaper, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. His Yankees cap is back on and it’s alarming how normal he looks. He could easily be taken for some old Joe Schmo from Kansas or Missouri. Except for the fact that he’s smoking hot.
He looks up when I step outside and looks me up and down.
“It’s criminal,” he says, tossing the paper in a trashcan.
“What is?”
“No one should look this hot in safari clothes,” he says.
I look down at myself. I va
ry what I wear to the site, but today, I knew I’d need all the tools at my disposal. So I’m wearing my baggy cargo pants with all the pockets, with something I’m sure to need in every one. And a blue t-shirt. I have a tool belt slung over that, and a khaki-colored baseball cap with a ponytail. “These clothes would not be sufficient for a safari,” I inform him.
He laughs and knocks the brim of my hat up an inch. “Whatever you say, professor.”
He leads me toward the parking lot, but I stop with one hand on the door of my father’s hotel room for just a second. I’d gone in right after breakfast. Kennedy had, in fact, laid him on the bed, where he lay, completely asleep. It had made me sick to see him like that. And honestly, made me feel really confused about Kennedy. Because he was the one who put my father that way in the first place. But then I remembered his conversation on the phone last night.
I was extra confused. Which, as a literal genius and world-renowned archaeologist, is my least favorite feeling. But all I can do right now is take things step by step and gather more evidence about Kennedy. If the time comes for me to figure out how to get away from him, then that’s just what I’ll have to figure out how to do.
I let my hand drop from the door and follow Kennedy, reminding myself that I have another job to do as well. If my father were walking beside me right now, he’d be reminding me of that as well. Even more than finding a way out of this mess, my father would want me to find a way to protect our archaeological findings in that dig site. He’s spent most of the last fifteen years of his life searching for the tomb of Iairos. And a little thing like sedation, kidnapping, and delivery to a mob boss would never get in the way of his ambitions.
The site isn’t too far from the hotel. I’ve walked and biked it. But Kennedy leads me to a brown junker SUV.
“Today we ride in style,” he says, grinning boyishly as he swings open the passenger side door for me.
“Ah, the extremely chic style of 30-year-old upholstery and rotting banana peels,” I say as I sit down gingerly, trying not to touch too much. Especially not the rotting banana peels.
“I said ‘style’ not ‘stylish’. She was all I could find on short notice,” he says, stroking a hand over the steering wheel.
“Well, good thing I had all my shots before I came to Greece.”
He grins and swings the car out of the parking lot with the confidence of a man who’s driven a lot of cars. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen him do something without confidence. He’s a very competent man.
I squirm against the car seat, determined not to day dream about all the extremely “competent” things he did to me last night.
Kennedy smirks at me, as if he knows what I’m squirming about, but suddenly his eyes go very serious. “I actually wanted to talk to you about that.”
“About what?” I ask. All the competence? I think to myself for a second. Wildly wondering just how far his apparent mindreading skills actually extend.
“Shots.”
“Shots?”
“Yeah, you just said that you got all your shots before you came to Greece,” he says, his eyes sharing time between the road and my face.
“Right,” I reply, really not sure where he’s going with this. “But it was a figure of speech. You don’t actually need any shots to come to Greece.”
“Ok. Well, I guess I just wanted you to know that I’ve got all my shots. In a literal way. Not as a figure of speech. No. Wait. Not literally, I guess. Now I confused myself.”
“Once again,” I mutter. “My least favorite feeling in the world.”
“What?”
“I’m confused too!” I toss my hands up in the air in frustration. “What the hell are we talking about here?”
He pulls the car up to the dig site parking lot and throws it in park. He reaches over and flips my ponytail off my shoulder. “I’m clean, Row. Clean bill of health. I’m really scrupulous about that. But I would never put you in danger like that.”
“Oh.” I feel like he’s just handed me a bag of flour. It’s something I have next-to-no ideas what to do with. I just gently set it aside. “Ok.”
He looks at me expectantly.
“Oh! Me too,” I hurriedly add. “I haven’t had sex in a few years anyways, but I got checked for everything last year.”
“Cool,” he says before focusing his attention out the front window. “Now let’s go dig some shit up.”
“No!” I yelp rocketing out of the car after him and grabbing him by the shoulder. “Not you! No. Not on my site. No civilians. No. No..”
He lifts a rye eyebrow. “I take it you don’t want my help today?”
“No,” I say again, vigorously shaking my head from one side to the other. “No, thank you.”
“Hey Rourke!” One of my crew members calls out to me from across the site. “Come check this out!”
I start to move toward him when Kennedy grabs my arm. “Row,” he says, his voice low and serious. “Were you being serious about grave robbers? All your work will go down the drain if you leave it here?”
I nod at him. “Yes and no. If we just all got in our cars and left right now, then yeah. Within a week, the site would be stripped clean. No question. But we’re packing up everything we’ve found today. The crew will take most of it back to the Antiquities Museum in Athens. We’ve arranged for a residency there for the next year. Where we’ll study our finds.” My mind clouds over as I realize that, unlike yesterday, today I have absolutely no idea what the next year holds for me. I gulp down that feeling.
“Or,” I start again. “I guess my crew will study what we’ve found.”
“And the rest of it?” Kennedy asks, completely skipping over the moment where I remembered he’s a kidnapper about to pluck me out of my regularly scheduled programming.
“The rest of it.” My heart plummets. “Well the rest of it will stay buried. No layman could excavate this site. And we’ll make it look good and plundered before we leave. So grave robbers won’t look at it and think ‘jackpot!’, you know?”
“That makes you sad,” he says, tracing the back of his hand over my cheek.
“Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “We didn’t find what we came here to find.” I turn and look back at the site, sighing. “But my father will kill me if I don’t protect the site. Someday, maybe we’ll be able to come back and keep excavating. But not if it’s been plundered. So the name of the game is to tag and bag everything we found and then take up the stakes and make the site look like nothing special.”
I know I’m right. I know that this is the logical thing to do. But the idea of reburying Iairos. The one thing we came to find. Ugh. My father, my poor incapacitated father, is going to have a stroke when he hears about this. But I don’t have an option here. Kennedy said one day. And it’s either listen to him or essentially surrender myself to Esposito.
One of those options turns me on like a light switch. The other makes me want barf into my shoes. I sigh and go to join my crew. Guess which one I choose.
Chapter Ten
Kennedy
I watch her work for hours that day. The methodical, plodding work. The mystical fascination with each object she comes across. The reverence. Christ Lord, all of it turns me on.
She’s got such concentrated attention. I adjust myself under my pants as I lean against my truck and watch over the site. I remember very clearly what it feels like to have that concentration focused on me.
In the understatement of the century, let’s just say that I wasn’t ready for last night. I feel like I’m halfway down the waterslide and I’m not sure if there’s a pool of Jell-O at the end or a pool of poisonous snakes.
I think of that one room in Esposito’s compound where each wall is lined with different kinds of carving knives.
Yeah. If I had to guess, it would be a pool of poisonous snakes.
God. I still can’t believe I’m doing this. I have yet to actually go rogue, but that’s just a matter of buying us as much time as possible
while Dare gets my mom and sister safe and out of the states. He was fucking pissed when I called him last night. I had to explain why they were in danger in the first place. He thought I’d gotten out of the hustle, like the rest of them.
Alessia’s family was a mob family for a long time. A few years back, her dad and her brothers quit the game. They left the states, picked up their roots, took the money and ran. Never looked back. They’re gonna skin me alive for keeping my mob connections live. For working for a mob boss.
Dare cooled down pretty fast, although I don’t know if he’s told any of the rest of them. Alessia, or her brothers, Dante and Fabi. But he let me know an hour ago that he’d landed in New York City. He was headed to Brooklyn now to try and extract Mom and Mara with minimum fuss. I try to think about anything else.
