by Shara Azod
Today seemed to be a day of wanting. Merc wanted the former beauty queen’s products for Stevshark-Sabine Security; the beauty queen wanted Rennes’ attention; and, if Rennes couldn’t have Cayenne Creighton, he’d settle for the presenter’s waist-length blonde hair in his fist and her fire-engine red lips wrapped around his cock. Seven more minutes and the presentation would be over. He’d be a gentleman and give her an hour before calling her to inform her where they would be dining. She wouldn’t say no to him; few women did.
Since he was a carnivore, they’d dine at Red Headed Step Child, the five-star steakhouse in Dallas. From the looks of the size four former beauty queen, she was a salad type of woman. Perhaps he could talk her into something more substantial, like a side of ribeye, as he planned to be balls deep in her by nine p.m. By ten thirty p.m., he’d be back at his downtown luxury high rise…jacking off to thoughts of Cayenne.
His subconscious just had to get in its two cents. You wouldn’t have to talk Cayenne into eating meat. Of course he wouldn’t. Cayenne was southern; her people were cattle ranchers. Thus, you had to talk her into having vegetables with her meat, as she was a New York strip with a side of New York strip, garnished with New York strip, type of woman. He didn’t mean to compare every woman to Cayenne—and find them lacking—but it was an inherent part of his makeup ever since meeting the feisty Texan. Rennes had enjoyed far less pussy than he could have gotten since meeting that woman.
It was a good thing that the technical side was Merc’s scene, as Rennes hadn’t bothered paying attention. Nor did he bother to check his phone, which was probably full to overflowing with texts. Only his sister would text him thirty times in thirty minutes. He’d get back to her later…much later. Considering Revelry’s penchant for wanting ridiculous shit, and his penchant for acquiring it for her, it wouldn’t kill her to wait for five minutes…or five days.
Seeing everyone rise, he smiled for the first time that day. He hated playing dress up almost as much as he hated playing nice. The beauty queen looked at him from under that sheath of flaxen hair, reminding him that she was available. He leered appreciatively, and then watched as she sashayed out of the office. She put every bit of oomph she had in her walk.
It might’ve been impressive if she’d had more than a teaspoon of ass. Unlike Cayenne, who had the kind of ass that filled out denim real nice. He quickly shut down those thoughts and forced them back onto the blonde. Just a few more minutes to wrap things up with Merc, and his night of debauchery could begin. He could practically hear his unruly subconscious smirk. It’s going to suck, just like every encounter with every woman who isn’t Cayenne does. He’d tell it to shut up if it’d do any good.
Tessa Cheyney, the only female security expert in their firm, had just ushered everyone from the office when the unmistakable sound of “Sweet Home Alabama™” split the air.
“Incoming!” Tessa yelled, showing her complete lack of tact and give-a-damn for the fallout that was most likely forthcoming. “It’s one minute past five, so I’m out. Deuces, wenches!” she yelled showing her complete lack of respect for both his and Merc’s alpha maleness. Of course, she slammed the conference room door on her way out.
Rennes would’ve said something in response, but he was busy dealing with the fact that his balls were in the process of shriveling up, like they always did upon hearing the sound of his sister’s ring tone. His own personal ring tone for Revelry was the “Imperial March”™, considering his sister had that Darth Vader-ish™ quality about her.
However, Merc had a dark sense of humor, and had programmed the Lynyrd Skynyrd® hit into the company’s phone system. Despite being from Naples, Florida, and attending some of the most prestigious universities in the world, Revelry sounded like hill people, probably because she spent so much time in Alabama with their maternal grandparents.
“You want me to get it?” Merc asked. “Or let it go to voice mail?”
Everything in Rennes’ soul wanted to punk out and tell Merc to let the call go to voice mail. After all, this wasn’t just anyone calling. It was his sister—the undisputed Empress of all Fuckery, which meant that there were only two possible reasons for the call: absolute mayhem or something semi-apocalyptic in nature. The fact that he hadn’t been to church in a month of Sundays didn’t stop Rennes from sending up a prayer. After all, it was the season. Please let it be mayhem.
“Put her through.”
“Rennes!”
He involuntarily cringed…just like every time he heard Revelry’s harsh accent.
“There’s a dick in the dishwasher! I repeat—there’s a dick in the dishwasher. This is not a drill. There’s a dick in the dishwasher!”
Rennes had graduated from West Point and from Ranger School. He’d participated in two wars, and a handful of conflicts. He was known for his composure. Despite all of that, he just wanted to slither into unconsciousness. What the hell?
“Do you hear me, Rennes?” Revelry yelled.
All of Dallas probably heard her.
“I repeat. There is a dick in the dishwasher. You need to get over to Cayenne’s before there isn’t a dishwasher, or a head left on the body of the guy stupid enough to put it in there. And you may have to help with disposal, if you know what I mean.”
Everyone knew what she meant, because Revelry was not good at being inconspicuous or subtle.
“It’s go time, Rennes!”
The only thing worse than the fuckery his sister created was any type of fuckery that involved her best friend. Cayenne might conceal her crazy with layer upon layer of sophistication, but it was just below the surface. From the desperation in his sister’s voice, Cayenne was about to unleash her crazy on all of Texas.
“Can’t you call someone else?” Rennes asked, despite knowing the futility of even voicing the question.
“I could, but the Pope’s kind of busy, being it’s Advent and all. The President’s busy running the country. And the US military is busy kicking ass and taking names. That leaves you, Rennes. I’d go myself but I’m in Palo Alto doing surgeries and shit. Buck up, and stop pretending you don’t have a thing for her. You know you do, but you’re just being a pussy about it. Now pull on your big-boy drawers and go save my friend. We have a trip planned to Turks and Caicos for the New Year, and that can’t happen if she’s executed for killing a bunch of people.”
Deciding to ignore the bit about pretending not to want Cayenne, he responded to the most ridiculous of Revelry’s statements. “Did a bunch of people put a dick in her dishwasher, or just one guy?”
“One guy, but once you kill one person, you kind of just have to keep going. It’s like trying to eat just one chip.”
Not for the first time did Rennes wonder how in all that was holy someone gave Revelry a license to practice medicine. The pool of available trauma surgeons must have been lower than a motherfucker if they let Revelry have a scalpel.
Fuccccccccccccccccck, he had neither the time nor the constitution for this shit. Knowing his evening was shot all to hell, Rennes asked the question that just begged to be asked. “Is there a body that the dick was attached to?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. What I do know is that there’s a dick in her dishwasher, and Cayenne is losing her shit. Get there before she does something crazy.”
Before she does something crazy? Rennes had known Cayenne since her junior year of undergrad. However, he only had to meet Cayenne one time to know that not only had she probably already done something crazy; she was probably out inventing new kinds of crazy, because that’s what she did. Cayenne was the kind of woman who gave overkill a run for its money.
“Now, Rennes. Go save my best friend or face my wrath.”
Rennes never figured out why Revelry thought she was the boss of him, especially since he was the older sibling. Maybe it was because he always did what Revelry wanted…eventually. Sighing, he answered in the way that women had been answering men for decades.
“Fine.”
; And just as men took that “fine” and ran with it so they wouldn’t have to engage in meaningful conversation, Revelry did the same. “Great. Glad we cleared that up.”
Not for the first time did Rennes think he needed to marry Revelry off to some unsuspecting sucker, so she’d be a whole ’nother family’s problem. He looked over at Merc.
“Don’t even think about it, Rennes. I’d be forced to kill off your entire lineage. So just leave that alone.”
Merc’s mouth said one thing…as did the tic in his jaw whenever he was in the same zip code as Revelry for more than five seconds. Despite that, Rennes believed Merc was softening up when it came to his sister—in the same way that tungsten, which had a melting point of 6192 degrees Fahrenheit (3422 Celsius), softened at room temperature—which was not at all.
Rennes knew he was being a dick, but if he had to suffer, so must others. He might not be able to ever have Cayenne, but Merc could have Revelry…whether he liked it or not.
Chapter Two: Acting the Yule
After earning her juris doctorate from one of the top law schools in the world, Cayenne Creighton knew one thing to be true: she was fixing to make a lot of money. She liked money because it bought shit, like bespoke ice cream and airtight alibis. She liked entertainment law, because she liked to be entertained…in style…and for free.
She was a sports agent due to an accident. Cayenne was pretty sure that Spell and Rage Slayer, co-owners of the premier sports agency in the southeast, and according to them, her sports agent sanseis, wouldn’t appreciate being called accidents, but there it was. She wasn’t about to hold back the truth simply because she’d interned with them between her second and third year in law school.
One moment she was enjoying sugar cookies with a glass of crisp white wine that was the creation of an outlaw vintner named Ozella Crown. The next moment she was enjoying her second bottle of wine—possibly because she was stunned by the fact that someone had named their child Ozella. Sometime between the start of the third bottle and the next morning, Cayenne had apparently agreed to take Zinoviy Vityaz, a seven foot, two-hundred—eighty—pound Russian basketball player, as a client. She had to have been drunk, as she didn’t even like basketball.
Cayenne was all set to tell Zinoviy to go fuck himself the moment he stepped through the doors of her office, but she didn’t know Russian, so she said the next best thing: “Drago!” It wasn’t his first name, but that’s what she was going to call him.
Not missing a beat, he responded. “If he dies…” He didn’t finish the line, but shrugged to indicate a complete lack of concern for the outcome. That was obviously a sign from the universe that she was meant to keep Drago. If that wasn’t enough, she had two good reasons to back her up on her decision. First, she did need someone to do random lines from Rocky IV®—which was in her opinion, second only to the original Rocky®, in terms of best movie ever. Revelry was okay at ad-libbing lines from the movie. When she rocked that haircut that clearly showcased the drunkenness of both her and her stylist, Revelry looked a little bit like Ivan Drago® from the hairline up. However, Revelry sounded like she was about to kick off a hoedown, which kind of ruined the effect. Drago, on the other hand, didn’t look a damn thing like Rocky’s nemesis from the neck up, but from the body down, yeah, he could totally be Ivan’s doppelganger. That is, if Ivan Drago had about twenty more pounds of muscle and five more inches of height. Plus, he actually sounded like a Russian, being Russian and all. He’d lend credibility to their role play.
The second reason Cayenne was keeping Drago was because he was a big motherfucker with the body of a brick shithouse, the aura of an OG, and the eyes of a guy who just might’ve spent some time in the Soviet army infantry. While she didn’t currently have enemies, she had Revelry as a best friend, which meant that having a posse full of general badasses was a requirement.
Over the years, Cayenne had made a handful of decisions that would go down as some of the best in her life. There were so many, but among the best were: being born and shit; stealing Revelry as a best friend; not murdering the Slayer sisters; getting to know Ozella Crown, and thus scoring a lifetime of free wine; and keeping Drago Vityaz as a client.
So far, her life had been like the loop-de-loop part of a rollercoaster; a hair-raising adventure. She could thank Revelry for ninety percent of that. Every year they did something they’d never done before, and their lives had been all the better for it. The past five years had been dotted with a slew of changes. She’d learned Russian, the rules of hockey, and an understanding for why the Slayer sisters hated that shit. She’d gained fifteen pounds, which resulted in her going up two sizes in jeans, and a full cup size in bras. She’d also developed nostalgia for being able to buy bras that weren’t fifty percent cotton, twenty percent stretchy stuff, and thirty percent steel. Having E cups sounded great in theory, but she set off metal detectors on a regular basis.
Her journey had taken her from Texas Hill Country to Naples, Florida in the summers during undergrad and law school; from there to Palo Alto so she and Revelry could keep the shenanigans going; from Palo Alto to Atlanta; and, from Atlanta to Dallas. The last move was primarily to keep from killing the Slayer sisters who had a nasty habit of plying her with sugar cookies, and clients who played sports she didn’t give two shits about.
Two things hadn’t changed in the passing years. First, Revelry Sabine, M.D., was still the most badassed best friend in all of human history. Second, Cayenne still had Drago Vityaz as a client.
Looking at the assortment of hot mess in her dishwasher, Cayenne decided that Drago would still be her client when he was dead because Cayenne was going to reanimate his ass, renegotiate his contract, take a bigger cut of his money, and then kill his beautiful, seven-foot ass again. Drago might be one of her best friends, but sometimes murder was the only way to teach someone basic etiquette.
There was after all, a dick in her dishwasher. To be precise, there was a litany of crap on the upper rack of her dishwasher that didn’t belong any place other than on someone’s dick, or in someone’s cooch or ass. Glaring at that one thing, Cayenne amended her statement. There was shit in her dishwasher that didn’t belong in any place other than someone’s imagination. Drago was so fucking dead.
Dicks in her dishwasher was the kind of shit that happened when she was nice to people. Or maybe this was simply the kind of shit that happened when players were traded from Atlanta to Dallas. Who the hell made a midseason trade in November when the season had just started in October? They weren’t even two weeks into the holiday season, and already the crazy was coming out in droves. ’Tis the season, all right, Cayenne thought as she glared at the red and green assortment of dicks and dick paraphernalia.
To reiterate, Drago was dead. Deader than the deadest dead there ever was.
However, before she could kill him, Cayenne had to get the dishwasher and the assorted dicks out of her house. Good thing she had a sledgehammer, a circular saw, and a 24-inch-long ratchet handle wrench. What she didn’t have was a shotgun.
However, she had the next best thing to a shotgun—Revelry. She’d need to store Drago’s body somewhere cool until Revelry could fly to Dallas and help her dispose of the body. That shouldn’t be too difficult since she already had the saw.
Cayenne wasn’t worried that Revelry wouldn’t help her. She was worried that Revelry would try to convince her to keep on killing whilst helping her. Ever the pragmatist when it came to pure fuckery, Revelry would be all, ‘since we’re already digging a hole, we may as well fill it with more bodies.’ That was reason number one million, six hundred thousand and eight why Revelry was her best friend.
If shit went south, they could just live out their lives in a country that didn’t extradite. Cayenne knew every damn one of the places, being as Revelry had the list tattooed on her arm.
That in itself should’ve given her pause. Instead, it sort of fascinated her, just like damn near everything else that crazy woman did.
C
hapter Three: Spruce’s Wild
Rennes didn’t know exactly what was going on, but he knew one thing for certain about this situation: It probably didn’t begin well, but it sure as hell would not end any better. His suspicions were confirmed the moment he drove up to Cayenne’s home.
There was so much he could’ve said, but Rennes kept it simple. “What in all hell?”
Merc, who had some kind of record for being in the most shit-hole places, shook his head at him. “I got nothing.”
Rennes totally understood. There were pieces of dishwasher trailing from the steps all the way down the cobblestone driveway. Someone would have a better chance at putting Humpty Dumpty® back together than trying to reassemble that dishwasher. In fact, Rennes only knew the metal and bits used to be an appliance because Cayenne was making her opinion known.
“Dicks do not belong in dishwashers!”
They totally didn’t, but then, dishwashers didn’t belong on driveways. Perhaps he’d point that out to Cayenne, when she looked about three notches less crazy.
Currently, Cayenne had that “someone-should-call-Colonel-Trautman-to-save-the-locals-from-her” look going on. She was sweaty, her hair was half out of what was most likely an elegant chignon, there was a smudge on her cheek, and she held a sledgehammer in one hand and a welding torch in the other. None of that, however, prevented his cock from springing to full attention.
Fuccccccck. Now was not the time for this. Actually, never would be the time for this. Cayenne was what his cousins from Alabama called “shonuff fine.” He’d cosigned on that sentiment way back then, and he was cosigning that shit right now.
It didn’t matter that Cayenne now carried some additional weight. Cayenne was some kind of good to look at, but she was the forever kind of woman, and he had always been a right-now kind of man. He liked his conquests easy, and he could testify under oath that there wasn’t a damn thing easy about Cayenne Creighton. If Cayenne was easy, you wouldn’t be so sprung.
