Take the Heat: A Criminal Romance Anthology

by Skye Warren

  In that moment, I knew I had a choice: I could sit here plying the guy with bourbon until he was too drunk to do anything but lead me out to some dark, secluded spot where I would put a bullet in his brain, or I could have a little fun before I disposed of him. It had been a while since I’d been with another guy, but I loved sticking my cock in a tight male asshole just as much as I loved fucking pussy, and this opportunity was just too good to pass up.

  I reached for my drink, brushing the back of his palm with my fingers as I did so. To anyone watching, the contact would have looked accidental, but we both knew I meant it.

  “Do you want me to see if I can get us a room?” I asked.

  He nodded, and I wondered how many times he’d done this before. I swallowed the last of my scotch and wandered out to the lobby. A brief negotiation with the clerk on the front desk, and I had the key to Room 12 in my hand. If he’d noticed I had no luggage, he said nothing. Maybe illicit assignations were what kept this shabby old hotel in business.

  I returned to Donnie, whose face lit up as I approached. Had he seriously believed I might bail on him?

  “Room 12,” I murmured in his ear. “Give it five minutes, then come up and knock on the door. That way, if there’s anyone here who knows your wife, they won’t realize we’re together.”

  He snorted, and I wondered if he was already a little drunker than I’d given him credit for. “Don’t worry; no one here knows Luanne.”

  But he sat obediently on his stool, giving me time to make my way up in the creaking elevator to the third floor and let myself into Room 12. In common with the rest of the hotel, there was no air-conditioning, and I threw open the window here, hoping to let some cool air into the stuffy room. I loosened my tie, splashed cold water on my face, adjusted my burgeoning erection and waited for Donnie to arrive.

  After what must have been a good ten minutes, I was starting to think he’d got cold feet. Should have just taken him out into the garden and offed him among the rhododendrons like you planned to all along, I chided myself. Then I heard a tentative knock. Walking over to the door, I pulled it open and practically hauled Donnie into the room.

  “Thought you weren’t gonna show,” I said, trying to hide my impatience.

  “Sorry. I bumped into someone I know from the golf club downstairs. Just couldn’t shake him off. Some guys just can’t take a hint, right?” He was babbling, anxious, and that anxiety was contagious. I knew only one way to shut him up. I pressed my lips to his in a long, deep kiss.

  If I’d had any worries he might have been having second thoughts, they vanished in that moment. Donnie responded with passion, pushing his tongue into my mouth in an overeager but endearing kind of way. His mouth tasted of bourbon, and he was making little sighing noises into my mouth.

  He didn’t object as I marched him steadily backward till his back pressed against the wall. My crotch ground against his, his cock as rigid and excited as my own. We fumbled at each other’s clothing, him tugging at the belt of my pants, me making short order of the buttons on his white work shirt. Donnie’s chest was covered in a mat of dark curls; his belly was flat. How I ever thought I’d be dealing with some ignorant, out-of-shape schlub, I didn’t know. This guy would have been totally right for Luanne, if only he hadn’t been as interested in other men as she was.

  “Oh God, Mike, I want you so much,” Donnie moaned as he broke the kiss. He’d undone my zipper and reached into my jockeys to curl his hand around the hot bar of my cock. His touch was as sure as Luanne’s had been, and I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have both of them here, working on my length with their skillful fingers. I only hoped that, unlike his wife, he wasn’t going to leave me hanging.

  That thought was banished as Donnie spun me round so now I had my back to the wall. He dropped to his knees, half-naked on the threadbare carpet. He’d unfastened his own pants, and his dick stood up, curving slightly away from his body. Its length and thickness took my breath away, and I itched to have it sliding into the tight recess of my asshole, filling me like I hadn’t been filled in quite some time.

  Donnie had other ideas of how to pleasure me, though. Never breaking eye contact, he took the tip of my dick in his mouth and swallowed maybe a couple of inches of my hot, aching meat. Being sucked into that slick cavern almost made me shoot my load where I stood.

  “Fuck, that’s so good,” I moaned, swept away by the feel of his tongue swirling over and around my helmet.

  “You like that, huh?” he asked, letting me slip out of his mouth for a moment. He looked up at me with puppyish eagerness, seeking my approval. It was kinda pathetic: the guy should have had everything, and yet here he was, trapped in a marriage with a woman he’d married for appearances’ sake and reduced to seeking pleasure with strangers in hotel rooms. It was a dangerous game; he couldn’t know quite how dangerous. Yet, despite everything, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

  “You like it?” he repeated, and I noticed he had his cock in his fist and was slowly stroking it back and forth.

  “Yeah, just keep doing it like that,” I told him. At once, he wrapped his lips around my tip again, taking me farther in this time. His dark head bobbed up and down my shaft as he gradually worked me into his throat. The wet suction had the juices fizzing in my balls, seeking release. The room was silent apart from the little moans he was making around my meat, and the slapping sound of his hand beating his dick. I threw my head back and let out a groan, certain I could feel Donnie smiling in response around my deeply buried cock.

  Lost in bliss as I was, I couldn’t afford to lose sight of why I’d brought him up here. My gun was a reassuring bulge in my jacket pocket. It would be so easy to just reach for it and press it to Donnie’s temple. One squeeze of the trigger and I would blow him away, even as he was blowing me.

  But I knew I couldn’t do it. No man with a mouth this talented deserved to die. Sure, he was living a lie, sneaking around to find forbidden pleasure behind his wife’s back, but Donnie Palmer wasn’t the villain here. Indeed, as the come shot from the end of my dick and splashed over Donnie’s tonsils, I knew what the real outcome of this sorry little escapade needed to be.

  * * *

  Luanne didn’t bat an eyelid as she opened the door to me. “I take it you’ve come for the rest of your money.” No what happened? Not even a shred of concern for her husband’s fate. She just smiled that cold smile at me, like this was the moment she’d been waiting for her whole life.

  “I found Donnie at the Elliot, just where you said he’d be,” I told her as she led me into the house. As I watched her swaying ass, it was all too obvious she had nothing on under the silky red robe she wore. A couple days ago, the thought of her making good on what she’d promised me in the diner would have had me itching to shuck that robe off her shoulders, but after what had happened with her husband, the prospect no longer had the same appeal.

  “Yeah, I thought you might. Always was a creature of habit, was Donnie.”

  The interior of the house was oppressively warm, and I wiped beads of sweat from my neck. “Say, I couldn’t trouble you for a glass of water, could I?”

  “Sure, come through to the kitchen.”

  I leaned against the kitchen table, watching Luanne as she reached into the fridge and took out a pitcher of iced water. When she turned back to me, she didn’t register the gun I pointed at her until it was too late.

  “I’m sorry about this, Luanne, really I am. But it’s for the best all round.” I took aim and fired. A small, red circle appeared on her forehead, as round and perfect as the O of her surprised mouth. The pitcher dropped from her grasp, shattering on the floor. She crumpled to the linoleum with barely a sigh, as beautiful in death as she had been in life.

  I turned and walked out of the house without a backward glance. No one had seen me arrive; my fingerprints marked nothing, and no one would have the faintest clue that I’d ever been here.

  All I had to do now was wait for D
onnie’s call. I knew it would come; his eagerness to see me again when I’d left him at the Elliot, naked, satisfied and very much alive, had been proof enough of that. More than that, he was going to need some consolation when he found his wife’s body, and I was just the man to give it to him.

  Surprise Witness

  Audrey Lusk

  “Alma, give me five minutes, undisturbed,” I ordered, firmly closing the door of my office before my assistant could respond. Woman was paid enough for rudeness. Why waste sentiment?

  I smiled, alone, as I never did in front of anyone—clients, colleagues, even the few I vaguely thought of as friends. Today was one of my visits. Some people meditated, some drank. I…well, recently I’d discovered this new hobby. Spike. In prison for life, Spike had this arrangement with an obsessively voyeuristic guard at the prison—at least when I made one of my visits. Shortly after our first…encounter…I took my personal interest in Spike up a notch and parlayed him into a useful informant.

  I got all sorts of good prison gossip, dirt I could exchange to help my other clients, and Spike, well, he got me. And I also got…stress relief…in the form of rough, nasty, intense sex. I supposed I might feel ashamed about how thrilling I found it to be abused by someone I should’ve held nothing but contempt for, but frankly that would be as much of a waste as sympathy for my secretary.

  Everyone I worked with, everyone I casually encountered took one look and saw an ice queen, a bitch with brass balls, someone who could very possibly make hell freeze over with a stray glare.

  I worked hard for that.

  I was stripping out of my good hose and changing into an old silk blouse, suitable for roughhousing, when a knock came at the door. I ignored it. Considered firing my assistant for her failure to run interference.

  “Diane?” A junior-partner voice if I ever heard one. Glen Openshaw. I couldn't ignore him, but I could make him wait. “Diane?” His voice was as bland and forgettable as his face, his personality. A Ken doll made flesh. I imagined his smooth dickless crotch—then imagined setting it on fire.

  I tucked in the blouse, stepped back into my shoes without hose and stormed to the door, throwing it open. Ignoring Glen entirely, in his perfect suit and tie, his pastel shirt, I yelled, “Alma, didn't I ask for five goddamn minutes?”

  “Sorry, Ms. Burke, I—”

  “It's my fault.” Glen made one of those conciliatory faces that gave me the urge to slap him. “I had to catch you before you left. You're going out to Millhouse today?”

  The prison, yes, I thought, excitement rising within me at the mere thought of Spike and his dark marble-like eyes. None of that reached my face, though, and all I said was, “Why?”

  Glen smiled again, completely oblivious to my deep loathing. “Well, I was hoping to come along.”

  “No.” I shut the door on him.

  Glen wasn't bad looking, tall and lean from hours of obligatory Pilates or whatever. Perfect hair, perfect teeth. Bred for corporate law. I bet his daddy was a lawyer, and he never had to work a day in his life to get through college. Legacied into the right frat.

  He wouldn't be so damned wishy-washy if he'd ever had to compete for anything, ever had to prove himself. Whereas, being a particularly well-endowed blonde, I had to constantly hammer home the fact that I was more than a sex kitten, a blow-up doll, a ditz joke.

  Alone, I began to shake—but only on the inside. I couldn't just drop round to see Spike every week. How dare this ass try and horn in on my very precious time? No way was he going to stop me from getting what I wanted, what I craved.

  Was this what it felt like to be an addict?

  Probably.

  Fuck it.

  I quickly rolled on the new pair of cheap nylons and shrugged back into my suit jacket. It was about time to get going. Spike would be expecting me.

  Glen was waiting at my car.

  “Look, Diane, Meyers wants me to go with.” Even though his tone was still tentative and apologetic, the bastard didn't pull any punches, citing the senior of all senior partners.

  I seethed. I could feel a seethe burn over me, replacing all the tasty lust I'd been hoarding for this trip, like a good buzz gone sour.

  But Meyers requires. And no one says no.

  “Why?” My tone should have frozen him on the spot, but Glen hardly seemed to notice.

  “Nothing about your performance, let me reassure you! Your work with Spike has been duly noted at very high levels.” I would give a shit about that later, I was sure, but right now I could not have cared less.

  Glen continued. “Just that I have a few questions for him that might help out another client, and I was hoping that if I went along with you, you could grease the wheels a bit. You know.” He ended with a hearty self-effacing shrug.

  Well, with you along, no one's getting greased. My thoughts were in capital letters with exclamation points around them. I imagined covering Glen in bacon fat and feeding him to hungry lions.

  While I knew I couldn't say no, I let everything hang—just long enough to make Glen fidget. I had to get some satisfaction out of the day.

  “Fine. Get in the car.” I popped the autolocks and slid behind the wheel.

  As soon as the doors were shut and seat belts on, Glen turned confidential. “Are you mad at me? This isn't because of what happened at the holiday party last year, is it?”

  I would have laughed, but I was as good at suppressing that as I was my anger. The holiday party? I'd almost forgotten Glen's drunken pass—the sloppy beer-scented kiss, the attempt to paw me in the copy room. If he'd shown a bit of backbone, pushed harder, then maybe… What? Probably just a harassment suit. Glen was a jellyfish; Spike was a shark.

  I imagined a shark eating a jellyfish with Glen's face, and almost smiled.

  Besides, that was before I’d found out what I wanted, what got my starter out of neutral. What I was now craving with every fiber of my being.

  Glen was waiting for an answer. Again I made him fidget.

  Finally I spoke without turning my eyes from the road. “Let's just get this over with.”

  For most of college, I truly had been the ice queen I appeared. I tried sex a couple of times, in a couple of combinations, with mixed results, but mostly no glimmer of what the big deal was. And masturbation had seemed like a waste of good studying time. I blew guys who wouldn't take no for an answer, and made all the right noises when they groped me, and never went back for more.

  Turned out, they just didn't have the right approach.

  Sitting in the attorney consultation room, Glen tried again with the small talk. “So this Spike must respect you, really be impressed by your professionalism. He's supposed to be such a hard case.”

  Can't you just shut up? my mind was screaming. I found an image to cheer and comfort me, a vision of Glen in a ball gag, something I’d only ever seen in movies, and was almost able to smile if I had wanted to. Instead I busied myself with removing my jacket, draping it carefully over the back of the chair.

  The door opened, and Spike, in his typical disrespectful slouch, was ushered in by his pet guard Lewis. I tightened at the sight of him—orange jumpsuit loose around his hips, white wifebeater displaying his extensive collection of cheap prison ink, blue on pale indoors-only skin. Just the sight of his shaved head and impressive ropy muscles frustrated me with superfluous wetness. Gassing up the car to leave it in the fucking garage.

  Walking in on us instead of me, Spike's reaction was almost invisible—a slight hitch in his step, a tightening of the muscles at his jaw, a slitting of his normally hooded dark eyes.

  Lewis, the guard, was less subtle—with a gape of disappointment that he tried to cover up with the most pathetic fake yawn ever. Didn't matter. Glen was clueless and I was fuming.

  As Lewis shut the door, Spike flung himself into the chair across the table from mine and stared at me. I matched his furious glare, trying to convey that this was neither my choice nor my fault. I won't say that there was an unspoken co
nversation or an instant understanding or anything so unanimous, but his lizard-like expressionless eyes slid to Glen for a hair of a second, and I dipped my eyes in a non-nod.

  The silence stretched on until Glen, oblivious, half stood and extended a hand across the table. “It's nice to finally meet you, Mr., uh, Spike. I'm Glen Openshaw.”

  Spike didn't spare a single glance for Glen. “What the fuck is this?” His voice was even—low and dangerous like the buzz of a distant chain saw hitting no resistance.

  I let my annoyance seep through, shifting the blame. “Glen has a client who needs a name. He thought he'd have a better chance of convincing you if he came along when I was here.”

  Spike held my gaze for another eternity, which probably lasted thirty seconds. The very cold and calculating nature of his stare didn't unnerve or frighten me so much as get me hot. Perhaps that was what made us so well suited for each other—we were both wound so tight, hiding every scrap of weakness, of emotion, we’d snap if we didn’t have the chance to cut loose from time to time.

  Finally, I saw his lips twitch in a flicker of a smile, and my guts rolled over in thwarted anticipation.

  Spike finally turned his reptilian gaze to Glen. “You think you have something better to offer? Do you even know how she 'squeezes' so much dirt out of me?”

  Glen opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He just gaped when Spike stood, revealing his long, hard, veiny cock sticking out above the bunched baggy orange jumpsuit.

  Before Glen could breathe, much less react, Spike's long wiry arm snapped across the table, catching me by the hair. I let him drag me out of my seat and forward to lie across the table, my mouth in perfect position for his throbbing cock. My gasp was rudely interrupted by the hard thrusting intrusion, choking me in the best possible way. I shuddered with the need it aroused, making my entire body hum.

  I didn't try to imagine what Glen might be thinking—particularly after his own clumsy Yule-fueled pass—but I heard him begin to sputter. I was just happy that I was still going to get my playdate, topped with the thrill of making straightlaced, vanilla, Ken doll Glen participate, even if only by watching.