VICIOUS MEN: THE COMPLETE VICIOUS CITY COLLECTION

by Renard, Loki

  There’s a pause. I know his hands are probably flexing. He’s trying not to scare me off, and I’m enjoying this, making him pretend to be less intimidating than he really is. This is just the smallest bit of power and god it feels so fucking good.

  “You’re going to be nice to me, right. You’re going to bring me candy, right?”

  “Kitty…” he practically snarls my name.

  “Make it a nice big box. See you soon.”

  I hang up and burst into giggles. My palms are sweating and my hands are shaking with adrenaline and excitement. Oh my god. Hearing his voice is like taking a hit of something potent.

  It’s going to be a little while before he gets here. If he’s still in NYC, there’s at least two hours if he drives. I don’t think he’s going to drive, though. I think he’s going to charter a plane or helicopter and be here in a matter of minutes. Twenty to thirty at the most. Enough time for me to double check the plan, make sure everything is in order.

  “We good, Chad?” I click the transmission button on Spooge’s butt.

  “You should get out of here. Just in case he sees you.”

  “I want him to see me. That’s the whole point. I want to wave from the balcony as it goes down.”

  Chad groans. “You haven’t changed. I think you’ve actually gotten worse. You know this is a dangerous guy, right? He has a body count. A big one.”

  “I know.”

  Chad has no idea just how close I got with Vicious. I’ve left out some of the personal component of my relationship with him, mostly because I don’t want to explain how I was taken and then seduced by a man like him, how I’ve been his sex toy, his lover, his tool for use. I’m trying to show what a strong, independent, kick ass woman I am. I’d be utterly humiliated if Chad knew my real reasons for doing this.

  * * *

  I’ve had enough time to get some food and return to my little look out point when the walkie talkie crackles into life.

  “Kitty. He’s here. That was fucking quick…”

  It was quicker than it should have been, but I’m not surprised. Vicious has ways of making the world bend around him when he needs to. I crouch down and watch between the railings as Vicious strolls into the building, my heart leaping a little at seeing him again. There’s a part of me which wants to run down and hug him, but I stay hidden. I can’t lose my nerve, and I can’t let my feelings get in the way of teaching him a lesson.

  He is so damn handsome as he strolls in, moving with a leonine purpose which sets him apart from all the others. People wander in and out of the lobby constantly, but none of them have his presence. Among tourists, travelers, and business men, he is a predator. One who is about to be prey.

  “STOP! POLICE!”

  Vicious doesn’t stop at first. He doesn’t realize that he’s the one they’re looking for, but he works it out pretty damn quickly when he is tackled by two officers and taken to the ground. Oh goddamn. This is even better than I thought it would be. The look on his face as they pull him up in cuffs is fucking priceless.

  They think they are apprehending a drug lord. He’ll try to argue his way out of it, but they won’t listen. There’s a warrant for his arrest that will see him in a cell until tomorrow at the earliest.

  Getting up my courage, I stand up and lean over the railing. I don’t actually expect him to notice me up here. I’m one person in a crowd of many, and I’m at the very periphery of his vision - but he does.

  He looks right up at the second floor where I’m leaning over the railing and we make eye contact. His gaze sears into me and makes my stomach do somersaults. There’s going to be hell to pay when he tracks me down, but right now, his ass is being dragged to jail. Tomorrow he’ll be released, angrier than ever. And that’s when the fun’s really going to start.

  Round one goes to me. Round two is going to bring him to his fucking knees.

  Vicious

  That brat. That little… I press my lips together and try not to strain against the handcuffs, which are done up way too tight. She was smart enough to get me arrested outside New York. There’s a whole different set of law enforcement in New Jersey, men and women I don’t have as many deals with.

  The first thing I did to Kitty once I had her in my grasp, or at least, the first big lie I made her believe, was that she was going to prison. I don’t think it is any coincidence that I now find myself under arrest.

  If she’s doing tit for tat, eye for an eye, then I can expect a man with a hacksaw to cut into my brain any minute now - but I doubt this is going to be that predictable. She’ll no doubt throw in her own twists and turns on the theme. That little brat.

  The truth is, I’m enjoying this. That’s the part I can’t let her know. This is the most entertaining thing that’s happened in years. A true battle of wills without any real hostility. She just wants to get her own back. A part of me wants to let her have her fun, but I know that would spoil it.

  When I catch her she’s going to pay for this in the most decadent and delicious of ways. I’m going to strip her down and I’m going to make her scream. There’s not going to be a part of her body that I don’t make irreparably mine. While I wait for my lawyer to sort this mess out, I lean back against the cell wall and I close my eyes, planning her defilement.

  6

  Kitty

  “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean the first part, okay, he can get out of that. This second part could kill him. I don’t want a manslaughter charge. People like me don’t do well in prison.”

  Chad sounds nervous. He’s not usually involved in things like this. I know it’s not really his cup of tea. I know he probably wishes he’d never taken my call. But we’ve come this far, and we’re going to go all the way, dammit. I want this to be a day Vicious remembers. I can’t do that by playing things safe.

  “Nothing can kill Vicious.”

  “A crossbow could. Or arsenic. Or…”

  “Okay, the normal things can. But I mean, he’s not going to let himself be killed. He’s going to want to catch me. And this isn’t that dangerous.”

  “It’s pretty dangerous.”

  I’m hesitating now. I want Vicious to be scared, but I don’t want him to be hurt. I want him to think that something bad could happen to him, just like I thought something bad could happen to me. With Vicious, that can’t be something small. That has to be something big.

  “He’s just been bailed out of jail,” Chad says. “If you want this done, it has to happen now.”

  “Do it.”

  Vicious

  It has been a very long time since I spent a night behind bars, but I’m not dwelling on that right now. Kitty is somewhere close. I can feel her. She’s keeping tabs on this. She has to be, and that’s how I’m going to catch her.

  My car is waiting for me in the police impound lot. Somehow she managed to get them to seize it as evidence. I’ve been forced to spend the last hour filling out paperwork and trying to prove that the damn thing is mine, which is difficult when my papers are in the aforementioned vehicle. When I finally get the keys back as well as my wallet and phone, I make a call.

  “Yeah?” Slick answers the phone curtly.

  “We need to get Kitty and we need to get her now. She’s doing some very silly things.”

  “I’m a little busy with my own problems. I think I know what’s going on with Blaze.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I think she’s pregnant.”

  I stay silent.

  “Are you quiet because she told you that she’s pregnant? Or do you just not give a fuck?”

  “Slick…”

  “Goddamnit, Arthur. You should have fucking told me.

  “Your wife will still be secretly pregnant in a day or two,” I reply. “If this keeps up, I don’t know how much longer Kitty is going to survive.”

  BOOM!

  I am about twenty feet from my car when it explodes. It’s not a violent explosion like in the movies. It doesn’t send a shockwave
and plume of flame clear across the lot or throw me off my feet or anything so dramatic. But it’s more than enough to destroy the engine and set the interior on fire.

  “You have to be fucking kidding me,” I curse.

  “What happened?”

  “She just blew my car up.”

  “Oh.” He reacts as if I told him I stubbed my toe.

  “You’re a federal agent,” I remind Slick. “You’re supposed to care about this sort of thing.”

  “I’m going on leave,” he says. “I need to save my marriage. Sorry, Arthur, you’ll have to sort this out on your own.”

  He hangs up, leaving me standing in the police impound lot where sirens are now blaring. Blowing my car up is one thing. Doing it in a police impound lot is a whole other level of fuckery. There are already officers surrounding me and one thing is for sure - I’m not getting out of here any time soon.

  Kitty

  My phone rings. I have to reach out of the bubble bath filled tub I’m in to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “Car detonated. Target secured. No casualties incurred,” Chad says.

  “How does he look?”

  “Er. Pretty fucking pissed off.”

  “Good.”

  I’m just getting started. The next few days are going to be some of the most frustrating in Vicious’ entire life. I’m turning up the heat now. I know he doesn’t care about the car. He changes cars like he changes his clothes. He will care about the fact that I’m on the offensive. I have to stay out of his reach though. If he gets his hands on me, it’s all over.

  When he gets his hands on you, my mind says. I know how this ends. I’m not going to actually win this. I’m either going to lose badly, or not so badly, and I’m going to have the best time possible until then.

  “You want to get a drink, Chad?”

  “I think I need to vacate this area. I’m picking up a lot of surveillance. And, Kitty? Don’t call me again. I’m out of this now. This is going to get someone killed.”

  I’m disappointed, but I can’t say I don’t understand. This is getting dangerous for everyone, and maybe I’m pushing things a little too far, but anyone who was ever abducted from a hair salon and ended up tied to a stretcher with their brain about to be drilled into can probably relate.

  “Thanks for your help, buddy. I’ll send you your bonus when I get clear. Be good.”

  “Stay safe, Kitty.”

  7

  Slick

  “We need to talk.”

  Blaze looks up from her magazine. “I thought that was my line.”

  I don’t know how to begin to address the situation, so I do what I’m trained to do. I produce the evidence. I take the pregnancy test I found when I was clearing out the trash, and I put it on the table in front of her.

  “Is this yours?”

  She looks at it blankly, and for a second, I think that maybe it isn’t hers. Maybe this isn’t as messed up as it seems to be. Maybe my wife hasn’t been keeping her pregnancy from me for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom.

  “Blaze?” I prompt her gently.

  There’s a silence in which I feel my stomach sinking. Something is terribly, terribly wrong. We haven’t talked about starting a family. Our wedding was, well, what my grandmother would have called premature. We hadn’t dated long, and with the chaos in my life and hers, we haven’t had time to talk about the normal things. This marriage has been a challenge for us both, but I love her more than anything, and if she’s pregnant, then I’m going to be absolutely thrilled.

  She looks down at the test and then up at me, tears in her eyes. “I want a divorce.”

  Blaze

  “Divorce? What do you mean?”

  He’s looking at me with a stunned expression. I don’t blame him. I’ve been feeling the way he looks right now since I found out. I know he married me because he was worried about me. It was an act of charity. He can do better, and he will, once he’s rid of me.

  “Blaze, talk to me.” He sits down next to me, and all I want to do is crawl into his arms, but I don’t deserve to. He’s too fucking good for me. So many things have gone wrong, and I don’t know that anything will ever be okay again.

  “You have to leave me,” I say softly, tears pricking at my eyes. “You have to go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” His voice is soft, but firm. “And divorce is not an option. For better or worse, Blaze. We promised.”

  “But you didn’t know everything when you made that promise.” It’s hard for me to talk. I want to sob, but I have to hold my tears back.

  “What didn’t I know?”

  “I was already pregnant!” The confession spills from me in a hysterical declaration. “I am pregnant, and you know what? It’s not yours. It belongs to the asshole who almost killed me. So, congratulations! You married a girl who was knocked up by her ex, who your best friend and worst enemy had murdered.”

  Slick stares at me. I know this is over now. I know he’s not going to want me anymore, much less the life inside me.

  “It’s too late to get an abortion,” I say. “I tried. I got the pill even, but I couldn’t take it. So I’m just going to have the baby. And that’s why you should get rid of me. I’m trash, Slick. I’ll always be trash.”

  He still hasn’t said anything. It’s almost as if he can’t compute what I’m telling him. I know this isn’t what he had planned for us. He’s a traditional man. He wants a traditional life. He does not want to raise a dead criminal’s baby. He deserves a woman who matches him, someone else in the agency, someone who wears pantyhose, went to college, and has an opinion on the election. Someone who will give him kids who look just like him. Not someone who managed to get herself knocked up by a brutal criminal.

  I wipe my eyes and start to get up. “I’ll leave. This is your place. You keep it. I won’t ask for anything, so…”

  His hand closes around my wrist. He doesn’t say a word, not a single syllable, as he pulls me into his arms and holds me tight, embracing me so completely I can’t hold back anymore. I start to sob uncontrollably, soaking his shoulder in my tears, my entire body shaking with the release of the secret which has made me sick for weeks.

  Slick holds me as I cry, until I can’t cry anymore, until I feel dry to the very core of me. I cling to him, knowing this might be the last time we hug. This is going to be the end of things. It just has to be. We were never meant to be together. I was a moment of charity, a damsel in distress. But everybody knows the white knight wants to make his own babies.

  “Come on,” he says, urging me up from the couch gently.

  “Where are we going?” Probably to pack my stuff, or his. Or maybe to the lawyers to get the marriage annulled. Divorce probably isn’t enough for him. He’s going to want to erase this whole sordid affair.

  “I’m taking you for ice cream.”

  8

  Vicious

  I call my men to come and get me, making sure that they check their cars before they come. I don’t need more vehicular detonations fucking up my day. If Kitty is behind this - and I’m damn sure she is, then she’s getting reckless and dangerous. I don’t think she intends to hurt me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to end up dead if she’s not stopped soon.

  “You alright, boss?”

  “Yeah.”

  The guy asking me goes by Tony, but everyone calls him Mt Tony. He’s well over seven feet tall, an ex-professional wrestler, and the sort of muscle I call on when I have jobs that have to get done.

  “Who are we going up against? Some new player in town?”

  “Yes and no. It’s Kitty.”

  “Kitty? You mean that little girl?” He makes a motion with his hand indicating her diminutive height.

  “Yes.”

  “Your girlfriend tried to whack you? We going to whack her?”

  “Absolutely not. She’s not the enemy.”

  “You got an interesting definition of enemy, boss. And girlfriend, for that ma
tter.”

  I raise a brow at hm. “Did I indicate I wanted your opinion on this, Tony?”

  “Nossir, just making observations.”

  At that moment, a man in a tidy hotel uniform approaches me with an apologetic look on his face. “I’m sorry, sir, your credit card was denied.”

  I suck in a breath. I booked myself a hotel room while I was waiting for my men, and now I’m trying to check out there’s another problem. I am really beginning to lose patience with this. I give him another card, but there’s little surprise when that one declines too.

  I call the bank, and engage in yet another frustrating conversation.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the lady on the phone tells me. “A hold has been put on all your accounts.”

  “Well, can you remove it?”

  “You’ll need to come into the branch where you opened the account with three pieces of identification and a household bill.”

  “Why the blasted hell would I need to do that?”

  “Sir, if you’re going to curse, I will terminate the call. This is standard procedure.”

  “I have millions of dollars with your bank, if you could…”

  “All the more reason to protect it, sir. We will see you soon.”

  I hang up, cursing internally. Kitty is hitting me at every angle, and this is starting to become more tedious than enjoyable. A battle of wits is one thing when it involves an arrest. It’s something else when I have to go find my electric bill. She’s putting me to a death of a thousand paper cuts.

  “I need to get back to New York,” I tell Tony. “You stay here. She can’t be far away. And she’s working with others. I’ll send you a list of known contacts, cross-referenced with any who have explosives experience. Start there.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “And don’t hurt her. No matter how much she makes you want to. I want to deal with her personally.”