I asked Liam the same thing. He frowned. “No. This is work. Fun work, but work.” He stroked my back, slipped his arm around my waist and slid his hand down to my ass. “Why would I want a burger when I’ve already got filet steak?”
Declan’s whisper rasped in my ear, “But that’s not to say that you can’t do whatever you want whenever you want with whoever you want.” And he looked in my eye. “I mean it. We’re not possessive.”
Liam leaned closer, “Ah, not in that way. If Declan’s saying what I think he’s saying, we just treasure you the way that you are. You can do what you like.”
Declan’s hand was on my waist, his other was on my thigh. He looked into my eyes, absolutely serious, as he said, “There’s not a single thing that you could do that wouldn’t make us love you more.”
Liam kissed me below my ear and whispered. “That’s a fact.”
Hammer and his entourage were on the far side of the room. Gunner stood, straight and formal by the bar and near the entrance. Declan was pessimistic.
“Will you look at the number of those bastards? We’re never going to get within twenty feet of the fucker.”
Liam laughed drily. “You want to revisit Horst’s plan with the triangle of snipers?”
“No, I fucking do not.” Declan shook his head and lifted his glass. “I’d want to revisit the airport and the good old US of A if the beer here wasn’t so fucking good.” He took a long pull on the lager. “Time’s running out, though.”
Liam inclined his nose and eyes, “That big fucker,” he said, “The one that looks like a bombproof safe with little arms and legs dangling off it. You know, one of those old-fashioned fucking safes with the big rounded edges.”
“Yeah. The one who’s face looks like a knobby combination dial?” Declan watched the huge man. “You’re thinking that’s the bodyguard?”
“Well, if he’s not, he fucking should be.”
Declan nodded. “Looks like he could walk through walls.”
“A man-sized safe.” Liam smirked, “Who was the politician that was said to have a ‘man-sized safe’?”
“I don’t remember. Some cheating scumbag with his hand in the till.”
Declan grinned as he tugged on his drink. “That really narrows it down.”
“Well, whatever we end up doing, I hope it doesn’t involve getting past him.”
“It would take you long enough just to walk around him.”
“You think he’s wearing bulletproof?”
“Looks more like artillery-proof.”
“He’s about the shape of a tank, for sure.”
The German food was great, I have to say but, golly, they like to eat a lot of it. You ask for some pasta or some meat and they bring you enough for a family. It’s okay with me, I have a good appetite. I still had to wind up leaving some from time to time, though, and I hate to do that. It always seems wrong to me to waste food.
We were in good restaurants, too, so it’s not like the food wasn’t good.
The fifth night, we were in the same room as Hammer and his gang. The restaurant was big, but divided into sections and with a low ceiling. That and the hardwood floor made the sound of a noisy table hard to ignore. Hammer was at a big table with a lot of men. They were all noisy but he was the biggest and the loudest.
Next to him was a heavyset man with a deep, jagged scar from his eyebrow down the side of his nose to a cleft on one side of his top lip. “That’s Forza,” Declan said quietly. “He’s Hammer’s bodyguard. You’d be a long time looking for a nastier piece of work than Forza.”
This was the closest we got to him. Liam worried we were too near.
“If we get recognized, if any of the opposition spot that they could have seen us before, we could be deep in the shit.”
Declan said, “Relax. Since we’re never going to get a go at him, does it matter?”
“You did bring everything, in case an opportunity should present itself?”
Declan nodded. I could see that the boys were turning glum. This was beginning to look like a huge wasted trip and they weren’t taking it too well.
The men at Hammer’s table all seemed like the type. ‘Made guys,’ Liam and Declan called them. Brutal, grunting men with hulking shoulders who clenched their fists and banged the table a lot.
The restaurant was dominated by the men’s voices and their waving arms. The air seemed to buzz with the possibility of violence constantly hanging. A contained fury, ready to break the surface. They were a noisy, powerful group, and Hammer was the focus of power. It was obvious. It was visible.
All of their bodies leaned toward Hammer or, when one of them told a story or held the attention of the table, he would lean back, but still directly facing Hammer. When a man slapped the table or another turned up a big palm, Hammer was where the gesture was aimed.
Long ago in my hometown, I knew a man like that. Since then I thought more than once about how I wished I’d handled him. A trembling of anticipation rose in my core. Fearful but excited, like he was a side of the same coin. Instinct told me that I had a strong sense of the man and I knew what I wanted to do. I didn’t know if I could carry it off, but I wanted to try.
Hammer was a huge man. His big gestures took up all the air in the room. I watched him. His eye caught me watching him and when he looked back, I held his gaze a long time. Long and steady. Long enough for him to wonder if I knew him. Enough just to make him unsure. A spoon clattered at his table and he quickly looked away.
After that I didn’t look at him again.
If I was right, if he was the kind of a man I thought he was, as long as I ignored him, he wouldn’t be able to shake me out of his mind. Constantly I felt him looking over at me. Quickly. Furtively. Probably making it look like he was just looking around the room. Or trying to. I didn’t look, not once. So I couldn’t be certain.
Gunner stood by the doorway to the restaurant. I know he was told to sit at the bar, but he was too tight-assed and proper for that. So there he stood, ramrod straight. I liked the twins. Discreetly, I caught Gunner’s eye across the room. Let him know to follow me.
When I was sure he got it, I got up and walked right by Hammer’s table. I passed near to him. And I didn’t look down or look at him. But as I passed him I sniffed the air. And I let a little laugh rattle in my chest.
My heels snapped a beat on the polished wood floor. I made smartly for the powder room, hoping Gunner had understood me. With a dark red lipstick, I leaned over the sinks, close to the big mirror. The door slammed open behind me.
Hammer came up, looking at me through my reflection. Came close behind me.
He leered, “I’m going to fuck you.” His lips curled back in a snarl as he reached for his belt.
I told him, “No, you’re not.” My heart banged in my chest. Was Gunner coming? It felt like hours that I watched Hammer over my shoulder in the mirror, but it can’t have been more than a second or two. The door opened again
As Gunner stepped in I said, “He is.”
I turned. Hammer was uncomfortably near, but I looked right at Gunner.
Gunner snarled. “Spread your legs.” I did.
Angrily, he said, “Lean back against the shelf.” I did what he told me.
Hammer stepped back as Gunner stood in front of me.
His faint accent grated on me like a velvet saw blade.
His eyes flashed and his lip curled as he told me, “Pull up your skirt.”
Trembling I dragged my skirt up my thighs. As Gunner stepped up and knelt down, I pulled my panties aside. Gunner pressed on my stomach. He looked for a long moment at my fuzz and my wet folds before his mouth, his tongue, took me. Right there. In front of Hammer.
My chin tightened and it was only then that I looked in Hammer’s eye. His face was a red mass of anger and confusion. Gunner’s tongue was flexed firm and soft. I lifted an eyebrow.
I asked Hammer, “Are you going to watch?”
“I’m going to watch him fuck
you.” He snarled, “And then I’m going to fuck you up the ass.”
Sounding as bored and tired as I could, I told him, “Really? Well, not now.” Gunner reached one of my explosive trigger spots. I bit my lip. Then, keeping my voice even, I told Hammer, “Maybe later. Give me a card or a write your number down.”
He pointed at Gunner. “He knows my number and where I’ll be.” My stomach rolled and my hips bucked against Gunner’s agile mouth. Warming to the performance, I dropped my voice a couple of notches.
“I said, ‘Give me a card or a write your number down.’“ My eyelids drooped. “If you want to watch him fuck me so then you can fuck me up the ass,” I gasped as Gunner’s tongue found another precious spot. I blinked slowly before I finished what I was saying, “then do what I tell you.”
Telling Hammer what to do like that, this obviously lethal man shaking with fury, it terrified me and thrilled me. Not knowing how he would react, and at the same time, inside I was being catapulted by the firm, expert and rapid moves of Gunner’s tongue.
Hammer’s face was a storm. He got out a card and scribbled on the back of it. He put the card on the sink beside me.
“Now go.” I said. I gripped Gunner’s hair. A groan dragged out of my fluttering lips. Disinterestedly, I flicked the fingers of my free hand toward the door and I told Hammer, “I’ll see you later. Maybe.” And I grabbed the back of Gunner’s head and the top of my own hair.
The door slammed behind Hammer. Gunner and I were alone.
I breathed hard. “You’re pretty good at that.” I said, “Eating pussy under pressure.”
His eyes gleamed. He looked up from my mound. “You want that I go on?” I felt his grin on my pussy. I yanked his hair.
“I do, very much,” I told him, “But I have to get the hell out of here. Did you find a back entrance?”
“Yours?” he grinned as he stood.
“This is serious.” These Germans didn’t usually make jokes when anybody else might. But now, now he wanted to play. I shook my head.
Gunner said, “I’ll take you through the kitchen.”
I thought of a joke myself but I let it go. “You shouldn’t go back too soon. Make it about twenty minutes or so, like we’ve been here,” I peeked in his eyes, “You know.”
“Should I go back into the restaurant all messed up?”
“Is that what you’d do?” I frowned. “No. You’d stride back in there, smart and immaculate. Groomed to perfection. Strutting and proud.” I straightened my dress.
“You’re right,” he steered me out of the powder room, down a narrow corridor and through a big, clattering kitchen.
As he opened the back door he told me, “I’ll try to send a text to Liam. They’ll know to come and get you.”
“They’ll be able to work it all out. Don’t take the chance. Somebody might look at your phone.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek. And a smile as I stroked his chin and looked in his eye. Sweet boy. “You played that part well.”
HOULD WE go in after her?” Declan tensed as soon as Hammer got up to follow Courtenay. Liam raised a finger and angled an eyebrow so Declan saw Gunner going after them.
Liam spoke quietly. “She’s up to something.”
“Don’t you think it might be something she’ll need us for?”
“If it was, do you not think she’d have said?”
“Ah, okay.” Declan’s lips tightened. “So you’re all right with her going into a situation with a feral mobster, and not knowing what the situation is?”
“I’m not, now that you come to mention it, no. But whatever it is, I think we should let her have her head, at least for a few moments.”
“How do you know that Gunner didn’t just run after her?” Declan’s hand clenched. “Like I’m thinking we ought to do?”
Liam put a hand flat on the table. “I know because I saw her signal to him. She gave him a look and waited to see that he’d understood what it meant.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right then. What did it mean?”
“The look?”
“Yes. The look she gave him. What did it mean?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t give it to me.”
“Oh, well, that’s completely reassuring. I don’t know what I was worried about there.”
Liam took a breath. “All I’m saying is, whatever it is she’s trying to do, we should give her a chance to do it before we go steaming in and fuck everything up.”
“Has it not occurred to you that we could quietly steam in right now, do the job and get it finished up? We could be out of Berlin and headed back to the good old US of A.”
“With a dozen fucking mobsters waiting out here, who just already watched Gunner follow their boss out to the back? You think we should hurry after the three of them? Do you think that table of thuggery would just shrug and bide their time while they contemplated the dessert menu?”
“Don’t you feel like we should do something?”
“Of course I do. And I’m doing it, or I would be if you’d just occasionally chill for a few consecutive seconds.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m watching. And I’m trying as hard as I can to listen.”
“Ah, fair point. When I’m jumpy, I am sometimes given to listening with my mouth and my tongue.”
Liam gave him a gentle look and nodded.
“I’m doing it now, aren’t I?”
Liam nodded again.
“Right. I’ll clam up then.”
Liam smiled with another nod.
“You’ll not hear another peep out of me.”
Liam’s head shook and he grinned as he caught a waiter’s eye, to indicate for him to bring the check.
Hammer burst back out into the restaurant with a face full of thunder. As soon as he reached the table he growled at the man-sized safe. “Where’s my brandy gone?”
“What brandy, boss?” The man-sized safe had a surprisingly cultured, gentle voice. Neither Liam nor Declan had heard it before. He looked like a hurt pug as he protested softly, “You didn’t have any brandy.”
“Why didn’t you fucking get me one then?”
The waiter was heading over with the check. Declan said, “If we get up and leave now, he’s going to make a connection between us and Courtenay, right?”
“It’s a worry, that’s for sure.”
“His seat’s got his back to us. If he ever sits back down.”
“He’s looking for ways to start arguments and fights though. You can see that.”
Both men were careful not to look at him as he cast around the restaurant. Hammer’s eye settled on Courtenay’s empty seat. The man-sized safe had persuaded a waiter to bring a bottle of cognac and a big balloon glass. Hammer’s eyes narrowed. He was interested in the table where Courtenay had been sitting, but his whole party of mobsters were focused on getting his attention to the big brandy glass.
Four Hitmen: A Quadrouple Bad Boy Mafia Hot Romance (Lawless Book 3) Page 9
