The King Brothers Boxed Set

by Lisa Lang Blakeney

  Of course, he is, you idiot, he's a criminal.

  As soon as Bill exits the bar, Stone slides into the seat opposite me, with some sort of look on his face that I've never seen before. Just like I don't know what he's thinking when he's wearing one of his frozen, expressionless faces, I damn sure don't know what he's thinking now that there's some movement. It's quite peculiar.

  "You can do better than him," he states as if he's actually giving me some gems and jewels on how to pick men.

  "Are you on drugs?"

  "Wouldn't you be able to tell if I was?"

  "That was a rhetorical question."

  "I'm not used to rhetorical questions. Don't use them with me. I'm used to actual questions that people want actual answers to."

  "It's apparent that you're used to prison life. In the real world, there is more than black and white. There are many shades of gray, and that's where sarcasm lives. If you want to have a conversation with me, you're going to have to get used to it. I try not to pass judgment on you because you've done time, but you were a terrible bully today. We're not in the freakin' penitentiary mess hall. Don't act like that again."

  "I heard you say the word no, and then I saw his hand still on you. You were pulling away. He wouldn't let go. If there was anyone being a bully in here this morning it was him."

  "Last time I checked I didn't have a secret service detail."

  "You should. You've got men coming after you left and right. I can't keep up with them all."

  "Then don't keep up! Mind your business."

  "How was your shift today?"

  "Really? You're making small talk now."

  "You seem tired."

  I counter like I'm in a debate with a five-year-old.

  "Shut up. You seem tired."

  And at that response Stone laughs.

  I mean an actual cackle comes out of his gargantuan body.

  A big belly laugh.

  It puts a smile on almost everyone in the bar as they watch him.

  "Shut up," I say through some stilted laughter of my own. "Shut up."

  He quiets down, but there's still a huge grin on his face.

  "I can't help it. You make me laugh."

  His face grows serious again.

  "You make me feel."

  Then Stone does something completely unexpected.

  He leans his elbows on the table and extends his right arm to cradle the side of my face. He uses his thumb to lightly rub both of my lips until he gently pries them apart.

  "You make me want."

  The green smoothie in my stomach starts doing somersaults.

  The hand that's cupping the side of my head pulls me forward as he does the same. Meeting together in the center of our small table. I gasp. Totally unprepared for what is happening between us right now.

  He kisses me gently. Almost reverently. And when an indescribable moan comes from somewhere inside of me, the kiss becomes more aggressive. Passionate. Hungry.

  I close my eyes as I free fall more deeply into the kiss, but he grips my hair in his fist. "Look at me, Ariana." Pulling my head back and forcing me to look at him.

  "Don't worry. When I fuck you, you're going to forget all about whoever that was who just left here."

  I laugh.

  "Oh, is that funny?"

  "You're not going to ever have the privilege of fucking me, son of Jack."

  "Oh, it's obvious. Trust me. I'm going to be the master of the next orgasm you have. You can decide how that's going to happen. It can happen while I'm inside of you or while you're alone thinking about me in the shower."

  "Then I guess I pick the shower."

  "That's the wrong decision. You seem to be making a lot of those these days. It will feel so much better with me inside of you."

  "I highly doubt that."

  "Are you actually scared of me?"

  "Yes."

  "I would never hurt you."

  "No, you definitely would."

  "Ariana–"

  "It seems as if you're missing a critical piece of information."

  "What? What am I missing?"

  "I don't think you'd hurt my heart–I think you'd hurt my body." I lower my voice to barely a discernible decibel level. "Stone, I'm a virgin."

  <<<<>>>>

  Twenty-Four

  STONE

  APRIL

  There is no fucking money.

  I've spent the last few weeks frustrating the fuck out of myself. Meticulously sifting through Nate Carter's life with a fine tooth comb. Working my ass off at the shop. Getting to know every technician there and subtly questioning them about Nate. Searching the house for bank or insurance records when no one is home. Scouring through Nate's Internet search history. Sucking up to Savannah. And I got nothing.

  He has three bank accounts. One business checking, one personal checking, and one savings. Combined they clear about a hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars. There's no investment accounts. No stocks. No expensive art or gun collection. No stamps or coins. Nothing. Nate lives a very normal middle class life.

  But something doesn't add up.

  Ariana did not go to college on scholarship nor did she take out any loans. Nate paid for her education completely out of pocket. I saw the statements. An education at an Ivy League school runs at a minimum of sixty thousand dollars a year. That's not including dorm fees and everything else. Any way you slice it, that's a lot of money to cough up every year over a four year span from a business that according to his taxes hasn't made much of a profit in the last seven years.

  A part of me feels terribly conflicted about this. On one hand, I hate drug dealers. Especially heroin dealers. Bucky was right about that. I've never been able to verify it, but I heard the same story from three different social workers who decided to break all types of privacy laws.

  My mother was a heroin addict. An addict of the worst kind who was caught trying to sell me to a sex porn peddler. Any mother who would sell their child to someone like that has to be out of her mind. Out of her mind because somebody made her that way. Probably a lot of somebody's. But for me it starts and ends with the drug dealer who sold her her very first hit. So yeah, it's personal for me. Personal as fuck.

  So, if that's who Nate is, if that's how he's made his money over the years, then he should pay. He shouldn't reap the benefits of destroying people's lives. People's souls. He should lose every single cent of that blood money.

  On the other hand, I was hoping that I didn't find any money because truth be told, I like Nate. I think he's a good man, a fair boss, and a great father. It's hard for me to believe that someone like him was a drug runner. Even in his youth. Part of me wants to believe that Bucky is fucking with me. That this is all a game to him and that he's just doing this to get me to unknowingly run off one of the last few people in my life that actually gives two fucks about me.

  But of course, if that's true, if Nate doesn't have any drug money, then that means I'm up shit's creek. I still owe a man seven million dollars, and I have no way to get it, which means that I would be forced to move forward with plan B. A plan which at this point I know that I could never follow through with, because if I attempt to make Ariana fall in love with me, there's no way that I'm going to be able to break her. In fact, it's the total other way around. She would be the one with the power to break me.

  That's why ever since that day at the juice bar, I have had to slide my mask back on. Keeping things cordial, platonic, and respectful. She hates it. She hates me. She thinks I'm rejecting her. And she probably thinks I am because she told me she's a virgin. A twenty-five-year-old goddamn virgin.

  Okay, I admit that was a mind blower. I mean she's had to have had horny little fuckers trying to tap that since she hit puberty. And I wouldn't be telling the truth if I didn't admit that part of me is petrified of what would happen if I did sleep with her.

  If I was her first lover. The first inside? The first man to teach her how to ride on top? The first lover to put
her on all fours and hit walls and muscles she never knew were there? The first guy to lift her juicy ass up and fuck her good and proper against a shower wall? If I think it's difficult to keep away from her now, getting inside of that shiny new pussy of hers would turn something primal on in me for sure.

  So, you forget about breaking her per Bucky's orders. I wouldn't be able to let her go. And that will not only get me killed, but it would put her in serious danger too. And the thought of anything happening to someone as innocent as Ariana is just too much to bear.

  I might as well lay down and die.

  "What are you doing home?" she asks.

  I can hear the venom in her voice when she speaks to me.

  "Your father is at the shop, and so is your little friend Jake. It was decided amongst the staff that I should leave early for the day."

  She rolls her eyes.

  "Jake is harmless. You should let that rest."

  "And you should stay away from him."

  "My father actually likes Jake. He'd probably give me his blessing if I gave him first crack at it."

  I crack my knuckles. A bad habit I picked up in jail. I know she's fucking with me, but she's pushing me to my limits when she talks like that.

  "What are you cooking?" I ask changing the subject.

  "I'm baking a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting."

  "What's wrong?" I ask as I walk over to dip my finger into the cake batter.

  She slaps my hand back.

  "Wash your hands, convict."

  I chuckle and move to the sink to start washing my hands.

  "What makes you think that there's anything wrong? You sound like Nathaniel Carter right now."

  "You cook for fun. You bake to forget something."

  I shut her up with that. She thinks I don't know her, that I don't pay attention, but even when she gives me the silent treatment, I learn more about Ariana each and every day.

  "I applied for a job that I didn't get."

  Finally, a real conversation.

  "What kind of job? I thought you loved your job."

  "I'm applying for a traveling nurse position."

  "A traveling nurse?"

  "It's simply a placement of a nurse into an area with a nurse shortage. We get paid a great hourly wage and usually your housing is subsidized."

  "So, you're leaving?"

  "That was the plan, but you ruined the first opportunity I had when you ran Bill out of the juice bar. His sister owned the agency that was going to get me a prime placement. Now neither he or her will return my calls. He walks right by me in the hospital."

  "Aww, that's too bad."

  "You're such a jerk. Bill is actually a big deal in this town. I think he may have even put the word out with some of the other agencies not to hire me. There's no way that I shouldn't have gotten that job today."

  "Maybe you don't interview well."

  "Oh my God! Shut up and get out of my kitchen."

  "I'm just saying you're being a little presumptuous. You think you're the only qualified nurse in the city of Philadelphia?"

  "You get a kick out of seeing me suffer or something?"

  "You're suffering working at one of the premier hospitals in the city? Making a super high five figure salary. Living rent free in a renovated house."

  "I may not have done time like you," she says as she vigorously mixes the batter. "But there are times that I feel like I am."

  Her eyes get a little glassy.

  "What do you mean, Ariana?"

  I place my hand on hers and stop her from churning the damn batter into butter.

  "I'm suffocating in this house."

  "Because of me?"

  "No, my house is like a living memorial to my mother. And yes, while it's heart wrenching, and sweet, and romantic, it's painful as shit for me. He talks about her a hundred times a day. He compares everything I do to her. My cooking, the way I clean, how I talk, a joke I may tell, an outfit I may wear, the way I may laugh. It's exhausting. So, I need to get away. I need to breathe."

  "Why don't you tell him."

  "And break his heart? I couldn't. He's done so much for me. He lives to make me happy. I know that. So how would I sound telling him to stop grieving for my mother. How much of an asshole would I sound like?"

  "Don't go, Ariana. Just talk to him."

  One lone tear rolls down her face.

  I catch it with my thumb and wipe it away.

  "You'll get tears in the batter."

  "Be quiet, son of jack. Just...be quiet."

  Twenty-Five

  STONE

  I'm in the storeroom in the back of the shop when I hear the front door bells jingle. My dick grows instantly hard. A cruel joke being played on me by a part of my human anatomy that thinks it's party time every time it learns that it will see Ariana, because we don't see her often.

  That's my fault.

  When she lets her guard down, and reveals a little part of herself to me, I pull back. First it was her virginity and then it was her true feelings about living in the shadow of her mother's ghost. Both times I ran for the hills. Not because I'm an asshole, but because the more she shares with me, the more I want to take care of her. And I'm in no position to take care of her. In fact, I'm probably her biggest problem, because Bucky is definitely watching.

  I can feel it.

  Most of the time the two of us are like two ships passing in the night. We work similar shifts and when she comes home, she cooks, she may utter a few sentences to me and then she crashes. Tonight though, my dick is all excited because she's coming in to close up the shop for Nate who is out of town for three days at a Harley convention.

  Savannah has been in a mood all day about it. Probably because she feels slighted. She thinks that Nate should trust her enough to do it herself, and she's right, but Nate has some serious control issues when it comes to his business and that's just one more thing that doesn't sit right with me.

  He runs his business like a drug dealer would run their business.

  Only trusting themselves and close family. Never an outsider.

  I haven't heard more than ten sentences come out of Ariana's beautiful mouth in so long, that I decide to eavesdrop for a little while before I come out and ruin it all. I'm sure she'll immediately clam up as soon as she sees me.

  "Hey, Savannah."

  "Hey."

  "How was business today?"

  Ariana sounds exhausted.

  "Slow."

  "Did we sell anything?"

  "No, we didn't sell anything, but I booked two rentals. Anything else, boss?"

  It irks me that Savannah is talking to Ariana like that, but I know that my girl can handle herself. So I fall back.

  "Is there something you want to say to me, Savannah, because I just worked a long shift and I'm really not in the mood for your attitude."

  "Oh, is that right? Someone is feeling a little high and mighty lately isn't she."

  "What is your freakin' problem?"

  "Well since you asked. I've been working here for three years making most of the sales in this dead-ass place, and your father doesn't trust me enough to close out the books? He always has to do it or have you do it. What the hell, Tiny? Does he think I'm going to steal someone's credit card numbers, or that I don't know how to count end of the night sales figures? Maybe I didn't go to Penn like you, but I do have a high school degree."

  "I don't know what he's thinking, Savannah. You'd have to talk to him about that. You think I feel like coming here after I've worked a twelve-hour shift, then going back home to that mausoleum, and then getting back up the next day and doing the shit all over again?!"

  "AHHHH!!!"

  I jump when I hear the blood curdling screams of both women.

  Are they fighting?

  I haul ass out of the room, but don't find two women rolling around on the floor like I assumed I would. What I find are three men with black ski masks. One has a gun pointed on Savannah. The other has one p
ointed on Ariana. And the third has one aimed right at my head. I walked right into it. And now we're fucked, because all of the technicians have gone for the day. It's just me and the girls.

  "On the floor, motherfucker," he orders.

  I put my hands up and get slowly down on my knees flicking my eyes back and forth between the gun aimed at my head and the one pointed at Ariana.

  Tears are streaming down her face.

  It wrecks me.

  I want to run to her, hold her, and assure her that I won't let them touch a hair on her head, but if I do that, I'd be revealing that I give a shit specifically about her, and then they'd probably use it against me. So I stand down.

  "You're going about this all wrong," I say to the one holding the 45 on me. He's definitely the one in charge.

  "Where's the safe, asshole."

  "This is a Harley dealership. Not a fucking 7-Eleven," I say coldly. "We don't have a safe. All our transactions are through a credit card processor."

  "Shut the fuck up and take me to the safe."

  This doesn't make sense.

  Either this guy is really stupid or he actually knows that there's a safe in here.

  "There's no safe," I reiterate.

  He presses the barrel of the gun into my temple, but I continue to stare him down. If he's going to kill me then this is where it's going to happen. I will gladly lay my life down for Ariana. I've laid down my life for much less.

  "Wait!" Ariana cries out. "I know where it is."

  What the fuck is she talking about.

  "Take me to it."

  The guy on Ariana and the asshole on me switch places. Ariana stands up and looks at me with mascara running down her face. Fear in her eyes. But not just fear for herself. Fear for me as well. It's a look that I'll never forget. The look of someone who actually gives a damn about my well-being.

  She doesn't guide the guy to the storeroom like I assumed she would, but walks right behind the front counter and lifts up the industrial all-weather mat that's on the floor back there. She points to a trap door which is hidden underneath it. The only place I didn't think to look when I was looking for whatever I could on Nate.