by B. B. Hamel
I could tell he wanted to swing, and badly. Instead, he slowly backed down. He turned and walked behind the counter, grumbling to himself the whole time.
“Come on,” I said to Hartley. We went back out the front door and headed across the property toward the barn. I knew exactly where I was going, considering I’d just scouted the place recently.
The back doors were sitting slightly open. I pushed them open and stepped in, Hartley on my heels.
What I saw stopped me in my tracks.
The whole damn place was empty.
Janey was leaning up against a hay bale not far away, smoking a cigarette. She smiled at me as I looked around. I finally stared at her and cocked my head to the side.
“Those things will kill you,” I said to her.
She laughed. “That’s it? Nothing else to say?”
I shrugged. “You moved the stuff. I’m not exactly surprised.”
She laughed again, shaking her head. “I guess I should have expected that. Mister Navy SEAL can’t be surprised.” Janey looked at Hartley. “Is he always like this?”
“Yeah, he is,” Hartley grumbled.
I grinned at her. “If I were still going to try to steal that stuff from you, this would be a huge deal, but that’s not my plan.”
“Before we discuss plans, I believe you have something for me.”
I tossed her the bag. She caught it effortlessly and looked inside.
“It’s all there,” I said, “courtesy of the Dixie Mafia.”
She looked surprised. “This is Dixie money?”
“I told them it was to hire a crew to rip you off.”
A bemused smile broke out across her face. “That seems suicidal to me.”
“Well, it’s good you didn’t have to make that call then, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
I felt someone approach from behind, and I resisted the desire to turn around. Instead, I looked blandly at Janey.
“Can you ask your brother to get out of my blind spot?”
Janey nodded and King moved farther to the left, getting into my peripheral vision.
“Thank you.”
“So tell me, Travis, why should I let you live?”
I sighed. “Why the fuck is everyone asking me that question?”
“It’s a good question. You seem like you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
King began to drift back into my blind spot. I turned my head toward him. “Stop moving,” I said.
He glanced at Janey.
“Travis, I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” I said to her. “Your brother moves again, I’ll fucking break his knee.”
“I’d love to see you try,” King said, stepping up to me and drifting into my blind spot again.
I moved fast. I stepped sideways toward him, driving my elbow low and hard into his stomach. He stumbled backward and tried to get his hands up, but I wasn’t going high. Instead, I shifted my weight and swung a rough kick into the side of his knee.
He crumpled to the ground, grabbing his leg.
“Enough,” Janey said loudly. “Enough.”
I stood up straight. “I warned him. Twice.”
“What do you want, Travis?”
King was rolling side to side. “Relax,” I said to him. “I didn’t break it, you big baby.” I looked back at Janey. “You know what I want.”
“You want to make a deal. You paid me, which is good, but now you’ve hurt my brother. I’ll ask one more time: What do you want?”
I took a deep breath, calming down. “I want to give you the Dixie Mafia. I want to get the leaders, or at least the ones who are local, in a single room. Then I want to kill them all.”
I felt Hartley shift her weight nervously behind me. She knew the gist of the plan, but hearing it like that was probably pretty harsh.
“Interesting,” Janey said. I could see the curiosity in her eyes.
“If they die, you can grab hold of the local drug trade in Knoxville and its neighboring counties, no problem.”
“What do you want in exchange?”
“Three things. First, nobody knows we were involved in this. Second, me and Hartley walk away from this. Third, you pay off Hartley’s family debt.”
She looked amused. “That’s all?”
King slowly struggled up to his feet. “I say we kill them,” he said, giving me a pissed-off look.
I ignored him. “That’s all. Hartley’s debt is fifty grand. The drug trade is going to make you way more than that, and we both know it.”
“I’m doing a lot of work in this deal,” Janey said. “There’s a lot that could go wrong.”
“Yeah, maybe, but this is your chance to finally hit back. No more pissing them off. You can win.”
I didn’t know if she’d go for this, but I had a feeling she would.
Janey was a business woman. She was in this for the profit, and she did nothing that didn’t directly profit her. If this went down the way I planned it would, she stood to make a huge profit.
But more than that, she hated the Dixie Mafia. Janey was the type of person that wanted full control and couldn’t settle for a sidelined position. I was guessing that being so out of control in that car with Ray that night had taught her never to let someone else do the driving. She’d walked away from it once, but she might not again.
“It’s an interesting idea,” Janey said.
“You can’t be serious,” King snapped. “This guy is an animal.”
I sneered at him. “Go ahead. Say that again. I’ll break your fucking skull.”
“Jesus, enough you two,” Janey said. “King, get the fuck out.”
King glared at me, spit on the ground, and then hobbled out the back door.
Janey walked over toward us, looking at me curiously. “You don’t seem like the same guy you once were,” she said.
“I’m not,” I admitted. “And you’re not the same girl.”
“No,” she said. “We’ve both changed a lot.” She looked at Hartley. “Why is he doing this for you?”
Hartley looked surprised. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I honestly don’t.”
“You’re pretty; I’ll give you that. But this man is offering to dismantle a very dangerous and powerful gang. All for what, some peach farmer’s daughter?” Janey shook her head. “I’d never do it, no offence. Nobody is worth this much effort.”
“You don’t understand a thing about me,” I said to Janey, “but I think I understand you. Getting control of Knoxville is your dream, isn’t it?”
“Something like that,” she said, nodding.
“I got you your money. I’m for real, Janey. Come into business with me. I’ll give you Knoxville, and you’ll give us freedom.”
She stared at me for a second, considering, and finally laughed. Her face shifted from an intense and dangerous stare to her old cheerleader smile. “Okay then,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
As she reached out and shook my hand, I couldn’t help but feel like I was shaking hands with a snake.
But it didn’t matter. All I knew was that I couldn’t steal that shipment from her, not really. My next best move was to topple the mafia, at least locally, and hope that they’d be too disorganized to realize that it was me who set them up. Then once Hartley’s debt was paid, we’d be out of this, and Janey would have her power.
All in theory, of course. I needed to get the heads of the Dixie Mafia together in a single room, and I needed Janey to uphold her end of the bargain.
A lot of loose ends, a lot of possibilities for failure. But this was the best course of action.
It had to be the best, because I was committed to it.
17
Hartley
Something felt off about Janey Caldwell.
I couldn’t tell what it was exactly, but the way she reacted to her brother getting beaten down by Travis was incredible strange.
He didn’t notice it. He was too busy being a macho
idiot. But when Travis took King down so easily, Janey actually stood there and smiled.
She watched her brother get hurt, and she smiled.
That was so strange. It only lasted for a brief second, and then she acted like she cared afterward, but I knew she had no real feelings about it. Maybe she even delighted in seeing King get hurt for whatever reason. I couldn’t begin to guess her reasons for any of this, but there was something very strange about her.
After we got back to the apartment, Travis poured himself a whisky and sat right down on the couch. He said he needed to do some planning, and that was fine with me. I retreated back to my room to do some planning of my own and got changed.
This had gotten so far out of hand. I didn’t know where I stood in all of this, or if I even thought we had a chance of succeeding. When Travis first told me his idea of turning on the mafia, I could hardly believe him.
The man was a Navy SEAL. He was supposed to be fighting for justice, not helping one gang take over another’s territory. But in his mind, he was helping the lesser of two evils rise to power while saving my life. Somebody else could deal with Janey and her family, he figured. A SEAL wasn’t a lawman, not by a long shot.
It just felt so strange to me, so unreal. I didn’t know how things had gotten this far, how I’d gotten so deeply into this. I knew I needed Travis’s help, but I was afraid that his plan wouldn’t work and we’d both be killed because of it.
I didn’t want him to get hurt because of me. Of course I didn’t. I wasn’t a monster, but all of this had gotten so complex, so far out of control. I didn’t think I could back out anymore even if I wanted to.
I hated just sitting in my room. I was trying to read a trashy romance novel just to escape and feel good for a little while, but I just couldn’t get into it. Reading about rich billionaires on Tinder just wasn’t doing much for me.
Frustrated, I got up and went out into the other room. Travis was still sitting there, staring at the wall, glass in hand.
“I don’t trust her,” I blurted out.
He didn’t look back at me. “I know.”
“Why do you?”
“I’m not sure I do either.”
“So why are we doing this?”
“Because it’s the best move.” He sighed and sipped his whisky. “Trust me, Hartley. I’ve reasoned this one out every which way, and this is our best move. I think Janey is more self-centered and businesslike than you realize.”
“She smiled,” I said.
He turned and looked at me. “What?”
“When you hit her brother. She smiled.”
He frowned. “That’s weird.”
“It was really weird. She didn’t look like she cared at all.”
He paused. “Did you care?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, surprised by the question. “I didn’t think you needed to do that.”
“Those people are going to try to fuck us, Hartley,” Travis said. “I needed to do something to show them that I’m a dangerous person. I needed them to be afraid enough to stick to the plan.”
I nodded slowly. That made sense. He got up from his spot and walked into the kitchen, getting a second glass. He poured me a small shot of whisky and carried it over, handing it to me.
He held up his glass. “To fucking over the mafia.”
I held up mine. “To saving the family farm.”
He laughed, clinked my glass, and drank. I drank mine down, feeling the burn in my stomach, grateful for the slight numbing spreading through my body.
“How are we going to make this happen?” I asked him.
“I’m not sure yet. The mafia has money and time invested in me now, though. They’ll come to a meeting if I call one.”
“Aren’t they going to check us out, though? That Culver guy, he’ll realize we’re not hiring people with that money.”
“Let me worry about Culver,” he said, taking the glass from my hand. He poured two more drinks, handed my glass back, and sipped his.
“You know,” he said, looking at me, “Janey asked you a question. Why do you think I’m helping you?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
He stared at me. “Yes, you do.”
I shook my head. “I really don’t.”
“All this and you still don’t get it?” He smirked at me. “Come on, Hartley.”
“This is your hometown. You don’t like seeing someone get hurt here.”
“Close,” he said.
“You’re a SEAL. You believe in saving people.”
“That’s true too, but why you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my heart beating fast. He stepped close to me, putting his glass down on the table.
“Yes, you do,” he said. “It’s because of that fucking fire in you. It’s because I never saw a victim.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re strong,” he said. “I’ve been around a lot of women in my life. Been with a fair number of them, too. But you’re the first one that I thought had anything hard inside her, the first one I felt like I could understand.”
“You think you understand me?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I think you understand me.” I felt his hands on my hips, sliding down slowly toward the hem of my dress. “Maybe I just can’t get enough of this fucking body, these hips.”
I sipped my whisky, my heart hammering in my chest.
“So you’re risking your life just because you like the way I look.”
“Could be. You’re fucking nice to look at.” His hands reached the hem of my dress and slowly lifted it up, sliding it along my skin. I bit my lip, thought I should stop him, but knew I wouldn’t.
His hands finally found my soaked panties. I couldn’t help myself when he got close to me this way. My body just reacted however it wanted. He smirked at me and slowly began to rub my soaked spot.
“I’m doing this because I fucking want to,” he said, and then he kissed me hard.
I kissed him back, letting his tongue touch mine, his taste invading my mouth, my mind, and my body. His hands kept working my pussy, my soaked-through panties useless. He slid them partly down and touched my skin, rubbing my soaked and swollen clit. I moaned into his kiss, letting him work me, letting the pleasure flood through me.
This was what I really wanted, I realized. This was why I’d come out of my room. I knew he’d touch me like this, make me feel this way, and I wanted him to. I didn’t want to pretend like I didn’t want it, pretend like I knew what was a good idea and what was a bad one.
As far as I was concerned, the way Travis could make my body feel had to be a good thing. I’d never believe that a man’s touch making me feel like this could be a bad thing.
I kissed him hard, pressing myself against him. Travis, this mysteriously dangerous man, the Navy SEAL who appeared in my life like a storm. Violent desire raged in my body for him, warring with my skin, needing him to touch me, needing his thick cock between my legs.
He pushed me up against the table, knocking the glasses slightly, and sat me down on the top of it. He continued kissing me, my panties down around my knees, his hand in between my legs. He worked my clit, rolling his fingers along my skin, sending bliss and more through my core.
He tipped my head back, pulling my hair slightly, and kissed down my neck. I groaned as he found my breasts and my chest, kissing along my exposed skin.
“I love this fucking sundress,” he said. “Easy to get at this nice little pussy.”
I smiled and then gasped as he pressed his fingers deep inside me. “Right now, I love it too.”
He laughed as he slowly stroked his fingers inside me. “I can tell. You’re dripping wet.”
“Not like I can help it when you touch me like that.”
“I know.” He kissed me again, his fingers deep inside me, and I moaned into his mouth as he worked me.
He pressed me back onto the table. I held myself up with my elbows as he slid my panties off the rest
of the way. He lifted one leg up, spreading my knees wide. I felt both exposed and so incredibly turned on as he kissed down the thigh that was propped up, slowly moving toward my soaking clit.
Once his mouth touched my spot, I knew I was done for. He began to suck and lick me like that night in the car, his fingers pressing deep inside me right away. I tossed my head back and moaned, not trying to control myself, but giving in to this moment. His tongue and mouth worked me, and I knew I was giving in to him.
“I love how you taste, how you smell, how you feel,” he said, his fingers still stroking me. I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. “I love the way you look at me like you can’t get enough.”
“Shit. I love the way those fingers feel,” I said, surprising myself.
“I know you do,” he said, kissing my neck. “You love the way all of me feels.”
I sat up and pressed him back. I grabbed his belt and unbuckled it. I quickly unbuttoned his fly and pulled his jeans down as he smirked at me. His cock was hard, pressing against his black cotton boxer briefs, and I slowly kissed its length.
“Fuck,” he grunted. “You know I fucking love that.”
I slowly pulled down his underwear, my heart hammering in my chest. His cock was thick and straight, hard as hell, as I slowly stroked his length.
I wanted to taste him more than anything. I’d never experienced that before, actually wanting to taste a man’s cock. But with Travis, it felt natural, right. I slowly licked him root to tip and slipped him into my mouth. I sucked him like that, slowly along his tip, and looked up at him.
“That’s right,” he said. “Look at me with those pretty eyes while you suck that cock. Swallow that fucking big dick, you dirty girl.”
I worked his shaft with my free hand, stroking his length as I fit more and more of him into my mouth. Slowly he slid into my throat as I sucked him, working, using my spit to slide along his skin. I was dripping wet and wild, out of my mind with need for him.
He pressed my head down, groaning as I sucked him. He began to push his cock down my throat, fucking my mouth, and I took as much as I could of him. He groaned loudly, cursing, saying my name as he fucked my mouth.
I slid off the table and onto my knees in front of him, letting him press his cock deeper down my throat. “Hartley, you dirty fucking girl,” he said. “Look at you, taking this dick down your throat. You fucking like it, don’t you?”
