Hook (Neverland Novels Book 2)

by Gina L. Maxwell

  I’m smiling on the inside—he’s so damn cute when he defends the integrity of his cooking, especially in those faded jeans that hug his ass and his fitted white V-neck—but I make sure to frown as I point my hunk of cheese at his frying pan. “Fine, but does it need a whole garden spade full of butter?”

  “What the fuck’s a garden spade?”

  “You know, the hand shovel for digging holes in gardens.”

  He hitches a dubious eyebrow. “No, I don’t know. How do you know?”

  I shrug. “I used to help my mom plant flowers around the house every spring, and now I do it to keep the tradition going for my dad.”

  “For such a hard-bodied guy, you’re awfully soft on the inside, you know that?”

  “Keep shoveling fat into our meals and I’ll be soft on the outside, too.”

  Smirking, he adjusts the stove’s temperature and moves the butter around with a wooden spatula. “I bet you look pretty hot in a wide-brimmed hat and gardening gloves.”

  The smart-ass is being sarcastic, but I don’t take the bait. Instead, I lay out some of my own. “As a matter of fact, I do,” I say, resuming my cheese grating. “You can help me next time. I’m sure I can find you an extra straw hat and set of gloves.”

  He snorts. “Somehow I don’t think gardening is really my thing.”

  “Okay,” I say nonchalantly. “Then you can just supervise and get me stuff. It’s not always easy to find what I need when I’m crawling around in the dirt on my hands and knees.”

  He stops stirring, and I can feel his intense stare boring a hole into the side of my head. Gotcha. “Your hands and knees? In the dirt?”

  God, whenever he drops his voice like that, my cock twitches like a trained animal. Pretending I’m unaffected, I continue moving the cheese up and down the metal grater like it’s the most important job of my life. “Mm-hmm. I get really sweaty and filthy, and my knees and muscles ache when I’m down there for a long time. It’s hard and sometimes painful, but in the end, it’s totally worth it.”

  In the span of a few seconds, James moves the pan off the burner and turns me in a one-eighty where he pins me against the counter. Just like that, my predictable man is ensnared in my trap. I might be the one caged inside his arms, but he’s the one who snatched up my bait and put me right where I want to be.

  “We still talking about gardening, Johnathan?”

  He presses his hips forward, grinding his sizable and getting-bigger-by-the-second bulge on my cock that’s straining to get at his. But I don’t break yet. I bite back the groans and pleas for him to eat me for dinner instead of the alfredo. It’s too fun to toy with him when the opportunity presents itself, and I’ve learned the punishments for teasing him are highly enjoyable.

  “Of course,” I say guilelessly. “What else would I be talking about?”

  This is the part where he takes control and makes me pay for being cheeky. I’m practically vibrating with anticipation and need. But he flips the script on me when he grins and says, “Just checking.” Then he pushes away and returns to his task at the stove. “Can you grab the small carton of milk from the fridge?”

  Still scrambled from the abrupt switch, I get it for him on autopilot, rerunning the previous minutes in my head to see where my flirting went so wrong. But when he pours the thick, white liquid into the melting butter, I snap out of it.

  “That’s not milk; it’s heavy whipping cream,” I complain. “Jesus, this is the third night in a row you’ve made something like this. Which means it’ll be the third night I have to put in a second workout after dinner. Do you have any idea the kind of cardio it’ll take to burn that off?”

  Yes, I know. I sound like a complete CrossFit douche, but my sudden case of blue balls is making me pissy. My boyfriend, however, seems unfazed by my attitude. As he continues stirring the mixture, his face breaks into a huge smile… And just like that, my irritation evaporates. I never dared to hope that I would see a genuine smile from the perpetually grouchy Captain Hook, but since we had our breakthrough the other night, they’ve been making brief appearances, a little more each day. And I melt faster than ice cubes under a blowtorch, every damn time.

  He turns his head and peers at me from behind a slash of black hair, momentarily sidetracking me with how sexy he is. But when he quips, “I have a fairly good idea, yeah,” then winks at me—fucking winks—I realize I’m the one who’s been played.

  “Holy shit! You’re doing this so you can watch me workout and objectify me? Is that all I am to you? A piece of meat? A pretty thing to look at? I have feelings, too, you know.”

  Before I end up collapsing in a fit of laughter, I turn away and stomp off in a fake huff. I don’t make it very far. Strong arms band around me from behind and maneuver me against the nearest wall. His deep chuckle reverberates through my back and sinks into my soul. The sound of a happy Hook gives me life. It’s everything. He is everything.

  “Come on, baby, you can’t blame me,” he rumbles in my ear, then sears a line of kisses down my neck. “The way sweat drips down every groove and valley of your body as you work out? I’d have to be dead not to enjoy that sight.”

  I tip my head to the side and rock my ass back against his still-hard cock. He hisses in a breath before he catches himself, making me smirk. “Keep trying to fatten me up and dead can be arranged.”

  He laughs and turns me to face him. Cupping my jaw, he kisses me soundly on the lips, twice, three times. “It’s not my fault you’re so fucking hot, Darling. Your workouts are like watching live porn from my living room.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I meant to say something snarkier than that, but he’s back to trailing openmouthed kisses across the base of my throat and his hands are pushing up my shirt.

  “Yeah.” He pinches my nipples, and I drop my head back on a moan. “I want these pierced. Silver bars that keep them hard and sensitive for me. How’s that sound, Johnathan?”

  “Really good, Captain,” I reply, my hips lifting from the wall, seeking the pressure my cock needs. “Really fucking good.”

  He pins me harder—

  Ear-piercing beeps alert us to the smoke swirling in the kitchen. “Shit!”

  Springing into action, James takes the pan with the burned ingredients off the stove and drops it into the sink while I grab a kitchen towel and wave it in front of the alarm to get it to stop before our ears bleed. Once that’s accomplished, we make our way around the loft and open all the windows to clear the air.

  “See? If you were fatter, I wouldn’t get distracted and burn dinner. You’re a damn fire hazard.”

  I chuckle and shake my head, ready to relent and admit to my faults, when the cell phone on the breakfast bar chirps with an incoming text. We freeze and stare at it like it’s a bomb about to detonate. It’s my burner phone. The one I’ve kept by me at all times in the loft the last few days because I’m waiting on word from Matt about whether the Powers That Be feel we have enough evidence to make our move on Croc.

  “Read it, John. Whatever it says, we’ll deal with it.”

  When this all started, I had to work hard to convince James to help me build a case against Croc. Now he’s reassuring me that, no matter what, we’re in this together. What a huge difference in just a couple of months. If I’d had a hundred guesses, I wouldn’t have predicted that this is where we’d end up. I only hope what’s yet to come doesn’t fuck it all up.

  I grab the phone and read the coded message. Adrenaline enters my bloodstream and rushes through my veins, making my muscles feel bigger, my skin tighter, like I’ve been injected with Superman’s alien DNA. It’s the thrill of the hunt.

  The corners of my lips pull back in a wolfish grin. “We hit the warehouse this week.”

  He sags back against the counter, disbelief written all over his handsome face. “There’s enough evidence? We actually did it?”

  “Yeah, babe. We did it.”

  “Christ,” he says, dragging a palm down his face and over his short bea
rd. “I don’t think I ever thought this day would come. That means Starkey—”

  He cuts himself off and swallows the lump of emotion I know is making his throat tight. There hasn’t been a day he wasn’t worried sick about his brother. Gripping the back of his neck in a supportive squeeze, I hold his gaze. “It means Starkey can come home.”

  James nods stiffly. Neither of us mention the complicated feelings Starkey has for the captain he was loyal to and the brother he blames for his pain. Nor do we mention the long road he’ll have ahead of him on his way to healing and hopefully forgiving James for his decision to keep their connection a secret. There will be a time to deal with all of that, but that time isn’t now.

  “What happens next?” he asks.

  I release him and blow out a breath as I mentally run through everything that has to be done. “We put a team together, analyze the op from every angle, then come up with a plan to get those girls out and take down Croc. It’ll happen anytime between two to four days, depending on how the planning goes.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  I grab his arm, stopping him short. “Not you. I meant we as in the FBI with a DEA assist because of the Dust. You’re staying here and pretending like nothing’s out of the ordinary.”

  James yanks out of my grip. “You gotta be fucking kidding me, John. After everything I’ve been through with that asshole, you can’t leave me behind for this.”

  Just as he has his Dom voice, I have my cop voice. “I can, and I will. This is serious shit, James. You’re not trained for this. Even if I wanted to let you come—which I don’t—no one else would let you get within a mile of the place. Your role was to get me inside the organization, and you did that. None of this would’ve been possible without your cooperation and help. Remember that.”

  “Don’t you dare fucking patronize me.”

  “I’m not—”

  “This bust is just as much mine as it is yours. I deserve to take him down, goddamn it.”

  Grabbing his shoulders, I give him a light shake. “You will take him down, I swear it. But not right now. Your time will be in court as a witness for the prosecution. That was the deal we made, remember? Amnesty for Starkey with minimum jail time for you and Smee on the condition you testify against him. Your testimony is how you take him down. Not by getting shot at in a bust you have no business being at.”

  Blue sparks stop shooting from his irises and the angry slashes of his eyebrows soften, then knit together to form a worry line above the bridge of his nose. “Shit, you’re going to get shot at. Before, it was like this abstract thing I knew was part of your job, but now…” He pulls me in by my belt loops, presses our foreheads together, and exhales as his eyes squeeze shut. “Just…don’t get fucking hurt.”

  I slide my hands around to his back. “I’m trained for this, James. I’ll be fine. But I need you to promise me you won’t go anywhere near the warehouse this week. If I’m worried about you, I won’t be able to focus. Then my chances of getting hurt go up exponentially.”

  Sighing, he steps out of my arms. I miss him already. “Yeah, okay,” he says with a clipped nod. “Just promise me you’ll bring him in.”

  “I promise.”

  “Then so do I.”

  He pulls me to him and kisses me like I’m going off to war, and I guess I kind of am. I feel him pouring every emotion he can’t verbalize into this kiss. He might not be able to love me in the traditional way, but like he said the other night, I know what he does feel for me is the strongest he’s capable of. To me, that’s what love is, but he has to come to that conclusion on his own.

  When we break away, he’s back to the stoic, unflappable man with a single goal of taking down his enemy. “Go on. End this.”

  It only takes me five minutes to gather the few things I need, but I use that time to shed my undercover skin and slip back into my task force officer persona. I pause at the door, wishing I didn’t have to leave him but knowing we can’t truly be together until this is all over. That’s motivation enough to get me moving.

  “Remember, no resisting arrest or escaping from your handcuffs,” I say like a kid trying to stall bedtime with random obvious statements. James knows the plan is to arrest him and Smee with the entire crew after the big bust with Croc. If any of the Pirates found out that Smee and James were working with the feds, they’d have targets on their backs for the rest of their lives. Their sentences won’t be long, maybe six months or so, but it’ll be enough to make it look like they cut deals for less time, which is what they’ll all try to do anyway.

  “Take away all my fun, why don’t you,” he says with a wry grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

  This isn’t easy on either of us. Everything changes once I walk out this door. Our bubble will pop, and the real world will rush in. Just as we learned to navigate this way of life, we’ll have to learn another while he’s in jail, and then another once he’s out, and I can’t help but worry how all that will affect everything we’ve fought to gain.

  It must be written on my face because James crosses to me and gives me one last kiss. “We’ll be fine. Go.”

  Infused with new confidence that we will be fine, I say, “See you on the other side.”

  “See you then.”

  Then I leave the loft and my boyfriend behind to prepare for battle. It’s time to go slay some fucking demons.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Hook

  The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

  It’s only a line from a movie, but nothing has resonated with me more than that sentence. In the movie, it’s referring to the bad guy, Keyser Söze—the guy everyone has heard about but has never seen. Some people believe he exists; others don’t. Turns out he was hiding in plain sight the whole time, one of those plot twists you don’t see coming, and when it happens, you’re left slack-jawed as you start to rewind the movie in your mind to search for all the hints you missed the first time.

  For the last twelve years, I’ve been trying to pull off my own version of a Keyser Söze. Croc knows I exist, obviously, but what he doesn’t know is that I’m not the obedient dog he thinks I am. I’ve been biding my time, waiting for the right opportunity that would ensure his downfall. And while I waited, I made sure he thought I was his reluctant minion. There would’ve been no point in pretending to be as eager to serve him as the other Pirates; he would’ve seen right through that bullshit, and I’m not that good of an actor. But an abused and broken kid with nowhere to go who sticks around because it’s the only life he’s ever known? That shit’s believable. More than that, it plays to Croc’s ego and blinds him to the truth.

  Now, after more than a decade of hiding in plain sight, the plot twist is only days away, and I’ve been relegated to sitting on my goddamn hands in the wings. Not even the wings. I’ve been ordered to stay metaphorically locked in the dressing room where I won’t be able to see the look on that asshole’s face when he realizes the curtain’s dropping on his precious empire.

  It grates on me like sandpaper on an exposed nerve. But like a fucking sap, I promised John I wouldn’t make him worry. I was about to tell him where he could shove his worry until he said it could place him in danger. That stopped me cold. The possibility of losing him was the bucket of ice water that broke my fever for retribution. My need to be a part of the bust that takes out Croc isn’t as strong as my need for John to make it out of that warehouse unharmed.

  Which is why I’m here—in the Crow’s Nest at the clubhouse with Cecco, Cookson, Bill Jukes, and Robert Mullins, while the others are at the warehouse picking up more inventory of Dust—instead of with John and his team. It’s also why I’m in the foulest mood of my life. And all things considered, that’s fucking saying something.

  “Captain, should we go over tonight’s assignments while we wait for the others?” Bill Jukes asks.

  “I’m thinking maybe we don’t do Croc’s dirty work tonight,” I say, flip
ping the Zippo Starkey gave me around in my fingers. “Maybe we should just stay in and get loaded. That sounds like more fun to me.”

  The men trade uneasy glances and silent “not its” for who gets to question their volatile leader. As usual, Cecco steps up to the plate.

  “Everything all right, Captain?”

  All right? Fuck no, I’m not all right. I am ten kinds of not all right, but I can’t let anyone know that I’m ready to jump out of my skin. That I’m wishing it was a week from now so the bust would be over, Croc would be behind bars, Starkey would be free, and I’d be able to see that John was safe with my own eyes. Even if it was from behind the plexiglass of a prison visitor stall.

  “Just tired today.” I take out a clove cigarette from my pack and light it. Smoking usually helps to calm my nerves and has the bonus of giving me something to do. “Don’t worry, we’ll do our job. We always do.”

  Cecco’s phone rings. “It’s Skylights,” he says. Nodding at him to take the call, I settle back and take a long drag on my cigarette. Cecco answers and there’s silence in the room as he listens to whatever Skylights has to say. Then his eyes jump to me as he asks, “Are you sure? Okay, sit tight.”

  When he disconnects the call, I lean forward and blow out a stream of smoke. “What is it?”

  “It’s Starkey.” My heart rockets into my throat as my stomach plummets. “Skylights said when they were loading the Dust up, they saw a couple of guys pull in with Starkey in the backseat and drive around to the back of the warehouse.”

  I shove to my feet, my insides trembling. I don’t know what’s got me juiced up more: wanting to knock Croc into the ground for daring to fuck with my little brother or just getting my arms around Starkey to make sure he’s alive and free.

  “He’s sure it was Starkey?”

  Cecco nods. “Starkey looked right at them as they passed. Skylights said he doesn’t look good, Captain.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They left the shipyard after loading so they wouldn’t cause suspicion if they stuck around.”