3. Penthouse Party

Penthouse Party

Saxon

T he fuck is it about this chick that affects me on a fucking visceral level? She didn't do shit—re-buttoned my damn shirt and whispered a stupid fuckin' question, yet I'm hard as a goddamn telephone pole.

The way she looked at me, maybe? Like I'm the hottest shit she's ever seen? I Dunno. Can't be that—plenty of bitches look at me like that, because let's be honest, I didn't exactly fall out of the ugly tree.

I don't know. There's just something about her. Something intrinsically erotic, inherently arousing.

"Your panties?" I repeat, because for reasons I again cannot explain, my brain is momentarily misfiring.

"Yeah. My thong. You took it off me. Where is it?"

I think back…

"Fuck. I'm pretty sure it's on the ground back in the hallway."

She sighs and rolls her eyes. "Great, thanks. I hate going commando." She narrows her eyes at me. "You sure you didn't grab it?"

I shrug. "Pretty sure. Feel free to check my pockets."

She takes me up on my offer, pulling spare mags, my cash, my pocketknife…

And something else.

"Ooooh," She purrs, cupping my rock-hard erection through the pocket. "What do we have here? I thought you carried your gun elsewhere."

"Much as I want your hand on my dick," I snarl through gritted teeth, "We don't have time for that."

"What if I can promise to make it very, very fast?" She rubs me, her cupped hand slowly exploring my length, or as much of it as she can with her hand in my pants pocket.

I grab her wrist and pull her hand out of my pocket. "Terra, ain't a single thing about you and me gonna be quick. If you're gonna give me a handy, you're gonna take your goddamn time. You're gonna edge me till I'm fuckin' crazy. If you wanna blow me, it's gonna be all mouth and no hands, and you're gonna suck every last drop of cum outta me and you're gonna keep on sucking. And darlin'? When we fuck, I'm gonna pound that sweet, wet, tight, hot little pussy so hard and for so long you won't walk for a week. What it won't be is quick. I don't do quick."

Her mouth falls open as I speak, and by the time I'm done, she's trembling. "You're a mean fuckin' tease, Saxon Cabot."

"It ain't a tease, darlin', it's a goddamn promise."

Absurdly, she extends her pinky up to me. "Pinky swear?"

"The fuck are we, six?"

She holds her silence, pinky in front of my face.

"Fuck, fine, you juvenile." I curl my pinky around hers. "Pinky promise."

Her smile could outshine the sun. "It's a thousand years bad luck if you break a pinky promise," she says. "It's sacred." She brings my pinky, still wrapped around hers, to her lips, and kisses it softly, tenderly, and with an eroticism that's 100% intentional. "But it's not binding until you kiss it to seal it."

I rumble in my chest, unable to communicate in words the hurricane of shit I'm feeling at this moment. I echo her gesture, kissing her pinky gently, with a flick of my tongue. "There. Sealed."

"You can't break it now," she whispers. "You now owe me the world's most epic pussy-pounding sex. Plus you have to let me give you a hand job to end all hand jobs, and the greatest blow job of your life. Just so we're clear on what you just swore to."

"Assuming I survive this shitshow, it's a promise I will be absolutely delighted to keep."

"Then you better dig deep in that well of badassery so you can survive and keep it." She toys with the button of my pants. "You sure we don't have time for me to give you a little downpayment?"

The door to the penthouse smashes open. My reactions are immediate and instinctive—spin to put Terra behind me, draw, and fire, all in one movement. My rounds go wide and low, which turns out to be a good a thing, sort of: if they'd gone true, I'd have just broken my vow. I shove Terra hard, and she goes flying—she's got some of her own badassery, because she turns the fall into a tuck and roll that takes her behind the couch a feet away, where she huddles in a tight, small ball, hands over her head.

I hear the chatter of that most useless of weapons, the Uzi; I don't bother ducking, because the damn things are so wildly inaccurate that even in the most expert of hands most folks can't hit the broad side of a barn from point blank range. And, indeed, the rounds go everywhere but near me.

BAM! BAM! I hit the Uzi wielder in the dominant shoulder and opposite knee. Hurl myself behind the couch, resting a reassuring hand on Terra's back.

"Nothing to worry about," I murmur in her ear. "These idiots are useless. Stay down, I'll have 'em taken care of in a second."

She just nods, hands still on her head.

"You good?" I ask.

Another nod.

"Good girl. One sec." I pop up and crack off a couple of rounds—there are four of them, one down and caterwauling like a zapped cat, and three more huddling around the doorway like so many cows.

Dumbfucks.

My two rounds drop one next to the first with a pair of holes in his fat belly; I belly crawl to the other side of the couch, pop up, crack off a couple more to drop the third with permanently busted kneecaps. That leaves the fourth, the only one with a lick of sense. He's hiding behind the door, occasionally rolling out to spray and pray with his Tec-9. At least, until his shit inevitably jams, as those asswipe pieces always do. I hear the chatter cut off, hear him chanting "Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck" under his breath.

That's when I spring over the couch and sprint across the room, slam into the doorframe, and reach around to grab the shit-for-brains by the wrist. Clamp down, hard, and twist. He yowls and drops the Tec-9, and I haul him out in front of me, jamming my barrel under his jaw.

"Talk, bitch," I snarl.

"I don't know anything!" he screeches.

"Wrong fuckin' answer," I growl.

BAM! I put a round through his thigh, just above his knee.

"Talk."

"What—what do you—w-w-wanna…know?" he stammers between sobs and curses.

"Who's sending you incompetent fucks?"

"His name's Jarrod."

"You work for The Cabal?"

"Th-the what? No, I just…they…Jarrod found me and my boys at the bar. I guess he heard we would do shit for money, so he hired us to take you out."

"How'd you find me?"

"He called me and told me where you'd be—here, today. I dunno how he knows. I swear! He told me to be at this hotel, today, at this time."

"When'd you get the call?"

"An hour ago."

"And how'd you know I was up here?"

"I got a text."

"Phone."

He grimaces and groans as he fishes a cheap burner cell from his hip pocket. I bring up the most recent message. It came through less than five minutes ago: "PENTHOUSE. FOUR TARGETS. NO SURVIVORS. EXTRA 5K FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF OF SC DEAD."

Nothing else. No clues as to how the fuck they know exactly where I am.

I pocket the phone and pace to the window, idly cocking the hammer of my pistol and un-cocking it, an old thinking habit of mine.

Tracker? It's the only thing I can think of. Mom's murder-suicide of Dad and herself was unexpected, to say the least, and Silas and Solomon and I took a private, unchartered jet courtesy of The Boss from Vegas to a local airfield a few miles from my family's property. We walked in from there, borrowed a car from Dad's collection, and drove to the funeral from there. Only Inez, The Boss, and the other Broken Arrows knew we'd be there, and there was no one in attendance at the funeral but my brothers and myself, the minister—hired that day by Inez through an intermediary and paid in cash—and the gravedigger.

After the service, Solomon drove off in Dad's car by himself for whereabouts unknown, Silas stayed at the graves alone to presumably piss on Dad's casket like he always claimed he would, and I took off on foot. I walked mile after mile, trying to sort out my feelings—sad about Mom, relieved or happy or some shit about Dad, and just generally conflicted.

At some point, my feet took me downtown, where I was unexpectedly accosted by a five-foot-three siren with a big juicy ass and big ol' titties, scarlet hair, and a dump truck full of attitude.

Which brings me to now.

How the fuck does The Cabal know where I am? If they knew where I was this whole time, why wait until I was away from the club to make their move?

The only explanation is that they implanted a tracker in me at some point, unbeknownst to me, number one, and number two, they're scared of The Boss. There's no other reason that they've left me alone for this long. They don't dare make a move on the club, because someone in The Cabal knows who the Boss is and knows better than to make an enemy of him—which is more than any of us know about him, to be honest.

Solution? Remove and/or disable the tracker. Fortunately, I know just the guy. Problem is, he doesn't come cheap, and the cash I have on me won't come close to paying for the job.

So, then, how do I get enough currency and/or collateral to convince Luka to help me out? He doesn't owe me any favors. I don't have access to my bank accounts at this moment. I'm hesitant to involve Inez or the others.

I scratch my temple with the barrel—my finger is outside the trigger guard because trigger discipline is the first thing you learn when handling firearms.

What do I know about Luka? What are his predilections, and how can I convince him to help me out?

He likes hookers—high-end escorts, to be precise. The kind that get all bent out of shape when you call 'em hookers. Expensive bitches with silicone tits, bottle-blonde hair, and six-inch heels. Not my thing, but more importantly, the kind of thing that requires more liquid assets than I have at my disposal.

Cocaine—preferably pure, uncut Columbian. Once upon a time I could have made a single phone call and had a couple of kilos delivered to his doorstep within an hour. This long out of the game, I don't much like my chances with that crew. They're likely to sell me out for the five mil.

Cars. Specifically, vintage Italian. Nothing gets Luka's dick harder than an all-original, numbers-matching Italian sports car. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, shit like that. The rarer and more expensive the car, the harder he jizzes.

And you know who had almost as much for a hard-on for cars as Luka? My old fuckin' man. I guarantee you that garage has something in it I can trade to Luka. God knows my brothers won't give a shit. Neither of them cares about Dad's cars any more than I do…Although Sol was pretty particular about being the only one allowed to drive the '66 Mercedes 300SL gullwing. Which he chose. He didn't even hesitate, when we got inside that garage. He beelined for that fucker, knew exactly where the key was, and exactly which cars he had to move to get it out. Almost like he'd had his eye on it.

Silas? Like me, he's probably inclined to snag a ride from the garage out of convenience or necessity. Sol always had a flair for the finer things. He likes expensive watches, custom suits, fancy leather shoes handmade by Italian gnomes and shit like that. Silas and me? Maybe it was the life of organized crime, but our tastes are simpler. Good whiskey, maybe a joint of premium green, and a willing woman to have fun with. Cars, watches, and shit like that? Meh.

I'm getting sidetracked. Maudlin. I haven't been away from Silas in years. We ran away together. Joined the Cabal together. Survived that hellish training camp together. It was only at the end that we got separated, and even then, Inez brought us both in pretty much at the same time.

"Saxon? You said two minutes." Terra's voice is soft, and just behind me.

I clear my throat and spin to face her. "You haven't changed."

She glances down at the tight green dress. "Yeah, but then these assholes showed up, and then you went all…spacey. Where'd you go?"

"Trying to figure out how these fucks keep showing up like this."

She wraps her hands around my bicep, and her short, thin, delicate little fingers can't quite meet. Her chin rests against the outer cap of my shoulder, turquoise eyes gazing up at me. "And?"

Fuck, I could really get used to the ways he touches me, the way she's looking at me—like I fucking matter. A lot. Like there's somethin' about me she just can't get enough of.

I push that shit away, because this girl deserves a fuck of a lot better than me.

"Tracker. They must have put one in me at some point."

"Wouldn't you, like…know? I mean, all I know is what they show on TV, but it seems like if these people you used to work for implanted a tracking device inside you, I think you'd fuckin' feel it."

"Not if I was already sedated."

"Did that happen a lot?"

"I had to earn my way up to being an assassin, Terra. You don't just join an organized crime syndicate and decide to be an elite assassin." I can tell she's not following, so I elaborate. "I started out as your basic enforcer. Break knees when some shmuck didn't pay his debt. Scare some guy's old lady so he'd give us what we wanted. No, I never actually hurt any women or kids, but I did threaten to a few times. Made it seem like I would. If you've got a gun to a guy's wife's skull, he'll do just about anything you tell him to, and he don't need to know you won't actually pull the trigger on her, he just has to believe you will." I don't dare meet her eyes. "Ain't proud of it, but that was the job. Other times, it was putting a hit on a rival squad for infringing on our turf. Bullets flew pretty frequently, and at some point, you're gonna get hit. What made me so goddamn good at the job was I didn't give a shit if I lived or died and wasn't scared of getting hit. Which meant I did."

"You've been shot before?" She asks, her voice so soft and so innocent and so caring it fucking cuts through me like a hot knife through butter.

I snort derisively. "Lost count, babe. It wasn't the military. In the army or whatever, you take a round, they send you to Germany or Stateside to recover. If they deem you fit for duty, they send you back. In The Cabal, they don't give a shit about you. Patch you up, and as soon as you're able to stay on your feet, you're expected to get back to fuckin' work. You don't, you're no good. And when you're no longer of any value to an outfit like that, you're dead weight. Meaning, dead. So yeah, I've been shot more times than I care to count."

Terra frowns up at me. "Saxon…"

I shake my head. "Old news, babe. Point is, they had any number of opportunities to stick a tracker in me."

"But why would they?"

"Because they saw me as an investment. They put a lot of time and money into training me. Turning me into an elite assassin meant training on top of training. My brother Silas and I went through a kind of paramilitary boot camp together, which is a story for another time, and then when Dom picked me to replace Grigori after he got killed, they put me through a whole other series of training programs."

"What kind of organized crime family has boot camps?"

"The kind that's not a family. I told you—they're not the mafia. They're more of a multi-billion dollar global corporation than a gang or crime family. They have a CEO, CFO, investors, a board, a business model, and office buildings. They have what amounts to a private army, and because they have so much money and so many resources, they can afford to train their soldiers with the latest in warfare strategy and arm them with the latest gear. The cartels down in Mexico, Central, and South America are very similar."

"So we're being hunted by people with endless resources."

"Yes. Right now, they're operating under the assumption that I'm out of practice, and thus easy pickings—send a few bottom-of-the-barrel dumbfucks like these after me and it'll be over in half a day. They're not even sending actual Cabal soldiers after me. These guys are street thugs they've contracted out."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

I snort. "Yeah, actually. It is. But they're gonna wise up. They're gonna remember who they're dealing with, and they're gonna start sending the real deal after me."

"So what's our next move?"

The way she says "our" next move makes my chest tight and makes something in the pit of my stomach warm up. What that means, I don't fuckin' know.

"You change out of that sexy-ass dress, first of all. Second, we send your girl and Tommy somewhere far the fuck away. Third, we go get some collateral so I can get this fuckin' chip out of me, or whatever the fuck."

"You know how to do that?" She asks.

"I don't, but I know someone who does. But in order to get him to do it, I'm gonna need somethin' of value he wants."

"Which is?"

"A 1968 Ferrari Daytona."

"And where do you plan on getting something like that?"

I sigh. "My dad."

"Won't he miss it? I mean, I don't know shit about cars, but that sounds valuable."

"He would, if was alive."

I happen to glance down at her—big mistake. Her big turquoise eyes are wide and sad. "Oh, Saxon, I'm sorry. When did he die?"

"Three days ago. My mom shot him and then herself." I wince at the lance of pain I feel when I think about Mom. "Her, I'm sad about. Him, not so much. He shoulda been shot a long fuckin' time ago. Fact is, I should've shot him my own goddamn self."

"That I understand."

"From what Emily said in that rant of hers, it sounds like you would."

"About that—" she starts.

I cut her off. "You wanna explain and talk it out? I'll listen to every word. And I'll probably understand more than most. But you wanna keep your shit to yourself? I'll get that too. You don't owe me shit, Terra. Not now, not ever. It's my fault you're in danger."