“DID I SAY YOU COULD put that down here?” Kitty Devlin shrieked, loud enough to draw the attention of the whole party. She was a drama queen, much like many of the women in her financial position were, but it was mostly harmless. Probably not to the young waiter who shook visibly as he picked up the tray he’d apparently placed in the wrong spot, but to me and my crowd, a little temper tantrum was nothing to get excited about.
“Good Christ,” Harrison March muttered under his breath before taking a swig of his beer. “If Jackson didn’t have the hots for Lemon, I would have skipped this shit.”
I shook my head with a smile as he scratched at his trim, blondish beard and closed his green eyes in irritation. “They’re both seven.”
Hare shrugged, and Damien Dormuss chuckled outright. “Yeah, but he’s my kid. He’s pumped full of testosterone.”
Hare and Damien had been with me for twelve and ten years respectively. I’d been searching for someone to count on after my father died of a heart attack fifteen years ago and left everything Wonderland encompassed to me, but no one had had the head for it prior to Hare. He was smart and fast, and while a little impulsive, he had the loyalty and intensity I really needed. Damien was much smaller in stature than Hare, almost meek to the naked eye, but underneath his small, olive-skinned frame, he was full of quiet power.
“You wish,” Damien teased.
As much as Hare might not be enjoying Lemon’s party, attendance wasn’t really an option. Kitty and Franklin Devlin were longtime acquaintances of Wonderland, Inc., and while a kid’s party wasn’t our most frequent scene, it was all about the show.
Hiding money, backing Franklin on his debts when necessary, and whatever else they got themselves into, we were there when they needed us, just how we were for all of the other members of our insanely large, global organization. And for our trouble, they paid us a tremendous amount of money, which we carefully allocated and hid in the layers of complicated events—like this party—further extending the reach of our power. On the surface, we’d been paid our standard organizational fee as well as individual vendor fees for each facet of the party—the caterers, magician, Sprinkles the Rabbit—but there were also a few other carefully placed line items that had no actual purpose other than moving money. Parking fees, maintenance fees, location fees, you name it—anything that would blend all too easily on our books.
Just like a fucking septic guy, I made a lot of money getting my own hands dirty so other people didn’t have to.
The Devlins weren’t into the hardest drugs or even the dirtiest parties, but Franklin had a gambling habit he liked covered up, and Kitty liked handbags too much to pay in full on their taxes. When you were in the top three percent, you didn’t want to pay taxes on that kind of money, and some tax exemptions only existed inside Wonderland Inc.’s books. Depending on the amount of money we were hiding, sometimes, a client’s cash would enjoy some vacation time in one of our many offshore bank accounts. In this case, with a child’s birthday the supposed front, we were only dealing with a barely six-figure number—for LA, mere child’s play. We didn’t need the Caribbean to babysit our money this time.
Our being here was both a show of support and a reminder of who allowed them to stay in this position.
Without us, they’d be fucked, and it was best for everyone if they didn’t have any trouble remembering that.
As a businessman, I spent most of my days trying to expand the number of people who felt that way. My dad had laid a lot of the groundwork in his tenure in my position, but he’d barely even skimmed the top of the barrel of possibilities for Wonderland, Inc.
He would have, though, I knew—if he’d had more time.
“…ole Charles King. Once we’ve got his ass sitting pretty in the White House, nobody will be able to touch us,” I heard from across the terrace.
What the fuck?
Charles King, one of the politicians in the race for nomination to President of the United States, and an important player in our next move as an organization, was a name I never wanted to hear this close to the outside world. People listened, people talked, and even our name associated with him in the smallest way could fuck us over in the future.
I swiveled my gaze from Damien and Hare, still ripe in the throes of ribbing each other, and scanned until I found the source of the name. Jay Pidge was gesturing wildly, showboating in a way that even I could see it from across the fucking patio. It wasn’t a stretch to think the name had come from him. Thanks to his Elvis-like good looks and an easy smile, he mistakenly thought he could get away with more than another average guy, and that often led to running his mouth about things he obviously shouldn’t.
This time it was to Eric Queen, who, unlike Jaybird, was smart enough to look uncomfortable with the setting of their conversation. He scanned the area around them surreptitiously, stopping suddenly. I followed his gaze to the back corner of the house, where none other than Sprinkles the Rabbit stood listening to their conversation.
I narrowed my eyes as Sprinkles started to move—toward Jaybird and Eric.
Eric’s attention was no longer on the rabbit as one of the sexier waitresses walked by, and Jaybird, distracted by his ego and a half-smoked cigarette, was oblivious to everything.
Sprinkles used their complacency to his advantage.
Scooting by and, to the casual observer, keeping to himself, Sprinkles moved past Eric and Jay and down the stairs into the side yard.
Unfortunately for Sprinkles—and Jaybird—I had a finely trained eye, and I hadn’t missed the lightning fast, supersmooth pick of Jay Pidge’s pocket.
“Everything all right?” Harrison finally asked, noticing my rapt attention and the crease in my forehead. It was one of my only tells, a facial tic I’d tried for years to control without success. Everything else, though, I kept locked behind a fortress.
“Fine,” I said, waving him off as I watched to see where the rabbit went before turning to face him. Until I knew how big of a problem we actually had, I was going to handle this shit myself. Because this was an innocent, though spoiled, child’s birthday party, and sometimes people other than me forgot how to be subtle.
Jerking my head, I indicated I’d be back and stepped away to follow the furry perpetrator.
By the time I made it through the crowd that was starting to filter back onto the terrace, past a still complaining Kitty, and made my way down the stairs, the rabbit head lay abandoned on the top of a picnic table, and everything I’d initially thought had been reworked.
Sprinkles the Rabbit wasn’t a man at all.
No, she was all woman.
Good Christ.
One arm at a time, she pulled the thick costume from her dewy skin and then folded it down from her shoulders. Her collarbone framed her delicate neck perfectly, and the tips of her blond hair fell down and into the nearly overfilled cups of her black lace bra. Her nipples weren’t peaked, the heat of the day and a nice stint as a fucking furry rabbit at a birthday party making sure of that, but the dusky rose color was obvious through the transparent material.
She shoved the loose costume down the length of her trim waist before shimmying it over her hips and stepping out of the pooled fur with one leg and then the other. Completely oblivious to my attention, she turned away and bent forward to pull her haul out of the white glove of her costume.
The cheeks of her ass were high and round, perfectly symmetrical on each side of the thin string of her thong, but I knew better than to let it distract me.
The key to being in a business like mine was never to let the physical bleed into the emotional. Skin, tits, pussy—it was all good for pleasure and sensation, but clever men saw its value as something else—something that could and would be used against them.
It really is a perfect ass, though.
I watched her hands closely as she fished inside the plush material, crossing my arms over my chest and one ankle over the other and leaning into the hot brick of the house.
Irritation prickled my skin at the carelessness of one of my highest-ranking guys.
Information and the ability to keep it secret was the backbone of our organization, and Jay Pidge, better known as Jaybird, was a fucking idiot. He probably carried all sorts of shit around in his wallet in addition to running his mouth in public, and after I cleaned up his mess here, I was going to make a mess of him.
Shiny cardboard glinted in the sunlight as it cleared the glove and landed with a plop on the picnic table. She shoved her hand back into the glove and came out with a lighter. Instantly, I recognized the custom insignia of Jay’s crest on the side as she set it next to the pack of cigarettes on the table. With impatient fingers, she opened the top to pull out a single stick and sank into the attached bench with her back to the table—and me.
She turned briefly to light the cigarette, redeposited the lighter to its spot on the table, and turned back away to fan her face. It was hot today, the California sun heating the April air to a balmy eighty degrees and sticking with little to no breeze, but with the minuscule amount of clothing she had left on, I had no doubt she’d be cool in no time.
Surprisingly done with the gloves, she picked them up and tossed them onto the ground with the rest of her costume and let her head fall back to soak up the sun.
That’s it? No wallet?
Did she really just pickpocket one of my guys for fucking cigarettes?
Fuck, no one ever surprised me. Ever.
I felt my face curl into a soft smile as the swells of her breasts heaved with her sigh. Thanks to my height, I had no problem seeing them over her shoulder. I couldn’t help but move closer as the soft tendrils of her ponytail fell forward and stuck to the sweaty skin of her chest.
Finally, after letting nearly goddamn half of the cigarette burn off on its own, she put it between her lips and inhaled—and then choked like an amateur.