Nineteen - Kholton

“She’s got your head jammed.”

 

 

 

“What the fuck?” Natalie curses at me the minute my ass hits the leather seat of her Mercedes.

“Hello to you, too, Miss Fisher.”

“Khol, I’m serious.” She sounds it, too. “What are you doing with Serena?”

“Tutoring her.”

Thank shit I’ve got on my seatbelt, because my whole body is thrown forward when she jams the brakes. Through gritted teeth, she hisses, “I swear to God, Khol, I will stab you in the eye if you don’t tell me the truth.”

“Jesus.” I chuckle. “Simmer down, woman.”

A car honks behind us and she bullets me one final glare before hitting the gas again. 

Natalie Fisher is an ex-partner—both in work and sex. We’ve done a couple of jobs together when we were both working for a private company. 

One of the most stunning women I’ve ever come across, but I still see her as “one of the boys”. Well, except for that one—er twelve times.

But don’t be fooled by her dazzling beauty and soft curves. The woman is lethal. Savage. Wild. A total bitch. A bad bitch. One you should be afraid of. Her teeth are sharp and serrated, hungry for blood. And hell if I’m going to let her taste mine.

“I thought you hung up the gloves. Going straight and all that,” she says. “What, are you running out of cash or something? Do you owe someone?” 

“Not exactly.” I rub the back of my neck. “Think you might wanna slow down, Fisher? You drive like a maniac.”

“Deal with it,” she snaps. “Now tell me. What made you backslide?”

“It’s Brian,” I spill. “He needs my help and I owe him. And I didn’t ‘backslide’ or whatever. It’s just this one job and that’s it.”

Natalie scoffs. “Brian, that dickwad. Figures. What’s his deal this time?”

“Careful,” I say through a short laugh. “He just might hear you. You know that sonuvabitch is like air. He’s everywhere.”

She makes an unimpressed grunt. But she knows it’s the truth. “Heard he’s been doing great since he got out of rehab. That true?”  

“Yep. He’s legit this time.” I scratch my jaw. “But after all the shit leading up to rehab, he’s got more debts than savings now. A lot of relationships to mend, you know. He wants to go straight. Clean up the skid marks of his shit and buy back into BCI Services. This job, it’s enough to take care of that and more.”

“Ah, I see. That needy little shit.” She makes a disgruntled noise in her throat. “What’s the prize?”

“Have you ever seen Serena with a peacock brooch? Lots of colorful diamonds?” 

“A brooch?” She shakes her head. “Who wears a brooch anymore except for little old grannies?”

“How much do you know about her family?”

“I grew up with them. I guess you could say we grew apart when…you know.” She lays on the gas and overtakes a minivan. “Why?”

Like a little bitch, I grip the overhead handle and double check that I’ve got my seatbelt on. The woman drives like a bat in daylight. “My client—who’s a woman—presented proof that the brooch is hers. Including a painting of a woman who looks exactly like her wearing the brooch. Claims she’s her grandmother.”

“Did you have the painting authenticated?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “Legit. Curator confirmed the painting was done around the time her grandmother was in her late twenties. Valued at roughly a hundred thousand.”

“Hmm,” she hums thoughtfully. “Well, she’s definitely not hard-pressed for cash if she’s sitting on a 100k painting. What, you have doubts?”

I blow out a sigh. I’ve been conflicted since I walked out of that museum, yet it’s virtually impossible that my client is lying about ownership. It’s imperative that we never take on a client until we’ve validated their claims. If there’s even a sliver of doubt, the client is turned down.

Somewhere along the way, we’d stopped stealing from, and began stealing back. Hence the multiple rounds of background and fact checking. As we grew, so did our reputation: We help return what’s rightfully yours.

It irritates the hell out if me right now that my feelings for Serena is making me doubt my client, whose side I should be on.

“She showed me the brooch,” I disclose. “But she also gave me this whole story behind it. And I dunno, I guess it just sounded…true.”

“Are you—” She eases up on the gas and decelerates to a cruise. “Khol…do you have feelings for Serena?”

I look over at her. “Sorry?”

“Serena is a good friend of mine, but if your client’s proof of ownership is one-hundred-percent legit, I’m willing to step aside and let you do what you have to do. But if she’s not your friend and you don’t have feelings for her, why the hell do you care about her story behind the brooch?”

“Uh, I dunno,” I ground out, “maybe because it’s worth seventy-million-dollars and I wanna make sure I’m doing the right thing?”

I’m irate. But not at her. I’m irate at the truth. As long as the client’s proof is tested true, the only thing that should matter after that is getting the job done. What I should not do is get close enough to the target to care. For all I know, her great-grandmother fed her a load of BS. Maybe the supposed jeweler husband stole it and lied to his wife. Whatever. The fact is, I shouldn’t care.

“The right thing?” Her tone is incredulous. “What right thing? You’re a professional thief.”

There was a time when I took pride in that title. Professional Thief. Contracted by some of the wealthiest, or most famous people in the world. Bathing in the thrill. But right now, the only thing I feel is shame.

Shame because of her. What would she think if she knew? If she heard those words?

Professional.

Thief.

“Forget it,” I bite out. “Just forget I said anything.”

“I can’t—” she starts to say then stops. “Okay. Fine.” She slams the gas and I swear it feels as if the car is no longer touching the ground.

Psychotic bitch.

Asking her to slow down makes no difference, she’ll only speed up. Instead, I hang on and beg God to allow me to survive the impending crash just long enough to kiss Serena Bentley one last time.

Around twenty minutes in, she decelerates. But only so she can reach across with one hand to rub my dick. “Got plans tonight?”

I don’t make an attempt to remove her hand. She could’ve been rubbing my shoulder at a funeral for all the interest my dick is showing. Not because she doesn’t do it for me—she does, oh boy, does she ever—but because I haven’t been able to get it up for anyone except Serena for months now.

“Yep,” I say dryly. “A long shower and an even longer slumber.”

“Fit me in after shower and before slumber,” she demands.

“Wait,”—I’m laughing now— “are you saying you wanna fuck me for reasons other than soothing your PMS symptoms?”

“Yeah.” She shrugs. “You’re hot as hell, you have a big dick and you know how to use it. So why not?”

I had a short affair with Natalie once. We were on a job together in Seattle, and that’s when I learned that raging horniness is one of her PMS symptoms. She jumped me and I didn’t stop her because, well, she’s Natalie. Ridiculously sexy. Bossy. And I’d wanted inside her the moment I met her.

After that, she would turn up out of the blue whenever she was experiencing said symptom and we’d hump like bunnies.

But we haven’t bumped uglies in well over two years now. I’m not her type, something she never fails to remind me of. So she’s got to be up to something right now.

“C’mon,” she urges when I don’t respond, still rubbing my unresponsive dick. “It’s been a while for me, so you’d be doing me a favor.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She stops and jerks up the handbrake. Just like that. In the middle of the street. There’s a chorus of angry horn-honking before drivers give up and begin overtaking us.

Thanks to the darkly tinted windows, no one can see as she undoes her seatbelt and leans across to lick her tongue up my neck.

“Natalie, stop—”

“Want to hear something baffling?” she whispers sultrily against my skin.

“Nope. I just want to—”

“No one’s ever managed to make me come as hard as you did.” She tries to undo my belt buckle. “Let me blow you. Right here, right now. You know I’m good at it.” 

As her tongue glides up my neck again, I grab her hand and rip it off me. “Fisher, chill the hell out. I’m not interested.”

“I knew it!” She throws herself back in her seat and jabs a finger at me. “You have feelings for her.”

See? Psychotic bitch. “What’re you on about?”

“Dude, your dick didn’t even twitch.” Her tone is accusatory. “The Kholton I know doesn’t hesitate with pussy. The first time I came on to you, you had me choking on your cock before I could even blink.”

Goddammit. I knew she was up to something.  “I’ve had a long day.”

“Bull. Shit.” She tosses her head back and laughs. “It’s Serena. She’s got your head jammed.”

I force a scoff and a laugh of my own. “You’re way off base.”

“Oh, yeah?” she challenges.

“Yep.” I’m nonchalant—on the outside.

“You sure about that?” She drops the handbrake and takes off again. “Collin Capshaw?”

Just like that, she’s got my attention. I narrow my eyes at her. “You’ve been digging up on me?”

She clucks her tongue. “You don’t know it, but I almost fell for you. You dicked me too damn good. So yeah, I did some digging.”

Side bar, Natalie Fisher is now a government secret agent. There’s no information that she can’t get to. “Secret Agent” has a lot of meanings, and whether she’s a good one or a bad one, I don’t know. I don’t ask questions. The less I know the better. But whenever I need information I can’t get on my own, or find myself in a jam, I call either her, or my other inside source, Teddy.

That’s my girl. Both she and Natalie are my big secrets to winning every single time. If there’s anyone who could’ve dug up my so thoroughly buried identity, it would be one of them.

“What, you didn’t like what you found?”

“Eh.” She shrugs. “I’m not into rich boys. That bit killed my hard-on for you. It was better when I didn’t know.”

I laugh. “That’s what you get for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Look,” she starts on a more serious note, “if this thing with Serena is something more, not just sex, then get your girl Teddy to run a deeper check on your client. I’d do it for you, but I’m on a six-week suspension.”

“Suspension? What did you do?”

“Classified.”

“Of course.”

“Goes without saying,” she adds, “if you hurt Serena, I’ll rip your sagging balls off.”