Center of Gravity (Marauders Book 3) (9 page)

“Drinking tea on a Saturday night. Such a good girl.”

“I had wine earlier,” I tried to defend myself.

“Don’t try, I know you’re a good girl. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Why do you ask?”

“You sound... you okay?”

“I’m fine. You?”

“I’m good. Your aunt home?”

“Yes.” I thought about it for a few seconds. Irina took sleeping pills, so she’d be out like a light in about an hour.  “I could come to you in an hour or so.”

“Want me to pick you up?”

“Mitch, I still have a cane, and I’m gonna be stuck with it for quite a while.”

“Fuck, keep forgetting that. Okay, I’ll text you my address, and I’m gonna go home and clean up.”

“I’ll see you then.”

I hung up, and half a minute later he texted me the address.

After Irina had said goodnight, I waited another half an hour before leaving. It wasn’t that she would mind, I just didn’t want to try to explain what I was doing because I wasn’t sure myself, and at the moment I didn’t want to hear why it was stupid. Or she might get eager about me seeing a guy, and then I had to explain that I wasn’t ‘seeing’ anyone, I was having sex with someone.

Mitch lived in one of the older apartment buildings on Main Street, not that far from the clubhouse. When he opened the door, my jaw hit the floor. It was a bright, modern, and really nice place. Along the right wall in the hallway was a staircase I assumed led up to a loft. To the left was a glass wall, overlooking a really nice terrace. His place was on the top floor, and the view from the terrace must have been great. I was stunned.

“Wow!” I mumbled and looked through the window. “When you said you needed to clean up I assumed you were living in some stud pad.”

“No. Dad has a thing for interior design and big open areas. I’m the same.”

The hallway, kitchen, and living room were on the main floor, open all the way through. I stood and stared for a long time, and then Mitch was in front of me, lifting me up and kissing me.

“So I was thinking,” he smiled against my lips, “would it be okay if I tested that famous ballerina flexibility today?”

“It would,” I laughed. “I’ll see if I can help you.”

Not ten minutes later, I was on my back in his bed, holding my good leg straight against my shoulder with Mitch lying on top of me.  When it got uncomfortable, simply since his weight was pressing my knee against my shoulder, I moved the leg to the side of my body, hooking my arm around it.

“Babe,” he chuckled, gave me a kiss, and put his hand on my ankle. “I really hope I get to booty call you for a while.”

“Please do.”

His thumb hit my clit, and I was already on my way to my first climax. He was so good at this it was ridiculous. Sure, I had a lot of pent up sexual energy, but it was still a lot him. I figured Lisa’d been right, and that the amount of practice had something to do with it. Which meant that as far as fuck buddy went, he was a very good choice.

When the spasms subsided, I opened my eyes, and Mitch was smiling at me.

“I changed my mind, you’re way too hot to be a good girl.”

“I
am
a good girl,” I insisted.

“Sure you are.” He gave me a kiss. “Want me to fuck you from behind?”

“Yes,” I laughed.

A very good fuck buddy.

-o0o-

Not only did he have the technique, he had the stamina, too. I was soaked in sweat and very satisfied, and despite his continuous comments about my ballerina flexibility, I actually hadn’t thought about dancing while I was at his place. I still wanted to go home and spend the night in my own bed, though. There was no way in hell I’d be able to get home the next morning without stretching, and I didn’t want to do that at his place.

“Can I borrow your shower?” I asked as I got up.

“Sure. Bathroom door is in the living room.”

I brought my clothes with me, and couldn’t help looking around a little on my way there. I was still surprised about the apartment. It was so nice and not at all what I had expected. I giggled a little when I opened the door to the bathroom. It was state of the art and
very
fancy. It seriously looked pimped; like he’d had an actual interior decorator there to place all his bottles in a way to make it all look perfect.

The next laugh was when I entered the shower and noticed the shampoo and conditioner. My suspicions about his ‘casual’ hairdo being carefully maintained seemed to be correct because his choice of hair products were top of the line. In fact, everything I saw in there, that I recognized, was expensive stuff. To the point where I was worried if it was really okay if I used it.

Mitch was in the kitchen, still naked, when I came back outside.

“I borrowed some shampoo and conditioner.”

“Borrowed?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “Planning on giving it back?”

“Okay. I
used
some of your shampoo and conditioner.”

“I assumed you would when you asked if you could
borrow
my shower.” He watched as I started getting dressed. “You’re leaving? You don’t have to.”

“I wanna get back before Irina wakes up.”

“You make me feel like a john when you just take off like that,” he said with a wink and held my cheek.

“Guess we’re even, then.”

He laughed and gave me a kiss. “Let me know if you have your place to yourself. Not promising I can always come, but if I can, I will.”

I’m not stupid, so I was fully capable of seeing what he was doing. He wanted me to take the initiative, even if it was in that kind of backwards way.

“I’ll do that.”

He followed me to the door, still buck-naked, which was pretty nice, and I heard him lock the door behind me.

-o0o-

The next afternoon I was having my physical therapy, and while Brett was stretching my leg, he winked.

“Are you seeing someone, missy? You have a very interesting glow about you.”

“No I don’t!” I glared at him. “Seriously, how did you know?”

“Actually, I saw you get into a cab just down the block when I got home last night. And no one who gets into a cab in a residential area that late has been up to anything good.”

“So why did
you
get home that late?” I countered.

“Good girl,” he said with a wink, and started to massage my leg. “Want me to change the subject?”

“Yes, please!”

“I was going to ask you if you could change your lunch appointment on Thursdays to a morning appointment. I have a new patient, and we’re having some problems fitting him in. He’s only in town once a week, and can’t be here that early.”

“I’m fine with that, but why can’t he have PT in his hometown?”

“He lives in the middle of nowhere, and they stock up here in Greenville once a week, but I’ll let him know that it works for me. He wanted appointments around lunch. And as a thank you, I’ll even throw in a free ride with me here.”

“That would be great,” I said and took a deep breath when he started to flex my foot because it tended to hurt a lot, and it did this time as well. “Means I don’t have to take the bus.”

“You could drive, you know,” he said and started to pull my leg while still flexing the foot.

“I don’t have a car, and I can’t afford one.” I inhaled sharply. “Damn!”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t trust that leg, either, and that’s the leg you brake with. It wouldn’t be good if it stopped working or something.”

“It’s not gonna stop working all of a sudden, honey.”

“I’ll think about it.”

I had thought about it, though, and I didn’t want to take any chances until I fully understood how my leg worked. It had been a long time, but it was still a mystery to me. Also, I hadn’t been driving much. I had a license, but I’d never bothered with driving in New York, and I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I was behind the wheel.

CHAPTER SIX

Do It Here

-o0o-

Mitch quickly concluded that the very tall man who looked like the Viking equivalent of a psychopath, was probably the Swedish man named Olle Örn. He had a lot of gray in his beard and hair, ice blue eyes, a big nose, and really good teeth. For a second he wondered if they were dentures because they were so straight and white. He also had something shoved up under his upper lip, making it stand out in a weird way.

Dieter ‘Pico’ Böhm was shorter, had a moustache, hair pointing in all directions and only held down with the help of the military cap he’d put on the second he got off the bike. It was obvious he was in charge because Olle waited until Pico was ready, and then walked behind him up to Brick.

“An honor,” Pico said in broken English. He definitely had an accent; that much was obvious even by those two words alone.

“Yes, an honor,” Eagle said next, and his English was better. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

After greeting Brick, Bear, and Bull, they shook hands with the rest of them. Eagle actually introduced himself as Eagle. Apparently the English translation of his last name had stuck among the Marauders.

Dutch took Mitch to the side after a tight hug.

“How are things with hacking attempt?” he asked.

“Nothing to worry about,” Mitch assured him. “He’s hidden his tracks, but he didn’t get anything. We’re doing a search in the system, and so far it’s clean. He’s been back a few times but hasn’t been any more successful, and he’s very careful, so we’re considering giving him a honeypot.”

“A what?”

“A trap. We’ll basically make him think he’s found what he’s looking for. He’ll hack it and that way we can track him.”

“I like it,” Dutch smiled. “Think it’s cops?”

“No. Not even cops suck that bad at hacking. This is something else.”

“Could it have something to do with them?” He nodded towards the guest.

“Doubt it. Their intel guy is a man called Staccato. If he’d wanted to test us, he would’ve done a better job, and if he’d wanted to get into our system, he would’ve. We might have caught him, but he’d get in.”

“And the emails, think he can get to those? The hacker, I mean.”

“We have programs that encrypt emails on all club computers, Dutch. I’ve told you that, at the same time as I told you that unencrypted emails are about as private as postcards. Don’t worry.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s why I only email you from the club computer. Anything you and Mech have seen before? What he used.”

Mitch laughed. “Sure. But we’ve seen most of it. He was probably trying to add some rootkit, get sudo access—”

“Fuck it,” Dutch laughed. “I don’t give a shit, and I don’t get it, either, but we need to keep an eye on it.”

“We are. We’ve just temporarily hit a wall, but our system is clean. It’s almost like he’s just poking us with a long stick. He doesn’t even seem to be trying very hard anymore, but we’ll get him.”

“Glad you and Mech are on our side,” Dutch said with a smile. “Take me to the bar.”

After a few welcome beers, they all went into the chapel, and Mitch sat down at his usual place. They’d put out extra chairs for Chucky, Dutch, Pico, and Eagle. Brick held his usual welcome speech to their guests, and then they quickly got down to business.

“I’m letting Eagle here speak for me,” Pico said with a nod towards the huge Swede. “His English is better.”

He looked at Eagle, who nodded. Before starting to talk, he took something out from under his upper lip, put it in the lid of a small, round canister, before opening it and once again shoving something black under his lip. Mitch just stared, and Eagle smiled at him.

“Swedish snus, twice as much nicotine as those fag sticks your suckling on. Puts hair on your chest, boy. Want some?”

Mitch shook his head. “Um, are you gonna need something to spit in?”

“Nope. Not from this.”

Mitch still didn’t think it was smart to put that shit in before he started talking, but it wasn’t his problem, so he shrugged.

“We’ve heard that you immediately guessed we wanted diamonds from you, which is correct,” Eagle smiled. “But we do also want pot. We’re growing our own, but we’re in control of most coffee shops in Amsterdam and Rotterdam now, and we can just barely cover our own needs, so we’ve decided to keep our own production in Holland, and smuggle in foreign products to ship to the rest of Europe.”

“I don’t need detailed answers to my questions, and if I step out of line, just let me know, but I do have some practical questions,” Brick said. “I’m assuming you’re taking things through the US already, so do you have a port here where we can ship things from?”

They’d all assumed that it was going to be done by ships. If the Smiling Ghouls were in control of outlaw activity in the Netherlands, they had contacts in the Amsterdam and Rotterdam ports, or were even partly in control of them. A quick look at what cities the Smiling Ghouls had in the US, it became fairly evident that they tended to choose cities with important ports.

“We have a few,” Eagle said with a smile. “Since these things are going to Europe, they’re going from the East Coast. One problem could be that you’re muling on a small scale. You do it often and small shipments. That’s not going to work with the way we’re transporting.”

“If we get to that point, we’ll figure it out,” Chucky said with a nod. “Setting up a transport company and a few trucks re-built for smuggling doesn’t take long, but we’re not going to start with that until we know where this is going.”

“What would our role be, exactly?” Brick asked.

“Your roll would be getting the goods to a harbor here in the US, probably New York, and setting up the deal with the cartel. You already have a good pipeline of clubs up there, and I don’t see any reason why you should create a different one,” Eagle said. “You leave it to our men, get your cut, and they ship it over to Amsterdam to distribute it in Europe. It wouldn’t be that different from what you’re doing now. Just a bigger risk, since it’s bigger amounts.”

“Even if the pipelines are the same, we’re not going to be able to do it in the same way as we are now, if the shipments get bigger,” Bear said and shook his head. “So what pipelines we have now doesn’t really matter. Might be better to use one further south. Shorter travel distance.”

“I think our US friends will insist on the New York Port,” Eagle answered with a casual shrug, but Mitch couldn’t help noticing his tense jaw when he said it. “But that’s something we can discuss later. And you can separate the shipments. Take the regular ones one way, and ours another way. That’s up to you. We don’t care either way.

“What about borders on your end?” Tommy asked. “This is just me being curious, but there’s a lot of small fucking countries in Europe, a lot of borders to cross.”

“It’s the EU,” Eagle smiled, and he seemed a lot more comfortable with that discussion. “No borders is the EU. Haven’t seen a manned station at a border in ten years. It’s trickier if you’re going outside EU, but not even that is much of a problem if you know the right routes.”

“You can come and we show you,” Pico said to Brick and Bear. “Or anyone else who wants to see.”

“They’ve invited us to come with them on a run if we set this up,” Chucky explained. “Think it would be a good thing to go on the first run. If for no other reason than to see Christiania.”

Eagle chuckled. “You wanna see it and the coffee shops in Amsterdam, too.”

They talked for hours, and it was definitely interesting. As far as Mitch could tell, the two visitors were straight with them. The only strange thing was the weird Swedish idioms Eagle kept using. Apparently he wanted them to spread around the word. The weirdest was definitely ‘shitting in the blue cupboard,’ which basically meant stepping over the line. Mitch liked it, though.

Once the meeting was over, Mitch called Anna. They’d seen each other at least twice a week the past month, and he still hadn’t managed to get her to stay the night at his place. She kept blaming her aunt or starting work early the next morning, but he was sure that wasn’t it.

He promised Dutch they’d sit down with Sisco the next day to go over what the cooperation with the Europeans could mean for the money laundry, but even after a quick talk he knew they were all on the same page. It would make it easier.

-o0o-

“You know, if you were a seventeen-year-old high school girl, I might have believed the excuse that you don’t want your aunt to know you’re having sex, but you’re not,” he said to Anna while she was getting dressed. He was still in bed, and he was studying her while having his post-coitus smoke. “So tell me what the real reason is.”

“The leg,” she said without looking at him while she buttoned up her shirt.

“I’ve seen your leg, baby. Quite fond of it, to be honest.”

She sighed and eyed him. “I need to do a twenty-minute exercise every morning to get it started.”

“So?” he shrugged. “Do it here, not like I’d mind.”

“It’s just…” she didn’t continue.

“It’s okay.” He got up from the bed and went over to her cane. “Did you know that the cane got popular among wealthy men in the 18
th
century since swords became banned? It was used as a protection, and also something that showed you didn’t make a living by physical labor.”

“No,” she laughed. “How did
you
know that?”

“Read it somewhere,” he said as he handed it to her. “I remember what I read.”

“Everything?” she asked with a smile.

“Most of it.”

“So you could give me useful information about random subjects then?”

“Probably.” He followed her down the stairs and to the door. “Just so you know, I wouldn’t mind. I’d even help with the massage.”

“I need an actual massage, not foreplay.”

“I could do that before getting to the foreplay.”

“Sure,” she said with an eye roll and pulled him down for a kiss. “I’ll see you.”

“Whenever you can, just give me a call,” he said with a smile, well aware that she wouldn’t. It was always him making the call. On occasion she texted to let him know her aunt was staying at her boyfriend’s for the night, but that was as close as she’d get.

Once she was gone, he tried to get some sleep but quickly realized it wouldn’t happen. If he’d stayed in bed when Anna left, it might’ve worked, but getting out meant he was doomed. He was pretty pleased when Eliza called.

“Buttercup,” he answered with a big smile. “Was actually hoping you’d call.”

“You free?”
she asked.

“Always free for you, honey. I’ll be there in twenty.”

He loved taking rides with Eliza. She was easy company and as sharp as she was beautiful. They always had great discussions about physics, comics, or movies. Lately she’d been asking him about boys, too, and as fucking uncomfortable as it made him, he was glad she talked to him, so he could warn her about guys like him.

A few months earlier, he’d been pulled over by the cops when they were on one of their night rides, and to his horror the cops had thought she was with him—as his girlfriend. They were probably looking to take him in for being with a minor. He’d been so disgusted he’d barely been able to look at her for about an hour after that. He was twelve years older than her! She’d naturally thought it was hilarious, and had teased him relentlessly about it for weeks.

This time there were no cops in sight, though, and after about a forty-five minute ride, he took her to his place. She took his hand when they walked into the living room.

“Sorry if I interrupted you,” she said.

“No you’re not. You’re never sorry, Buttercup.” He gave her forehead a kiss and went to get a Coke each for them. “And she’d already left when you called.”

Eliza was studying him when he came with the bottle and glasses. He knew he’d said too much because Eliza didn’t miss stuff. At the same time he needed to sort some things out, and with the exception of Mac, Eliza was the best option. Besides, Eliza was lacking the thing that made him and Mac scratch their head about women—a penis.

“You had a girl
here
?”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t want to spend the night,” he said, and Eliza raised her eyebrows. “Can you shut up about this? I don’t want it blown out of proportion because you yap about it to Mel or someone.”

“If you shut up about a few questions I have.”

“Okay.”

“It’s about a guy.”

He took a deep breath. She was fourteen; it couldn’t be that fucking bad, and if it was he’d go bury the little prick somewhere in the woods and make sure Eliza never knew about it. He really would, and Mac would help him.

“Ask me.”

“It’s this guy at my school. He’s older than me, and we’re texting. He’s really sweet and funny.”

Mitch bet he was sweet, but just emptied his glass to not say anything.

“So,” Eliza continued, “I guess I just wanna know if it’s for real.”

“Tell him you have a purity ring and are planning on staying a virgin until you’re married. If he still texts you after that, it might be. Or he just thinks you need some convincing.”