The Hostage Bargain (23 page)

“We have skills,” Thor said. “As you know. Utterly unmatched.”

“Plus, humility.” I leaned back on Thor’s shoulder, enjoying being in a kind of nest with my Peter Pans. “And I’m Isis. What the hell else would I choose?”

Odin scowled. “And you’d have to continue to obey our rules and perform the duties.”

I smiled. “Would the duties be erotic?”

“Very,” Thor whispered.

“And the punishment would be severe, yet exquisite,” Odin said.

“Then we’ll kill her,” I said.

I caught Zeus’s green gaze. Thor kissed the top of my head. Odin smiled his devilish smile.

I felt so free in that moment, barreling into the unknown.

I nestled more deeply into Thor’s shoulder, looking richly forward to spending endless days and nights with my guys, and seeing their hideouts and learning the bank robber trade, and helping them with it; I was determined to find a part to play. We would help each other. We would be okay.

We all just sat there together and watched the swirls on the watery surface of the hot tub, four badass peas in a pod.

~ THE END ~

I hope you enjoyed your kinky bank robbers. This book is lending enabled wherever possible, so feel free to share it with a friend. And if you enjoy writing reviews, please go ahead and tell other readers what you thought—it helps so much when people do that, but most of all, thank you for reading!! Readers rock.

Psst: can you take ALL the Kinky Bank Robbers at once?

Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers: the full 3-book boxed set is on
super steal sale
right now for $3.99 (individual books cost $2.99)!
grab it here.

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Alter ego Carolyn Crane
http://authorcarolyncrane.com

Annika Martin is a NYT bestselling author living a stone’s throw away from the Mississippi with her awesome husband and two daring cats in a home full of plants, sunshine, and books. She’s heavy into writing love stories about criminals—some of her tales are dirty and fun (kinky bank robbers!) others are dark and intense (Prisoner). She also writes gritty, sexy romantic suspense and urban fantasy as RITA-award winning author Carolyn Crane.

The Hostage Bargain (Book 1 of Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers)
*this book!*

Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers 3-book set
*Limited time super-steal sale*

Books 1-3: The Hostage Bargain, The Wrong Turn, and The Deeper Game for 3.99 instead of $2.99 each.

The Wrong Turn (Book 2 of Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers)
*next book*

When Isis consented to letting three hot, dominating bank robbers use her for their every delicious whim and pleasure, she was thinking about forbidden thrills. Dangerous fun. What she never expected was the deep bond the four of them might form.

The Deeper Game (Book 3 of Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers)

Q: Who would stalk Isis?

A: Somebody with a deathwish.

Isis always knew her bank robbers were ruthless, dangerous, and brilliant. After all, they take their names from gods. They’ve eluded law enforcement agencies across the globe. And with just the crook of a little finger they’re able to bend her to their every kinky desire. But it isn’t until the threatening letter arrives for her that she realizes just how ruthless, dangerous and brilliant her three men are.

PRISONER (book #1: Criminals & Captives) by Annika Martin & Skye Warren

This is a sexy, dark new adult romantic suspense I wrote with my pal Skye. In Prisoner, a hot and tortured prisoner takes the prison’s prim volunteer teacher (a college student) captive on a cross country escape/road trip. Grayson & Abigail are two very damaged characters (and ***dubious consent alert*** the sex is not always consensual!!). Only the first book is out, but more will come, because Grayson comes from a whole gang of tortured criminals who take women captive…yeah, it’s all very gritty and ‘lost boys’-ish!!

PRISONER:

HE SEETHES with raw power the first time I see him—pure menace and rippling muscles in shackles. He’s dangerous. He’s wild. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

So I hide behind my prim glasses and my book like I always do, because I have secrets, too. Then he shows up in the prison writing class I have to teach and he blows me away with his honesty. He tells me secrets in his stories, and it’s getting harder to hide mine. I shiver when he gets too close, with only the cuffs and the bars and the guards holding him back. At night, I can’t stop thinking about him.

But that’s the thing about an animal in a cage—you never know when he’ll bite. He might use you to escape. He might even pull you into a forest and hold a hand over your mouth, so you can’t call for the cops. He might make you come so hard, you can’t think.

And you might crave him more than your next breath.

Find it here.

Upcoming from Annika...

Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers #4:
Zeus starts a detective agency!

Criminals & Captives 2:
Stone’s story.

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Click here to get on the Annika Martin release alert email list.

INTO THE SHADOWS (The Associates 3) by Carolyn Crane

The Associates are hot, tortured (are you sensing a theme?), super-smart and dangerous spies. The books in this series can be read alone because each has a different hero and heroine and a different mystery. Fans of the kinky bank robbers might enjoy INTO THE SHADOWS best as a starting point. (
Undercover agent Thorne McKelvey knows exactly how Nadia sees him—as a brute and a killer just kinky enough to play her sexy games. And that’s how it has to stay…
)

Find it here.

MIND GAMES (The Disillusionists 1) by Carolyn Crane

This is the first book in the award-winning urban fantasy trilogy about a hot & tortured mastermind who has the power to turn people’s greatest weaknesses and negative emotions into crime-fighting powers. It’s fun and thrilling and won a lot of best-of awards.

In North America.

Free outside of North America
 (or at least discounted)

Chapter One: excerpt

“Eep!” I cried.

From across the coffee table, Zeus gave me one of his gorgeous, green-eyed glowers that always made my insides melt. “Just lie there and take it, and don’t be a baby.” He tightened his grip on my leg, which was propped up on the smooth tabletop. “If you would stop squirming, it would be over sooner.”

Thor looked at me sadly and slid closer to me on the couch. “It is one of the most sensitive parts of the body,” he said. “But if we knocked you out, it wouldn’t mean as much.”

I squinched my eyes shut. I didn’t want to say
Mississippi
, the word that would make them stop anything. I was supposed to be all badass now.

“Eep,” I whispered, as the sting of the tattoo needle intensified.

Zeus snorted. “If you say
eep
one more time, I swear, Odin is going to start all over again. On the other side.”

I plunked my head back on the couch and stared at the chandelier on the hotel room ceiling as Odin’s implement vibrated its painful little path along the tender inside of my ankle. I tensed. The needling stopped.

“I’m gonna fuck it up if you don’t start handling this.” I lifted my head to see Odin rise up straight next to Zeus, scowling up at me through his black wavy hair. His glasses and the bruising around his eye from a recent scuffle almost cancelled out his pretty boy looks—
almost
. “You usually like a little pain, Isis.”

True.

I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I felt proud to be getting the tattoo of our bank robbing gang—an angry cloud with four fierce lightning bolts. Before I joined up, the design featured only three lightning bolts. The last bolt was me.

Odin dabbed at my ankle.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “What if the cops caught me and recognized the tattoo, and I cracked and led them to you?”

Zeus gazed at me with extra smoldering intensity. His nut-brown hair was still wet from a recent shower. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to touch
him.
“The cops’ll catch us when we’re dead,” he growled.

My mouth went dry; I so loved when he talked tough like that. Still, I worried. “What if I’m the weak link?”

“The tattoo isn’t about that. It’s about family,” Zeus said. “It says we belong together.”

“Seriously, though, what if I fuck it up?”

Zeus stood and came around the coffee table and sat down next to me on the couch. “Listen to me, Isis.” He set his hands gently on the sides of my neck, fingers lightly touching my ears. “We’re a family now. You know what family means? We get to fuck things up and be fucked up, and we still belong together.”

It was such a sweet thing to say. I felt my eyes misting up.

“I know you can never go home again,” he continued, “and part of that is our fault.” I started to protest—I’d made my own choices. He waved it off. “I know you miss your sisters. But we’re family now, Ice. We’re here for you. But if you don’t want the tattoo, you don’t have to get it.”

“It’s not that I don’t want the tattoo. I want it. And you know I’m 100% into this.”

Thor smoothed a bit of hair from my forehead. Even my hair was different in this life—short and platinum blonde instead of long and red. “Good, because we’re 100% into you.” He smiled devilishly, and I could tell he’d thought of something dirty. “Actually, we’re 300% into you.”

I grinned. “I don’t know that we’ve gotten quite that far yet in our relationship.”

Thor crossed his lanky legs. “The night’s still young, baby.”

Shivers ran over my skin.

“And, also, I think you’re 300% into our gang rules,” Thor whispered.

My belly tightened. Yes, I liked the dirty rules.

Thor said, “Actually, I think you joined entirely for the rules. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe the rules state that we can use your body in whatever way we see fit to satisfy our each and every carnal desire. Which would include tattooing you however and wherever we please.”

“Correction,” I said. “I didn’t join for the rules that let you use my body to satisfy your carnal desires. I joined after being held at gunpoint. I
stayed
for the dirty rules.” And, of course, the thrill of breaking them.

I was taken hostage in their bank robbery last month—a
takeover robbery
, as they say in the biz. Ironically, it was only after I’d become their hostage that I’d found real happiness and freedom.

“Isis, a tattoo means more than words,” Odin said. “And it says we’ll never leave you behind, no matter what.”

“And you’ll never leave us behind,” Thor added softly.

There it was.

“I wouldn’t leave you like that,” I said quickly.
Like her
.

“We know,” Thor said.

Did they?
My powerful, roguish criminals were also a little bit vulnerable, I realized. Letting me join was their own risky act—one as dangerous as the most violent bank takeover. They’d committed to a woman before. And were broken when she killed herself.

“Let’s do this,” I said. “Together forever.”

Zeus pulled me to him with a fierceness that surprised me, and he kissed my forehead.

I said it again: “Let’s do it.”

“Good,” Odin said. “Because God Pack membership is not the stuff of a
fucking-g
pinky shake.”

I smiled. I loved his accent, the way he pronounced words like
fucking
with an extra syllable:
fucking-ga tattoo.

I looked over his shoulder at the vase of tulips on the side table, flowers Zeus would’ve ripped up not too long ago out of grief and angst, and I felt this surge of affection for my bandits. We’d come through a lot in a short time. And we had a code. Sure, our code was all about being a gang of criminals living dissipated, sex-crazed lives in luxury hotels, but it was our code. We were our own goddamn kind of family, and I was proud as hell of it. And I wanted the tattoo.

“Naturally, it’s the most intricate tattoo known to humankind,” I said. “I think this thing has a higher lever of detail than a dollar bill. You guys only got one angry lightning bolt added today. I have to get the whole crazy thing.”

“It’s not angry, it’s wrathful,” Odin corrected. “Wrath is more constructive than anger.”

“And cooler,” Thor added. “Wrath is cooler than anger.”

“Do it.” I shoved my foot back across the coffee table at Odin. He watched me, toying with the tattoo implement. His fingernails looked pale against his dark skin. He’d once told me he’d gotten his dark coloring from ancestors in the Berber tribe of North Africa. He was proud of his heritage, but he hated being so gorgeous—it detracted from his image as a dangerous criminal. The things he did to counteract his looks—the two-day beard, the messy hair, it just intensified his handsomeness. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.