With Extreme Pleasure (11 page)

K
ing had only been without his Hummer for thirty-six hours, but damn was it good to have it back. Yeah, yeah,
it
wasn’t the same vehicle he’d been driving before, but if this upgraded version wasn’t the sweetest thing he’d ever laid a hand on, then he’d never eat a crawfish again.

Uh, the sweetest thing besides Cady.

Fitz had taken care of the VIN change with the state and the insurance company who had no idea that they’d skated on a huge replacement payout. How he’d done it, what strings he’d had to pull…those things were part of the mystery that was Fitzwilliam McKie.

King was pretty damn sure there was more to the story of who McKie was, what he did, who he worked for, and who funded their gig, but there was no question that the man made things happen—and did so at a level that required either a lot of connections or a lot of cash.

Having fallen into a fortune of Civil War gold this last year, King was well aware of the strings money could pull, the people it could buy, the things it could provide, and how it kept machines well oiled and running. McKie could be using it to do all of the above, hoping to deprive Nathan Tuzzi of being able to do the same.

The thought of Tuzzi had King glancing at the woman tucked into his passenger seat, looking out her window at the Pennsylvania landscape rolling by. They’d crossed the state line and left New Jersey only a few minutes ago. He’d pointed it out, but she hadn’t said a thing.

Then again, she hadn’t said much of anything since taking on McKie over breakfast. She’d been particularly silent while loading up the replacement Hummer after Fitz had run them through the plan. The government man’s plan wasn’t much of one, to King’s way of thinking, and was no doubt giving Cady an assload of grief.

Hell, he was only an ancillary target, the bull’s-eye on his back small in comparison to hers, and he wasn’t happy. He couldn’t imagine what Cady was going through, knowing she was wearing a big red circle like a crosshair, pointing her out to the thugs.

Since Fitz was certain that Tuzzi had sent Malling to hurt Cady over and over again, the plan was simply to let it happen—or at least to let Malling get close enough to try.

For that, she and King had to be available, on the move, and in the open. McKie would then follow Malling’s reports back to Tuzzi, looking for the hub of his information flow in order to plug it up.

It seemed simple enough on the surface—as long as Malling didn’t succeed and as long as McKie had his plugging mechanism ready to rock and roll.

King admitted he was curious. What exactly was McKie’s mechanism? How was it activated? Who did the activating? What would happen to Tuzzi when he realized he was constipated and had nowhere to go?

What would happen to Cady when all was said and done?

Though he wouldn’t wish any of this crap to befall anyone, King grudgingly admitted he was glad he was here to help her through. That didn’t make a spit lick of sense; he might know her situation and her very fine body, but he didn’t know more than a few piddly things about her.

During the photo shoot for Ferrer, she’d dusted his Cajun country sun-baked skin with makeup, and foofed his hair this way and that so that he looked less like himself and more like the metrosexual population of Manhattan.

They’d talked. He’d enjoyed her tits pressed against him, her hands in his hair. He’d also enjoyed her fiery spunk without realizing how much of it was anger.

She was mad at the world, and with every right. She’d played an innocuously small part in a practical joke gone sour, and had lost everything including her freedom.

It left a damn bad taste in his mouth, and the more he thought about it, the tighter his grip on the steering wheel grew, the stiffer his thighs and his spine. At this rate and another ten miles, he’d be in no shape to drive.

Time to break the seal of silence.

“You look better. Your face. Your lip.”

She turned her head, rolling it from right to left on the seat, meeting his gaze with eyes that appeared tired. “I still ache, and everything twinges if I move the wrong way, but your ice packs helped.”

“I didn’t hurt you last night, did I? Or make anything worse?” After the fact and way too late, but better than never. He hoped.

“Are we going to talk about it? The sex?”

Damn, but if that didn’t feel like he’d been put in his place. Might help if he knew where his place was. “Do you want to?”

“Not really,” she said, her lower lip protruding as she shook her head. “Tell me about your tattoo.”

Hmph. So that was that. They could have sex, they just couldn’t talk about having sex. Fine-o-dandy with him. “What about it?”

She sat up straighter, shifting her whole body so that she faced him instead of the road. She looked comfortable in the seat, and way too good in the Hummer. He was afraid he was going to get used to having her there then miss her when she was gone. A dog. He’d have to get a dog.

“I get what it is.” She reached over and popped the snaps of his chambray shirt, pulling the fabric aside to get a better look at his ink. “The Mardi Gras colors, the beads, and doubloons. And the crown is obvious, you being King and all. But it’s not faded, so it has to be fairly new.”

He nodded, liking the way she didn’t ask but took what she wanted. Liking, too, the feel of her fingers on his skin, and liking that part too much. “It is. I got it last year.”

She traced the lower edge of the crown, lingering and staring for an eternal moment, before sitting back. “After finding the treasure?”

He’d told her about the treasure one day at Ferrer. How he and his cousin had been sitting on the buried gold their whole lives and never had a clue.

She’d wondered how it had felt, to have that luxury, to realize he could do anything with his life, go anywhere, never want for money again—unless he was a stupid shit and blew it all.

She’d said that. A stupid shit. He remembered frowning at her, wondering who the hell she thought she was to be giving him a financial responsibility lecture.

He had a much better understanding of the root of her name calling now than he’d had then. “I had the old ugly ass prison tats lasered away, and this one inked in their place. When I see it in the mirror every morning, I’m reminded about my good fortune. And I’m not talking about the gold.”

“What was it like?”

“Prison?” When she nodded, he considered how much of the hell to reveal, how much to keep back, how much he wanted to revisit. How much he wanted her to know. “It was prison. You sit with your back to the wall to eat. You sleep with your eyes open. You stay to yourself, and stay in shape in case doing the first becomes a problem.”

“And you did that for four years?”

“Four years inside, then a lot of years after. Old habits are hard to break.” There were a lot he still battled, chalking up his losses to being a dick at heart. Whether or not it was true didn’t matter.

Blaming nature was easier than being a failure, and continuing to fuck up. He’d fathered a kid and not known it until the boy was on his deathbed.

He’d remained estranged from Simon, his only family, for nearly twenty years. He hadn’t known what a good woman he’d had in Chelle Sonnier until he’d let her go.

Money might not buy happiness, but it had certainly bought him a new perspective, which in turn had done a lot for his state of mind.

He supposed that was why he was here now with Cady. Not for the sex, not for her company, but to stop himself from another fuck up and failing someone who needed him.

Then again, that was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Did Cady need him?

“You don’t sleep with your eyes open now.”

He cut her a quick look. “You said you didn’t want to talk about the sex.”

“How was that talking about sex? I said you don’t sleep with your eyes open. That was all.” She huffed, sputtered. “I swear. Men. Everything for you is about sex.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, and she slapped the shit out of his shoulder. “Ow.”

“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not. Though I should have asked how your head is feeling, and I am sorry about that.”

He reached back with one hand to find the bald spot and the stitches, found her hand there doing the same thing. “Tender, but bearable. My vanity, on the other hand, not so good. I was hoping to keep my hair for ten years at least.”

She laughed. Not just a giggle or a snicker, but a laugh that filled the cabin of the SUV with a lightness that lifted his spirits.

Surprising, because he hadn’t known they’d been down. Or maybe it was hearing Cady sounding so carefree that did it. Whichever it was, he smiled.

“You goon,” she said, still laughing. “Your hair will grow back. If anything, I’d worry that some of your brains escaped when the doctor pulled out the glass.”

He liked hearing her laugh. Even if it was at his expense, he admitted grimly, yelping when her probing fingers got too close to his wound. “Get me a bottle of juice or a soft drink, will ya? All this heat I’m takin’s dryin’ out my throat.”

Cady snorted, but popped her seat belt and squirreled around, digging in the cooler behind them and giving King the pleasure of seeing her ass up close as she did.

“I still can’t believe all the supplies Fitz laid in back here. Malling could follow us all the way to Alaska and we wouldn’t have to restock.”

Driving to Alaska with Cady Kowalski. Funny the appeal the idea held, though making a sharp south turn and taking her to Louisiana held even more.

And that thought he cut off right there.

“Did he ever show you any ID?” she asked, handing him the bottle of orange juice she’d come up with, and twisting off the top of her own once she’d belted herself back into her seat. “Or is he still holding out on proving who he is?”

“He showed me something, but it didn’t say a lot, or look like any government badge I’ve ever seen,” he said, then brought his bottle to his mouth.

He’d downed half of the contents and driven several more miles before Cady spoke. And this time, she spoke softly, her earlier spunk squashed flat. “Do you think he’s who he says he is?”

“McKie?” King shrugged. “I don’t know, chère. I really don’t know. Whoever he is, he makes things happen. Not a lot of people have the connections that can.”

“What if the ID is fake? What if he’s part of Tuzzi’s gang?”

“I’m not going to say that either possibility isn’t viable, but my gut tells me that whoever he is, he’s okay.” It was an eyes in the back of his head thing. Something he wasn’t sure she could understand even if he could explain.

Holding her bottle against her bottom lip, she caught his gaze, then asked, “Is this the same gut that got you out of prison in one piece except for those ugly ass tats?”

“They really were ugly,” was all he could come up with to say. Oh, he tried. He tried to figure out when he’d become an open book, or when his mind had become so simple that any waif off the street could read it.

But there was nothing there, nothing left to do but assure her when he wasn’t sure of anything at all. “The ID being fake doesn’t bother me—”

“But McKie being part of Tuzzi’s gang does.”

“It would if it made any sense, but it doesn’t.” And now that he’d said that, he was going to have to come up with a platform she couldn’t refute. And sound like he knew something about Nathan Tuzzi while doing so.

Couldn’t be too hard. All he had to do was sub one of the prison thugs he’d known for the one hounding Cady to hell. “What reason would Tuzzi have for coming after you this way? Through someone posing as a Fed?”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, I can’t see him having a soft spot for government agents, so to get at you through someone posing as one, well, there’s a dastardly twist of irony there, yeah, but I still think his pride would call foul.”

“He’s never struck me as someone to let his pride go before a fall.”

Now she was getting biblical on him, and other than taking the name of the Lord God in vain on a regular basis, religion was not his arena. “He’s had you looking over your shoulder for years. If his goal’s been to see you suffer, I’d say he’s been damn successful.

“And from everything you’ve told me,” he went on, pausing because he realized there was a very good chance she had not told him everything, that she’d kept something from him and Fitz both, something vital to keeping her safe.

“What if he has a new goal?” she asked before he could grill her about the secrets she wasn’t telling. “What if seeing me suffer isn’t enough anymore?”

He steeled himself before finishing her thought. “What if he wants you dead, you mean?”

“What else could he want? What else is there?” she asked, her voice rising with each question. “I don’t have anything for him to take away. I suppose he could set me up somehow, make sure I take the fall for something that would put me behind bars, but where would the fun be in that? I wouldn’t be as easy for him to reach. Then again, he may have a gang of butch inmates on call.”

King waited several moments to make sure she’d spilled everything she was thinking and worn herself out. There was no way for him to disprove her theory, or to prove his own. But she was borrowing trouble her mental health—her physical, too—could do without.

“Tuzzi doesn’t want you dead, Cady. He’s been put away for life. If you were in prison, his brand of torture wouldn’t be half as effective. You’d be looking over your shoulder for reasons a whole lot bigger. And if you were dead, you wouldn’t be there for him to torture at all.”

She was quiet after that, as if letting King’s hypothesis sink in and get comfy enough to settle. A lot of road passed without a response. He couldn’t know what she was thinking; her mind wasn’t quite as simple for him to read as she’d apparently found his.

But her stress level didn’t seem to be rising. She’d slumped in the corner of the seat, pulled her feet up so that she sat cross-legged. Her seat belt crossed between her breasts, and when he realized that’s where he was staring, he turned back to the road.

Then he took a deep breath and said, “Until we know differently, Fitz is a good guy, okay?”