The funny thing is that it wasn’t funny. He wasn’t being totally humorous, and I didn’t take it as such. If you weren’t part of our strange relationship, it might seem bizarre to suggest they had such power over me, but it wasn’t a far stretch. They really did. Their thrusts and deep fucking did incredible things to my body and my soul.
And true to their word, they spent hours helping erase the suffering I felt whenever I thought about Maksim and Avery. At least for one day, my mind was clear, and our lives were free of the guilt I carried with me still.
If only I could have stayed there like that.
* * *
“Okay,we can’t avoid this any longer,” I said the following day at brunch. “We need a plan of attack to get Maksim.”
“We can fly to Prague and hire a car to get to Pardubice before Maksim arrives. If we leave today, we can get there before Maksim presumably,” Valen said. He was the planner, the one who usually got everything put together for us.
“What about him seeing us? Don’t you think he’ll run for the hills the minute he spots us in the crowd?” I asked.
“We’ll get a private viewing box and spend our time in there,” Valen told me. “We’ll do some quick shopping before we leave Vienna, too. Get some nicer clothes, so we don’t stand out looking like a bunch of kids in our athletic gear.”
“I don’t know. I think I look good in sweatpants,” Ryker said, shimmying his hips as he stood up from the table. His massive snake was noticeable as it danced and moved in his pants.
“I think I like it, too,” I laughed. “In fact, I might declare it a house rule when we get home. All of you have to wear them, or you have to be naked. I like seeing them swing.”
“That can be arranged,” Archer grinned. “We could have grey sweatpants sent ahead to both houses, at Fincross and back in Oakville. It could be our house uniform.”
“I’m on board with that suggestion,” I replied, and I tried to imagine it, the four of them lined up like that. It was an amusing image, and I thought again about how they were all lucky they were so well endowed. It would suck to be the smallest dick among these massive beasts. It could have thrown off the entire vibe of the group.
“What are you thinking about, Evie?” Kingston asked from across the table. “You’ve got that look on your face.”
“I was thinking about how lucky I am to be surrounded by such exemplary examples of man meat,” I said, pretending to be completely serious.
It didn’t last long, just a couple of seconds, as they all wore identical expressions of confusion.
That made me laugh, and I couldn’t keep it in. They joined me and started playfully arguing about who actually did have the smallest one, and I was about five minutes away from a dick-measuring contest when the doorbell rang.
“Are you expecting anything?” I asked Valen, the organizer.
“Nothing,” he said, and we all went completely silent.
The doorbell rang again, and the sound was like a knife slicing through our blissful day. We’d been hiding out here, unnoticed by the rest of the world, but this intrusion brought into stark contrast the reality we had to face.
I got up and crept to the door with the Kings moving alongside me. We were slow, careful, and quiet.
I looked at the monitor on the wall near the front door, and the hallway was completely empty. I hit the button to change the angle and checked out the front of the penthouse entrance. There wasn’t much on this floor, just an elevator that opened into a short hallway to the entrance of this apartment with nowhere to hide or duck out of view.
“Maybe it’s just nerves,” I said. “It might just be that I’m jumpy.”
“I’ll open the door now,” Ryker said, reaching for the handle. He turned it, swung it open, and looked at the ground.
There was a huge bouquet of white roses with a single red rose in the center. Attached to the bouquet was a small card with blood-red writing on it.
I stepped out, picked them up, and held them at arm’s length. Amara’s many lessons had stuck with me, and I just assumed they were sent from Ilya or Maksim as a warning.
“Don’t touch them,” I cautioned the Kings. “Remember, the thorns might be poisoned. And don’t sniff them. Remember, anthrax powder can be hidden almost anywhere.”
“You sound paranoid,” Kingston said, taking the bouquet from me. “That’s the worst part of this, you do sound freaked out, but you have a good reason.”
“What does the card say?” Archer asked, reaching for it.
“Open it carefully,” I said. “Maybe in the kitchen over the stove, so the fan can carry anything away with it.”
“It’s disgusting that we have to be so careful,” Archer grumbled. “I hate that Ilya has us all nervous like this. It offends the part of me that wants to spend lazy days fucking my girl without the fear of mafia psychopaths trying to murder us.”