Chapter 14 #3
My mouth is definitely ajar. Emma Jean is silent.
Widow is stalking into the space, crunching across a river rock path.
We’re at the end of the wing, windows on all sides.
With the press of a button on the wall, Alexei turns all the glass from transparent to frosted. Hoooooly shit. Now that’s money.
The tubs are filled with steaming water and there are stacks of white towels on a shelf, like we’re in a resort.
Alexei stops walking and turns around, folding his arms. His expression is all for me, taking in his new bride’s reception of the space. I’m a bit…surprised.
“What the actual fuck?” I whisper, moving into the foggy room like it’s a daydream. “A bathhouse?”
“The water comes from the ground, from a natural hot spring found on the property.” Alexei says that like it’s no big thing. Just the usual. Nothin’ fancy. “Papa did his most important business here.”
“Finally, it’s time to try this place out.
I’ve been dying for a dip,” Bohnes breathes, releasing me and tearing his shirt over his head.
Emma Jean makes an odd sound and takes off, leaving the doors open in an attempt to flee the sight of Bohnes’ bare cock as he strips his pants next.
Good choice on her part. I want Emma Jean alive.
Bohnes hops into one of the tubs, sinking into the water with a sigh and leaning his head back.
Eyes closed. His pale arm rests on the side of the bath as water cascades over the edge.
The black skeleton ink on his back is blatantly obvious right now.
It’s hidden most of the time. Such a shame, too.
Who doesn’t love an undertaker with bone tats?
“If your father did business like Jonas…” Ash is looking askance at the tubs, like he doesn’t trust that the water’s clean. Usually, that’d be Alexei’s role in a conversation like this. “People could’ve died in here. Or at the very least, a lot of sex and drugs…”
“The tubs were emptied, sterilized, and refilled by the crew.” Alexei turns to me, like he expects to be in trouble for asking Nisha to do a favor for him.
What he doesn’t know is that Nisha asked me first and I said yes, Alexei could put my girls to a task.
I didn’t know exactly what my crew might be doing, but I trust Alexei.
Seems I was right to put my faith in him.
“But I do feel the need to add that Papa didn’t allow prostitutes, drugs, or assassinations at his meetings.
He said men that lack emotional discipline were not welcome to do business with him. ”
“Pavel was too nice to play games with my father.” Ash slips his sword off first, then his shirt.
Puts the sword back on. He better not bring it in the bath with him.
It’s an antique. Probably best not to get it wet.
Or kill people with it. Couldn’t he use a machete from the thrift store like the first ‘true’ bitch of Prescott?
Her man, he’s the one whose name is on the back of the Nightmare sign.
She was called Baby. Literally. Maverick and Baby, 1997. “You’re not though.”
“Thank you.” Alexei accepts the compliment, standing awkwardly aside as Ash—with the damn sword—climbs into the water. Widow hesitates, but I can see he wants in, too. Who wouldn’t? This is our damn house, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
Married into the mob. Tied yourself up with this shit forever unless you can pull a fast one. But I can. I will.
I get naked under their watchful, greedy gazes, climbing into the tub and relaxing in the steamy water. Only my eyes are visible, like one of those feminine ghosts again. What are they called? Rusalka. Yeah.
With a curse, Widow strips down and crawls in next, each of us occupying one of the tub’s four corners. Bohnes pokes my foot with his toe under the water and ew, the smile that I accidentally give him. His eyes flash with triumph, so I kick him, splashing water and making Alexei flinch.
I already know that Miss Marie Jennings isn’t going to get in with us. He does, however, remove a plastic bag from his pants, lay it over the edge, and perch there. He even touches the water with his gloved fingers, swirling it around.
Alexei studies the room with eyes the color of nostalgia, like he can see something of his father in this place.
Like there are more ghosts. I rise up from the water, leaning back and showing a hell of a lot of tit as I park my elbows on either side of me.
Alexei and I catch eyes. A whimsied sigh drops from that imperial mouth of his, pink and pert and built for underground politicking.
“We gonna be doin’ business in here, too?” Widow murmurs, letting his head fall back and rolling it around as he takes in the strange space with the curious but cautious eyes of a wild animal.
I’ve seen shit like this on yakuza movies or whatever, but in real life? Makes sense. Harder to hide a weapon when you’re naked. Not impossible though.
Part of my security for unknown visitors is a squat and cough, you catch my drift?
“This here is my bathhouse. Ain’t for business,” I say, all cocky and shit. I’ve netted myself a mansion with a bathhouse by marrying the mob’s heir on paper. Not half bad, eh? “Unless it’s like, some Prescott bitch shit. Other than you guys—and Bastian, obviously—no cocks in my bathhouse.”
“No argument there.” Widow’s stare is hot, hard, and fucking diabolical. Just the look of him pisses me off. “Only person here who likes looking at cock is you.”
I kick him next, splashing again.
Alexei withdraws his fingers from the water, ruffles up like an unhappy cat, and then plucks the latex off. He folds it inside-out and sets it aside to dispose of later, applying hand sanitizer and then drawing on a new glove. I want to dunk him so bad.
I start surreptitiously slithering through the water toward him, like a hot, dead ghost.
“No dicks in the bath except ours and your platonic soulmate’s.
Makes perfect sense.” Bohnes is joking, but he’s a little bit serious, too.
It’s so steamy in here that his white hair is plastered to his forehead, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
Good thing he didn’t smudge his ghoul makeup on today or it’d be bleeding from the heat, melting down his face.
“I don’t even like the idea of other women seeing you naked.” This is Widow. The perfect statement to simply ignore. I don’t give a fuck what he does or doesn’t like. I’ll be rockin’ tits out in here with my crew, come hell or high water. We earned this shit.
I turn to Ash, finding his eyes soft on me as he slides beneath the water.
He, too, looks like a pretty dead creature, suspended in steamy water, hibernating.
Black hair in soft tendrils. Eyes still open.
Still looking up at me. Ash comes to the surface with a sharp intake of breath, far too close to me.
Our naked skin is almost touching.
My ghost swam into a handsome specter’s haunt, and she loves it.
“I think I’ll fuck you again.” I reach up to cup the side of Ash’s face and he grabs onto my wrist, pressing his thumb hard against the center of my palm. Staring at each other. Breathing in steam. “All four of you.”
“Use me,” Ash breathes, grabbing onto my shoulders suddenly with both hands. He peers imploringly into my face, his lashes thick and dark. “Instead of Bastian, let me go to the club. You know Chet will take me with him—”
I slap Ash, and then I grab his chin roughly.
I rise from the bath, nude and dripping, dark hair hanging heavy and wet.
It drifts in the sloshing water around my hips like India ink.
He looks up, surrendering his psychosis to me.
The blood he sheds is mine. The kills he makes are on my conscience. He breathes because I demand it.
This is what it means to own someone completely.
“You will not suggest sacrificing yourself again. I thought that was understood.” I cock my head, noticing from the corner of my eye that Alexei is leaning slightly toward the water.
He’s drawn to my nudity as much as he’s drawn to this draconian behavior of mine.
I smirk and reach out, grabbing onto his elbow and jerking hard.
He falls into the bath and then sits there, looking at his wet, gloved hands in horror.
“Touch me like that and we’ll have problems.” Widow is talking stupid again, and I decide ignoring him is probably best still. He wants attention and those annoying man-quips aren’t going to work on getting mine. He’ll learn quick. He’s a good boy, too.
“What was what?” I smile tightly, pretending to think for a second. “Did you just say parking space?” I squeeze Ash a little harder and he gasps.
“Gomen,” Ash whispers, closing his eyes, chin still tucked in my fingers. “Scarlett-sama.”
I look up to find Bohnes watching me with bad dog eyes. He’s not as easy to handle as the others. Maybe that’s the reason I like him so much? I enjoy a challenge.
“I’m going to fuck the four of you.” I repeat. “Sit. Stay. Cum.”
“Talk to me like a dog, and I’ll fuck you like a bitch,” Bohnes replies prettily, leaning forward with a slosh of water around the hard-knock muscles of his killing machine body. His eyes pick up the color of the water, blue and hot. Steaming.
“Sounds to me like you’d enjoy wearing a collar.
” I take a slow step toward him. Bohnes tilts his head back, baring his throat for me.
I wrap my fingers around his neck and he shudders in perverse pleasure.
He’d look so fucking hot with a black leather collar.
A spiked one. My grip tightens and his pupils dilate in excitement.
Alexei is still sitting in the bath in his wet clothes, damn near catatonic. When I snap my fingers, he breaks out of it and gives me a look of such raw hunger mixed with disgust that I feel my pussy clench tight.
“Take your clothes off.” I’m not playing.
Widow’s hands come down on my shoulders from behind. He presses his strapping form against my back, naked and erect and pushy.