AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wait, wait,” I said, sitting up, holding my hands out. “Pinching a wallet is one thing. I’m supposed to put it back?”
Marc nodded. “In his pocket.”
My mouth unhinged. “Why do I think this isn’t as simple as it sounds?”
“It is as simple as it sounds,” Marc said. “This is it. We go in, find out what’s going on and get back out. You and Brandon will stay at the party and make sure he stays there. We’ll take care of the rest.”
“So you were nagging at me for stealing wallets, and offering me a job to steal a wallet so you can steal his drugs?”
“We just want to look at what he’s doing. We don’t want to touch it.”
“Well, forgive me if I don’t believe you. Who in the world is curious enough to break in and look at something and not want to steal it, or use it, or whatever? What kind of job is this? How does this make money for you?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Marc said. “All we want is information.”
“What’s in it for me if I do?”
Marc pursed his lips, he glanced at his companions. Raven shrugged at him. Marc turned back to me. “You do us this favor, we’ll get you a job. A real one. We’ve already agreed to pay your rent for a month, but we’ll get you a job where you won’t have to steal wallets any more. You can get a real apartment, too.”
“Who would hire me?”
Marc tilted his head at me, as if surprised I would ask the question. “Pick a place.”
“What?”
“Where do you want to work?”
“You can’t just get me a job anywhere. I have to apply. And there’s interviews.”
Marc leaned in on me again. He reached out, dropping a hand on my knee, and stared me right in the face. “If you do this, help us, you can name the place you want to work, and I can guarantee you, you’ll have a job there. I can’t do the work for you, but you’ll have a job.”
I couldn’t believe this. I was sure I must have been dreaming. Maybe I thunked my head and was still back in the hotel room, just not having woken up yet. “How can I trust you?”
Marc flinched. He sighed, pulled out his phone from his back pocket. He dialed a number and held it out to me. “Talk to the manager at the hotel,” he said. “Ask him to confirm your room is reserved.”
“What?”
He held out the phone to me. I took it.
“Hello?” The voice was Colby. “Who is this?”
“It’s ... Kayli,” I said. Marc made hand gestures to me to keep going. “I was just calling to ask about the room—”
“Oh yeah. Yes, we got it for the next four weeks. Your room is reserved. Listen, I’m sorry I fussed at you before. I just ... you know how it is around here.”
“It’s fine,” I said, but I lost him after he said four weeks. I hadn’t even finished talking to these guys yet and they had already kept their first promise? I didn’t know how to respond to that. “Could you do me a favor, Colby?”
“Sure.”
“Can you tell my brother I may be a little late coming home today? And let him know that it was paid?”
“I’ll leave a note under the door.”
I hung up on Colby and turned back to Marc. “How did you do that? Why?”
“We told you we would,” Marc said, determination settling into his eyes. He needed me to believe this. “I’m not playing with you right now, Kayli. This is your chance to get out of the gutter before something bad happens to you. You’ve had a rough start, I get that. You went to a shitty downtown school, and got tossed around a lot. Your dad’s a drunk. Your mom’s dead. That’s fucked up. From what I understand, you take care of your brother, and you do your best. Well, here’s fate for you giving you a leg up. Pickpocket, but this time, do it for the good side. Work with us this one time, and I guarantee you, that you’ll never need to pickpocket again. You’ll always have a job. I’ll make sure.”
My heart thundered under my chest. I had a hard time controlling my breathing to look as cool as I was pretending to be. He could have been offering me solid gold. A job. I had no idea where to start with that. I was willing to take anything before.
I still wasn’t sure I believed it, but now that I could walk out of their apartment, and possibly never see them again and still had my rent paid for a month ... what would I do with the next month? What happened when Jack drank all the money I earned? Would I just start this endless cycle again? Maybe Marc was right. I didn’t want to steal forever. “I just need something until Wil gets into college,” I said. “If you know of anything ... I mean, as long as he can keep going to school. That’s all I need. I can take care of myself from there.”
Marc’s once intense smile softened. His eyes lit up. Raven next to him started smiling, too. When I glanced back at Corey and Brandon, they had the same stupid look. Kevin looked pleased.
I groaned, rolling my eyes. “Will you idiots stop grinning like that? Just tell me what I need to do.”
“There is no name calling on my team,” a voice said, the severity and sternness catching me me off-guard.
It took me a moment to identify who had spoken, because lips around me didn’t move and the voice didn’t fit any of the boys in front of me. It was only when heads shifted to the second hallway, the one where the boss was supposedly busy and behind a closed door, that I realized they knew who had spoken.
The door was open, exposing a tall man, with longer jet black hair, parted down the middle, and the ends hanging around his chin. He shoved it back with his fingers as if used to his hair being in the way. He wore black-rimmed glasses on his face. He had an olive complexion which made me think he was as foreign as Raven, but more Mediterranean or perhaps Native American. He had strong, thickly muscled shoulders and a defined, tight abdomen that looked like he spent every moment flexing to strengthen it. He had a birthmark on his lower right hip. There was a trail of hair running from just above his belly button, right down to his crotch.
His exposed crotch.
Outside of the glasses, he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. His length was partially erect, and already impressive, as if he rolled out of bed with morning wood and wasn’t even going to bother waiting for it to go away before baring himself to everyone.
I’d seen a few naked men in my life, mostly from movies and the few times I’d been exposed to the internet. There were guys at school who liked to expose their genitals to me if they thought they could get some attention. Only a handful of times did I ever get close to my boyfriends and their body parts. I thought at first I could play it cool with this new guy standing naked in front of me and divert my eyes in the causal way that I wanted to.
But I simply couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I couldn’t stop staring at the definition of his sculpted body, the defining lines of his collarbone and the matching indents on the sides of his hips.
Not to mention his penis.
“Dude,” Brandon barked at him. “Get some pants on, will you? We’ve got a girl here.”
The naked man inhaled sharply, and looked me square in the eye, as if asking me if I was offended. The darkest eyes, almond shaped, dragged my attention from his body up to his face, challenging me and at the same time telling me the answers to questions I was asking without saying a word.
He studied me just as much as I studied him. His eyes swept over me in the shorts, the boots, the way my hair hung around my cheeks and down my shoulders to almost chest length. His eyes stayed at my chest and hips for so long that I felt a swell in my breasts and genitals and the warm wave of a blush as if I’d been the one naked instead of him. Slowly, his eyes reclaimed my face with a determination that nearly knocked me over. He angled his head. There was the slight rise of a heavy, dark eyebrow. I wasn’t who he was expecting, I presumed. However, he didn’t seem displeased.
And suddenly his entire face blanked, becoming unreadable.
“She’s seen one before,” he said, toneless and as cool as water, and yet every syllable
was with precision.
A finger poked at my temple, pulling my attention away. Marc smirked at me. “Pervert,” he said.
I gasped, and made hand signals where my voice wasn’t going to work. Gesturing to the man, like this wasn’t my fault. Me? He’s the one walking around naked!
The nude man turned, heading for the kitchen. He grabbed a box out of the cabinet and walked back to his room. He paused at the door, and his eyes once again retrieved my attention. “You and I are going to talk later,” he said, his voice now smoky and severe, and he closed the door behind himself.
The last view I had of him was his butt, and with the way the light played and the shadows, I caught a dimple.
Marc planted a palm on his eye. “For Christ’s sake.”
Raven only smirked and shrugged, looking right at me. “Enjoy the view while you can, right?”
I unhinged my mouth from hanging open so I could talk. “I take it that’s the boss?”
Marc sighed. “Yeah. That’s Axel.”
I did a double take. “Did you just say Axel?”
“Yeah.”
I absently rubbed at a tiny spot on my cheek. “So ... you guys live together?”
“Marc, and I, and Axel live here,” Raven said. “The twins live down the hall.”
“I’ve got my own house,” Kevin said.
I glanced back at Brandon and Corey. Corey smiled, happy, his face all lit up in a pleasant way. His brother merely looked curious as to what I wanted.
“Huh,” I said. I didn’t mean to make my tone sound like I didn’t believe him, but I’d just stumbled into this odd place. Still, I was starting to be really amused. And they’d paid my rent. And they were going to help me find a job. All I had to do was pickpocket some old guy? I didn’t know what lottery ticket fate was ringing up for me, but I thought I could get used to this. And if I woke up and this was a dream, I’d be really pissed off. “So tell me who this old guy is I’m supposed to pickpocket?”
Marc lit up again. “You’ll do it?”
“I guess I don’t have anything else better to do at the moment. As long as you keep your promises.”
“Start dreaming up where you want to work,” he said. “I’ll make it happen.”
“And I want to know what it is we’re taking a peek at,” I said.
He looked at the others, who seemed to shrug in unison. “Okay.”
