“Not…um…not really,” I said quietly. “I mean, there was one guy who…well, nothing really happened, you know?”
“I do know.”
Glancing away, I shuffled my feet a bit.
“Thought about it since then?” he pressed.
I swallowed again as I nodded once. I had actually thought about sex with a man – thought about it, sure. Actually, really, truly considered it? That was a completely different question.
Brad Ashton wasn’t really interested in any kind of reality, though, so my answer was exactly what he thought he wanted. His mouth curved into a smile as he focused on my lips. One of his hands moved up to my shoulder and then over my jaw while the other one latched onto a belt loop to pull me closer to him.
My heart began to beat faster, and I forced my face to only show my feigned nervousness over this whole situation and not my actual nervousness. What Brad Ashton wanted was blindingly obvious, but I’d never given anything up for a guy and didn’t particularly care to now. I hadn’t actually planned to let it get as far as that.
Ultimately, I had a job to do though, and this was going to be the best way to get it done.
His lips touched mine, and his hand moved to the back of my neck to pull me a little closer to him. I responded reluctantly, both because it wasn’t something I was interested in, but also in hopes of showing Marshall’s hesitance.
“Not so sure,” he whispered against my lips.
“Everyone…everyone keeps telling me I shouldn’t,” I said. “In the military…”
I let my voice trail off, figuring the rest of that sentence pretty much spoke for itself. Brad gave me an understanding smile and ran his index finger over the edge of my jaw, down my neck, and to my chest. He rested his palm there, presumably feeling the beat of my heart under his skin.
His lips brushed against mine again, softy and unhurriedly. My response was a little more encouraging, but only just. His hand gripped my shoulder a little more before running up the back of my neck and into my hair.
“Are you nervous, Marshall?” Brad pulled back and looked into my eyes.
I swallowed hard and nodded slightly.
“I don’t want you to feel pressured,” he told me. “You are in my employ, after all, but this has nothing to do with that. I’m afraid I chased off your predecessor when he believed it was all part of his job. It’s not, I promise you. This is only if you are interested.”
I let my tongue draw over my lips as I looked at his. My gaze flickered back and forth from his mouth to his eyes as the remainder of my plan began to form in my mind.
“I…I don’t know,” I stammered.
“Maybe just hang out for a little while?” he suggested. “Get to know each other?”
The finger in my belt loop pulled again, and the pressure I felt on my leg was pretty damn obvious. I mean, the guy was just huge.
No pressure. Right.
“I don’t know,” I replied again quietly. I took a hesitant step backwards, and he released me. “I…I just hadn’t thought about it. I mean, you’re Brad Ashton for Christ’s sake. I’ve seen every one of your movies.”
“All of them?” He raised an eyebrow, and I thought I managed to actually blush that time.
“Yeah,” I replied quietly. “Even the…ah…the early stuff.”
“You mean the porn?” he laughed.
“Yeah, that.”
“Meaningless,” he informed me with a wave of his hand. “If there is nothing else fame has taught me, it’s taught me to go after what you want, when you want it. I want you – tonight. Who knows what will happen to us tomorrow?”
Who knows what might happen to you tonight?
I let my tongue lick at my lips, glanced from the floor up to Brad’s eyes, and then over to the door. I wondered what Alex could hear from there and if Phillip would be returning any time soon.
“Stay here, Marshall,” Brad said. His head tilted to one side, and he gave me one of those half smiles that seemed to make his female fans start dropping articles of clothing around his feet. “I mean…if you aren’t busy or anything. I was going to order dinner in.”
I glanced at the door as it opened and Phillip entered, answering my earlier question. His eyes widened just enough to show his annoyance and possibly a little jealousy. He didn’t look at me or at Ashton as he moved around the room, and I figured this was probably a pretty common occurrence.
Staying right now wasn’t a good idea. I couldn’t kill Ashton in his own room – not with Phillip and Alex hanging about. Besides, the plan was forming, and I wasn’t ready for this particular job just yet.
Need to get some condoms.
No, I wasn’t going to let it get that far…was I? I just needed to do a little recon around the area and pick up some other supplies.
“I, ah…” I stammered a bit. “We were gonna go watch some football. Um…Jim and I. He’s probably already wondering where I am. Do you…um…you want to join us?”
“Me in a public bar?” Brad snorted. “No, that’s all right.”
He took in a long breath and blew it slowly out his nose.
“Go on,” he said, “but think about it, okay?”
I nodded and headed out the door and down the hallway. Playing hard to get would make him a lot more likely to agree to go somewhere else with me later, and I needed him to be willing to leave. If he wasn’t, well, I could always drag him out, but he looked like a screamer, and that would definitely cause some commotion.
Jim was hanging out around the corner as I left the suite, and he pushed the down button for the elevator as I appeared.
“You’re dodging the bullet there,” Jim snickered as we headed down the elevator.
I just shrugged at him.
After a couple light beers, I claimed to be tired and headed back up the elevator. Reaching into my back pocket, I quickly stepped into the skywalk heading to the other hotels in the area as I called Jonathan with the pre-paid phone.
“Hyatt Regency in Atlanta,” I said when he answered. “I need room 555 in the International tower. Can you check it?”
“Sure thing, bro.” I could hear clacking of the keyboard as Jonathan’s magic fingers poked around until he announced he was inside the hotel’s firewall or whatever. “It’s open. What name you need it in?”
“Marshall Miller.”
“Got it.” More clacking. “Give me a few and I’ll call ya back.”
After shoving the phone back in my pocket, I headed down the stairs of the Marriott and out onto the street. It was getting late, and it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with what I needed, even if my connections weren’t very strong in this area. Even if they were, I wouldn’t use them. It would just place Evan Arden in this area, and I wasn’t going to chance that.
I found a juvenile delinquent near the Hard Rock Café and scored exactly what I needed.
“You don’t look like the type that would need these,” the teen said as he handed me a few pills and I handed him some cash.
“Depends on what you want,” I answered quietly.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I walked away from the kid and headed up the long stairway to the Hyatt entrance again as I answered.
“All set?”
“You should be good.”
“You rock,” I said. “Thanks a bunch.”
I hung up and walked over to the hotel’s front desk.
“Hey,” I told the lady at the counter. “I lost my key – can you get me a new one?”
I handed her my ID with Marshall Miller’s name on it, and she handed me a new key for room 555. I took the steps – it wasn’t too far – and quickly opened the room. I checked around, and was pleased to find Jonathan had been right – there wasn’t anyone already staying in the room. I didn’t have any luggage to leave around, but hopefully Ashton wasn’t going to notice that. I did mess up the bed and put a couple of the hotel glasses and the ice bucket on the desk to give the place a bit of a lived-in look.
> I slipped out again, then walked down the hall to the elevators, turned, and headed back in the other direction. When I got to the end of the hall, Alex was there. He raised his eyebrows a bit when I asked if Mr. Ashton was still awake.
“I just need to…um…speak to him a minute,” I explained.
Alex gave me what I supposed was a look of both disdain and annoyance before knocking lightly. Brad opened up and smiled as he turned to one side and let me in. As soon as the door closed, he was giving me a coy look and smile which were as sarcastic as looks could be.
I stared intently at him for about seven seconds, took a deep breath, and then rushed forward, grabbed him by the back of the head, and crashed my lips to his. His fingers gripped my biceps as he tilted his head backwards, giving me control as he opened his mouth to me.
With closed eyes, I might have been able to pretend he was Bridgett or some other chick, but the stubble on his upper lip made that impossible. Still, I had work to do, and not all work was the pleasant kind. I performed as I had to and kissed him with as much passion as I could find within myself.
I felt his hands move up my back, grip my shoulders, and then one of them moved back down to my ass. He pulled me against himself, and I could feel without a doubt that it wasn’t a rabbit in his pocket. I pushed back a bit, breaking our kiss and breathing hard.
“Not here,” I whispered. “I can’t do this here. The other guard – the one outside – he saw me. The way he looked at me – I can’t let him think something is going on. I have a military pension and shit…I don’t want to lose that.”
“I understand,” Brad said softly. “Discretion – right?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “It’s important. I can’t let anyone know…my family…”
“I know,” he whispered softly. “Don’t you worry, sweetheart, I understand.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
“We should meet somewhere else.”
“Another hotel?”
“Exactly.”
“But…your fans…”
“I know how to be sneaky,” he said with a smile. He lifted himself up on his toes and brought his lips to mine briefly.
“What about Alex?”
Brad rolled his eyes.
“He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
“About you, yes,” I agreed. “What about me? Seriously, I can’t just…you know…come out. My family…”
I let my voice trail off, and Ashton pursed his lips as he looked into my eyes.
“I have the room next door,” I said quietly.
“What’s that?”
“My room,” I said as I nodded towards the door at the other end of the suite, “it’s that one right there. We can’t…I don’t want to stay there, but you could get out that way.”
A slow smile spread over his face.
“You are a sneaky thing,” he commented.
I tried to make myself blush as I looked away. I wasn’t sure if I pulled it off or not, but it was enough for him to grab my head and kiss me again.
“You are hot and adorable,” he informed me. “Give me about an hour to convince Alex and Phillip you aren’t coming back and that I’m going to bed. We’ll have the whole night.”
I nodded and smiled.
Too damn easy.
Shortly after eleven that night, Brad and I opened the adjoining suite doors, clomped down the back stairs of the International Tower, and out the side door. He wore a baseball cap pulled down over his face and some dark glasses, which looked ridiculous in the dark. You would likely notice that he was hiding something, but what he was hiding would have been anyone’s guess.
We quickly booked a room at the Westin just down the street under Marshall’s name again and hurried up the elevator. He was all over me as soon as the door to the room closed, and I had to just go with it for a few minutes to keep him off his guard.
His hand dropped down my chest, over my abs, and cupped my crotch. I closed my eyes and thought of all the porn I could remember to get myself to react a little.
“You’re still nervous,” Brad commented.
“Yeah, I bit, I guess.” Either that or my dick really only worked for chicks.
“Don’t be,” he said quietly. “We can go as slow as you want to.”
“Okay,” I replied. I cleared my throat. “Maybe some wine or something?”
“Good idea.”
There was a small bottle in the tiny hotel room bar, which I opened and poured into two glasses. Checking over my shoulder, I quickly added Rohyphenol tablets to one of the glasses, stirred the drug until it dissolved into the liquid, and then handed it to Brad.
It didn’t take long for the drug to take effect. Not that I needed any of that to rape him, as had become the drug’s more common usage, but it did make him nicely stupid and easy to manipulate. Actually, he took to the stuff like I imagined a schoolgirl would.
In other words, he just dropped to the bed and started to giggle.
“I think maybe that wine hit you a little too hard,” I informed him.
“Hard,” he slurred. “I want to see you hard.”
More giggling.
“Let’s get a little fresh air first.”
He agreed. He would have agreed to anything at that point, up to and including taking a leap off the balcony. If I had thought about it beforehand, and if his death should have looked like an accident, I might have gone that route. He was a message, though – like most of my work: Don’t fuck with Rinaldo Moretti. It didn’t matter who you were or how many people there were around you – you were going to get killed.
Ashton half fell against me, and I felt his mouth on my neck.
“So fuckin’ sexy...”
“Yeah, I’m a dream,” I replied. I sat him down on the bed as my phone began to buzz.
I glanced at the number, but other than being a Chicago area code, I wasn’t sure who it was. Under most circumstances, I didn’t answer when I didn’t know the number – it was more often someone wanting me to buy something than anything else – but this time I did.
“So where you hanging out tonight?”
“Terry Kramer?” My eyes narrowed as I looked at the phone again. I had a number in there for Terry, but this one wasn’t it. “What do you want?”
“Just wonderin’ what you were up ta,” he said. “I heard you might have left town.”
“Who told you that?”
“No one in particula’,” he said.
I could just about see his ridiculous, nonsensical grin in my head.
“Well, your information sucks,” I told him.
“So, you wanna go have a drink somewhere?”
“Busy,” I replied.
“Oh yeah? Doin’ what?”
“I gotta date,” I said right before I hung up. I looked down at Ashton, who had flopped over to his side on the bed and closed his eyes. He muttered something as I hoisted him back onto his feet again, but I couldn’t understand a word of it.
I carried my “drunk” friend out the back of the Westin and down the street to a quiet, deserted alley. I found exactly what I needed about halfway down the dank passage, and I helped Brad sit down on the curb by the sewer cover. It was heavy, but I managed to loop my fingers into it and haul it up.
“Whatcha doin’, hottie?” he mumbled.
“I’m going to kill you, sweetheart,” I answered.
With one hand firmly around his waist, I turned his body so his head was right at the top of the storm sewer entrance.
“Whoa,” he said with another giggle. “That makes me dizzy.”
“It won’t last long,” I promised.
I made sure my grip was firm enough to keep him from falling before I was done with him, reached down my leg to the small gun holstered beside my boot, and put it to his head.
“Rinaldo says don’t worry about paying him back this time,” I told him.
Brad’s eyes widened in recognition, but I fired before he could start to struggle
.
With his head in the manhole, the spatter all went down and I stayed mostly clean. There was a little blood on my boot, but it would come off easily enough. All I had to do was release my grip for his body to fall into the sewer and out of sight. I stood, replaced the lid, and walked back down the street. A cab took me to the bus station.
I leaned back in the seat and let out a long sigh which turned into a big smile.
I felt like the end of an A-Team episode when everything worked out, and the heroes all got to go home and live happily ever after while the bad guys were put in jail. Except, of course, I was the bad guy.
Whatever.
It still felt awesome to have had everything come together so nicely. Ashton was dead, Rinaldo would be happy, and I didn’t have to actually take my clothes off to get it done.
There was just no way I could have gone through with that.
Chapter 8 – Wretched Patient
I was fucking sick.
My head was absolutely pounding, and my knees ached from all the kneeling in front of the toilet I had been doing. Though I still hated vomiting with a passion, I was almost too exhausted to give a shit if my insides did start coming up.
I almost never so much as caught a cold, but whatever I had this time was nasty and unshakable. I had no idea where I might have picked it up, but I had spent the last day and a half puking up anything and everything I put in my mouth. Other than calling a dog-walking service to take Odin out on a regular basis, I had barely moved since yesterday morning.
To top it all off, every time I closed my eyes, I was hit with hideous dreams of blood, dust, and bodies all around me. Even when I could drag myself out of the bathroom, I couldn’t get any actual sleep. When I got to the point where I was feeling too weak to even get myself a glass of water, which I would undoubtedly throw back up, I reached for my phone.
Pride didn’t even enter into it – I knew when I was defeated.
“What’s up, brotha?” Jonathan said when he answered. “Haven’t seen ya in a while.”
“Hey dude,” I replied, “I need a favor.”
I started coughing as soon as I got the words out. My head started pounding in my temples again, and the pain was enough to make me squeeze my eyes shut.