Bram didn’t look down the hall where Raghild would have entered. Because of that, he didn’t see the spear that flew across the hall before it was imbedded in the side of his head.
Hardly anyone else had been looking, either. Valgard’s face snapped up from his mug of ale in time to see Bram fall from the bench. Blades were drawn, shields snatched up.
Skorri stood at the end of the hall, a shield on his left arm and now his sword drawn by the right. He didn’t look that big. The blond goatherd wasn’t small, but he didn’t look all that imposing, either…except that Valgard stared at him past the shaft of the spear that still wobbled in his peripheral vision. Its tip was buried deep in his son’s skull.
“That was stupid,” Valgard glowered, rising out of his seat as he picked up his axe. “Had you spoken before you attacked, you might have found that it was not we who killed Halla.”
“Your wife spoke,” Skorri growled. His voice and his whole body carried an unsettling tremor. “You lie well, but I heard the truth. I heard everything on the roof.”
Valgard blinked. “The roof?”
“One learns a few tricks while hiding from the Danes.”
As if on cue, a burning piece of wood fell from above him. Valgard looked up to see flames quickly eating into the ceiling of his hall from outside. The walls would follow. It had been a warm, dry summer.
“I appear to block the only exit,” Skorri observed through gritted teeth, “though if you are lucky, you may convince the Valkyries that you deserve to leave with me tonight. I doubt your chances, but there’s always hope.”
* * *
It was the first day in a week that Alex woke up to something other than Lorelei’s touch. Instead, he woke up to Taylor crawling on top of him. “How is anyone supposed to enjoy college when he has to wake up this early in the morning?” she asked with a grin.
Alex sighed happily. “ ‘m all dedicated ‘n’ stuff,” he mumbled.
“We need to get you transferred to U-dub,” Taylor said.
He let out a groan as he stretched. “Might have trouble focusing on classes there.”
“Exactly,” Taylor said as she began kissing the side of his neck. Lorelei’s mouth mirrored her attention on Alex’s other side. At that point, he was just plain spoiled.
“If you two want…want to stay and…play longer,” he managed, “I think I’d…like that.”
“Hell yeah,” Taylor breathed out.
“I’ll take very good care of her, love,” Lorelei smiled into his ear.
* * *
“We can’t just leave guys with their fuckin’ heads cut off lyin’ around up here,” Carlos argued. He sat at the desk in his office, wearing only his open robe, a gold chain, and the phone that he’d had to keep glued to his ear for an annoyingly long time. He spoke in Spanish. The only thing that mitigated his ire was the mostly-naked maid, who straddled him in his office chair in a slow, steady grind.
She kept her eyes closed and stayed quiet. Her silence was absolutely necessary. It wouldn’t be good for the family to know he was fucking around during his conference calls.
“No, I’m sayin’ that it brings down more heat than it’s worth. We can’t just be all flashy like that and then go out for drinks like nothing happened. This isn’t Juarez.” He tried to think up a compromise. The maid kept grinding. Finally he offered, “Look, I’m not sayin’ I won’t do it. I just need to clean it up when it’s done. I’ll cut the fucker’s head off myself, that’s fine. I’m just gonna do it where I can keep the body. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll make the right people watch and then let them go tell everyone else. It’s better than the whole thing going on the news. Once we escalate like that, we’ll have to stay at that level. That’s a lot of work and I’ll need a lot more guys.”
He shifted a bit for the maid, who leaned back onto the corner of the desk on her elbows. It gave him a nice view of her body. This was his fourth or fifth time with her. Lydia did a good job in hiring this one.
It was great to have a wife who understood him. What good was being a gangster if you couldn’t live like it?
The other guys on the conference call didn’t understand that. They all had wives, too, but their wives just nagged. They all had to cover up their side-action. Carlos, by contrast, had a wife who would help him get more, and would help him cover it up from others. She couldn’t fix everything, of course, and sometimes he got careless-otherwise he wouldn’t be stuck in Rain City-but Lydia was his best asset. She understood the lifestyle, and stayed turned on by it after the wedding instead of becoming a cranky old bitch like everyone else’s wives did.
“No, I’m not going soft, cocksucker. I’ve done this shit before, remember? I’m the one who did the cop outside of Tijuana. You’re the one who puked over it.”
This was too god damn early in the morning to deal with these guys without something like the maid to wake him up. They seemed to forget what time zone he was in. The sun was hardly even up yet. His eyes were bloodshot. He’d barely gotten out of bed in time for this.
He’d been tired lately. For a while now, actually. Lydia liked to him up all night. He couldn’t complain, but there it was. No real sleep for two days. About the only thing that woke him up anymore was sex. That was something else Lydia understood.
Come to think of it, Lydia probably sent the maid in here herself.
“Hey, that whole rumor about the Russians being here already is true, okay?” Carlos scowled. “It’s for real, and those assholes are for real. They’re going to be a real problem. I can deal with all the chickenshit stuff first. I’d like to do it quietly is all. Yeah. Yeah. I’m done.”
Carlos waited, then put the phone on speaker and muted it. “Now you can make noise,” he said in English. She took him up on it.
On the speakerphone, Pedro yapped about Los Angeles. Carlos would’ve been there, except for the whole thing with Pedro’s wife at Carlos and Lydia’s wedding. That was half Lydia’s doing, too. But Pedro found out during their honeymoon, and it nearly came to bloodshed. Instead, Pedro got a promotion and a divorce, and Carlos got banished to the great wet north.
That was fine, Carlos figured. Nobody here would get in his way, anyway, and he wouldn’t have to deal with his punk brother trying to kill him. Nobody else in the family was here making eyes at Lydia, either…as if she’d ever cheat on him. She flirted, sure, but she’d never cheat. Carlos was sure of that. Lydia belonged to him.
“God, you’re so good,” the maid moaned.
“He is, isn’t he?” came Lydia’s voice. Carlos looked up, feeling not the least bit of shame about what he was doing as she entered. It wasn’t embarrassment that left him quickly forgetting the maid, though, so much as lust. Lydia was all made up and dressed in leather and lace: stockings, garters, lacy bra, gloves, the whole bit.
“There a special occasion here?” he asked with a grin. The conversation over his phone’s speaker continued. He hardly listened anymore.
“You left the bed and I wanted more. I know how hard you work. I wanted today to be special. You don’t have anything else you need to do today, do you?” she asked. Her falsely innocent doe eyes contrasted sexily with the absolute sin offered by the rest of her body.
He had a lot of important things to do, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember details. He didn’t bother to try, either. Carlos pulled away from the maid without so much as a look her way. Lydia held out her arms to him, engaging him in a hot, biting kiss as he seized her. Her arms tore away his open bathrobe before she pulled herself up against his shoulders. His hands seized her ass. Carlos pinned her to the wall.
“Take me to bed and fuck me, baby,” Lydia hissed.