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One week later
Somewhere in Caribbean
“WHAT DO YOU THINK OF these?” Carlo said. “Think they’ll do the job?”
From behind her black sunglasses and her large, floppy white hat that covered much of her face, Gia looked up from her beach chair and watched her brother actually snap the elastic band on his white Speedos, which were bulging in ways that made her shake her head.
“I’m your sister,” she said. “Why would you do something like that? Even ask me questions like that?”
“Because you’re a woman.”
“Who happens to be your sister.”
“Whatever. Tell me how I look...”
“You look like a high-end call boy.”
“A call boy that’s about to get laid?”
“If that’s what you want, Carlo, I can’t imagine it not happening. In fact, whenever you’re on the hunt, when hasn’t it happened? But if you do find your dream woman for the day, just do it at her place, OK? Not at ours. Because that I won’t have.”
“You’re such a prude,” he said.
“Right,” she said. “That’s the very definition of me.”
He folded his arms across his defined, lightly hairy chest and looked down at her. They’d been there for six days and were now living in a lavish house she’d secured for them through Airbnb. The beach directly in front of their home was private—but just off to the right, there was public access and plenty of single women tossing themselves about in the water in ways that she considered wonton.
“You need to lighten up,” he said. “This trip is supposed to be about letting go of everything we just went through. It’s about us. Being free.” He cocked his head at her. “When was the last time you even got laid?” he asked.
That question cut too close to the bone. Gia had had a secret three-year relationship with a man that had ended in tragedy—only their Uncle Niccolo had known about it. It was so painful for her to discuss, she’d never shared it with anyone else—not even Carlo.
For a fleeting moment, Gia felt her heart sting at her loss, but since she refused to give herself away, her face remained expressionless.
No one deserves to know that I lost you, David, she thought. It’s too personal, and if Carlo knew, he would just ask too many questions that I don’t want to relive—or answer...
“Like I’m going to tell you,” she said.
“But I tell you everything.”
“Which is often more than I even want to know. You know, like about your sex life.” She waved her hand to the right. “Go and prosper, young man,” she said. “Because your sister is waiting for a call that will lead us to our next job.”
“You’ve been working on that for a few days,” he said. “Where do we stand with it at this point?”
“Today should end the negotiations,” she said. “In the next few hours, I plan on finalizing the deal, and then we’ll move forward with carrying it out.”
“So soon?”
“No, not so soon, so don’t get your Speedos in a bunch—as if they aren’t already. I’ve told them that we’re working on another job now, and that it will be at least two weeks before we finish it and are ready to work for them.” She patted the canvas bag at her side. “My phone is with me. I’m just waiting for them.”
“So, that means we can stay here for another two weeks?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “God only knows I wouldn’t want to ruin your chances of getting laid, Carlo. So go, leave me alone and live your life—just not in our house. And I mean that, Carlo. Don’t you dare bring some big-boobed bimbo back to our house.”
“I’ll take her at her place,” he said.
“How reassuring.” She lowered her glasses from her face and shot him a look. “You’re such a whore,” she said.
“I’m just good at what I do.”
“Then go and do whatever it is that you do,” she said dismissively. “I’m expecting a call.”
* * *
WHILE SHE WAITED FOR the call to come, she lowered her hat over her eyes and watched her brother walk away from her, his round ass bouncing behind him in material that should be outlawed. He could be a fool at times—especially when he had the chance to hunt down women as he did now—but she loved him deeply.
Even if he does drive me crazy when he’s like this.
When he was horny—as he clearly was now—he was like a teenager. But when she needed for him to be clear-headed, smart, and on the job, he always came through for her, which was one of the reasons she’d decided to come here. She knew that he wanted to have his way with the women, and so what? Let him. One of the reasons she’d decided to come here was so that could easily happen. And when he was satiated? She knew that he’d be there to have her back when the next job began.
Just as he always has...
Since he’d been working for her, it always had been the same. Do the job, let him get laid, rinse, and repeat.
Gia had long accepted it.
When her phone rang an hour later, she steeled herself before dipping her hand into her bag and removing the phone.
“Yes?” she said when she answered it.
“The deal is done,” the man said on the other line.
“How done is done?” she asked.
“We’ve wired you the first two million into the account you gave us.”
“Then you already know that I’ll need to check on that.”
“It’s there. Check on it when we get off the phone.”
“I plan to.”
“Once you do, what happens next?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she chuckled. “After we finish this job, what happens next are their deaths.”
* * *
New York City
One Week Later
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IN THE TWO WEEKS THAT passed after that hellish night at the Stone Foundation, life started to return to normal for Alex and me.
To collect ourselves, each of us had taken a few days off from work before we returned to Wenn, and dived back into our jobs.
Our top priority was to replace Diana Crane and Mike Fine on the board of directors so that we could move forward with securing the deal with Rudman Cross. Despite the fact that we had many excellent contenders, Alex had nevertheless surprised me by putting my name forward for consideration, which the board was considering along with filling the remaining seat.
“You’ll get it,” he said after he broke the news to me. “Those people not only respect you, but they also love you. You’ll see. In a week or so, you’ll be a member of the board. Promise.”
“That’s a pretty certain promise,” I’d said.
“That’s because I know how you are revered, and also because I know my board. So, welcome to it, Mrs. Wenn. And frankly, it’s about time.”
Now, on a sunny Saturday morning, Alex woke before I did. When I felt him stir in the bed and press his naked body against mine, I roused and stifled a sigh.
The past two weeks had been so emotionally draining and physically grueling for each of us—what with work, dealing with answering the press’ questions about Stepen Rowe, and assisting the police in their investigation of him—we’d been too tired to do anything more than have dinner and a glass of wine when we returned home from work before deciding, out of sheer exhaustion alone, to just call it quits for the night and turn in.
For too long, making love hadn’t been in the cards for us.
But perhaps now it was...
“You smell like a memory,” he said against my ear.
I pressed myself against him, and closed my eyes with a smile. I’d wanted him for so long, but I hadn’t felt that I had the energy to give him everything I had—which he deserved. And I knew that he felt the same.
But this might be it. We might finally be able to fall back to who we were before Stephen Rowe slammed back into our lives.
“Is that so?” I asked, feeling his erection pulsing against me. “But what’s the memory?”
“How you taste,” he said in a low rumble as his hand slid down my back and stopped to cup my ass. “And how you feel when I’m inside of you. God, I’ve missed you, Jennifer.”
I turned and came face-to-face with him. His hair was messy and had fallen over his forehead. His stubble, as it was every morning before he trimmed it, was thick and beyond sexy. We stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, and then Alex smiled the sort of mischievous smile that planted those deep dimples of his into his cheeks. I knew what was coming next, and my whole body ached for it. “I’ve missed you, too,” I said. “It’s been too long...”
“How about if we make up for that?”
“But Mr. Wenn...”
“How about if I take you right now?”
“Is this—well, I don’t know. Is this how I get a seat on the board?”
I saw him make a valiant effort to suppress a laugh when I said that, and with the exception of a grin, he succeeded. “Maybe,” he said. “It might also be how you get slapped across your ass.”
Oh, God—I was in for it. I could tell by the fire in his eyes. Often, Alex and I got wild when we made love, from him pressing my naked body against our bedroom windows for the world to see as he drove into me to a whole host of other adventures that had made even Lisa blush when I told her about them.
“You’re just a couple of freaks,” she’d said to me at one point.
“That we are!” I’d singsonged. “To keep the marriage fresh and alive, one must be willing to do cartwheels!”
“But with his cock in you?”
“We’re not that talented, Lisa,” I’d said. “I mean, what does that even look like? Us connected to each other while we pinwheel around our bedroom? Give me a break. And by the way, don’t you and Tank experiment?”
“Tank just goes all alpha on me.”
“What does that mean?”
“Uhh... kind of like what you’re saying to me now. Sometimes I feel as if we’re performing in Cirque du Soleil. Tank is a beast. I swear to God that man can lift me onto him with a mere finger.”
“Well, then,” I’d said to her. “By all means—always take the finger.”
“That sounds dirty.”
“It was meant to.”
But now it was Alex who was up to something dirty—I could feel it. I knew my man. It had been too long since we’d made love. He was about to make this morning especially memorable, and I knew that I was going to have to match him step for step.
Game on, baby!
When he dived beneath the sheets and covered his mouth over my sex—his tongue gently teasing me before it plunged into me—I grasped the bedspread on either side of me and let out a low, satisfied moan as I inched myself closer to him.
With a slowness that nearly undid me, he snaked his hands up to my breasts, and then cupped them for a long, sensuous moment before tweaking my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. At first, he was gentle. But then he squeezed them so hard, I let out a primal gasp of delight.
“You’re in a mood,” I said.
His mouth was still against me when he spoke, and while I couldn’t understand a word of what he said, the vibrations of his voice against my clit made me wild with lust. He continued to drive me into the ether before he crawled on top of me and drove into me with one firm push.
And when he did, my breath caught in my throat.
“I’ve been wanting this,” he said as I looked into his heated eyes.
I wrapped my arms around him. Kissed him. Started to buck against him. I made it my duty to meet him thrust for thrust.
“So have I.”
Without giving him warning, I spun us around on the bed and sat on top of him while he was still inside of me. I placed my hands on his rock-solid chest, and leaned down to bite his own nipples, which made his head rear back into the pillow as a smile spread across his face. I ran my nipples along the stubble that peppered his face, which was nearly enough to do me in, before I allowed him to take one of my nipples into his mouth. He sucked on it and then I pulled sharply away from him, reached behind me, and grabbed his cock.
“It’s always a power game between you and me when it comes to sex, isn’t it?” he said.
“Well, it shouldn’t be just me receiving all of the pleasure,” I said. “That would seem rather unfair.”
“I think it’s more than that,” he said.
“How much more?”
“In bed, you always want to be my equal.”
“Would you have it any other way?”
“Christ, no.”
“Good. Then, fuck me!”
“And we’re already at the dirty talk...”
“Are you serious? I’ve waited two weeks for this. Fuck me—unless you’re too tired to deliver...”
“You are so going to get it for that,” he said.
“I have all the energy in the world this morning. How about if we see if you do, stud...”
And he did. And it was fun. It was the best of us. There were times when we both giggled, laughed, cried out in ecstasy and took time to catch our breath. As we rolled around on the bed—and as he thrusted in and out of me—I became delirious. Then, Alex suddenly swept me into his arms and carried me over to the chair that was across the room and overlooked the city.
“We’ve never done it here,” he said as he bent me over the plush fabric.
We hadn’t closed the blinds the night before—and right now? All of New York spread before us. “Especially not in the light of day,” I said as he entered me again. “God only knows who’s watching...”
“Do you care?”
“What do you think? How about if you stop talking and just fuck me?”
He was so long and so thick, I had to close my eyes and bite through the sweet pain as he edged me closer and closer to climax. I felt so full, that I just gave myself over to him as his hands went to my nipples and he plunged into me.
“Alex,” I said as I grew close.
“Can’t take it anymore?”
His thrusts became longer and deeper.
No, frankly Mr. Wenn, I can’t take it anymore.
I buried my face into the chair’s lush fabric and screamed out in climax while Alex did the same behind me.
“Holy shit,” I said after he’d pulled out of me and carried me back to the bed. “That was amazing.”
“I love making love to you,” he said.
“I love you making love to me—and vice versa. I think you just sent me to the morning sun and back. I can barely see.”
“That’s because your eyes are closed, Jennifer.”
I opened them. “Oh,” I said. “Right.”
“Now that you can see, how about you tell me if you see this?” he asked.
We were lying next to each other—facing each other. I looked into his eyes and saw that they were filled with affection and love. I placed my hand against his cheek, but then he took my hand in his own and squeezed it gently.
“I’ve thanked God every day since that night at the foundation that you’re still with me,” he said with emotion in his voice. “Because life without you, Jennifer? I don’t want to live it. You are the best of me. You see me for who I am—flaws and all. And yet you still want me. You still love me.”
“I could say the same—”
“And maybe you could, but it’s me who’s talking now. I just hope that you know that all of it is true. There is no one in this world who I’d rather be with. Who I’d rather call my wife. And who I’d rather spend the rest of my life with.”
“I love you so much, Alex,” I said.
And then he made love to me again.
* * *
WHEN WE’D FINISHED and both of us were spent, I propped my head up on my elbow and looked down at him.
“After that, I think that I might have the vapors,” I said to him. “And that I also might need a shower. Want to join me?”
His eyes glinted with humor when I said that. “Would you mind if I took a power nap?”
“After all of that work?” I said as I kissed him on the lips. “Not at all. Because you were superhuman this morning. I won’t be long. Give me twenty minutes.”
In the bathroom, I closed the door behind me and was about to use the toilet when I saw the pregnancy test kit sitting on the edge of the vanity, as if it were there to mock me. I hadn’t taken a test in the past two weeks because it hadn’t seemed like there was a point when we weren’t making love.
A deep sense of shame came over me when I looked at the kit, which had disappointed me time and again for so many months that I had come to resent it. Still, regardless of that—and because it had been too long since I’d checked, I decided to just suck it up and give it another go. I opened the box, pulled out a strip, sat on the toilet, and peed on it.
The test took twenty minutes to show whether I was pregnant, so when I was finished, I left it on the vanity and then stepped into the shower where I stood under the hot water for a good fifteen minutes before I even started to wash my hair and my body.
When I was finished, I toweled off, and without even thinking about the pregnancy strip, I started to blow out my hair with a hair dryer until it was dry. I moisturized my face. I brushed my teeth. And then, just as I was slipping into my white, terry-cloth robe that hung next to Alex’s on the back of the bathroom door, I caught sight of the pregnancy strip in the mirror next to me.
I’d practically forgotten about it.
Steeling myself for more disappointment, I stole a look at it.
* * *
WHEN I STEPPED OUT of the bathroom, Alex was standing across from me, naked, looking out at the expanse of New York.
“Are you an exhibitionist?” I asked.
He turned to look at me. “Might be.”
When his gaze caught mine, which was filled with tears, he spun around, came over to me, and held me.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “You look upset.”
“Is that how I look?”
“Yes.”
“Then in this case, looks are deceiving.”
He shook his head at me as I tried—and failed—to compose myself.
“Jennifer, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Then why are you crying?”
When I held up the test strip in front of him, he looked at me and then at it in bewilderment. And then his lips parted in anticipation of what I was about to say.
“We’re pregnant,” I said as tears spilled down my cheeks. “It’s finally happened.”
He took the strip from my hands, stared at it for a long moment, and then looked back at me with a wild grin on his face. “We’re pregnant?”
“Apparently, we are. To make sure, I checked twice.”
“I can’t believe it...”
“Well, believe it,” I said as he held me close to him and kissed me. “Because finally, I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a child. Now, make love to me again, Alex—and do it as if it were our first time.”
# # #
THANK YOU FOR READING Annihilate Them! I hope you enjoyed it! Annihilate Them: Holiday is coming soon.
If you are interested in reading more about Kate and Ben, I’m including the first chapter of A Dangerous Widow on the next several pages. This is a stand-alone novel filled with romantic suspense. Here is the book’s description:
Five years after her beloved husband’s death, Kate Stone suddenly learns that it was no accident. Instead, due to a chance encounter with a psychic, she discovers that it was a full-on, calclated, cold-blooded murder.
Initially, Kate rejects the idea. How could Michael possibly have been murdered? All of the evidence surrounding his death suggests that it was an accident.
Enter Ben Cade, the first love of Kate’s life—a man she hasn’t seen in sixteen years. Now a former SEAL turned private investigator, Ben agrees to help Kate learn the truth. Soon, the love they once shared for each other begins a slow simmer—just as chaos ignites around them as twists, turns, death threats and deceptions abound.
Enjoy the excerpt! The A Dangerous series continues in 2017 with A Dangerous Agenda with more Kate and Ben!
