SWNOVELS Sinners Consumed: Chapter 6
in an hour, I float into the forgotten living room at the back of the yacht. Instead of sighing into the silence like last time, I sink down on the window seat and press my cheek against the cold glass, as if it’ll extinguish the restless heat underneath it.
After a ridiculously long shower, I’ve been wandering the yacht like a spirit condemned. A collegiate hoodie instead of a Victorian dress; chained by leather restraints and violent orgasms, rather than the shackles of doom.
I lasted less than two hours before the sound of the decks groaning and the endless grandfather clocks ticking began to grate on me, chafing at my skin.
Now, as I press more of my body against the glass, staring at the rain fracturing the bright lights of Devil’s Cove on the horizon, I rattle my brain for something to do.
The answer comes like one of those cartoon light bulbs: I’ll work.
I’m not scheduled for a shift, but what else am I going to do tonight? Hide in Rafe’s room while the casino vibrates above me? With a quick glance at the Breitling, I realize Laurie and the like will be bobbing over the Pacific in a staff shuttle soon.
Spurred on by new vigor, I dart down to the laundry room and pick up a spare uniform in my size. Brushing the tangled evidence of rough sex from my hair, I paint on a face that looks too innocent to enjoy being gagged by a belt. Within thirty minutes, I’m behind the bar, stocking the mini fridge and loading the dishwasher.
But the start of the shift comes and goes. The hour melts into the next, the solitude tightening like a noose around my throat. No Laurie, no guests. When the dishwasher’s three lonely beeps fill the lounge, signaling it’s been two and a half hours since I put it on, I drop the rag I’m clutching and stomp up to Rafe’s study.
I find Laurie’s number in one of those Rolodexes old people have and use the phone on his desk to call her. She answers on the first ring.
“Yes, boss?”
“Laurie, it’s Penny. Where are you?”
“Penny?” She pauses, the line filling with the muffled sounds of a bar. “Rafe’s closed up the yacht until New Year’s Eve, sweetie. He didn’t call you? He said he would.”
Closing my eyes, I sink into the leather chair and drop my head against the backrest. “No, he didn’t,” I say tightly. Although I guess that solves the dilemma of trying to hide the fact I’m living onboard from my colleagues.
“Full pay, of course. And the staff Christmas party will still be going ahead. Wait.” The noise behind her fades, and it sounds like a door slams behind her. “How are you on the boat? The staff shuttle wouldn’t have been running—”
It’s stupid and childish, but I panic and hang up on her. When the phone shrills with a call back, I dive under the desk and turn it off by the plug.
Great. Now what?
The silence swells against the walls of the study, dulled only by the footsteps of the ghost crew going about their duties. It’s growing darker now, and the only light from outside is the occasional sweep from Rafe’s men’s torches as they patrol the decks.
The worst part about this seclusion is that I’m stuck with it all night. There’s no way I’ll sleep before the sun comes up.
I manage to kill another ten minutes rifling through Rafe’s perfectly organized drawers and glaring at the photo frames lining his shelves. One of him passing someone an oversized check catches my eye, and I pick it up to study it.
His signature silhouette seeps out from behind the glass. Sharp suit, megawatt smile. Black, gold, green, all the colors so polished, so refined, that no other word comes to mind. Perfect.
I knew the moment I met him he was the perfect liar.
A heady thought charges my nerves. Now that I’ve seen what’s underneath the gentlemanly exterior—felt it inside me; heard it in my ear—I’m hot with knowing I’ve had a glimpse of something no one else has.
Now, he’s the perfect liar, to everyone except me.
A slow-moving hum tears me away from his magnetic stare. Frowning, I glance over my shoulder toward the French doors, squinting when I notice a hazy light cutting through the rain.
He’s back already?
A Pavlovian response flickers in my clit, and I take the steps down to the lounge two at a time. Realizing I look like a puppy bounding around with excitement at his master returning home, I perch on the edge of the sofa with my back to the doors and turn on the television, staring at a basketball game with plastic interest.
My indifference lasts about ninety seconds before the French doors burst open and an icy chill brings in a bundle of chaotic energy with a familiar female voice at the heart of it.
“The party has arrived!” A blur of blond hair and bags rounds the sofa. My gaze slides up pajama-clad legs and lands on Rory’s bright grin. “I brought candy and card games, Tayce has pizza and wine, and Wren brought a movie.”
“Not just any movie—Mamma Mia!, the extended karaoke version.” Wren appears and thrusts a well-worn DVD under my nose. I look up at her in surprise. She’s a whirlwind of pink, from the glittery scrunchie in her hair to the wellington boots her pajamas are tucked in to.
As Tayce flops down on the sofa and flashes me a sly grin, Rory’s attention flicks toward the door, then back to me. “And you,” she whispers, “will bring the gossip.”
“I—”
Rory cuts me off with a flap of her hand. “Not right now, though. My husband is on the warpath.”
As if the word husband summoned a demon, a dark presence heats the nape of my neck.
“Penelope Price.”
I swallow, tracking the black shadow as it shifts over the cream carpet. Shiny shoes come into view, and with a braced spine, I force myself to look up at their owner.
“Where’s my brother?”
“Which one?”
Angelo’s jaw ticks, and he rakes a look of displeasure over my wrist. “The one that likes to play games.” He takes a step forward, making my heart jolt. “Unlike me.”
I stare at him. The expression on his face is one from my memories. He glared at my father the same way all those years ago, when we gatecrashed his parents’ funeral. Now that I’m the subject of it, I’m not going to squeal like my drunken father did. Besides, I have this weird feeling of loyalty in my chest—I wouldn’t tell Angelo where his brother had gone, even if I knew.
“Rafe? Beats me.”
His eyes thin. “Then what are you doing here?”
My mind scatters in four directions for an answer. “Yacht sitting,” I announce.
Tayce snorts beside me, hiding her smirk in the collar of her leather jacket when Angelo cuts her a menacing look. The heat of it makes my resolve splinter, and I find myself muttering, “Sorry, I know as much as you.”
“And all I know is that Rafe called my wife and invited her to an impromptu sleepover in the middle of the fucking Pacific on a Monday night.”
“And you’re ruining the vibe, babe,” Rory groans, sliding in between me and her ever-advancing husband. She mutters sweet words while she plays with his shirt buttons, but I can’t hear them over the blood pounding in my ears.
Rafe arranged a sleepover for me? The idea is sweet, sickly even, and it churns in my stomach like I’ve eaten too much chocolate in one sitting. I try to wash it away with rationale: he probably doesn’t trust me to be on his zillion-dollar mega-yacht alone, which is fair, considering the last rich guy that was mean to me got his casino burned to the ground. Besides, it’s not like he knows how badly I wanted to have sleepovers when I was a kid.
I look over the top of Rory’s messy bun and meet Angelo’s suspicious stare. He gently sweeps his wife to the side so there’s no barrier between me and his last-ditch attempt at interrogation.
“You know where my brother is, Penelope?”
“Have you tried Find My iPhone, Angelo?”
Tayce stills. Wren draws in a sharp breath, and Rory mutters something about flamingos under her breath.
The air heats for a moment, then cools when dry humor softens Angelo’s expression.
“I get it now.”
I frown. “Get what?”
But he doesn’t reply. Instead, he plants a kiss on his wife’s jaw, tells her to call him before she goes to sleep, and disappears out to the swim platform.
I turn back to the lounge for an answer. “Get what?”
Rory smirks. Wren turns red and looks away. When I glance at Tayce, she places a hand on my thigh and gives it a squeeze.
“He means, he gets why Rafe is obsessed with you now. You talk almost as much shit as he does.”
The interrogation was inevitable. I answered questions about our situation with flippancy—we’re just fucking, chill—and questions about how long I’ll be here for with vagueness—until I get bored of him.
Truth is, I don’t know the real answer to either.
At least the third-degree was short-lived. When Tayce asked how big Rafe’s dick is, Rory got so grossed out she knocked a glass of red wine on the cream carpet. We turned our attention to moving the sofa three feet to the left to hide it, and luckily the conversation never went back to the topic of her brother-in-law’s manhood.
The evening bled into night with the unrelenting rain and the soundtrack of Mamma Mia! providing the backdrop to a sleepover I could have only ever dreamed of as a kid.
Now, I’m curled up on the sofa in my pajamas, drunk on sugar and wine, and I’m trying to play it cool. Trying not to grin like a maniac as I watch Wren teach Rory the official dance to ABBA’s Super Trouper, and trying not to ask when we can do this again.
The sofa dips beside me. “Decide on what you want, yet?”
I glance down at the black box Tayce set on the coffee table. She snaps it open and runs her finger over a silver tattoo gun.
I swallow. “Depends. Does it hurt?”
“A lot less than getting impaled by Rafe’s massive dick, I’m sure.” Cheeks heating, I go to swat her away, but she ducks out of arm’s-reach, laughing. “Nah. It’s more a scratch than a stab. And after a few minutes, the area goes numb and you can’t really feel it anyway.”
My eyes travel down the length of her arms as she snaps on a pair of black gloves. “You don’t have any tattoos yourself?”
“Nope, that’s why they call me the tattooless tattoo artist.” She glances up at Rory and Wren doing the Brooklyn shuffle, then lowers her voice. “Tattoos make you identifiable.”
The sound of her beer chinking against mine in The Rusty Anchor echoes in my head.
“I hear you’re the best.”
She laughs. “That’s what they say.”
“Did you always know you wanted to be a tattoo artist?”
She cocks her head, and for a moment, I watch her unscrew her gun and sterilize each part. “No,” she eventually says. “I was studying Art History at college. I wanted to be a museum curator.”
“So why tattoos?”
A dark smirk touches her lips. She flips her long, black hair over her shoulder and pins me with a knowing look. “I like inflicting pain on men, even just for a little while.”
I knew I liked this girl. My attention drops to the gun. “It’s temporary ink, right?”
“Uh-huh. Will fade in a couple weeks.”
“All right, then I’m happy for you to go rogue.”
She cocks a brow. “Are you sure?” Leaning in, she adds, “Because when I go rogue, I go…rogue.”
The mischief dancing in her eyes gives me pause. “Okay, maybe put it somewhere I can’t see, just in case.”
She chuckles. “Good idea, red-head.”
We agree on the small of my back. I pretend like Tayce telling me it’s an area with thicker skin and fewer nerves is what convinces me, but really, it’s because I know Rafe will see it when he next fucks me from behind. The thought of his stomach tensing against my ass and his hot hand grazing over it sends a lethargic excitement through my core.
Tayce was right; the scratching morphs into a light burning sensation. She works meticulously, silently, the ends of her hair brushing against my spine.
When the hum of the gun cuts out, I pop my eyes open. She wipes something cold and wet over the area, then rises to her feet. To my surprise, when I twist around to look at her, she’s making a slow retreat.
I frown. “Is it done? Where are you going?”
She nods to the hand mirror on the table. “Take a look.”
Rory stops dancing and squints at my lower back. As her eyes widen and her jaw drops, suspicion trickles into my veins.
“Tayce…” she whispers, biting back a laugh.
“What?” I snap. I snatch up the mirror and twist awkwardly to see her artwork. When a familiar name in a heart stares back at me, my blood runs cold.
Five heavy seconds pass. I lift my eyes to Tayce, who’s staring at me like a deer caught in headlights. “You told me to go rogue,” she whispers.
I drop the mirror to the sofa. Pull down my top.
“Yeah. And now I’m telling you to run.”
She’s out the door before I can finish my sentence. I sprint after her, Rory and Wren hot on my heels.
Tayce’s laughter floats up the spiral staircase. “I’m sorry, okay! You can tattoo anything you want on me as payback!”
“I’m going to draw a massive dick!”
“That’s fine, just not on my face, all right?”
She’s within arms-reach by the time we run through Rafe’s study. Glancing over her shoulder, she yanks open the door to the library. I follow her in and come to a crashing stop.
My breathing slows, but my heart picks up pace.
“Jeez, what an ugly bookshelf,” Tayce mutters, following my gaze.
Rory comes up beside me. “Are they the For Dummies books? Looks like the whole collection? I can’t imagine Rafe reading those.”
“He doesn’t,” I whisper, my throat going thick.
“Well, who does then?”
I swallow. “Me.”
In the silence, the wind roars. The grandfather clock ticks on the mantelpiece. My eyes trail the splintered wood, the hammer on the desk, and the Swedish instructions torn into two and dumped next to the trash can.
Wren sighs and clutches her chest.
“See, I told you he was a gentleman.”