Itug the zipper down just enough to see the panic in his eyes. "Move a muscle or say a word, and I'll drag this out for another week," I growl. "Got it?"
I zip the bag back up on his frantic nod and kick the body bag down the tender until its hidden deep beneath the back bench. He's one of Dante's more vocal lackeys, and two layers of duct tape doesn't muffle his cries well enough. I'd tack on a few more strips, but there's no time. I told Her to give me a couple minutes to start the tender, but clearly, she can't count, because after thirty seconds, she's on the swim platform, gazing down at me. That goofy smile hasn't left her lips, and it has me even more on edge than the ghost of her hand on my chest. Something about her … is different. She's brighter, sunnier. If that's even possible. Her eyes follow me around like she knows something I don't. I don't know what that look is, but I know it doesn't match the shaky you're scaring me that rushed out of her mouth the night I strung her up in my garage.
Great. Now I'm thinking about her body again.
Blood rushes to my dick, and I turn my back to her, because even with mirrored sunglasses on, I don't want to risk looking at her legs in that skirt again.
"Get in," I grit, stabbing the key in the ignition.
"Ah-hem."
I turn my head and find her fingers wiggling in front of my face, nail polish sparkling in the sun.
I lift my gaze. "What?"
"It's very ungentlemanly not to help a lady onboard, you know?"
For fuck's sake.
I flex my hand, then grab her by the elbow like I'm helping an old lady cross the road. Resisting the urge to tug her onboard and then throw her over it, I let her go the second she finds her footing.
"Sit."
But she's not listening. Instead, she tugs out her cell and flashes me her palm. "Uh-huh. Give me a sec."
She zones in on her cell screen, fingers flying, sparkly pink W' phone charm swinging. My eyes narrow into slits on her smirk and glassy eyes, and my disbelief hardens into something hotter.
Who the fuck is she texting?
Before I can act on the impulse to snatch her cell from her hand, she locks it, drops it into her purse, and glances up at me.
"Sorry!" She huffs out an exaggerated breath. "Okay, I'm ready when you are."
It takes every ounce of self-restraint to keep my mouth shut and turn around. Doesn't fucking help when she joins me at the helm, like the little space invader she is.
I bite my tongue and white-knuckle the wheel, trying to concentrate on steering away from the yacht and not the fluff of her coat tickling my arm.
With a clear path, I yank the throttle, partly in the hope she'll fall back and out of my orbit, and partly to get back to shore and get her off the boat as soon as possible. But no jolt or jerk disturbs her. She simply stares over the windscreen, the wind ruffling her hair, that stupid smile still dancing on her lips.
"You won't get in a car, but you'll get on a boat." I take a sharp turn, for no reason other than to try and throw her off balance. Doesn't work. "Make it make sense."
"Did you kill him?"
I squint. "What?"
Her gaze lifts to mine under a cupped hand. "You heard me the first time, Gabriel. Did you kill him?"
My full name on her tongue, and in that tone, slides under my skin and chills. Her brazenness both unnerves me and pisses me off, and it takes a few seconds for me to realize she's not talking about the dude in the body bag behind us, or the guy from the phone booth, but Seb.
I glare back out to sea. "No."
The silence hums louder than the engine. I feel the memory of that night crackling between us, and shit, I feel almost … embarrassed. Like a teen caught jerking off to his father's porn mags in the garage.
The sun beats down on the back of my neck. "Forget about that," I mutter.
"Forget about what?"
I let out a hiss through my nostrils. This chick's really going to make me say it.
"That night," I grit.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
What? I turn as she lifts her face to the sun and closes her eyes as if she said nothing at all.
I study her for a moment and suddenly realize what she's playing at.
"If it happened in the dark, it didn't happen."
Fuck.noveldrama
That's why she never told Rory about the incident in the garage or the night I showed up at her house and taught her how to get out of the trunk.
The girl's taken my father's rule and spun it into a whole new meaning. And—dare I even let myself think it—she's into the fucking idea.
Is she?
Electricity laced with ill intent zaps through my core and swells in my groin.
No. Christ.
I resist the urge to slam my head against the dash to knock the ungodly thoughts out of it so they can't come back to haunt me later. Or to reach over and finally cut out her tongue like I threatened to. Because her saying that is the last thing I need. It's too ambiguous, too bad for me. And no sin, even Mildred's, will ever be good enough to drown out my imagination when it festers on all the bad things I could now get away with doing to her in the dark.
My right hand is going to have a field day.
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
I'm barely listening. I run a clammy hand down my throat and consider strangling myself with it. "No."
"Then why do you carry a gun?"
"It looks cool."
"Oh. And why do you always wear black?"
"Hides the blood stains."
"Wait—I thought you'd never killed anyone?"
As I turn to pin her with a blistering glare, the wind whips her hair and a strand hits the corner of my mouth like a stray bullet.
A faint taste of her sweet shampoo snaps my last nerve.
I kill the engine so fast the boat lurches forward. Yanking the key from the ignition, I palm the dash, painting it with heavy breaths.
I'm rigid from my shoulders down to my boots.
Whatever she's doing, it's pissing me off. I scared the shit out of her, and now she's making small talk?
I glare down at her shadow on the dash and contemplate my next move.
I don't even need to ask Denis to pry; I could just choke the secret out of her. Scratch the itch and breathe a sigh of relief as her body breaks the water's surface.
I know I'm bluffing myself just even thinking about it. Her shadow alone makes my chest feel too tight in my shirt. It's tiny and five shades lighter than mine, and the mere sight reminds me of the foreign flicker of guilt I felt slamming down the lid of my trunk on her screams.
A second option is hard to come by; I'm too distracted by the sound of her heavy breaths in my ear. Then her shadow shifts toward mine, just an inch, and my mouth moves without consulting my brain.
"We never finished lesson two."
Her breaths cease. "What?"
With a sharp inhale, I slowly return to my full height, glance up at the sky, and curse the sun for shining and myself for being born with the Devil on my back.
Then I stoop to grab the moor line.
"Lesson two." My voice is as rough as sandpaper. "We never finished it."
She freezes. Her eyes slide down to my hand and grow wide. It's an expression that'd make any man with a heart stop.
But she was right: I don't have one.
"Was it the questions? I can totally stop with the questions."
I take another step.
"Wait," she yelps, throwing her palms up. "I'll sit down and be quiet, I swear! You won't even know I'm here!"
She hurdles backward over the front bench, and I follow her retreat. I'd be impressed she cleared it in those ridiculously high shoes if my vision wasn't red at the edges.
I catch her wrist, then the other, and her muscles grow limp as I wrap the rope around them in a tight and unforgiving knot.
Annoyance sparks hot in my chest. She doesn't put up a fight. No elbow striking, no annoying squeaking. She just stares like she's catatonic, only moving when I tell her to.
"Lay down."
She obeys.
She fucking obeys.
I crack my knuckles and lower myself to the bench, my hands still burning from the contrast of rough, weather-worn rope and delicate skin.
I clear my throat and rest my elbows on my knees. "Get out of it."
Wrists clenched to her stomach, she gazes up at me, chest heaving under every breath. "I don't know how," she whispers.
"You haven't even tried," I bark.
As if brought back to life by my tone, she wriggles and squirms like a fish on a hook. Tugging at the binds, shoulders rolling, hips shifting. Her skirt rides up her thighs, inch by inch, as she bucks.
A flash of pink, and I'm on my knees before I can stop myself.
Awareness prickles the nape of my neck, and I grow rigid. Regret churns through me as I force myself to look down and take stock of what I've done.
I've pinned her beneath me. Knees pressed against her thighs, a hand by her head. My gaze climbs over golden hair fanned out like a halo, down her slogan tee and the chest heaving beneath it. Across the inch of tanned stomach and her clenched fists, down to my other hand, yanking down the hem of her skirt.
She looks down at my hand and swallows. "What are you doing?"
Good question.
I saw bare skin.
I saw pink lace.
I saw red.
I acted on instinct, and it wasn't a gentlemanly one. There's only one other man on this boat, and he's halfway dead already, but he's not the fucking problem.
I am.
I let go of her skirt and glare over the side of the boat out to sea, trying to compose myself, but it's fucking impossible. I'm too aware of every inch of her beneath me. Soft, warm, bleeding through my clothes and burning low in my gut.
Seconds drip by. A bead of sweat glides down my back.
"Um," she mutters. My jaw clenches as she shifts her hips an inch. "So is there a trick or something? L-like, do I need a hairpin or … Hey, what happened to your face? It looks painful."
I look down as her bound hands rise to my cheek. She moves slowly, watching me as though I might bite, before spreading her fingers like a flower in bloom and brushing them over the welt.
Every muscle in my body seizes. Her touch is as light as a whisper; soft enough to hurt. I don't stop her. Can't.
Instead, I stare at her and wonder if her gaze would soften like that if she knew why I have it. If she knew she is behind every slash, bruise, and ache in my body right now. If she knew how sick I am, how desperate I am to know her secret.
If she knew she is lying five feet from a man in a fucking body bag.
The lump in my throat swells as her fingers trail south over my cheekbone. When she reaches the corner of my lip and slides her thumb across it, my cock twitches, and something within me snaps.
I catch her finger between my teeth. A rough warning bite—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to make it stop.
She blinks up at me and lets out a puff of air.
"Do you bite every woman that touches you?"
I don't reply. Mainly because my brain's spinning too fast to think of one, but partly because I wouldn't know. In my thirty-two years on this earth, she's the only girl I've met who's been brave enough to touch me with such a gentle caress.
I hold her finger between my teeth longer than I should, deciding what to do with it. Half tempted to bite harder to wipe the warmth from her face, half tempted to suck it and taste her skin and the sweetness underneath.
Instead, I use every ounce of restraint I have and pull back with a low grunt. I grab the knife at my ankle, and with a clean slice between her wrists, the moor line falls away.
Arms dropping to the deck, she's all flushed cheeks and parted lips, hazy gaze and ragged breaths. Lying there like I've just fucked her into oblivion.
My stare lingers a beat too long. Just enough to etch the image into my brain for later before I stagger back to the helm.
I book it back to the coast, my balls tight. She sits behind me in perfect silence, like she should have fucking done in the first place.
Once I cut the engine and moor up at the dock, I turn my back to her and glare out to sea. Not just to hide my hard-on, but because now that I've seen her hurdle a bench like an Olympic athlete, I know she can very well disembark without me having to touch her again.
The boat dipping and the deck groaning brings a slither of relief through me. It's gone as quickly as it arrived when her sweet voice floats over and prickles my nape.
"You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you have a crush on me."
My shoulders snap into a tight line, and I run my tongue over my teeth, still tasting her.
"Good thing you know better, then."
She pauses. "Phew. Well, thanks for the ride."
The sound of her heels clicking down the dock fade, but a final question strains against the base of my throat.
I shouldn't ask; I know I won't like the answer.
But fuck, I was born bad, but I was born a nosy bastard too.
I turn my head. "Who were you just texting?"
She stops and glances at me over her shoulder. "Oh, just some guy I'm going on a date with."
My body turns to stone.
I was right: something bad is about to happen.
Just not to me.