“I need answers, hummingbird,” I said, a threat to my voice. “And I’m going to get them.”
"Are you trying to scare me, Foxy? Because you can't scare a girl who's been to hell and back."
Maybe I was trying to scare her. But I needed answers dammit. I couldn't understand how she was so calm, so unaffected by being back here after ten years. Like it meant nothing. Like all of it, the lifetime we'd spent together, meant absolutely jack shit to her.
"You know what, Rogue, you don't wanna tell me why you're here yet? Fine. But I'm gonna need a name and address for the dead man who did that to your face because if his blood isn't wetting my hands by dawn, we’re going to have an issue."
"Wind your neck in, Badger," she said, fucking mocking me. "Because I'm not giving you shit. Oh, except this..." She held the dog in one hand then reached into her denim shorts' pocket, rummaging around in it for a second while the three of us waited, curious as fuck to see what she had hidden in there.
A beat later, she took her hand out and flipped me her middle finger. I slammed my palm down on the kitchen island in fury and the way she flinched made me even angrier. If some asshole had touched her once like that, then how many times might he have hurt her before this? The finger mark bruises on her neck were enough to make me so far beyond protective, that I wanted to load my pick-up bed with guns and go hunting for the man responsible without even a clue to guide me to his door.
"A. Name," I pushed.
"Give it up, bro, she doesn't wanna tell us," JJ said and I shot him a glare, but as soon as I met his gaze, he cocked his head and gave me that imploring look that always seemed to work on me and I huffed out a breath.
"Can I go back to my car now?" she asked, sounding bored and my eyes whipped back to her.
"You're not sleeping on the side of a road, Rogue. You're staying here," I insisted, and I knew I wouldn't be letting her leave whether she accepted the offer or not.
She was quiet for a long moment then clucked her tongue and shrugged. "Fine." She strode over to the fridge, nudging JJ aside and taking out some orange juice.
She poured herself a glass before heading out onto the patio and dropping onto a sun lounger in the shade of an umbrella, tucking the dog up next to her. Her bronzed legs were in the sun and looked so appetising that I had to drag my eyes away.
At least that was one good thing to focus on. Rogue Easton was under my roof, locked up tight in the place I'd dreamed of bringing her to a million times. She'd been in my dreams since I was eight years old. And she'd laid claim to my soul long before then. Now she was back, I was finally going to do what that little boy had never been able to. I was going to make her mine. And I was never going to let her go.
I closed my eyes and tried to pretend that I hadn't found myself deep in the wolf den with the predators closing in on me as I feigned total indifference to my situation. But on the inside, I was a wreck. These boys, these men, were so different to the people I remembered and yet, this aching part inside of me was throbbing with a need to open my arms to them and beg them to take me in.
The worst part of that was how easy I thought it would be if I did. They wanted me here for some reason. They'd taken one look at me and demanded I stay, but that didn’t make any sense. I was one of a very few people on a very short list. Fox's dad and the leader of this crew of cutthroat gangsters wanted me dead. I wasn't supposed to be in Sunset Cove. Not now or ever. That had been made terrifyingly clear to me when I left. My return here was a death sentence which was due to be carried out the moment Luther laid eyes on me.
My life, everything I ever had been or ever would be was supposed to end if my ass ever made it back here. And yet, here I was. My ass firmly pressing down on what was very clearly an obnoxiously expensive sun lounger while three assholes circled me like vultures.
"I'm gonna make some lunch," JJ announced loudly.
"Why? We just ate," Chase said in response which was followed by what sounded like someone getting punched in the arm.
"That was hours ago. Besides, I bet Rogue wouldn't mind a sandwich. Would you?" JJ asked and I reluctantly cracked an eye open to look in at him in the kitchen being all domesticated and shit.
My pride demanded I tell him to take his sandwich and shove it up his ass until he could taste it in his mouth again, but my pitifully empty stomach demanded I kick my pride to the curb and tell him yes please while worshipping him on my knees and kissing his feet. I settled on a happy medium with a side of fuck you tossed in.
"I've had one meal in the last three days so yeah, I'll take your sandwich and if you've got some chips too, that'd be great," I said.
"Why haven't you eaten for three days?" Fox demanded and I flinched out of my fucking skin as I realised he was standing right over me, casting me in his shadow and just lingering there like a big wall of muscular crazy.
"Because dead girls don't need food," I snarked back at him then instantly regretted it as I got trapped in the penetrating gaze of his deep green eyes.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he growled. Like, actually growled.
"Not a lot as I'm clearly living my best life right now, locked up in your dad's house wondering if he's planning on turning up to kill me himself or if he hands that kind of work over to you now."
Stone cold silence hit me in response to that and I arched a brow as Fox gave me crickets, his jaw ticking.
"Bullshit," Chase called, stepping out of the house to stand beside Fox and pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. "No way you don't know about Luther."
Fox turned to glare at him and Chase arched a brow like he didn’t know what he’d said that was wrong.
"What about him?" I asked, sitting up and leaning out to steal a smoke from him without bothering to ask.
I was aiming for rude but the casual over familiarity of the gesture had me mentally sitting in the back of his mom's car while the rain pounded down on the roof and we talked shit about everything and nothing while laughing our asses off for a brief moment before I blinked the memory away.
Chase observed me for a few seconds with a look in his eyes that said he wished I hadn't come back and as fucked up as that was, I actually preferred that attitude to Fox's weird overbearing shit and JJ's casual disregard for what I wanted.
Fox glared at the cigarette in my hand like he wanted to snatch it away from me and I gave him a flat look which dared him to do it.
Chase sparked up and then leaned down to let me light my own smoke from the end of his. As I inhaled deeply, the cherry flared with heat and I watched as it was reflected in his eyes, the scent of sea air, chain smoking and danger coiling around me from his skin as he got too close.
Chase had always been slim and underfed when we were younger, but it looked like he'd gone on a mission to rectify that in the years we'd spent apart. His body was thick with muscle that said he did more with it than just work out in the gym and the ink on his skin was as dark as the soul that peered back at me from within his ocean blue eyes.
"Daddy Harlequin is-”
“Dead,” Fox ground out and my gaze flicked back to him as my lips popped open at that piece of lifechanging information.
My gaze slid back to Chase for confirmation and he shrugged.
“Dead as a fucking doornail. Took a bullet right between the eyes a few years ago," Chase confirmed, taking the cigarette from his lips as I took a drag on mine.
"Good," I replied as the shock of that statement sank in and I leaned back in my sun lounger as I tried to feign indifference, but shit, that was big news, huge, enormous, gigantic, fuck you up the ass with a baseball bat news.
With Luther Harlequin dead and buried, I was free - assuming his heir hadn't decided to stick to his decisions and would kill me for him. But as that heir was standing over me looking like he was trying not to blow a gasket as he drank me in with a mixture of so many emotions in his gaze that I couldn't count them, I was going to guess not. Fox could have killed me the moment I was shoved t
hrough the front door and yet here I was, lounging by his pool and drinking his OJ.
No one called me out on my joy over Fox's dad's death which said plenty about the motherfucker in question and I lifted the cigarette to my lips, taking a long drag as I bought myself a few seconds to process that shit because it changed…everything. And nothing.
JJ cleared his throat from inside the house and gave Fox a hard look which seemed to hold a question while Fox just shrugged innocently before turning to look back at me. There was a time when I could interpret every look my boys exchanged and send them silent messages of my own, but unless Fox was having trouble holding a fart in, I was lost as to what they were thinking about me in that moment.
I only usually smoked when I was stressed, but I figured this situation met the requirements. Mutt didn't seem to like it much though, hopping up off of the sun lounger and moving around the pool before cocking his leg against a potted palm.
"This is why I don't allow dogs in my house," Fox grunted, his eyes following Mutt with distaste written on his features and I stood up with a saccharine sweet smile.
"Okay, no worries. We'll get out of your hair then."
I turned my back on him and tried to walk away, but his hands grasped my waist and he tugged me back against him instead, his warm, ripped abs pressing to my spine through my stolen shirt as I sucked in a surprised breath.
"No one even breathes in Sunset Cove without my say so, hummingbird," he warned. "So don't go thinking you're doing anything at all without me okaying it.”
I jerked out of his grip and turned back to glare at him. "Keep your fucking hands off of me, Fox," I warned, pointing my cigarette at him. "I don't know why the hell you want me here, but I'm not your property so you can keep your paws to yourself."
"Is it a price issue?" Chase asked as he dropped down into the sun lounger I'd just vacated. "Because I'm good for the money if you wanna warm my bed while you're here. Once your face heals up of course. I'm not buying damaged pussy."
Fox whirled on him in the blink of an eye, grabbing the edge of the sun lounger and flipping it up so that Chase was thrown into the pool with a cry of outrage. The huge splash drenched the front of my legs and I took a step back in alarm as Fox stalked towards the edge of the pool and grabbed a fistful of Chase's curly dark hair as he surfaced.
"You call her a whore again and I'll break your fucking nose," he snarled before shoving down on Chase's head and dunking him beneath the water again.
Fox's muscles flexed, the fox tattoo between his shoulder blades drawing my gaze for way longer than I would have liked it to. But Fox Harlequin had always been the kind of guy it was hard to take your eyes off of and now he was like an actual force of nature.
I held my ground as Fox stood up and stalked away from the pool, cutting me an unreadable look as Chase emerged from the water coughing and cursing.
"You were wrong anyway, Chase," I said, releasing a trail of smoke from my lips. "My pussy isn't damaged in the least. So if you wanna make good on that offer you could just bend me over and forget about my fucked up face. I get the impression you're not all that pleased to see it anyway."
I flicked my cigarette into the pool as Chase smirked cruelly and I totally ignored Fox as I moved back into the house where JJ was looking at me with an assessing gaze as he pushed a plateful of food across the kitchen island to me.
"I call bullshit," he announced as I took a barstool and tore a bite from my sandwich. Avocado, cheese and sun-dried tomatoes filled my mouth and I groaned loudly as I chewed, not giving a shit if they knew I appreciated the food. It didn't come close to making up for what they'd done to me and I had no qualms about eating every single thing in their fridge if they were dumb enough to offer it up for free. "You don't carry yourself like a working girl."
"Well, there's a first time for everything and you guys look like you can afford to pay a good price for pussy. So all I'd need to do is close my eyes and imagine you're absolutely anyone else and we'd be good,” I snarked back.
JJ smirked like that made sense to him and Fox dropped down into the chair beside me, practically breathing down my neck.
"I'll give you whatever you want. You don't need to earn money," he said in a low growl and I arched an eyebrow at him.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you're one of us. What's mine is yours."
I scoffed lightly. "No thanks."
Fox opened his mouth to say something else, but JJ placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a meaningful look as they silently communicated something between each other and I gave my attention to my sandwich. Some things never changed. JJ and Fox still liked having their secrets. I wondered if I could still figure them out just as easily as I once had. But I found I didn't even want to try. Being back here felt like the air was too thin and the silence too loud. I needed to escape the thick layer of Harlequin that was slowly trying to drown me and just focus on finding those keys.
As none of them was wearing a shirt, it was pretty easy to see that they didn’t wear their keys around their necks like I did, which meant that I was probably in the perfect place to figure out where they kept them. So I'd stay put for now while I tried to find them. But the moment I did, I'd be gone even faster than I'd disappeared the first time.
"I'm gonna guess sleeping in a car isn't all that restful," JJ said as he moved around to my other side and boxed me in like he and Fox were a pair of bookends. "So if you wanna have a shower and a rest in one of the guest rooms, you can. There's one with an en-suite opposite my room," he offered and I jumped all over that option like a seagull on a French fry.
"You're saying I can escape the overbearing Badger to my right? That would be a hell yes." I hopped up, licking the last sandwich crumbs from my fingers and ignoring Fox as he bristled.
I headed over to the fridge first, ignoring JJ as he led the way towards a corridor beyond the kitchen.
I tugged the fridge door wide just as Chase stalked back through the open doors, scrubbing at his dark curls with a towel while dripping water all over the tiled floor and scowling at Fox.
I grabbed a pot of what looked like freshly made guacamole, a bottle of white wine, a couple of cans of soda, a punnet of raspberries and a second bottle of wine because it looked expensive so why the fuck not?
JJ appeared beside me with a frown so I turned to him and dumped my haul in his arms for him to carry before turning and pulling open the cupboards until I found a family sized bag of Doritos and tossed them into his arms too.
Once he couldn’t carry any more, I reached out and stole the pink lensed shades from his face and put them back on mine.
"I want my hat back," I growled as I waved at him to lead the way and he cocked an eyebrow at me like he found me amusing.
"I think I dropped it when I was chasing you," he admitted.
"Of course you did. I literally own five things in the entire world so why would you be careful with one of them?" I replied scathingly, tossing the cupboard door closed as I gave up on my food raid.
"Why is that exactly?" Chase asked me and I flicked a glance his way, refusing to look at the water sliding down his bare chest in lickable beads of moisture.
"Because I haven't had a home for ten years. But you guys know all about that, don't you?" I said icily.
"You had a home," Chase replied without so much as a flicker of remorse in his gaze. "It's not like you were cast out onto the streets."
I gave him a smile that was all venom and shrugged nonchalantly. "It's not like any of you cared either way."
"That's not true," Fox said, gripping the edge of the kitchen island hard enough to dent it if it hadn't been made of fucking marble.
"Isn't it?" I asked sweet as pie before turning and walking off down the corridor that led from the kitchen. I had no idea where I was going, but I cared more about walking out on his bullshit than I did about accidentally wandering into the wrong room.
JJ skirted me and headed off into the depths of the
house, taking a set of stairs and saving me from making an ass of myself by walking into a closet by accident. I followed on after him, whistling to Mutt and pretending I couldn't feel Chase and Fox's eyes burning a hole in the back of my head until I turned a corner and left them behind.
He turned another freaking corner like we were in a hotel or something and led me up a couple of steps before heading into another corridor.
“That's Chase on the left, then I'm next and Fox is in the master on the right," JJ explained as we passed by closed doors and I feigned disinterest while drinking it all in. "And you can have this one." He moved to the door beyond Fox's directly opposite the room he'd said was his and used his elbow to push it open for me.
The room was painted white like every other part the house I'd seen so far. There was a queen sized bed made up beside a pair of French doors with floor length white curtains drawn wide either side of them. I trailed inside and found a view of the sea waiting for me beyond them with a large balcony right outside. The private beach was fenced in and a jetty led out to a speedboat where a Harlequin thug was patrolling, his large gun on clear display. I could see another one moving closer to the house and I pouted. Even if I could get down there, I’d never get past those assholes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the place was crawling with security cameras too.
I stepped up to the doors and instantly tried to open them, growling in frustration as I found them locked and gave them a good rattle to make sure.
"Just how long do you plan on keeping me prisoner in here?" I asked as JJ put my snacks on the nightstand and I leaned my forehead against the window, watching the sea so I didn't have to look at him.
"You're not a prisoner, Rogue," he said, sounding kinda pissed about the accusation and I turned back to look at him with a scowl, thanking the rose tinted glasses for giving me some small barrier against this echo of my forgotten hopes and dreams.
Sinners' Playground Page 8