Sinners' Playground

by Caroline Peckham

  I led Rogue through to the bathroom in my suite, catching her arm and pulling her after me when she stopped following. As if I was gonna let her out of my sight.

  I grabbed a towel where I’d left it slung over the shower door and twisted her around, yanking her arms behind her back and tying them tightly together.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Rick?” she growled and the passion in her voice sent a ripple of heat along the length of my dick.

  “Making sure you stay right where I can see you,” I growled in her ear, tugging the towel hard and making her stumble toward the shower door. I flipped it open and tethered her hands to the handle while she watched me with irritation.

  “Is this getting you off or something, because I’m super not interested in some weird ass shower voyeurism so feel free to blindfold me too.”

  I ignored her, kicking off my shoes and socks before dropping my shorts and giving her an eyeful of my solid length. “Just like old times, huh beautiful?” I sneered and she determinedly looked me in the eye for several long seconds with an expression that said I’m-not-interested-in-your-nine-incher.

  I stepped back into the shower, turning the knob so the rush of water fell over me, waiting for her will to shatter as I squeezed shower gel into my hands. As I gripped my cock and ran my palm up and down it, her eyes dropped and she cursed as she lost the game, looking it dead in the eye.

  “Fucking hell, did it get bigger?” she balked, feeding my ego and I gave her a rare smirk as I thought of the last time she’d seen it.

  “I think your tits got bigger too. You always had nice tits,” I commented and she shrugged like she knew that these days. They’d be even nicer sucked raw in my mouth.

  I thought back on the last time I’d been naked with her, a time I used to think on a lot, but not anymore. It had been years since I’d let my mind drift to that piece of my past.

  "Come on, before the cops show up," I teased Rogue as she stared at my new tattoo on my bare chest. We were covered in spray paint and Mary Beth was gonna fry her ass if she showed up at the group home like this.

  She continued to ignore me and I grabbed her shirt, ripping it off of her impatiently. Ho-ly fucking tits.

  She had tits. Perfect, full, bare tits. And it was all too late for her to stop me seeing them as she shrieked and threw her arms around her chest to cover herself up.

  "Shit," I breathed as I stared and stared at her. I’d been hoping to see those since the moment they’d started growing. My dick liked thinking about them a lot. And I mean a lot.

  "Do you just go around ripping people's clothes off all the damn time as well as getting secret tattoos?" she demanded as she looked around as if searching for a hole to swallow her up.

  The blush on her cheeks was cute as hell, but it was making heat rush all over my skin too. I wanted to ask to touch them, but I didn’t know how to phrase that exactly. It put me in a weird ass position and suddenly I decided this shit was kinda her fault anyway.

  "Why the fuck aren't you wearing a bra?" I balked.

  "I didn't know I had to run my underwear choices by you, asshole," she snarled. "You didn't see anything. Right?"

  "Err, I kinda saw everything. And I hate to break it to you, beautiful, but you've got really nice tits and I'm not going to be able to forget them. Ever. Like on the day I die, I will probably have a flashback to this moment and be like, damn-"

  "I hate you," she growled and I frowned, not liking her saying that even if she didn’t really mean it.

  "Alright, alright, I'll make it fair," I said, raising my hands in surrender as she narrowed her eyes on me.

  I grinned at her as I committed to this idea, kicking my shoes off, unbuckling my belt, dropping my jeans and boxers, before stepping out of them and revealing my most prized possession to her. It had gotten big in the last couple of years. Especially when I got a boner, and I was currently in boner town. Because, well, tits.

  Her mouth fell open as she stared at it and my chest puffed out with pride. I waited for her to tell me how perfect it was, but she didn’t.

  "It's kinda rude if you don't say anything," I teased and her mouth snapped shut.

  "Are they always that big?" she asked, seeming concerned and my chest puffed up even more.

  I grinned, shrugging casually, but no, obviously not. I’d Googled that shit. And I knew I was well above average. "Well, like I said, beautiful, you've got really nice tits and I can't say I've really seen all that many in person so..."

  That night was stained on my memory. A lot of shit had happened, some good, some bad, some fucking life changing. It would always bind me to Rogue. But fuck if it had a hold over me anymore.

  “I see you still crave my cock as much as the last time you saw it.” I gripped my shaft tight, relieving the pressure in it as her eyes worked across it with far more confidence than she’d once had. “I’ve got your name tattooed on my balls, I’ll untie you if you want to come and have a closer look.”

  “No thanks,” she said lightly. “Is this shower show gonna last all day because I’ve got things to do, people to see, keys to take from psychos.” Her upper lip peeled back and anger twisted in her eyes.

  I finished up washing while she tried to ignore me yet kept watching me out of the corner of her eyes the whole time. Then I walked up to her dripping wet and hard as stone, reaching around her back and making her breath catch.

  I untied the towel, yanking it free and using it to dry my hair and chest before wrapping it around my waist. “Enjoying the tour so far?” I deadpanned.

  She rubbed her wrists and I noticed a shark tooth bracelet wrapped around one. I twisted the tooth between my fingers and she tried to smack my hand away from it as I almost ripped it off.

  “Is this the same one JJ used to carry around everywhere like it might make him grow taller if he kept wishing on it?” I scoffed and she shrugged.

  “Well it certainly worked. And on more than just his height.”

  I absorbed that nugget of shit, picturing cutting JJ’s dick off and breaking his legs so he could never claim to be tall again. “I didn’t realise you were fucking all of them, but it makes sense I suppose. You should make the most of his herpes riddled cock while you can though, because I plan on smashing his head in with a brick and watching his eyes pop right out of their sockets. I don’t think he’ll be much of a lay after that.”

  Her jaw pulsed furiously and I released a derisive breath. So she cared about him, did she? Then why was she fucking them over? There was clearly more to this than she was letting on.

  I brushed past her, catching her hand and towing her along again.

  “I thought you liked to cut people’s heads off?” she said icily, yanking her hand free of my grip. If I cared about her escaping me, she wouldn’t have gotten away. But as it happened, I was sure little miss lost girl was going to trail around after me through my house until she got what she wanted either way.

  “Not always.” I shrugged. “It’s a lot of effort to cut through all that flesh and bone, you know? Sometimes I prefer to choke the life out of them. It’s quieter. More personal too. So I’ll make sure the next one I do that way is Foxy boy. I’ll give him a goodbye kiss for you.”

  “You obviously thought it was worth the effort to cut off Rodriguez and Piston’s heads though,” she said darkly and I frowned over my shoulder at her.

  “Who?” I muttered, not really giving a shit.

  “The guys whose heads you chopped off tonight outside Harlequin House before writing ‘war’ on the gate,” she said with a tut.

  “I didn’t do jack shit, I’ve been here all night. Is that why you showed up here, beautiful, to tell me off? Because it sounds like a wasted journey.”

  “I told you why I’m here,” she said firmly. “And can we get the fuck on with the trade because this place smells like bullshit. Or maybe it’s just the words coming out of your mouth.”

  I wheeled towards her, shoving her up against the wall and baring my
teeth in her face. I could feel her heart thundering against my flesh as my cock drove into her thigh and she started panting like a bitch in heat. “Why the fuck would I lie? I’m proud of each and every Harlequin death I’ve delivered. I declared war on Fox and his little crew a long time ago, I wouldn’t waste the journey to declare it again. And trust me, if I got that close to his house, I’d be sneaking in the back door and gutting each of them in their beds.”

  “Seems like an unfair fight.” She lifted her chin, all snark and defiance. It was making me wanna force her to her knees and make her choke on my cock until the fight went out of her. I had the feeling it would take a bit more than that though from the look in her eyes.

  “You don’t know what an unfair fight looks like, beautiful,” I growled and her throat bobbed.

  “Wanna bet?” she snarled and I cocked my head, my curiosity piqued.

  “Who hurt you?” I demanded, darkness seeping into my blood and settling there.

  “It would be quicker to list who didn’t,” she bit at me and the devil in me leaned closer.

  I got nose to nose with her, breathing in her coconut scent and the desire pouring from her eyes as keenly as her pain. “Well do me a favour, lost girl. Remind me to fuck you before you take a razor blade to your wrists. It would be a damn shame for that body to go to waste before I could get my fill of it.”

  Her fist came up to hit me and I caught it with a smirk, pushing my tongue between the middle of her fingers then shoving away from the wall and hearing her trail after me. “Great, well book me in for that next week. I’m free on any day that doesn’t end in a Y.”

  I grunted.

  “You would have laughed at that once,” she muttered.

  “The next time I laugh it’ll be over a Harlequin’s corpse.”

  “Wow, savage, Mr Stone. You should really consider a career in kids tv.”

  I turned my head to hide a smile. Damn beautiful bitch.

  “Why’d you choose Stone anyways? You sound like some sort of British detective. Maverick Stone, fights crime by day, giggles over corpses by night.”

  “It was the first name in the surname book.” I shrugged.

  “The surname book?” she snorted and I shot her a sharp look. “And surely that would have been like Aadvark or some shit. Maverick Aadvark, I actually kinda like that. Did you know aardvarks can eat up to fifty thousand ants in one night? That’s like, so many ants. Can you imagine eating that many ants?”

  “No.”

  “I once saw a colony of ants carrying a whole corndog. A whole corndog, Maverick.”

  “What’s your point?” I rounded on her, my eyes narrowing.

  She shrugged. “It’s just a lot of corndog to carry for all those tiny ants.”

  I frowned, seeing so much of the girl I’d once laughed with, laying on the beach while the sun melted into the sea and we knew it would rise again and again, believing our time together would never end. How naive.

  Fuck it, I could dangle my key over her head all night. And I’d get her to jump through as many hoops as I could before she realised I was never going to give it to her. By the time I’d fucked her and left her spent with a permanent ache between her thighs, I’d take her key for myself. And it wouldn’t be long before I squeezed the location of the others from one of her boyfriends’ lips while they watched their brothers bleed out around them. Because the contents of that crypt was mine. And no long lost girl was going to take it from me.

  "T hey told me you were the only one who tried to come after me," I said in a low voice as Maverick opened a safe that was hidden in the wall, unlocking it and taking his key from within.

  I’d given him the information he’d wanted about the Harlequins and now it was his turn to pay up with that little piece of metal in his fist.

  He’d made a song and dance about putting on a pair of grey sweatpants before leading me out of his room and back downstairs to a huge office that had once been intended for the resort manager, but Maverick had claimed for his criminal dealings. I wondered what deals he'd struck in here, sitting behind the big, oak desk and making arrangements with all kinds of unsavoury characters. The thought of him sitting there at all seemed too refined for this wild man before me. I couldn’t imagine him holding meetings or discussing business dealings in a calm and civilised way. So maybe he didn’t. Maybe all of his deals were sealed in blood and paid for with stolen things and illegal acts.

  He fell still at my words, the key I’d come here for locked in his fist as he looked into the safe and let me see the stacks of cash and several guns inside.

  "Ever since they told me that, I can't help but wonder how different our lives might have been if-"

  "Luther might as well have shot me that day," he growled, turning back to me with shadows dancing in the depths of his dark eyes.

  He left the safe open and moved towards me, his gaze running over me, drinking in my tattoos again like they fascinated him more than any other change in me.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because the boy I was died that night. I lost everyone I'd ever loved,” he ground out. “Every single one of them chose to abandon me and show me my true worth."

  "Not me," I breathed, his words sounding so familiar to my broken heart that they could have been my own. "None of it was my choice."

  Maverick moved into my personal space again, reaching out to brush a lock of pastel coloured hair behind my ear before fisting a handful of it and forcing me to tip my head back. Pain dug into my scalp and I gasped at the sudden change in him.

  "Rick," I snarled, grabbing his wrist and digging my nails in as I tried to tug him off of me.

  "It doesn’t matter," he growled. "What you were, what I was. Those kids died a long time ago, didn't they? And from where I'm standing, it looks like those years corrupted you almost as deeply as they did me. You're just a fucked up little lost girl, back here in hell searching for boys you remember loving and finding demons in their places. How much does it hurt to come back and see how thoroughly destroyed all of it is? I know that when I got out of prison and came back here it felt like a veil had been lifted. And once I could see all the dirt that coated this place, I forgot about any beauty it might have ever held."

  "We were happy once," I breathed, giving up on fighting him off and reaching up to cup his stubble coated cheek in my hand.

  Maverick fell deadly still at the contact, still gripping my hair tightly, still leaning over me and yet something bigger than this fucking power play passed between us that made my heart squeeze with the force of it.

  "Nah. We were just dumb. Living in a lie about a dream, waiting for reality to come and fuck us up good and proper like every other motherfucker in this place. Tell me, Rogue, when it fucked you did you cry? And how long before you stopped crying and just learned to lie back and take it?" His words were dark and harsh and dug deep into the cracks in my heart, but there was a bleak and hopeless kind of truth to them that I couldn't deny.

  "I still would have been happy," I protested weakly. "If I'd had you. All of you."

  "If you'd had the boys you thought we were you mean. Because the men we are now aren't the same people. The things we've done to each other, to you, to countless miserable fuckers and innocent assholes alike can't just be scrubbed clean. The night you killed Axel was the night our dreams died too.” His words were harsh and meant to cut, but it was a double edged sword which I was certain was making him bleed too.

  "You're blaming me for killing the man who tried to rape me?" I snarled.

  "No." Maverick released me suddenly and stepped back. "He was just the key to removing the blinkers from our vision. For exposing each of us for who we really are."

  "So all I ever was was the girl no one wanted?" I asked, my throat thick as I fought against showing him how much those words killed me. Even now I hated to admit that to myself. But it was true, I'd never once had a person in this world who had chosen me above all else. No one at all aside from...him. He
was the one person who hadn’t thrown me away, who had tried to follow me, tried to keep his word to me-

  "And I was the boy no one wanted,” he replied bitterly. “The fall guy. The one it was so easy to forget. Who fucking cares? They won't forget me when I gut the lot of them and hang their corpses from Gallows Bridge but I'll sure as fuck forget them."

  "I wanted you," I breathed, unable to stop that truth from slipping past my lips even though I knew what I'd get for it.

  The smallest flash of something other than all of the darkness and hatred in him flashed within his eyes before he shook his head like he was refusing to believe it and I felt that rejection like a sucker punch.

  "Yeah? Well more fool you. I'm just dead weight, beautiful. I'm a sinking ship drowning in blood and anyone who gets close to me now gets dragged to the depths sooner or later. I suggest you run far and don't look back. Sunset Cove is going to burn. All I have to do is kill Luther and the rest of the dominos will fall right behind him-"

  "Wait," I gasped, standing up and grabbing his arm. "What do you mean kill Luther? They told me he was dead, that I was safe here now. If he's still alive then being here is a death sentence for me-"

  Maverick stared at me for a long moment then burst out laughing, clearly catching onto some joke I was missing. "Dead? You seriously think that motherfucker is dead? Sounds to me like the Harlequins are playing you for a fucking fool, beautiful. Though I don’t know why you’d be surprised to hear they’re a bunch of fucking liars. They always were after all.”

  I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me, my lungs compressed and burning. I just stared at him with my lips parted as I tried to process that. Luther Harlequin was alive? Fox's father, the man who had been behind me losing everything I'd ever loved and suffering every day since, the man who had placed a death sentence over my head that expressly forbid me from ever returning to this town or seeing the boys who had once been my entire world again, was alive? What. The. Fuck?