“Well?” that familiar sarcastic edge, that slightly superior tone was in his voice. His scent was unmistakable; he had on some elegant and probably expensive, exotic cologne, but behind it was a darker note. A note that lit a sense memory. It revived thoughts and feelings that I knew I shouldn’t have had at the time. But I loved them and I wanted them then. And I wanted them still.
His head cocked a little to one side. He’d asked me a question. I’d forgotten. I realized that he was still holding the tray.
“Yes,” I told him, “It’s my sandwich.”
He set the tray down. My eyes didn’t leave his as he bent with the tray. The waiter clearly wanted his tray back but he couldn’t find the nerve to ask Roger to return it. He bobbed his head uncertainly. Roger showed no sign of noticing. The waiter shuffled away with a little bow, trayless and dejected.
“Aren’t you going to eat it?”
“While you stand there and watch me?”
“I’ve watched you eat before. I never noticed it troubling you.”
“I seem to have lost my appetite.”
“Oh. I put you off your food?”
No! I wanted to shout at him but I held back. I said, “I’m very surprised to see you, that’s all.”
“Likewise.” My stomach curled at the sound of his voice.
I said, “Are you going to just stand there?”
“Until you invite me to sit, of course.” His manners were much more polished. He had reinvented himself. That same spirit burned from his eyes but he had a kind of an assured confidence, a new certainty.
I told him, “Then, it’s my pleasure.” Try to match him. I didn’t feel like I succeeded. “Won’t you please join me?” My voice trembled as I waved my hand to the chair, and my hand shook.
He hitched the knees of his gorgeous suit and his lithe, athletic frame settled into the seat. He laid his phone on the table with his hand on top of it.
He sat in front of me with his thighs spread, like he had when he was a teenager. The bulge was prominent, high and strong. He made no attempt to hide it.
Finally he said, “It’s been a long time, Sis.” My stomach flipped again when he said ‘Sis.’
I said, “You didn’t exactly keep in close touch.”
“With the family?” His lip curled.
“With me.” I was aware of sounding pouty. I hated that.
“It was partly because of you that I left.” It was like a slap in the face.
“For all that you said, I think deep down, I always knew that you hated me.” Now I really did sound whiny and hard done by. Suddenly the whole of the day, my professor, the prospect of flunking college, the yawning sense of failure, everything threatened to well up behind my eyes. I held my breath, but still my chest shuddered.
Trying to make my voice stronger I said, “I don’t blame you. I would have hated a whiny little pup following me around everywhere.” I choked, “Making me look stupid.”
“I never hated you.” A breeze blew my hair into my face. He reached over to brush it away. I knew that it couldn’t stand it if he did. I would collapse. More than anything, I didn’t want to go to pieces in front of him.
As his hand approached my face, I seized his wrist to stop him. I misjudged and I used a little too much force so I smacked against the inside of his wrist. But when my skin came in touch with his, it was like all the lights went on in a huge room inside me with a great whump.
He looked at me as I held his wrist.
“Nobody else would dare to do that. You know that, Sis?”
It didn’t matter how hard I peered at his sunglasses, I couldn’t see his eyes behind them. My mouth tightened. “You said you left because of me.”
“I did. Not because I hated you, though.” His lip twitched. His fingers drummed on his phone.
His voice was flat as he rose. “Enjoy your sandwich.”
“Yeah,” I said stiffly. “Keep in touch.”
There was a sharpness when he said, “Like you did?”
“You mean like you did.”
“I left my phone numbers, Facebook, email. You had plenty of ways to be in contact.”
“Likewise, Roger…” I stopped myself. Even now, I couldn’t break off. Not completely.
The deck rumbled as he left me with the sandwich I could hardly afford, and now, almost certainly couldn’t bring myself to eat. As I glanced at the plate, I saw his phone. My head whipped around, but he was out of sight. I picked up the phone to run after him.
As I got up from the chair, a huge noise shook the air from behind the restaurant. I was just a couple of steps across the deck when a helicopter roared overhead, close enough to blow all the linen. Somebody’s glass blew over and waiters came running towards the protesting howls.
As the helicopter rose and arced out across the beach, it threw up a small sandstorm in its wake. It headed straight for the ocean. It was a small dark fish halfway to the horizon before it baked to the left and veered out of sight.
Even though I had a strong hunch that Roger had left in the helicopter, I carried on to the edge of the deck to look around. He was nowhere to be seen. So I made my way back to my table and tried to decide, should I leave his phone at the restaurant so he could come back for it, or should I take it?
He would be bound to have a way to track the phone, so if I took it he could find it easily enough. And me with it, if he cared. But that was what I knew I would do. So perhaps that was what he meant me to do. To pick up the phone and take it.
My heart jumped at the idea. Then I realized I was just bein an idiot, all over again. Believing something impossible, just because it was what I wanted. Just because it was him.
I decided, I would not take his phone.
The wine was fresh and crisp, and I did my best to enjoy it. Any taste that I had for the sandwich was gone, but the waiter was pleasant enough when I asked him to bag it for me. I knew that I would need to eat, and I hoped that a walk along the shore would revive my appetite.
Watching the water’s edge, seeing the ocean lap at the shore, I wanted to dip my toes in. I tried to make some sense out of my feelings about the day, with no success. It was a day of disasters. And in the middle of it, Roger showed up. My pulse raced again at the thought. It looked like he had managed to make himself pretty wealthy.
I tried to be glad for him. It was what he wanted. Roger always thought a lot about money, possessions, status. He pretended not to care but I had always known that he did. Maybe the boarding school taught him an attitude and it stuck.
Thinking of the finely cut cotton of his suit, I tried to keep my mind off the bulge in his pants. The recollection of his scent took me back to the sensation of him standing over me, so near, and his hard heat.
On the horizon, slate-gray clouds began to gather. It would be a beautiful sunset. I remembered the signs from when we were here as a family.
His phone rang. It made me jump. I knew that I would be able to answer the call, though I probably couldn’t do much else. I pressed the screen and held the phone to my ear. A cultured male voice said, “Thirteen point eight million dollars. Cash.”
I said, “Who is this?”
And the voice hesitated. “I was told to give the number only. Will you see that the message gets to Mr. Colt?”
“Thirteen point eight million is the message?” I said, baffled.
“Thank you.” They hung up. I looked at the screen. There was no number.
I put phone back on the table when it rang again, so I fished it back out. Still no number. I pressed the ‘Answer’ key.
“You picked up my phone.” When I heard his voice I nearly dropped it again. “I knew that you would.” The bastard did do it on purpose. “Did you answer it a few moments ago? Did a call come in?” It was getting hard to hear him as a huge motorboat sliced the waves close to the shore.
I shouted into the phone, “Yes. Thirteen point eight million dollars, cash, is what the man said.”
Through the n
oise of the boat’s engine I was just about able to hear him, “Thanks, Sis. Did you eat your sandwich yet?”
“Not yet. I wasn’t hungry.” I shouted with one finger in my ear, pressing the phone hard against the other ear. The boat grew louder and closer.
He said something and I couldn’t hear him at all, the damned boat was so close. I shouted to him to repeat it.
“Have lunch with me,” I moved away from the table but the boat slammed onto the beach almost in front of me.
He stood tall in the back of the speedboat. Two of his uniformed minion-kids sat behind the windshield to drive.
As the long speedboat lurched back into the waves, the front rose and I was thrown hard against him. I held him to steady myself. My heart thumped as my hand rested on the firm ripples of his stomach.
His body was big and hard against mine, and I felt protected like I had in the days when we lived together. Protected and excited, like when kids in the hall make remarks about me and he beat them up.
The huge swelling in his pants transfixed me. As I held tighter against him, the fabric of his pants was stretched tighter and harder.
His throat tightened and his breath seemed to thicken. When he rested his hand on my waist, the bulge moved up. He took his hand away again. I was sorry that he did.
We bounced hard over the white spume and the green waves. The water splashed under us and a cool spray dampened my face and my clothes as we sped in a wide arc out to the open ocean.
His shirt was damp, too and it clung to his skin. He had a beautiful muscular bod when we were younger. Now he was awesome, and breathtakingly beautiful. And, somehow, he seemed to have become incredibly wealthy.
In no way was I prepared for the size of the gleaming silver yacht that heaved into view ahead. There was no doubt in my mind that it was our destination, because the massive helicopter that had swept thunderously over the restaurant perched like a dainty dragonfly at the back of one of the upper decks.
Aboard the yacht, he took me to a shaded deck at the front, no bigger than a tennis court. More minions milled around and served us lobster and mayonnaise salad with freshly baked bread. A green bottle of champagne swirled in a silver ice bucket, beaded with drops of water that ran down the sides in rivulets.
“This is quite a change from how we grew up.” I said, sipping from a tall champagne flute.
“All the times we came up to the beach when we were kids?” he tore a hunk of bread, “I met a lot of the local kids. All of them were from very wealthy families. I kept in touch.”
He had always had that gift for getting along with people, even when he bullied them like a savage. They seemed to love him for it. Maybe his gift was for spotting the masochists. Then again, I thought, Maybe he found the masochist in whoever he met and then nurtured it.
“As we grew up together,” he took half a lobster tail from the shell and tore it in half, “I needed work and I needed money. I found ways to help them get what they needed.” He ate the lobster tail with some bread and mayonnaise then refilled our glasses.
“I found transport, office space, and staff-anything. Whatever was required.” I wondered whether all of ‘whatever was required’ would have been entirely legal.
He said, “Soon I discovered a big demand for a very high end taxi service, with executive jets as the taxis.” He certainly didn’t think small. But you wouldn’t wind up on a yacht like this by thinking small.
“Now I have a fleet of twenty two planes, four helicopters, plus limos and SUVs for ground transportation all over the US. Some in China, Europe and Russia, too.” My stepbrother had turned into one hell of a man.
“So, why did you say that you left because of me?”
“Sis…” he protested.
“Really. You said that it wasn’t because you hated me. I’d thought it was because you hated all of us. Well, Father and me at any rate.” I didn’t say ‘The Asshat.’ I never said that aloud. He was Roger’s father too, after all. I didn’t want to hurt him. From what he said, I always knew that Roger had his own issues with him. Hearing me bad-mouth him wasn’t ever going to make it any better.
His feet shuffled. I saw that the front of his pants was beginning to lift above his lap. A tent pole rose.
“I couldn’t stay there, with your mother and… him. Nothing against your mother, she’s a good woman, but I couldn’t forgive him for replacing my mother. Marrying the first woman he found who would…” he paused. He didn’t want to bad-mouth Mother to me. “Who would give him what he needed.”
“I get that, really. But you said that it was about me.”
“When I met you, Sis, do you remember?” Did I ever! “All the girls at school, all the girls since–everywhere I go, girls just fling themselves at me. Practically beg me, sometimes they actually beg me to do whatever I want with them.”
They did. I remembered it well.
“None of them hold a candle to you, Sis.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from him.
“I wanted you. I wanted you so bad. It was always you. And it couldn’t ever be you.” His brow furrowed, “Look, it won’t do any good to talk about it.”
“It might. I wanted you too, you know.”
“Well, that only makes it worse.”
He got up and strode around the deck.
“Just seeing you makes me so damned horny, Sis.”
I could see that it was true. He stood proud like the mast on the front of a galleon. “I’m going to have to fuck half the girls in the crew tonight to get you off my mind.”
He chewed the inside of his lip. I leapt up to stand in front of him.
My big breasts heaved and my nipples ached to be free of the constraint of my sheer black bra.
I said, “There could be another way.”
As I slid up against his big, hard chest, the beat of his heart pounded against my temple. His heat stirred against my hips and his hardness lengthened along my thigh. My thighs straddled his leg and I squeezed him. The torment burned on his face.
He was hoarse, “Sis, it’s wrong.”
My hand slid down his hard abs. “Isn’t it, though.”
The taut muscles of his leg flexed as I gripped it between mine. As I pressed my mound against the ridge of his thigh, a rush went through me and I had to cling tight to him. It was wrong. It was bad and illegal and terrible and if the law didn’t get me, I’d burn in Hell.
None of that made me want him less. My eyes were wet and my lips parted as I peered up at him. He looked down and the sweet taste of his breath drifted to mingle with mine. I pressed my arms, my breasts, my hips against him.
I raked my nails in his hair, felt around to the back of his head. I had wanted this for so long. His body here, in my arms and his strong arms wrapping around me, I pulled his face down to mine.
He pulled back. The conflict blew like storm clouds across his face. His rich, thick lips trembled. His voice was a whisper. “Sis.”
At the sound of moccasins on the deck, we broke apart. Two of the minions brought canapés or whatever those fussy little pastry things were. He looked at the minions and they froze.
“Everyone go below decks and into their quarters.” His voice was like gathering thunder, “Everyone. No exceptions. Nobody is allowed in the public rooms or on the berth levels. Not until you hear from me.”
They nodded silently and began to back away.
“You two tell everyone. Right now.”
They nodded again then silently turned and hurried below.
Then there was only us. Just him, and me. On a deck above the ocean, out of sight of the land. Part of me was still wondering if all of the laws and customs applied if we were were offshore. Was this international waters?
We stood a couple of feet apart. Near enough that I could feel the heat of his body and hear the soft moisture in his breath.
I said, “I don’t care about them seeing us.”
“Neither do I, Sis.” His eyes pleaded, “I wan
t us to have privacy,” he said, “but that isn’t why.”
“Why then?” I didn’t mean to tease. Well, maybe just a little.
“You know. You know what I want, Sis.”
And at that moment, I did know. The trouble was, what I wanted was what all of those other girls wanted. I wanted him to do to me what he did to them. I wanted him to treat me the same way, but I didn’t want him to think of me in the same way.
I wanted him to grab me with his strong hands, yank the clothes off me and peel my quivering flesh bare to the cool moonlight. I wanted his lips, his mouth and his tongue all over me. As he held me by a tight grip on my hair or dragged me by my ankles.
Two Hitmen: A Double Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Lawless Book 1) Page 12