Damn. I smelled heavily of sex and ocean and Sofi Castillo. The sun had melted into the horizon long ago, and the sky had turned to a deep navy. Somewhere in the haze between our third session and our fourth, we had moved over to the fire pit and started that up to make sure no little critters took the liberty of joining us. Now its warm yellow light fluctuated over the perimeter like water itself, falling and flickering on Sofi as she slept nude on the rumpled towels and blankets we had stretched out between the second and third session, while she had been begging for a break and a shower and I’d been insisting on more, like I could clear her from my system if I binged.
Now it was over, though I was still as hard as a rock, and my balls were tight and drawn close to my body, desperate to unload themselves. But I hadn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t let myself.
Something happened when I was inside Sofi Castillo, and I didn’t like it.
The world melted away, and I felt this stupid, crazy sense of belonging, of completion. When I came, I swear to God, I could see the future. And it was with her.
I couldn’t stop myself from touching her and kissing her, couldn’t stop myself from getting into her once more, but I could at least stop myself from slipping away into the madness. I had been proving to myself that I could do this—that I could hold myself over the wild, hot abyss that was sex with Sofi, and not fall in. Not give in.
My eyes trailed over her as she slept, her hair an insane tornado of rust red curls, her golden, curvaceous limbs curled around herself like a freaking angel. Fuck. I grimaced and forced my eyes away. This was not my fault. When we met, I had no intention of consummating my attraction to her. She had been the one flirting her head off, slapping my ass, demanding that I try a bite of her cheesecake, insisting that we go dancing. I didn’t want this to happen. It was supposed to be clean, not complicated. She was a cog in my con—not a woman.
I massaged my forehead, which seemed to be developing a permanent furrow. I guess you’d call them wrinkles. Wrinkles at thirty-one. Great. That had to be partially Gabe’s fault, but I knew it wasn’t just Gabe that I worried about. Not anymore.
Damn Sofi.
How could she think that a man like me wouldn’t be dangerous? Hell, I’d disengaged three different guys within the first twenty-four hours that we knew each other. And we’d had that conversation about appropriate business and pleasure separation. I had thought that might be able to help, but then we’d come to a private strip of beach to discuss the plan, and the waves had run up on us, and the last thing I could remember with real clarity was her implication that I was married. Pfft—but at least she could tell that something wasn’t quite right. I knew that much now. I should have kept things formal—even if it did kind of get under my skin, how she’d laughed at me as I’d slipped off my loafers, as if I’m incapable of loosening up—but it might have helped us keep our hands off each other if we’d been in my office. Then nothing would have happened—unless I’d swept everything off the damn desk and slammed her down there. Oh, yeah. That would’ve worked.
I swallowed.
Shit.
I had to shake this off.
The plan was never going to work if I couldn’t even go through with it. And Ronaldo—he had my money. The money I had schemed over for weeks, wasted, gone, and who even knew where Spider could be, that fucking traitor. My face smoldered with the memory of Sunday morning, standing by the phone like some humiliated reject, waiting for a call which would never come, trusting a man who had long since fled.
I found my pants in our rumpled, sandy pile of clothes—damp and wrinkled, probably ruined—and shook them out before slipping into the clammy fabric, then shrugging on the shirt and buttoning it. I had to get home. I had to take a shower and get this woman off me.
I scooped up my loafers from the sand and allowed my eyes to fall across Sofi once more. Her back rose and fell gently with every breath, and I felt a pang, looking at her. It wasn’t her fault, either. She wasn’t a bad girl. Sure, she’d set a dumpster on fire at San Maria’s Catholic School—but it was only trash she’d been destroying. She wasn’t the one who had used Spider to take the Battista score.
I sighed.
I remembered how her index finger trailed lazily, thoughtfully, over my abdomen, just a few hours ago. “If I was as beautiful as you are,” she purred, “I wouldn’t be so angry all the time.”
I caught her finger with my hand. “Hey,” I said. “You’re gorgeous, don’t you know that?”
She grinned and scrunched her nose. “But you are always pissed,” she said.
“Oh, yeah.” I smiled back at her and pulled her finger up to my lips, kissing it lightly. “Definitely.”
Her eyelashes lowered as her eyes roved over me. Slowly. “Next time you wanna be so angry,” she breathed, swinging a leg over my hips and straddling, “maybe you’ll think about me?” Her hair fell around us like a privacy curtain and she grinned. For just a second, we were the only two people in the world. “I can be your little chill pill.”
Collateral, I told myself now, watching her sleep.
She was collateral.
I grimaced.
Still, I stepped forward and hooked my fingers around a coarse quilt, tugging it up over her naked body to protect her from the wind as she slept.
Not that I cared.
I forced my eyes away again.
I headed back toward the Castillo house, planning to just cut through the patio and back toward my car, still in the drive. As I approached the sweep of cement which connected the pool and the barbecue, I froze. Hm. There was a distinct woodsy scent in the air: someone was burning marijuana.
My eyes rooted through the shadows and found an ember lazily flaring on and off in the darkness, a cigarette held by a slim silhouette.
“Hey,” Madeline greeted lifelessly.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, frowning.
“I have no idea,” she replied. “The sun was setting when I rolled the first joint.”
“Great.” I nodded. “Get a good show?”
“Better than the current selection on Netflix,” Madeline said. She took a drag on her joint and exhaled heavily, standing with a steady slowness. I could see that she was wearing a silver bikini, the same thing I had thought was part of her dress at Rainbow Disco. “Are you all done for the night?” she asked innocently, taking a step closer. I bristled. The last thing I needed was to ruin Sofi’s scent—and memory—by mingling it with this girl’s. “Or do you have a few minutes left on your shift?”
I glowered at her, not sure of the implication there. “Don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I told her with a false brightness.
“Oh, right,” Madeline simpered. “We’re just fucking people because we love them now.”
“There are lots of reasons to do what Sofi and I just did.” I nodded curtly. “I’ve got to get to a twenty-four hour dry cleaner before this salt—”
“Gabe told me,” Madeline mentioned coolly, stubbing out her joint. “He didn’t realize what he was saying at the time…but he mentioned at Rainbow Disco that the Battistas are apparently not the biggest fans of the Castillos.”
I clenched my jaw. I was going to kill Gabe. He had the biggest, dumbest mouth, especially when a serving of pussy might be available nearby.
“So, it’s weird,” Madeline went on thoughtfully. “Weird how you would think of your enemy’s family when outfitting a heist like this. Then, fucking her like crazy over there. All part of the game, isn’t it? Win her trust, and then, what? What’s the real objective here?”
“You must think you’re real smart, huh,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. Fuck. She was right. Except about the sex—that had nothing to do with winning Sofi’s trust, and a lot to do with my hands slipping on the reins.
“Well, I didn’t drop out of college like Sofi did.” Madeline sauntered closer, her hands going behind her back. “I got that degree in Psych. Got you all figured out, boy. It’
s textbook antisocial and somatic narcissistic personality disorder.” Her bikini tumbled from her shoulders, revealing the pale orbs of small breasts, standing out stark from her tan torso. She was almost close enough to touch me now. I recoiled slightly from her robotic advance. She was nowhere near my type to begin with, but to proposition me right after watching me fuck her best friend was the icing on the cake. I never really thought of myself as a moral man, but maybe I was.
Maybe I was when I was with Sofi.
Scary thought.
“I keep trying to warn her, but she seems to like you,” Madeline cooed. “And I think I’ve figured out why, now that I’ve seen what you do to her.”
My jaw clenched. “You’re a great fucking friend, you know that?”
Madeline smiled. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. A dreamy, amused smile spread over her mouth. “I could be your fucking friend,” she went on. “Sofi knows me. She loves me the way I am.”
“Shitty and two-faced?” I demanded, pushing past her.
“Yeah, well,” Madeline grumbled, “she’s got bad taste in men and friends, doesn’t she?”
“I’m going to have to pass, Maddy,” I yelled over my shoulder. “Thanks anyway!”
“Awesome,” she called after me, sounding dopey.
It shouldn’t have mattered that she’d hit on me, and it didn’t. It didn’t matter that she’d sauntered over from her musky little cloud, stripping off her top, implying things about my honor which were actually pretty accurate. It wasn’t any of those things, but I was shaking. As I pulled my keys from my pants pocket, my hands were trembling.
I wrenched open the car door and ducked inside.
It wasn’t that Madeline had come on to me. That was no big deal. The world is full of shitty people, like Maddy, and they always gravitate toward decent ones off whom they can leech, like Sofi.
It was that she was right about me.
And she said she’d been trying to tell Sofi, but she wouldn’t listen. Because, for some crazy reason, Sofi liked me.
As I twisted the key in the ignition and peeled away from the Castillo estate, I felt like I was going to puke.
9
Sofi
I’m not going to lie. I was confused, and then disappointed, when I woke up with the beach sunshine burning into my face, the fire pit dead, and my partner in crime having slipped away in the night. It was early in the morning when I tiredly pushed that quilt off my naked body—I didn’t remember cuddling up underneath it, but then, I hardly remembered my own name by the end of it all—and I fished my clothes from the sand—Leo’s were gone, of course—and dressed, then hobbled back to the house. I made a pot of coffee and yelled for Maddy, who loves coffee (of course), but got no response. No surprise, either. She’s a big night owl.
And I’m not going to lie about kind of waiting for the phone to ring all damn day, like a loser.
When it finally jangled around noon, I pounced on my luminous cell phone like it was an oasis in the desert. Fuck yeah. Leonardo Battista.
I straightened my hair and cleared my throat, as if he could see me. Then I swiped over the phone and held it to my ear. “Hello?” Polished. Calm. Perfect.
“Hey there,” Leo’s pleasant baritone rumbled on the line. An automatic blush thronged to my cheeks. I had such a love-hate relationship with this reaction he gave my body. “I trust you slept well.”
“Like a goddamn kitten,” I replied. “Thanks for that, hot stuff. Where’d you run off to?”
“I had to get home,” he answered, evasive. “But why don’t you come by today? I want to familiarize you with the floor plan my brother just picked up. And I’d like to see you again.”
“Sure,” I said, still high on confidence. I was excited to go over the plan, but, at the same time, I was sure that he was being coy. Obviously, we weren’t JUST going to talk about motion sensors. We got off the phone and I rushed to my closet for something that screamed, “Rip me off.”
Two hours later, I was struggling to feign interest in his explanation of the timing system on the motion sensors. He hadn’t tried to touch me once. My neckline was plunging, and I was wearing a sheer, floral beach dress that most men would probably be able to shred with their bare hands during foreplay. I was obviously up for grabs. But nothing. Nothing.
After another hour of this ego torture, I was done. Forget it. God, I was tired of trying to figure this man out. Just FORGET it.
I stood up from the couch, sighed loudly, and told him that I really needed to go. I was tired. “Someone kept me up past my bedtime last night,” I said, though my tone was flat and there was no air of flirtation with it.
Leo finally looked at me. Really looked at me.
And his eyes softened, as if a layer of cataracts had suddenly, graciously peeled away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and I went still. “You’re right. We’ve been drilling this stuff for hours, and—you deserve a break.” He pursed his lips and forged on, “Want to hit up that place you like so much? Belly of the Whale?”
I stared at him for a moment, uncertain how to take this invitation. Fuck it, I couldn’t help it. I grinned. Leo could flip-flop all he wanted, but I knew the truth. He wanted me. Men like Leo didn’t just go to kitschy restaurants whose specialties are their fries and shakes just because they want to be polite. He was in fucking love with me.
“I, uh, yeah,” I said, smothering the big-ass grin threatening to split my face in two. “That sounds really fun, actually. You wouldn’t mind? I thought you hated it.”
Leo nodded and smiled back at me. God, those lips. “I do hate it,” he assured me. “But like I said. You deserve it.”
“Well, great,” I beamed. “I’d still like to catch a shower at home and stuff, though.” I cleared my throat. “Still have a shitload of sand in my hair.”
“Okay.” Leo briefly touched my arm, but it was enough to send those damn butterflies nuts in my stomach again. His eyes were like a field of freaking storm clouds. “How about seven?”
“Seven sounds perfect,” I breathed, then cursed myself as I was heading out the door. I needed to get my head out of my ass about this guy before it was lodged up there permanently. I can’t remember the last time I felt so happy and so stupid at the same time.
I charged through the foyer, stripping off my shoes as I went, and passed the living room on my way to the stairwell, where I was hoping to go up and find a nice hot shower to revive my feminine wiles.
“There you are,” Madeline’s voice called from the den. “Where have you been all day?”
“I think ‘all day’ might be a generous term,” I said, turning from the stairwell and sauntering into the living room. “Considering that I left here around one in the afternoon. You were still in la-la land.”
Madeline rolled her eyes. She was draped across one of the sofas, ensconced in a quilt. “All right, where have you been all—the past four hours?”
I raked a palm through my curls. “Well—”
“Leo?” Madeline asked, raising one perfectly penciled brow cynically.
“Yes,” I answered, trying to keep things as vague as possible. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of Madeline, too. “We’re about to go for a business dinner. I just came to change.”
“A business dinner,” Madeline said flatly.
“I’m on vacation!” I repeated my mantra, stalking out of the room and up the stairs.
“From common sense, or…?” she countered, yelling from the couch but following me no further. “Just think, Sofi, while YOU’RE on vacation, HE’S not. He’s working.”
I paused and leaned over the bannister, glowering. That was annoyingly perceptive of her. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“That he’s working an angle,” Madeline clarified.
I came pounding down the stairs, infuriated. For someone with almost no emotional register, she could be a real thorn for those around her.
“What the hell are you t
alking about?” I demanded. “What ANGLE? We’re both professionals. We’re associates. This is business—”
“Enemies,” Madeline disagreed, leaning back again to lounge in the throne she had built herself out of the quilt-strewn couch. It was now ringed by melted daiquiris and open bottles of fingernail polish. She propped her foot up on a pillow and carefully selected a deep purple, glittery polish. “And you don’t even know it. Too busy getting lobotomized by his schlong. You’re right where he wants you, mamacita.”
“Since when are we enemies? We both want the same things: the Heart of Icarus, and to get off with ridiculous amounts.”
Madeline’s mouth twisted up into a dark little smile as she painted one thick stripe down the center of her big toe. “Hold on, I need to focus,” she breathed, but I knew that smile couldn’t possibly mean anything good. When she was finished perfectly painting her big toe, she leaned back and dunked the brush into the polish again. “Okay, maybe I’m wrong,” she allowed, shrugging. But when she looked back to me again, her eyes were sparkling with sadistic amusement.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded. Normally, her fucked-up sense of humor really appealed to me. She wasn’t the type of girl who worried about offending anyone ever, and that was refreshing. But her dark smile had never been turned on me. Not that I knew of.
“I just find it entertaining when people get all tangled up like this,” she said warmly. “You know, most of the time, they’re all just kind of marching around like little ants, going to their jobs and then their houses and back again, bumping into each other, saying excuse me, getting set up with the sisters of old college roommates, getting married, having two kids, blah, blah, blah and it is. So. Boring.” She grinned. “But every now and then, someone will really fuck it all up.”
“Which one of us fucked up, me or him?” I asked. Please let it be him.
“Oh, you,” Madeline answered with an easy shrug, returning to her other toes. “What’s-his-face told me at that stupid bar with the foam and the lasers.” Maddy had done too many drugs to easily recall proper nouns.
The Perfect Con (A Bad Boy Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Confessions Book 1) Page 8