Dollars (Dollar #2)

by Pepper Winters

  I tried to keep my thoughts on my boat and what would soon hit, but they kept trailing to Pimlico. Had she ever been at sea before? Had she ever ridden a storm where the ground became a bronco and the walls creaked and groaned as if desperate to let the sea enter?

  If she had, this would be terrifying. And if she hadn’t, this would be utterly horrifying.

  I can’t leave her on her own.

  Glancing at the radar, I said, “I’m going to grab something.” Someone. “I’ll be back in ten.” My eyes lingered on the captain’s chair, and the matching bucket seats soldered firmly onto large steel posts. The shoulder and waist straps would keep us from flopping around when the waves struck, but a quick release mechanism meant we could unbuckle and swim if we capsized.

  Not that I think we’ll capsize…but you never know.

  Yet another reason why I had to get Pim and bring her to safety.

  “I wouldn’t leave if I were you.” Jolfer squinted at the egg-sized droplets obscuring the windows. “Especially to cross the deck.”

  Admittedly, that was a design flaw. I’d had the boat builders place the bridge towering over the polished deck. They’d insisted there should be some way of internal access from the main floors, but I’d refused an additional lift as I didn’t want to interrupt the space downstairs with yet another ascender.

  On nice days, even on rainy days, the quick stroll over the exposed wood was a welcome refresher. Today, I would be drenched.

  “I won’t be long.” Pushing off from the control panel where the hand-holds glinted silver amongst the array of glowing buttons and dials, my legs spread for balance as I made my way to the exit.

  Blessed with not suffering seasickness, even I didn’t like the uncertainty of when the next swell would hit and how big the yacht would roll.

  Clutching the doorframe, I battled the hissing elements as I wrenched it open and traded dry for wet. Instantly, the low howl of the storm behind thick plated glass took off its gag and screamed.

  The noise of wind and rain and thunder hammered me as I shot forward, slipping and sliding across the deck.

  My clothes became saturated—a heavy hindrance, robbing me of coordination. By the time I made it to the glassed-in foyer where the lift was, I panted and gasped, my hip throbbing from sliding sideways and falling over.

  Not trusting the elevator mechanism in this crazy bucking world, I threw myself down the stairs. Each couple of steps, the boat yawed and yawned, throwing me into a wall then forward then back.

  My shoulders ached as I stepped onto Pimlico’s level, bruises deep inside from the violence of the squall.

  Rather than walk and do my best to balance, I jogged down the corridor, moving with the boat, hitting the walls with a grimace. I wouldn’t drag this out any longer than needed.

  We need to get back to the bridge.

  Reaching Pimlico’s door, I didn’t knock.

  Barging inside, my eyes fell to the messy bed, the coverlet on the floor, but no Pim. Where the fuck is she?

  I stumbled toward the bathroom. There was no way she should still be in there with hard tiles and smashable mirrors to hurt her.

  A loud crash sounded over the mayhem of the storm. Cream curtains billowed as the French doors to the balcony snapped and snarled.

  And there, tied to the guardrail with a dressing gown belt was Pimlico.

  I slammed to a stop. My knees locked against the roll and buck.

  She had her back to me. Her arms spread wide, her head thrown back, and chocolate hair plastered to her naked white body.

  In the dark, she lit up in a fork of lightning. Her spine still stark, her bruises still colourful enough to cast mottled shadows over her flesh.

  She didn’t jolt as another fork split the sky like an angry god. She didn’t huddle when thunder answered back with ear-cracking drums.

  She merely wedged her feet against the railing and lived.

  EXHILARATION.

  Life.

  Death.

  Chances. Choices. Catastrophe.

  The storm got worse. I became steadily petrified; huddled in a ball on my bed, clinging to the mattress as I slid this way and that. I thought it couldn’t get any worse. That each soar into the sky and every plummet down, a wave couldn’t possibly get stronger.

  I was wrong.

  The wind churned the seas, but the thunder churned the skies, and when the first bolt of lightning arched against the monstrous wet clouds, I had to make a decision.

  Scream with terror and think I was going to die or…give in.

  I couldn’t be afraid anymore.

  I’d been afraid for far too long.

  I didn’t have the energy to be afraid anymore.

  I’m done.

  I’d been willing to die at my own hand. I’d been living in hell where my senses had been dulled, my freedom at touching rain and feeling sunshine stolen. All I was allowed to endure was coldness, nakedness, and pain.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight, the world was alive. The brutality of existing whispered in my ear to let go of everything and breathe with it. To howl with it. To die with it if that was my fate.

  Climbing from my bed naked, I relished the bite of chill because I chose it not Alrik. I embraced the fearful scatter of my heartbeat because I was the architect of my panic not Alrik. And when I unlooped the belt from the robe Elder made me wear after he forced me to face his cello, a weight somehow unbuckled from my shoulders and fell like a cape around my feet.

  I was reckless and stupid and moronically brave as I unlocked the French doors and let them snap back as if alive. I fought the wind, head down, arms up against the rain as I braced myself against the sting of droplets and the caress of tropical gales.

  I clung to the balustrade, battling the storm. Unable to hold on against its might, I lashed the terrycloth belt to the balcony, tied it around my hips, and knotted it tight.

  I gave my life, not to a piece of towelling and the smite of nature but to fate.

  No one—not a person or animal—was in charge of me in that moment. Not even myself.

  Facing that was my ultimate fear and my biggest freedom.

  I was alone.

  I was tiny.

  I was no one.

  Live or die, the world wouldn’t know or care.

  Each crack of thunder sent my nipples pebbling and my tummy liquefying with panic. Every deep dark roll of the ocean as it vanished from beneath the boat only to surge upward with more power than any calamity stopped my heart then defibrillated it.

  If I could survive this—bare as I was born and open in every way I could possibly be, I could survive anything.

  I had survived everything.

  And this was me claiming that life back by acknowledging that yes, I was small, yes, I was inconsequential, but I still breathed. The world still nurtured me even while its elements did their best to exterminate me.

  I was worth living. I was worth surviving. And I would never again let nature or man take that away from me.

  My arms spread into wings, wishing the wind would pluck me from gravity and haul me into its angry embrace.

  I wanted to fly.

  Give me your worst!

  “Pim.”

  The storm knew my name. My fake name. My slave name.

  I’m here. I’m yours.

  My head fell back in rapture.

  “Pim!”

  The wind snapped my name to pieces.

  Take me. Heal me. Use my true name.

  “Pimlico!” Something heavy and cross landed on my rain-soaked shoulder.

  My eyes wrenched open.

  Elder stood dripping wet, his black eyes wild as the wind. His lips moved, but the gale stole his words.

  I frowned, watching his mouth, but he didn’t try to speak again. He dropped his gaze down my body, lingering on my breasts and stomach as the rain touched every part of me. His eyes heated every droplet until they sizzled against my skin.

  I’d never h
ad someone look at me that way before. A way full of violence but nurturing. Of want but protection. No teenage boy could’ve looked at me that way and no monster had the capacity to blend such right and wrong and make it undeniably acceptable.

  Before I could stop myself, my arm fell, my hand groped for his, and I smiled.

  Our fingers linked tight and unrelenting.

  Hair plastered against my scalp, clinging like kelp to my collarbone, but I didn’t care. Elder swallowed; his face lit up by rouge lightning, his clothing glued to his delectable body.

  His fingers suddenly squeezed mine as if a decision he hadn’t even asked himself yet was reached. Pulling me forward, he smirked as the rope around my waist prevented me from sliding between him and the railing.

  Still holding my hand he bent down, wobbling as the waves wreaked havoc with his yacht and yanked off his flip-flops. Once bare-foot, he moved toward me.

  My heart looked through the chasing raindrops in interest not fear. My body primed from the electricity of the storm, ready to accept touch rather than expect pain.

  He wedged his body against mine, his jeans rough against the back of my thighs, his t-shirt unwanted against my naked shoulders.

  Clothing. Barriers. Masks.

  Letting go of my fingers, he clasped the railing on either side of me, wedging me safely between him.

  His protection gave me mixed emotions.

  I liked having him there, sharing the power of the storm and being free for the first time in my life, but he’d ruined the rapture I’d felt. His body heat was a trap, warming me when I wanted the rain to chill me because I chose it to, no one else.

  He’d taken away my choice even after forcing me to make so many.

  I did my best to lose myself in the wind again, but it remained tainted. My joy faded as minutes passed. We balanced and tripped, our ears throbbing with howling noise.

  Perhaps I should push back and signal we’d go inside.

  Maybe I’d tempted death long enough by laughing in the storm’s face.

  But then, as if my thoughts trickled into him and he read my discomfort, Elder pulled away, letting the wind lash against me with wet-coldness.

  I sighed with relief.

  Looking over my shoulder, I expected him to order me into the suite where it was safe or point that he was leaving and to do whatever I wanted.

  However, his arms went up and his hands latched around his t-shirt collar. With a black look, he ripped it over his head.

  A thunder crash sounded at precisely the same time my eyes fell on his dragon tattoo. His ribs exposed, his organs painted so lifelike he was part man, part skeleton, part myth.

  Never looking away, his hands fell to his belt buckle and undid it. Unbuttoning his shorts and unzipping the fly, he grabbed both the waistband of the beige material and grey boxer-briefs and pulled.

  He stripped with grace even while fighting gravity, and the moment he was free, he threw away his clothes as if they offended him.

  What is he doing?

  The question was void the moment I asked it.

  I understood.

  He understood.

  Clothing was not welcome when facing such furious power. We were merely human at the mercy of the weather. Who cared if we died dressed or naked? We had no armament against it—might as well give in to the inevitable.

  I shivered and not from the cold as he moved toward me. His right hand landed on the railing where I gripped it. His thumb grazed my pinkie. His erection hung heavy as he took another step, placing himself behind me, aligning our pieces as if we belonged to the same chessboard with a long lost king and queen.

  I stopped breathing as his other hand landed by my left. His thumb mimicking his other and pressing my pinkie. He didn’t lean forward or wedge his nakedness against mine. He merely stood there, letting the wind nip my spine and the rain lick my shoulder blades. The only contact was my pinkies and his thumbs, but it was the most contact I’d ever had with anyone.

  He held me with nothing but his thoughts. He touched me with something better than hands. He cradled me in feeling and no one—not my mother, friends, or Alrik—had ever done such a thing.

  It cracked yet another piece of me, throwing it to the thunder hounds snapping in the wind.

  His head came down, his nose tracing the shell of my ear. He inhaled me. I inhaled the sky. I didn’t know if I smelled of imprisonment and hatred or freedom and love.

  I was blended now.

  The storm had taken what I’d been and made me into someone I was meant to become.

  It hadn’t healed me.

  It had purged me.

  Leaving me baptised by hell itself in its angry clawing abuse.

  A low groan slipped from his chest to mine. My answering shiver was for him, not the storm. My pattering heartbeat for him, not the rain.

  I was alive because of him.

  I was becoming more than Pim because of him.

  A wave surged inside me, breaking over the shore of my mind with the possibility of finally being honest with him, finally giving him my voice, finally admitting my true name.

  Before, there was no way I could weaken myself; now, there was a way because it wasn’t weakness, it was time.

  The softest kiss landed on my cheek, wiped away as quickly as it’d been bestowed.

  But it had happened.

  I’d felt it.

  Time stood still as a man stood behind me, protecting me not molesting me, and allowed me to spread my wings and fly.

  I OUGHT TO strap her ass for standing so recklessly in the storm.

  I should give myself a whipping for doing the same thing.

  Where had common sense gone? Where had the fear of a lightning strike or falling overboard and drowning gone?

  Who the fuck knows.

  All I knew was standing naked with Pim while we faced death with no fear had been better than any pot, better than any drug I could take to calm my mind and let me control my tendencies.

  Being that way…free that way…had given me a glimpse into the sort of person I could become if I trusted myself that I wouldn’t fuck it up like last time.

  An hour we stayed, riding the sea. An hour where my hands slowly slipped over hers, encapsulating her tiny grip while holding onto the rail beneath. An hour where my cock craved to press against her and my heart hammered at being so damn close.

  And after an hour, it was as if someone notched up the churn cycle, switching the waves from rodeo to downright berserk. Our feet slipped often, we crashed against the balustrade frequently while I did my best to protect Pim from my weight as we shot forward, bending almost in half as the boat rolled, threatening to kiss the water before springing back and wrenching us into the sky.

  Danger turned to potential death. We’d tempted fate enough. I untied Pimlico’s safety measure and dropped the belt into the sea. Instantly, the wind snatched it from my hands, a lick of white in the otherwise black sky.

  Keeping her hand locked in mine, I dragged her back into the relative safety of her suite. She took one door, and I took the other, both struggling and puffing to shut the wild weather outside and throw the lock home.

  Once the wind was banished but the motion was not, I moved to the bed and grabbed the coverlet. Pimlico stood with spread legs, doing her best to predict where the next swell would take us, but tripped forward when the sea decided she’d guessed wrong.

  Cocking my chin, I didn’t try to yell over the noise. For a moment, I wondered if I’d read our connection wrong outside. When I’d pressed against her fully clothed, her annoyance and frustration screamed loudly from tense muscles. Yet once I was naked and hovered but didn’t touch, she’d relaxed as much as she could while fighting a rabid storm. We hadn’t been able to talk, touch, or taste—only watch and balance and bow to the ferocity of Mother Nature.

  But we’d been linked beyond anything else I’d ever felt.

  She’d been in my head. I’d been in hers.

  A conne
ction breathed between us now that had no words but was so fucking strong.

  Tiredness and muscles ached and throbbed, but we still had a few hours before the storm stopped toying with us. We were soaked past bone and into soul, my teeth locking together from the building shivers.

  Moving to the sunken couch, I sat and dug into the cushions. As Pimlico deliberated if she wanted to join me or if I’d overstepped too many of her boundaries tonight, I pulled out the seatbelts wedged in there for times exactly like this.

  Fighting to stay upright for the first hour was fine. Fighting to stay seated and not tossed across the room by the fifth hour was not.

  Not bothering to dress, I locked the belt around my hips, ignoring that I fluctuated between aroused when I looked at Pim and calm when I looked away. Slowly, she stumbled toward me, grabbing onto bolted down furniture as she made her way across the space.

  By the time she flung herself onto the couch, her chest rose and fell with exhaustion. Giving her a smile, far happier than I should be about entrusting our lives to a tyrannical ocean, I reached across her and slid the buckle into its home.

  Wrenching the seatbelt tight across her belly, I grabbed the duvet and covered both of us.

  I never took my eyes off her face, watching her carefully as the material settled around us, giving instant comfort and warmth on our cold drenched bodies.

  A normal person with no aversion to clothing would snuggle in straight away; perhaps even sigh in relief to be draped in softness.

  Not Pim.

  She tensed. Her jaw worked as she swallowed, wrenching her arms out to press the coverlet down away from her face and neck. She didn’t stop touching the soft cotton, but after a few seconds, she forced herself to relax.

  I couldn’t figure out why she had such an issue with clothing. Yet another question I desperately wanted to ask. I had pages and pages inside my mind. Sheets and sheets of queries and demands that would all have to wait until she was ready.

  Her two weeks is up.

  You could force her to talk.

  My face went slack even as my body continued to tense with wave rocking.