feather-light touch. Silky Italian wrapped around callous words. Slow licks, racing hearts. Sweet and sour, hot and cold; contradictions pull at my nerves in a game of tug and war.
I hate that I love every second of it.
A dull thud jolts me awake. I pop my eyes open and realize the sound is Anatomy for Dummies slipping out of my hand and hitting the cream carpet. In my post-nap haze, it takes a few seconds for my brain to sharpen enough to realize I’m not alone in the library.
Rafe reclines in an armchair across from the sofa, ankle resting on his thigh as he spins a gold poker chip between his thumb and forefinger. Each spin glints in the midday sun, as blinding as his presence.
I didn’t expect him to be back so soon.
His stare traps mine. “You look like an angel when you sleep.” Before the tug of war can start in my chest again, he swipes the vodka glass off the desk and adds, “The snoring, though? Not so angelic.”
I sit up, pulling my knees to my chest in self-preservation. How long has he been sitting there? Watching me? Vulnerability and unease grip me, making me want to shrivel up and wilt under the heat of a sunbeam.
Instead, I opt for picking up the book and walking it to the haphazardly-built bookshelf. It’s hard to ignore how my heart thumps under the weight of Rafe’s eyes tracking me.
I brush my fingers over the yellow spines. “You bought me all the For Dummies books.”
“Mm. Found a career yet?”
“You trying to get rid of me, or something?”
His dark laugh caresses me like silk. “Or something.”
The room heats with two words left unsaid: thank you.
The chair groans. I don’t need to turn around to know he’s approaching. Each footstep treads up my spine, until his presence brushes my back.
A shudder rolls through me as his hand runs down the length of my braid.
“Did one of the girls braid your hair, Queenie?”
“Why do you call me Queenie?”
His smile is dry. “Your mama never taught you not to answer a question with a question?”
“No, my mother didn’t teach me anything memorable, except that mixing red wine with a whole pack of allergy medicine will make you choke on your own puke.” When Rafe’s hand brushes over my neck, I shake the memory away. “Anyway, Rory did.” I pause. “How did you know I didn’t do it myself?”
The expensive fabric of his slacks touches the backs of my thighs. “You can’t braid, Queenie.”
I frown. “How do you know that?”
He stills, then skims his nose up the curve of my throat, bringing his lips to my ear. “Apologies. I’m thinking of one of my other enemies with benefits.”
Jealousy flashes behind my eyelids. I whip around to push him off, but he tightens his grip on my braid, yanking my head back until it rests below his collar pin. “I’ll have to thank my sister-in-law for giving me a leash.”
Sweet, holy hell. All irritation vaporizes, its steam falling to the gusset of my thong. I swallow, trying to slow my breathing as his other hand trails the chain of my necklace. His fingers skim over the four-leaf clover, then carve a path across my breasts.
Something stirs in his slacks.
“My bedroom, ten minutes.”
And then he releases me. I brace my palms on the splintered bookshelf until the violent click of the door sounds behind me.
Christ. I exhale shakily, trying to gather my decorum from all four corners of the room. Last night, the excitement of crooning to ABBA and playing UNO! loosened the choke hold this man has on me. But once Rory, Wren, and Tayce left this morning, everything that’s infinitively him soaked through the sudden silence, bled through the wallpaper, and rubbed my skin raw.
We’re fuck friends, for now, but I know when all is said and done, his rough touch and smooth voice will be impossible to forget.
I count ten lots of sixty Mississippi’s, then follow in his footsteps. The pipes in the walls gurgle and clink, and when I push open the door to the cabin, I realize Rafe’s in the shower.
Indecision slows my limbs. I stare at the steam rising from beneath the door and consider what would happen if I opened it. Slid my shorts down, slipped through the shower door, and pressed myself into his wet, naked body. If, under hot rain, I sank to my knees and took him in my mouth. Took control.
Even though I’ve never done it before, the idea makes my mouth water. But I’ve taken only one step toward the en-suite when something out-of-sorts catches my eye. My suitcase. It’s where I left it, pushed up against the wall in the corner of the room, but it’s been opened. Some of my stuff is missing, and I have an awful idea of where it will be.
I slide open the closet door and weaken with dread. White shirts sandwich silk dresses. Crisp, black slacks flank mom jeans. My attention falls to the shoe rack, where his leather dress shoes sit side-by-side with my Doc Martens and heels.
Pulled taut by that damn tug-of-war, I grapple with my stuff, shove it back in my case, and take a seat in the living area. I turn on the television, flicking restlessly through the channels until a news woman talks at me with such intensity, I know if I turn up the volume loud enough, she’ll drown out the feeling of unease. At least until Rafe takes me to bed and fills me with something else.
But when I tune in to what she’s saying, my blood runs cold.
“For those of you just joining, we have breaking news this afternoon,” she says, shuffling her papers. “The body found on the bank of Clam Lake in Atlantic City this morning is confirmed to be Martin O’Hare. O’Hare has made headlines in recent weeks after his casino and bar burned down under unknown circumstances.” The reporter pauses, her expression grave. “It isn’t known at this time whether the two incidents are related.”
My head swims in the opposite direction from my stomach. Hot, sticky numbness pins my body to the sofa, and my hand wouldn’t be able to pick up the remote to turn the television off even if I’d wanted to.
Martin O’Hare. Dead. The reporter’s mouth moves, but I can no longer hear what she’s saying over the roaring of my ears. The noise fades when the shower shuts off. Now, I’m hyper-aware of what’s happening in the bathroom behind me. The thawp of a towel. The turn of a tap. When the door opens and a wet heat brushes against the back of my head, I swallow thickly.
“Martin O’Hare was found dead in Clam Lake.” It doesn’t sound like my voice. It’s too calm, too at-odds with the violent pulse in my throat.
While my eyes are glued on the screen, my attention is tethered to Rafe as he moves from behind the sofa over to the bar cart. In silence, he pours a vodka.
“Really?” The clink of ice cubes rattles my bones. “That’s not where I left him.”
Heat prickles my skin in a way that makes me want to rip my clothes off. Fueled by panic, I clamber to my feet, but when I bump my shins against the coffee table, I realize I won’t get very far. I sink back to the sofa, letting the soft cushions drag me down to hell.
“You did this?”
Now, the silence aches. Rafe’s calm disposition nips at my edges. Makes me take stock of the exits. Instead of making a run for one of them, I drag my stare to him.
He’s back-lit by a window, wearing nothing but ink and a low-slung towel around his waist. His eyes meet mine over the rim of his vodka glass, glittering like the sea behind him. A water droplet trickles down his chest, and he wipes it away before it reaches his navel. I stare at the hand he used. It’s even more busted than it was yesterday.
“That reminds me, I brought you back a souvenir.”
My shoulders tense. Rafe disappears from view, and when he approaches the back of the sofa and drops a small box onto my lap, I stare down at it.
And then I scream.
I jump up, roll over the coffee table, and stagger toward the door. “You’re sick,” I choke out, stumbling backward. I’ve seen this type of shit in films. A horse’s head in a bed. A skull on a bookshelf. A fucking finger in a ring box.
Aside from the cocked brow, Rafe’s the dictionary definition of indifference. He stares at me, then stoops to retrieve the still-shut box from where it rolled under the sofa.
As he snaps it open, I squeeze my eyes closed.
“Penelope.”
When I’m brave enough to pop a lid open, I’m met with dark amusement and a key ring swinging from his finger. He tosses it to me, and it lands at my feet.
I glare at the I Heart Atlantic City logo for five staggered heartbeats.
And then my unease rises up my throat and spills out between us. “I told you not to be nice to me,” I blurt out.
“It was four dollars.”
“You know I’m not talking about the fucking key ring.”
Another heartbeat, and then Rafe’s rough laugh touches me. He runs a hand through his wet hair, bitterness clouding in his eyes.
“Christ, Penny. A thank you would have sufficed.” He downs the rest of his vodka, then lets the glass clatter to the bar cart. “I must be fucking mad,” he mutters, wiping his mouth.
I feel so fucking sick, nausea pushes against my seams, leaving no room for other feelings, like relief.
“You killed him for me?”
He looks at me quickly. “No.”
I let out a tense breath.
“I killed his brother for you. And then I killed Martin because he’d have come to the Coast to kill me.” He fills up his glass with more vodka, pausing thoughtfully before taking a sip. “Actually, yeah. I killed him for you too.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t like the idea of another man putting his hands around your throat,” he says dryly.
I grit my teeth, digging my nails into my palms. “I set fire to his casino.”
“Semantics.”
I turn away, because I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me.
“You think I’m bad luck.” I drag a hand down my face. “You don’t even know me.”
His laugh is louder this time, tinged with something ironic. “You have no fucking idea what I know.”
We stand there for a few minutes. Him at the bar cart, me glaring at the clock on the mantel. Every tick strikes inside my rib cage, as if counting down to the moment my heart cracks in half.
I’ll never let it happen. Never let this man within arms-reach of my heart. Because this is what men do, isn’t it? They’re nice to you, until they aren’t. Until you stop giving them what they want, and then they turn nasty. And then they drag you out to an alleyway and take what they wanted from you anyway.
My necklace sizzles against my clammy skin. Of all the times to think of Matt, it isn’t now, but he pops into my head anyway. You’ve got to be clear with your intentions from the beginning.
Rolling back my shoulders and galvanizing my spine, I walk over to Rafe. He watches my approach with a mix of wariness and annoyance, tensing when I step into his hot, wet orbit.
I’m so close his liquor-tinged breath grazes my nose. My nipples glide over his chest through my T-shirt, hardening at the idea of friction.
His gaze falls to mine, melting like the ice in his drink. “Penny…”
There go those busted knuckles with a feather-light touch, skimming over my cheekbone. I turn my head a fraction, because I know what comes next: the silky Italian wrapped around callous words. I don’t want the contradictions.
I just want all of the bad and none of the good.
Swallowing in an attempt to slow my pulse, I turn my attention to his chest. We both watch my trembling fingers as I slide them over the serpent’s head, down the length of playing cards, dice, poker chips. The walls of his stomach clench when I skim south of his navel and to the fold of his towel.
I lift my eyes to his. He searches them, and then his expression cools with realization.
He lets out a humorless laugh. “That’s all you want, huh?”
“It’s all we agreed on.”
His eyes singe like burning embers when I tug the towel. The fabric hitting the carpet sounds so loud, so final. Like a signal warning me that, now, there’s no going back.
Before I have time to think, he grips my neck, sliding his fingers around the base of my braid. He pulls my face to his; I’m so close to his lips that for the small price of a million dollars, I could taste his last sip of vodka.
He holds me there for what feels like minutes, but can only be seconds. His jaw ticks like the clock on the mantel; his heart beats slower than my own. When I glance toward the bed, it’s only because I need a breather from his suffocating glare, but by the way he laughs again, I realize he interprets it as a hint.
He thinks I want him to hurry up and fuck me.
With a curt nod, he releases me and steps aside. Every inch of my body trembles as I walk toward the bed and climb it on my knees.
Behind me, the bed dips with my heart. I drop to my forearms and bury my head in the pillow, as if the tension can’t touch me down here. When Rafe’s thighs press against my own and his dick grazes my ass, I squeeze my eyes shut, expecting the heat of his hands to sear my skin.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, the mattress groans and the drawer beside me slides open. I turn my head just in time to see him take out a condom.
The sight catches in my throat. Of course, safe sex is important and all, but he didn’t think twice about fucking me without protection before. Now, I feel like another number, another girl in his bed. The thought makes me want to set his whole fucking yacht ablaze.
I can feel a bitter retort creeping up my throat, but I bite down on the pillow to stop it. This is what you wanted, remember? As fucked-up as it seems, sliding into me without a rubber falls into the category of nice.
My stomach tightens as he pulls down my shorts. The fabric slides over my ass fast, then the movement slows down my thighs and with a hot whip of embarrassment, I realize why. The fucking tattoo. In the storm of dead men and key rings, I’d forgotten all about it. How could I? It’s a big red heart with the name Raphael swirled through the middle of it.
A ragged exhale slips from his lips and dances up my spine. “Is this a joke?”
“Tayce…” I swallow. “It’s temporary.”
Foil crinkles, latex snaps.
“How very fitting,” he says quietly, before plunging into me without warning.
Pain sears through me, but nothing is as painful as the weight of his palm on the small of my back. He’s holding me awkwardly, covering the tattoo. I breathe deeply, trying to adjust. Despite the pain simmering to a delicious heat, I realize it doesn’t fill the hollowness in my core like it did yesterday, but rather just move it north, so it sits somewhere behind my breastbone instead.
Rafe fucks me like he would a whore he’d paid in advance, before turning up and realizing she looks nothing like her photo. Then he fucks her anyway because she doesn’t do refunds.
Each stroke feels clinical, like a step toward an end goal. Devoid of emotion, and it doesn’t come with roaming hands or strangled Italian.
He fucks me until I can’t bear the animosity. Until I’m on the brink of tears. Just as I turn around to grab his wrist, the words I’m sorry brewing on my tongue, his thighs tense against my ass and an animalistic groan escapes him.
My eyes sweep up to his, and he traps in his violent stare as he comes. He doesn’t release me from it, not when his breathing shallows, nor when he pushes me off his dick.
It’s me who turns away first. As my head falls back to the pillow, the bed dips again and he’s gone with the click of a door.
I’m left with silence and another set of contradictions a whole lot worse than the last.
The ice-blue sky darkened hours ago, and now my restlessness is lit by moonlight and the floor lamp in the corner of the library. Sleep wouldn’t come to me now even if I was narcoleptic.
I’ve spent the last few hours wearing a path in the carpet from the sofa to the badly-built bookshelf. The routine is well-rehearsed: I pick up a book, crack its spine, gloss over introductions, and glare at diagrams. Then I toss it into the I don’t give a fuck pile at my feet.
In the silence, the truth is too loud. There’s only one thing I give a fuck about right now and he’s three rooms over.
He flew all the way to Atlantic City to take the heaviest load off my back, and all he wanted was a thank you. The word has blistered my skin all night. I didn’t want to say it because the man has already coaxed a please from me, twice, but also because…why?
Every man has a motive, and Rafe’s makes no sense. If I’m so unlucky to him, why not just kill me, instead of someone on my behalf?
Letting out a frustrated groan, I slam Tennis for Dummies shut and drop my head to the back of the sofa. I ache in all the places he didn’t touch me earlier. There’s a persistent throb at the base of my skull, which strengthens every time I close my eyes and see Rafe’s violent gaze as he came inside a condom.
I’m hot. Feverish. Hoping a blast of December will put my world to rights, I shoot to my feet and fling open the door that leads to the deck. As I stand under its frame, icy wind pushes past me, rippling all the soft fabrics in the room and rustling book pages.
Numbness claws at my bare thighs, and a tremor ripples down my spine. Suddenly, my focus on the black abyss softens. That tremor…it didn’t come from inside me.
“Oh, no, no, no,” I whisper. But before I can retreat, the night’s sky lights up purple, a white flash of lightning streaking through the middle of it.
The only thing worse than a thunderstorm is being trapped on a boat in the middle of a thunderstorm. My heart stumbles with every beat, and a clammy sweat clings to my skin. Fumbling with the lock on the door, I press my back against it and squeeze my eyes shut.
Luck has all but left you, I try to reassure myself. You haven’t been lucky in weeks.
But the next zap of lightning floods the room, bringing all my demons to light.
You know how lucky you are, kid? You’re one in a million.
One in a million.
The thunder rumbles under the carpet as I bolt out of the library. It follows me through the study, into a living room. When I crash out into the corridor, I stop short.
At the end of it, Rafe’s large silhouette consumes the shadows, his door clicking shut behind him. His gaze finds mine, something too soft to crack my heart dancing in the middle of it.
Somehow, it does anyway.
He steps into the path of light streaming through a porthole, and I realize he’s naked. He holds something between his thumb and forefinger. A single die.
“Choose a number.” A strangled noise escapes me. He takes another step forward, voice firmer now. “A number, Queenie.”
“Five,” I blurt out.
He tosses the dice and catches it. When he opens his palm, he nods in agreement. “Five.”
“Really?”
His eyes flick back up to mine, glinting humorlessly. “No.”
A bolt of lightning fissures the space between us. Before the thunder comes, I run toward him. It’s not until my face is buried in his neck that I realize he’s picked me up, his strong forearms caging me to him as he takes me into his quarters.
A gentle hand runs down my braid. Soothing words touch the shell of my ear, drowning out the next rumble of thunder. He lowers me to his bed, pulls me into his chest, and traps us under the covers.
I press my face against his chest and his fingers find purchase in the base of my hair. His other hand slides down my spine, traces the stupid heart on the small of my back, and a rough noise of approval vibrates behind his solar plexus.
When the next lightning bolt comes, it flashes through the sheets. Rafe brings his palms to my ears, dulling the impending roll of thunder.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I don’t specify what for. For shielding me from the storm, for killing Martin O’Hare. For giving me the two most ridiculous orgasms of my life. For the fucking key ring.
But the thunder is loud; my acknowledgment is quiet.
The only reason I know Rafe heard it is that his lips press down on my forehead, giving me the most gentle of kisses.
