Authors: Amber Bardan
No boys in the bedroom, but he didn’t need to know about that one or how little I’d needed it.
“Home by midnight.”
“Hmmm,” he murmured.
“What?”
“The night you came here, you got into the car with Karim, and there’s no way you could’ve gotten home by midnight.” He swallowed and wiped his mouth on a napkin. “So, which is it, Angelina? Did you want to be a lady, or did you want to be bad?”
The sun heated my chest. My lips tingled. My pulse thundered in my ears again. I breathed through my nose. “I guess I wanted to be bad.”
Haithem picked up his champagne and drank, never taking his gaze off me.
“And look how that turned out for me,” I added.
He tilted his glass forward. “Then the real question is, if you could go back, would you run home like a good girl, or would you tempt fate again?” He leaned in, and rested an arm on the tabletop. “If there was no price to pay?”
“There’s always a price to pay. You taught me that.”
He smiled. Smiled and looked into me. Directly into me. Laid me bare.
I knew then why he was so irresistible. Not because he was so fine, so delicious no woman could walk away without soaked panties and a lost mind. I wanted him because Haithem was a glass of aged whiskey, a full-fat hot chocolate, a double-choc cheesecake, a triple-shot espresso, five-star fine-ass dining—he was gold in the kind of carats they have to blend to make jewelry out of. A blood diamond. He was all the fat, all the calories, all the sugar, all of the bad, wrong, decadent, sinful, greedy goodness I’d always been told I couldn’t have—and believed I shouldn’t want.
But I needed it.
I wanted it.
All of it.
Something purely for me. One thing, one moment that was selfishly, brazenly mine. There wasn’t an instant in my life I could remember where I’d lived solely for myself. Not a second where I wasn’t so bogged down in worry, or concern, or grief, or obligation, or numbness, that I could simply enjoy myself.
I’d hollowed into a defunct husk.
Now something blossomed in my shell. Maybe Haithem was tainted rain and maybe, eventually, I’d be poisoned—but right then, he watered me. Without him, I’d whither again.
I reached out and took the edge of his plate, and dragged the cheesecake toward me. He watched me, and the look that flashed across his face made my panties stick to my dampening skin.
He held out the fork, and I took it.
Consequences
.
“I guess you can always fly in bigger clothes.” I smiled and scooped up some cheesecake.
He laughed and watched me eat. I cleaned the plate, hardly tasting what passed between my lips. Someone had turned up the volume on my privates. I couldn’t taste the strawberry, couldn’t taste the vanilla. I knew it was there but all I tasted was sugar. I was too aware of what was going on inside my underwear to pay much notice to what was happening in my mouth. The scrap of fabric between my legs tugged like a humming live wire. Maybe I rocked myself a little.
I licked the fork.
The front.
The back.
Haithem’s jaw ticked. I saw his control flickering on and off, and it filled me with a power I’d never known. I did that to him. If I could break him, I would. I’d take a hammer and shatter through his walls. If I was going to be stuck with him, if I was going to suffer the consequences of my lust, then I’d be damned if I’d let anything keep me from what I’d come for.
I needed him. Wanted him. I don’t think anyone else could hope to understand. I was ready to break out.
“You said I could ask you for anything...” I rubbed my lips together.
“I did.” His voice lowered, deeper than I’d ever heard it go.
I gave a half smile that tugged at the corner of my mouth. “Well, I know what I want.”
“Then ask me.”
You’d think I’d have whispered my request, but I didn’t. I spoke clear and loud. “I want orgasms.”
He laughed, soft and rumbling. “Orgasms? That specific?”
“Yes, orgasms.”
Why lie? Why tone it down or dilute it with innuendo?
I wanted orgasms. I wanted to shake and come. To live and forget.
“I’m surprised you’re still surprising me.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “I’d have sworn if you were to ask me something like that, it’d be for lovemaking.”
Lovemaking.
Images of Haithem as I’d seen him the night before, head to toe, huge and nude, but rolling in his white sheets with me in his arms, filled my imagination.
Tempting.
But something told me when Haithem and I came together it wouldn’t be for lovemaking. Such a pretty word was too out of sync with what I felt for him.
They weren’t sweet, warm feelings.
“I don’t want lovemaking—I want orgasms.”
Haithem pushed back his chair and walked around the table. My heart attempted to back out of the deal by making a quick exit up my throat.
“And what do I get in exchange for providing orgasms?”
“You?” I blinked. “You said you owe me, and I could ask for what I wanted.”
“That was before you threw a million dollars overboard.” He sank down on one knee in front of me, putting us at eye level. “And before you accepted all my gifts.” He reached for my foot and pulled it into his lap.
Holy shit, was orgasm-giving starting right now?
Haithem tugged off my shoe and held it up. “Haven’t I been very generous?”
I stared at the shoe. I’d worn good ones.
Why not? He’d given them to me.
“What do you want, Haithem?”
“Not much.” He tossed my shoe then pulled up my other foot. “Just a little agreement.”
“What is it with you and agreements?”
He grinned and threw away my other shoe. “I’m a born businessman.”
“So, tell me what you want.”
He pressed his thumb into the bottom of my foot. My back arched off the chair, and my breath caught. Fuck, if he could do that to me with one touch on my foot, what hope did I have?
“While I’m touching you, I get to ask questions, any questions I want, and I get the truth from you.”
He rubbed his thumb up the arch of my foot. I squirmed, my muscles aching deliciously.
“One question,” I whispered.
“Five.” He pushed deep into the muscles of my foot.
Oh, lord help me, I might’ve called out ten if he’d just touch me more. “Two.”
“Four,” he said, and tugged my leg so my ass dragged down on the chair.
“Three...and a pass if I choose to use it.”
He smiled and raised my foot, baring his teeth for a moment. “Deal,” he said, and bit my big toe.
Bit it, the crazy fucker.
Yep, I’d just dealt the devil my soul.
Deal
.
Sure, why not? It was only a soul.
He gripped my ankles and tugged again. I held on to the arms of the chair, my hips dragging forward.
“Shouldn’t we go in the cabin?” I glanced at the open doorway.
“Why, who is going to see us up here?”
I looked at the man on his knees in front of me. Had he ever been on his knees for a woman before? A little corner of my heart said no, he hadn’t.
I was special.
“You nervous, Angel?”
I shook my head.
He dropped my feet to the floor and stood. “This isn’t going to work if you lie to me. The truth, remember?”
“Then I’ll take that as question one.” I stared up at him. Thank fuck for champagne. “Yes, I’m nervous.”
He smirked and pulled me to my feet before sinking into my chair and hauling me onto his lap.
My ass hit his legs with a jarring thud.
His arms surrounded me. I was enveloped. My head rested on his shoulder, my legs on either side of his. The fabric of my dress bunched at my middle. He touched my belly and the muscles there—who knew I had muscles under my belly?—clenched.
I might not have been able to see him, but I felt him behind me. Felt every movement of his humongous body. For some reason, I’d expected to be able to see him. To be a little more in control than I was in his lap.
“What’s the matter, Haithem? Don’t want to watch me come?” The champagne must have contained an evil spirit, because surely those words weren’t mine?
“I get to ask the questions, remember?”
I shut my lips.
He ran his hands over my ribs then held them over my breasts. They seared through my dress, through my bra, pressed heat into my body.
“Was that another question? Damn, Haithem, you’re running out fast.”
He pinched my nipples. Squeezed them right between his fingertips.
I squealed, sensations rocketing into my core.
“Don’t be cheeky. That wasn’t one of the questions.”
He rubbed over my nipples, soothing where he’d just tormented.
I kinda wished he’d pinch them again.
His hands moved, not messing around now, and he pushed between my legs. My hips arched off his lap. His fingers pressed over layers of fabric—skirt, panties, too damned much.
I’d asked for orgasms. You’d think he’d hop to it.
Then he did, he ran his hands to my knees and then ran them up under my skirt. His palms on my skin created a friction that made me twitch with desire. He reached my panties and brushed over my crotch.
My head went even lighter than it already was.
“Second question,” he whispered, and rubbed two fingers over the top of my mound, lightly applying pressure over the place that demanded it.
“Why, if you don’t want lovemaking, were you offended when I propositioned you?”
My head swam. My tongue was loose and pliant, and I spoke to him far more freely than I’d have liked to. “Because offering to pay me, no matter the reasoning, made me feel like a whore.”
My cheeks heated, but I didn’t have time to finish blushing before he pushed aside my panties. He touched me intimately. Went straight to the source of my heat.
“Good girl,” he whispered. “I like it when you tell me the truth.”
He touched my clitoris. Pushed right between my folds and stroked it with two fingers. I jerked, my knees snapping together. He caught one thigh in his hand, hauling my legs open.
“Last question, Angel, and then you get to come.”
He rubbed over my entire pussy, from clitoris all the way down to my ass and back up again. Rubbed my own wetness all over me. I shuddered, a need so sharp it hurt crawling over me. My hips bucked fruitlessly.
His free hand moved to my chest. “I want to know, I want you to tell me exactly why you’re nervous,” he whispered. “Is it me? Or have you not fucked as much as you’d like me to believe?”
“Pass,” I shouted.
He made a growling sound and pressed his teeth against my shoulder at the same time he moved his fingers up and pumped my clit.
I came. Came apart, really. I screamed, screamed from deep in my lungs. Must’ve been the shock. Nerves twisted, muscles stiffened and contracted. My insides turned outward, and pleasure bore down on me hard. I shook, clutching my thighs together, but his hand kept moving on me until I stopped shaking.
I flopped, panting, against his chest. His fingers still stroked me, but ever so softly now.
“You liked that, Angel?”
I gave him one for free. “Yeah.”
Turned out I wasn’t half the lady I’d thought I was.
FOURTEEN
I
SHOWERED
LIKE
I’d never showered before. Lined up all the toiletries, cosmetics and beauty products Haithem had given me on the bathroom counter and made a plan to use them all.
It wasn’t as if I had much else to do, but honestly, I was driven to do it.
I attacked my skin with body scrub and a loofah, put a conditioning mask in my hair, even took a razor to my privates. I’d never shaved my pussy completely, never needed to, and with my coordination there was always the chance I’d lose a flap. But I was careful, used one of the gentle razors for women and scraped myself clean.
Afterward, I blow-dried my hair and used a serum, gave myself a pedicure, then opened a perfume box set and used the scented body cream. I squeezed a dollop onto my palm then smeared it onto my arm. My skin soaked it up, the moisture, the fragrance. I put my cheek to my shoulder and inhaled. Maybe I was a little sleepy, because my eyes shut for a while.
I opened my eyes and caught a look at myself in the mirror. Squeezing more cream into my hands, I stepped closer to the mirror then spread the cream over my chest, wiping over my breasts. My nipples tingled under my palms, and a shiver ran into my stomach below my belly button. I used more cream. Ran my fingers over my middle. The first few days on the yacht had stripped a little flesh from my curves. Not much, but enough for me to notice a new tightness. I watched the mirror. Looked at every place my hands roamed. I’d never looked at myself like that before.
In the past, I’d allowed other people to make me feel that what I had wasn’t right, wasn’t enough, but gazing in that mirror, I saw what I had and I liked it—and I knew that anyone who didn’t, didn’t deserve to enjoy it. I rested my foot on the bath and moisturized my legs. Stroked over my thighs. My fingers brushed between my legs. The touch was electric, or maybe I was just that sensitive after what Haithem had done to me.
He’d given me exactly what I’d asked for. But, as with anything that good, one small taste only made me hungry for more. I touched myself again. My sex felt foreign under my fingers, hairless and so slippery. I looked at the mirror, watched my hand move between my legs, and hunger and need enveloped me again.
His hand had been here, his fingers here. Touching me where I touched. I rubbed my clitoris with my middle finger. Pleasure radiated into my core. Not like the pleasure he’d given me but pleasure, nonetheless. My pelvis tilted forward. Why had I only just discovered I could do this myself?
I made speedy circles over that nub until everything went tight then rippled in little waves of joy. My foot slid to the floor. It hadn’t knocked me out, hadn’t stolen my breath or made me scream, but I liked it. There were probably many things I hadn’t discovered I could like—yet.
But now I could see them, find them, take them. I washed my hands and face again but didn’t bother with makeup, only rubbed in a bit of tinted sunscreen.
Standing in front of the wardrobe, I pulled a sleek white dress off a hanger. One of the ones I’d worried I’d never get to wear because I didn’t attend the kinds of events that called for dresses like that one. But why wait and hope I’d eventually go somewhere special? Normal rules needn’t apply, right? I dressed and went out onto the deck.
Haithem sat at the table with a laptop. My heart skipped softly. After he’d done as he’d promised, I’d thanked him as though he’d just handed me a cup of coffee and then ran to the bathroom. I hadn’t expected him to hang around. I approached the table and sat across from him, gaze fixed on the laptop.
Laptop
.
Internet and emails.
The real world intruded on my bubble. And yes, the yacht was a bubble. A dangerous bubble, with new rules, and illusions that were so easy to sink into and forget everything on the outside.
Reflective ocean surrounded us—everything amplified, intensified—and I was trapped in the middle between reality and something that was part fantasy, part nightmare.
Haithem glanced up and his brow rose. He scanned me as though I’d changed skins. Maybe I had. His handiwork, really.
I cleared my throat. “Has anyone replied?”
“Replied?”
“To the email you sent?”
He shut the laptop and rested a fist on top. “Don’t know, haven’t been checking your emails.”
“Hmm,” I hummed, gaze trained on the computer under his fist.
My pulse grew louder.
He’d respected my privacy? I wouldn’t buy that for one red minute.
“Let me have a quick look,” I said, and reached across the table for the computer.
He unclenched his fist, and he held the laptop, dragging it closer to his body. “There’s no connection.” His eyes squinted just a fraction. Those sinful lashes concealing so much of his eyes. But it was his voice that got me—the quiver of tension.
The sliver of threat. I stared at him.
Water crashed against the boat, and voices drifted up from the lower deck. Between us, silence boomed.
“I’ll try for you tonight.” His accent got lost in the sharp finality of his words.
I held my breath inside. He lied. He was a lying liar. If he made nice with me he had his reasons.
I tugged at my dress. It was too tight. Why had I worn this stupid dress again? The sun bore down on us. My lips tasted of salt.
Tiny lines cut into the corners of Haithem’s mouth. That’s the thing with hard light. It shows up everything.
I’d missed so many things, but now they swarmed at me. All the things I should be thinking about. I’d succumbed to distraction—and I couldn’t give up those moments of diversion, the tastes of pleasure. I’d only just started this game, each of us moving like pieces on a board, playing to our own agenda, and we all know—queen takes king.
“What day is it?”
“Tuesday.”
I shut my eyes, guilt rising like a tide through my body. It was as easy as that—put a name to the day of the week and everything became real again. Tuesday, and on Tuesday there were things I had to do. Responsibilities and obligations.
People who would miss me.
“Does it bother you to know that tonight there will be an eight-year-old underprivileged girl who is going to be let down by the one person she thought she could count on?”
Haithem shrugged. “Perhaps, if I understood how that had anything to do with me?”
“I’m part of a Big Sister program, Haithem. On Tuesdays, I spend time with a girl named Sandy. Take her to the park or the beach. It’s the one stable, regular thing she can count on.” My throat ached as I explained to him. Dammit, it’d taken a good six months to get Sandy to open up. “Thanks to you, her trust is about to be shattered.”
Haithem grew still. “Everyone has their trust broken, eventually.”
“
Not by me
.” I spoke through my teeth.
Haithem leaned back and pulled the laptop onto his knees. “And here I thought I’d caught myself an angel. Turns out, I’ve captured a saint.”
I snorted. I’d busted my chances for sainthood the moment I stepped onto this yacht. Not that my motivations had
ever
been so pure or so selfless.
“You know things rarely end well for saints.”
My nose screwed up, and I swiped the moisture on it with the back of my hand. “Go to hell.”
“I’m sure I will.”
I smiled. “Oh, I’d count on it.”
“Careful, might stain that halo.” He smiled back, a narrow, closed-lips smile. “So then, my little saint, what other goodly deeds have you committed yourself to?”
I breathed in.
The asshole thought he’d figured me all out. But as I’d only just discovered in the past few days, not even I knew what I was really capable of. “Since I’m not busy coming, I don’t think I owe you any answers, do I?”
His smile broadened, showed a little teeth.
I should’ve moved to the shade. The top of my head scalded.
“That’s right. Angel has been flirting with the dark side.” His gaze traveled me, examined me in a way that reminded me of every little touch he’d laid on me to make me come. “Let me guess then, volunteering with the elderly?”
Crap
.
I tried not to blink. Not to confirm that I did just that. I scooped my hair over one shoulder, letting the breeze cool the back of my neck.
He leaned forward, his smile turning into a grin. “I know. Animals...an animal shelter.”
Dammit
.
I fanned my face and looked away.
“Yeah, I can picture that. Angelina cuddling all the poor homeless puppies.” His voice lowered as though revealing secrets. “An adorable image,
such a lady
.”
Such an asshole.
I turned to him, my teeth snapping together. “Adorable? Shows what you actually know. There’s nothing adorable about an animal shelter.” I rested my palms on the tabletop. “Cuddling puppies? Try hosing out stalls and shoveling poop. It stinks, it’s noisy and it’s actually not a nice place at all.” My lips tightened. “I hate it. How saintly is that?”
Haithem leaned forward, his expression smoothing as though things had not just been real weird or real heated, and covered the back of my hand with his. “So why do it?”
I swallowed. Tried to be distracted by his light touch. Tried to think about how naturally this man held my hand. Tried to let the stark contrast between home and here, buffer my proximity to the truth.
I knew why I did all those things, even if I pretended not to. But I’d never tell him, never tell Haithem I needed the karmic points just for living—for being the one to live. That if I got to be alive then I had to make sure I deserved it.
His thumb brushed the space between my thumb and index finger. I slid my hand from under his. He didn’t hold me down, yet my palm felt glued to the table.
As though my body thought that he and I were friends. Like maybe after all this time surviving on my own, I needed his twisted version of help.
No.
He’d never know that in order to survive I’d had to drown myself in enough to bury my own memory. A memory that was beginning to crawl its way out.
My chin rose. “What would the world be if we only did the nice things?”
His mouth softened, and for the first time since I’d pushed the boundaries by reaching for that laptop, I knew we’d stopped playing.
“Now you’re speaking a language I understand.”
* * *
H
E
DIDN
’
T
JOIN
me for dinner.
I ate a chicken Caesar salad that Karim brought up on a tray, on my own. It should’ve been nice. Sunset on the yacht. Sky pink over amethyst sea, warm breeze, and solitude. No Haithem to annoy me. But too much alone time with my brain and all that... I chewed the lettuce. One of my favorite summer meals, made to order.
How’s that for service? Lucky me. Spoiled rotten.
Rotten, all right, because my gaze kept flicking to the stairs, willing Haithem to walk up them. I set down the fork—my salad more tossed than consumed—and went back into the cabin. I fished a can of cola from the fridge and sat on the edge of the bed. A scrap of paper stuck out underneath the bedside table. I set the cola down and picked up the paper and flipped it over.
Blood rushed away from my head, making the cabin dip. The photo of me and Josh on our eighteenth birthday in his Mustang. A time branded in my mind.
A time when we’d actually believed things were looking up. He’d fought and won. We didn’t know that it’d only been a warm-up for the real battle.
I placed the photo facedown on the side table and rubbed my forehead.
I’d sensed this birthday creeping up on me. Felt the days, the weeks, the months ticking by. Yet somehow I’d shut it out. I’d walked past Mum on the phone to the minister, organizing a memorial for our birthday—and it’d gone right over my head. I’d known but let it slide off as though I’d never heard anything at all.
Just as I blocked it out when I walked past his bedroom door. It was only a door. I paid no attention when a Maroon 5 song came on the radio. They were only songs, not songs that used to drift from his room to mine. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see his eyes anymore—they were only my eyes now. I ignored my clenched guts, my hurting chest and my burning eyes. I ignored the desire to cry. I ignored the need I had to scream.
And I did something else.
But now there was nothing else to do. I picked up the cola and drained the can. There was no fresh air in the damn cabin, even with the door open. I walked to the intercom and picked up the receiver.
It rang half a dozen times before Karim answered. “Yes?”
“Put Haithem on the phone.”
Silence met my ear. I hadn’t asked nicely. Couldn’t bring the “please” to my lips. Karim was less of a friend to me than Haithem was.
“Very well.”
I let out a breath and waited.
“Angelina?” His voice was like a balm. It blunted the corners of my edginess.
“Don’t I deserve dessert tonight?”
He laughed softly. “We had dessert for breakfast.”
“Yet I still want dessert now.”
“I’ll see what’s in the kitchen.”
The line clicked, and I hung up the receiver then flopped into one of the chairs and stared at the ceiling. Footsteps padded across the deck, and Haithem walked into the cabin with a covered tray. I rested my elbow on the arm of the chair and my chin in my hand. He slowed, dragging the coffee table in front of me, and then he set the tray on top. He sat on the couch opposite and lifted the lid.
“Lemon meringue pie.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Pity there wasn’t also a tub of ice cream on the tray. Haithem relaxed on the couch. I took the knife and cracked through the meringue top. The knife slid fluidly, catching on the biscuit base. I pushed down, dragged the knife along the bottom of the pie dish, then flipped the knife over and pried up a piece. I laid it on one of the two small plates on the tray.
With the back of the knife, I lifted the meringue top away from the curd and set it on the other plate, slid the meringue part across the table, took the curd plate, then picked up a fork. Haithem made no move to take the plate.