Page 26 of Sinners Reunion

King raises an eyebrow.

Okay, not totally bored. What happened in that RV was pretty not boring, but I’m not about to make a habit of it.

Not a regular habit, anyway. Just an occasional one. Maybe.

Cat checks her watch. “We’ll be competing in about eight hours, so if anyone needs their beauty sleep, better get on it now.”

“All you need is a catnap, kitten,” Bennett says with a smack to her butt.

She giggles and walks off, giving him a look over her shoulder that he can’t refuse. He rises and trots after her, a man in love.

God, I want that.

It’s a common misconception that sex addicts are horrible people who lack any ounce of ability to maintain a monogamous relationship. I may be a horrible person, but I’ll be damned if I can’t be loyal to someone. I masturbate to the thought of sucking the same dick every night. Are you kidding me? Monogamy is the stuff my wet dreams are made of.

Unfortunately, the only man I’ve ever desired to commit to had zero desire of a similar nature. Even now, our inner workings fail to align.

He only went down on me to win a bet with Jim. I’m a smart girl, and I figured it out fairly quickly. In fact, I knew what he meant as soon as he told his friend he’d lost. I once watched him arm-wrestle a three-year-old little boy because the child’s father bet King five dollars he couldn’t beat him.

This was at a charity event.

The “bets” were actually donations for cancer research.

King was meant to lose—a cute gimmick/photo-op the event organizer thought everyone would naturally understand. Well, she underestimated the pull of a bet on this man.

Did King lose? No. He grinned at that little boy and pinned his tiny little fist in record time. The child cried. Wept actual tears. King still stood and collected his five-dollar winnings like an absolute cad. And that’s where you’d think the story would end, right?

But it’s not. Because what he did next was just a small thread in the fabric of our early tapestry. It’s just a tiny glimpse of how he pulled me closer and closer until I thought I saw a picture forming in the weaver’s loom.

He pulled out his wallet, tucked those ten ones inside, and pulled out a bank envelope. I don’t know how much was inside, and I never asked, but it was enough to put a smile on both the man’s and the director’s faces. With those two satisfied, he turned his attention to the disgruntled child. He marched back to the table, rolled up his shirt sleeve, and plonked his elbow onto the surface.

The baffled child stopped crying, purely out of shock, and when King motioned for him to arm-wrestle him once more, the child shook his head.

People had gathered around to see the spectacle by this point—far more than had seen him beat the child. I felt a shock of pride rush through me when he leaned over the table and told the kid he couldn’t win every time, but he had to keep trying. I’d said that same thing to him only the night before when he couldn’t get me to reach that illusive tenth orgasm.

It hadn’t helped King’s ego, but it soothed the little boy. He nodded and put up his tiny arm. King took his hand, and the match began. This time, the win went the other way, and my heart felt a shock for a different reason.

At that point, I knew so little about him. Pretty much only that he was attractive, violent, and could fuck. We were at a cancer-research event so that we could murder one of the attendees, for fuck’s sake, so I was well aware that he wasn’t morally sound. I knew he worked as a fed and that his accent made me buy stock in panty liners.

But this? Learning that he was also generous and kind, that behind that gruff exterior there might be a little something softer?

That was the beginning of the end for us.

There was romance five years ago. There were flirtations, longing looks, and the beginnings of something real. The threads were mostly mine, but he wove some as well. He can pretend it was all an act, but what we shared was something special.

Now I’m forced to pretend it wasn’t.

“Guess I’d better hit the sack too,” Blayne says. He scuffs his cowboy boot through the dirt. “You coming, Pick?”

The bald man shakes his head. “Nah. Charity’s already fast asleep, and a little beauty sleep ain’t doing me any good.” He shakes the silver can of beer in his hand. “Besides, me and this little guy have business to attend to.”

He opens the can, and hot beer spews all over him.

And me.

“Fuck,” I whisper as I hold my s’more away from the disaster. But it’s too late. It was soaked too.

“Sorry,” Lice Pick says. “I don’t think things through sometimes.”