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“Josh. Don’t do this,” I cry out, pushing him away.
“You think too much of yourself,” he snarls, pulling back. “Not everyone in this world wants to fuck you.”
I let out a long breath, then inhale. I feel dizzy and sick. “I dumped you because we were ready to take our relationship to the next level.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Sex.” I feel my cheeks warm as I say it aloud. I’m pretty sure we’re alone due to what Josh was shouting at me, but I don’t know for sure. We could be surrounded by people listening into our conversation, and I wouldn’t hear them over the thrum of the engines. “We were going to have sex for the first time.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then. “So fucking what? Don’t tell me you were scared? I didn’t want to hurt you. Not back then, anyway. You wanted it just as much as I did. If I remember rightly... which I fucking do, we were waiting until you turned sixteen.” He snorts a sad laugh out, and I cringe. “It’s not like you haven’t fucked pretty much every man who’s laid eyes on you since.”
His venom is spewing all over me and I want to be anywhere than here, having this conversation. “I wasn’t scared for me. I was scared for you.”
“I was a fifteen-year-old boy. Almost sixteen. Fucking you was literally the only thing I thought about for months. Spare me the bullshit.”
I swallow back, the memories burning my throat. I don’t want to be having this conversation. I don’t even want to think about the abuses of my past. It’s still all so raw. “You remember the bruises, the marks on my skin? The day before I split up with you was the day after I lost my virginity... to one of my father’s friends. I wasn’t given a choice in the matter. My father practically sold my virginity to the highest bidder.” I almost choke the last few words out as I remember the cruelty, the unending pain. The devastation. “I split up with you because I knew you’d try to hurt my father and I knew you couldn’t win. You couldn’t back then and you can’t now.”
I hear a noise I can’t quite fathom, but I know it’s Josh. He’s hit something or kicked something. I don’t know whether he’s angry at me or for me, but either way, his anger isn’t helping either of our situations. “I never told my father any of your secrets. You weren’t the only child. I’d literally just turned sixteen. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. why my father would let his friends do that.” I know I’m crying in front of him despite my declaration to myself earlier that I wouldn’t. My chest heaves with thick breaths and I’m practically choking out the words. “I didn’t care for business then and I don’t now. I only cared about you. When your parents died, I wanted to call you, but by then, my father had passed me around to all his friends and I was trapped. The only way I knew how to escape was to become famous. I auditioned for everything, all under the watchful eye of my father and his team. I’ve not had one minute out from under his gaze since you left. Not until the day I ran away and you reappeared.”
36
NIX
It’s like a sucker punch to the gut. I always knew her father was a psycho bastard, and I knew he beat her. She couldn’t hide the bruises as well as she wanted to. Fifteen-year-old me never mentioned them because it was clear she never wanted to talk about it. I should have done something. Said something. A surge of anger rushes my body. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to slam my fist down the fucker’s throat so far I rip his bowels out through his mouth.”
“You won’t get near him. The best thing you can do is let me go and forget I ever existed.”
She’s so fucking beautiful it hurts. I’ve spent the last week wanting to hurt her. To do unspeakable things for what she did to me and now I find out it was her father all along. I slam my fist down hard on the wall of the yacht, making her jump. She’s trembling and I don’t know whether it’s from cold or fear. Fear which I’ve caused. Hatred like nothing I’ve ever felt before envelops me, but not for her fuck of a father.
For me.
Fuck. She should have told me. I would have... I let the thought trail off. I would have done something stupid and blown it just like she said I would. But that was then. I’m no longer a fifteen year old boy.
I pull off my jacket and wrap it round her shoulders. I’m not going to let her go. Never again. I won’t let her out of my sight for a second. Not with her father out looking for her. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make him pay, and I won’t let him lay one finger on her again.
“Here you both are.” I turn to find Ed with his arm around the current supermodel-du-jour. “I thought you’d got up to mischief.” Ed gives me a pointed look. No doubt because of what I said to him earlier. “Come and join the party. My dear, do you like Mojitos? Irena, my bartender, makes the best in the whole of Manhattan.”
I’m forced to watch Ed putting his spare hand round her shoulders and guiding her away from me. I know he’s looking out for me and making sure I don’t do something reckless, but right now, I’d push both him and the model over the side for another second, alone with Sin. I pull out a cigarette and begin to follow them. When he gets to the front of the ship, I flick it over the side. I don’t need to smoke, I need a much headier drug. I need Sin. I need her more now than I’ve ever needed her. The want and desperate need is clawing at me.
The model peels away as Ed introduces Sin to Irena. I stay back and watch as she takes a sip of the mojito that’s passed to her. There’s a look of pure joy on her face, as though she’s never tasted a mojito in her life. It’s a stark contrast to the look in her eyes when she was talking to me. I lean against the rail and watch her. I can’t hear what she and Ed are talking about, but she’s laughing. It occurs to me that I’ve not seen her laugh so freely since we were teens. It’s like a massive weight has been lifted from her shoulders, feeing her from a massive burden. I want her. I want what I’ve always wanted, but now it’s different. I want to watch her first. I want to remember how it felt having her in my arms before all the bullshit of the world slammed down on us.
“Hey gorgeous. Wanna party?” It’s the model that was previously hanging onto Ed. Heavenly or some other weird name. She holds up a line of coke on a mirror and gives me a sly wink. Once upon a time I’d have snorted the coke off her stomach, but those days have passed. “No.”
“Your loss,” she purrs, drifting her hand over my crotch as she walks away. If only Mercier and Dacre could see me now, passing up premium pussy. “Fuck!” I let out a low breath and head back out to the deck, where it’s slightly quieter. I pull out my phone and see fifteen missed phone calls from Dacre and Mercier, and a number of text messages, probably from them, too. I don’t even have time to dial before my screen light up again. Dacre is calling. I press answer.
“She’s here with me,” I grunt into the phone.
“What the fuck, man? Where are you? We’ve been looking for you half the night!”
I roll my eyes. “It’s ten o’clock. Don’t exaggerate. We’re on Ed’s yacht. He’s throwing a party. She’s safe.” I glance back around and see her through the open door. She’s talking to a woman I recognize from one of the soaps Sin likes to watch. Her smile lights up the room.
“Look, I’ve gotta go.”
“Wait!” Dacre’s voice practically screeches through the phone, his British accent lost in the hysterics. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’ve taken her to a party?”
“I wouldn’t be the first,” I say irritably.
I hear Mercier snorting in the back ground as Dacre speaks again. “I had to. If this all goes tits up and we don’t get the thirty mill, I need to have something to fall back on unless you and Mercier want to get off your asses and find a job.”
