Page 43 of Sinful
“I’m taking you to the back of the boat, where it’s quieter.”
A frisson of fear jangles my nerves. I don’t want to go somewhere quieter. I want to be around people. Witnesses. He's already irate about the thirty million. He was furious even before realizing there was no ransom. Will two million dollars be enough to keep me alive? I don’t know. I keep trying to guess what he and the others will do, but so far they’ve taken all my expectations and twisted them. I let my free hand trace the railing, ready to grab it if Josh makes any sudden move to throw me over. Then we’re moving away from it and the only thing I have to hold on to is Josh.
The music seems so far away now and the lapping of the water is louder. Beneath my feet, the deck hums with the purring of the engines. It’s almost ironic that I’m on a boat because I’ve never felt more adrift.
“Why did you bring me here, Josh?”
He doesn’t answer. For a second I wonder if he’s left me alone, and this was his master plan all along, but then I hear his breathing.
“Are you going to kill me?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I regret them.
He moves closer to me, pinning my back against a wall, his body thrust against mine. I don’t know if he’s trying to scare me or intimidate me or if he’s going to kiss me. All I can think is that I won’t fall over the side like this. It’s of little consequence.
“I should kill you,” he snarls, taking my arm and raising above my head, pinning it to the wall like he’s done with the rest of his body. “After what you did to me.”
“I still don’t know what you are talking about,” I whimper as his fingers dig into my wrist. I feel his erection pressing up into my stomach and it horrifies me that this is turning him on.
“Of course. Why would you remember something as insignificant as telling all my family’s secrets to your daddy, so he could take my parents' company effectively leaving me penniless?”
My mouth falls open. “I don’t know what you are talking about. She... I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t.”
My mind goes back to when I was fifteen. The weeks of tears and pain. Hearing about Josh’s parent’s deaths, my father taking his company. “How could you think I’d do something like that? I loved you.”
His grip tightens on my wrist. I want to cry out. but I promised I’d show him no more of my tears. I wasn’t expecting this, though. Of all the things I expected tonight would bring, this is far from anything I imagined.
“What the fuck do you know about love? You dumped me. You threw me away like trash,” he accuses, the words laced with bitterness.
I shake my head. He’s so wrong. That wasn’t what happened. Not in the way he thinks.
“I stopped seeing you because I wanted to protect you.”
He snorts. “Protect me?” His voice is dripping in anger and if it wasn’t for the party being so far away and the music so loud, I’d be worried that someone would hear us. It’s obviously not a concern of his as his voice gets louder with each syllable until he’s shouting in my ear. “Protect me from what, Sin? Protect me from you? From kissing you?”
My heart pounds as he kisses my neck. It’s not gentle like the way he caressed my face in the apartment. It’s harsh and hard. “Protect me from touching you?” his hand slips down the top of my dress and finds a nipple. He squeezes it so hard I have to bite my lip to stop from crying out. “Stop me from fucking you?”
“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 sorts 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,” he grits out. “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…” I flatter, reliving one of the worst times of my life. “To one of my father’s friends. I wasn’t given a choice in the matter.” 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, “ I whisper, “and I knew you couldn’t win against him. 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. “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 you reappeared.”
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