Page 1 of Room Twenty-Three: Tangled & Teased

Club Sin Rules

Chapter 1

Erin

“Lickthoselipsandblow...” I raise my eyes to my cousin Lydia, and shake my head as she smirks. “... and make a wish!” She holds a small cupcake to my mouth. The single flame of the candle flickers on the top.

I purse my lips and breathe out, causing the flame to rock before it disappears in a puff of billowing smoke.

“Happy birthday, Erin!” Lia shouts. “What did you wish for?”

“For something exciting to happen to me,” I say.

My life is boring. I’m a trainee accountant, working for my father in his company, when I wanted to be a ballet dancer. But my tits got too big, my thighs and ass too round, and the moment my ballet instructor gave me the talk that I could continue dancing, but it should only be for fun—I quit.

It was hard to hear that my figure didn’t fit anymore; but I know there’s no way of turning my five feet four inches filled with curves into something long and lean. Especially when I’m not prepared to give up eating.

Lia takes my hand, rubbing her palm over the top. “You can do whatever you want to. You’re twenty-one years old. Travel the world. In fact, we should go together. Change your flight to a round-the-world ticket and follow me to Vegas and Mexico. I have my rooms paid for and the two of us can go traveling afterwards.”

“With what? The two of us have no money,” I say over the beat of the music coming from the gazebo where the alcohol and food are. “My father will cancel my credit cards.”

“You don’t need your father’s money. We can go to Europe... Marbella... Ibiza... I can work in the bars. You can dance in the cages.”

“I don’t wanna dance,” I whisper. It isn’t true. I’d love to dance but not at the expense of eating salad every day.

“Then we can both work in the bars.”

I know Lia is desperate to travel the world. She keeps bringing it up in conversation that we only need a round-the-world ticket and a bit of spending money and we’re ready to go.

Really, I should take her up on the offer.

Lia surprises me. She’s braver than I would be in the same circumstances. Her life altering experience changed her entire outlook on life.

I smile as I gaze around at my old friends from school. I never thought I’d be spending my birthday here. Now I’m glad I jumped at the offer to fly home to Queensland for my twenty-first birthday.

London is where I live, but Australia is my home, even though prior to now, I haven’t been home for nearly three years.

I’m happy that Lia and Lydia rallied my old school friends into celebrating my birthday at the Gold Coast’s Surfers Paradise beach. Though, I can’t believe how everyone has changed from students to workers in such a small-time.

I look at Lia, wishing I could take her up on the traveling offer, but I can’t. “I need to go back to London.”

Lia nods. “I understand.”

She doesn’t really understand, but she has enough worries and things going wrong in her life. She doesn’t need me to voice my burdens. That my father is being pressured into becoming more than an accountant for the Mafia. Men, I thought we escaped when we moved to London.

But no. My father took his problems with him.

I see and hear his concerns every day. Worse, I’ve seen the bookkeeping, and I know he is treading on ever-thinning ice. To be honest, I don’t know what the heck he is thinking.

Stop thinking about it.

Sand splatters against my back. I turn to see my cousin Lydia, grinning. “Do you want sex on the beach for your birthday?”

I grin. “I should be so lucky.”

She thrusts a plastic cup into my hand and smirks. “You are today. Here you go.”

“Haha. I’d prefer the real thing.”

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