Sinners' Playground

by Caroline Peckham

  ***

  Dawn broke through the sky like gold paint spilling across a canvas. I was up on Carnival Hill, gazing down at the glistening water from the seat of my truck, my phone as silent as the grave.

  Gone.

  She was gone.

  She’d slipped through my fingers like sand, silent and inevitable. Yet my heart refused to let go this time. There was no choice in it like there had been before. When I’d stood on Devil’s Pass as a sixteen year old boy and told her to run. I could still feel the cracks in my heart that were left there from that day.

  I wished I could reach into the past and rip that fucking day from existence. I wanted to change the thread fate had spun for us and spin us a new one. A life where we’d all just stayed together and none of the fucked up shit had happened to us.

  But I was stuck in this new reality where Rogue hated me, where my brother had become my sworn enemy, where so much blood had been washed from my hands that I’d long since forgotten the moment I’d become a monster just like my father.

  There’d been a time I’d tried to fight that. I’d never wanted to end up like him. A man I hated. Who had forged me in his image and handed me the baton to run his crew in his place. I had vowed to be better. But I wasn’t. I’d done just as many dark and twisted things as he had. And now I knew why he’d done them too.

  I curled my hands around the steering wheel as tiredness gnawed at my brain and I scraped through every option I had left to me. There was one thing I knew wasn’t an option though. Because it hadn’t ever been an option in all the years since Rogue had been gone. I wouldn’t give up searching for her.

  Even after JJ and Chase had finally stopped looking and I’d sworn I had too, I’d never really meant it. I may have called off my men from the hunt. But I’d still sought her out in every woman I’d claimed. I’d found something in them that reminded me of her, a piece I wanted to carve out of them and keep. The way they smiled or laughed, the shape of their eyes or nose, the way they spoke their mind, or gazed at the sea like it held a million possibilities in its depths. I had tried to find my Rogue in fractures of all of them. But all along, I knew I was fooling myself. And by the time I’d had my fill of them, they lost their appeal. I could no longer see the pieces of Rogue I thought I’d found in them. She was an illusion, always alluding me, tempting me into a stranger’s eyes only to leave me high and dry when I tried to dig her out of them. So to lose her again when I had found the real thing after all this time was unimaginable.

  I was well aware I wasn’t thinking straight, let alone acting straight since she’d been back. But I’d always known the sacrifices would be high to hold onto her if she ever returned. My mind was the least of my worries.

  I sat there until the sun had fully risen and scrubbed at my eyes, starting the truck and turning down the dusty track that led up here through the trees. I’d walked this path a thousand times in my youth. We’d hung out on Carnival Hill all the time, played in the woods, watched the sun set over the water. In a few months, the carnival would come with a circus and music, games and rides. I’d once won Rogue a hummingbird keyring just like the tattoo on my inner arm on the miniature rifle range. I remembered laying with her on the beach after, her fingers wound between mine as we gazed up at a moon which had seemed impossibly large.

  “Do you prefer the night or the day?” she asked and my thumb skated across her knuckles.

  “The night,” I answered.

  “Why?” She rolled toward me, our fingers becoming unclasped. I took the cigarette from her mouth, smirking as I toked on it.

  “Because anything seems possible in the dark,” I answered as I released a line of smoke and it coiled away on the wind.

  “What would you do if anything was possible, Fox?” she whispered conspiratorially, leaning closer so her coconut scent reached me.

  I’d keep you as mine.

  “That’s a secret,” I told her, falling down onto my back as she tried to wrestle the cigarette from my hand while I laughed.

  My secret hadn’t changed. Only I didn’t care to keep it quiet anymore. Maybe if I’d been brave enough to say it back then, everything could have been different.

  I wouldn’t be shy about my intentions for her now. We’d already lost too much time together. My heart had been too hollow for too long, and now she was slipping away again right under my watch.

  I drove down to the main road and headed back toward Harlequin House, but before I got there, JJ called.

  “Did you find her?” I demanded as I answered, my heart thundering against my ribcage.

  “Yeah, get down to Sunset Beach, just off the end of The Mile,” he said and relief crashed through me like a fucking tsunami.

  “On my way,” I said, hanging up and speeding through a stop sign.

  She hadn’t left town. She may have run, but she wasn’t gone. And that surely had to mean she was staying regardless of what she thought of me or the others.

  Maybe she wanted to put down roots in the soil she’d grown up on. And maybe that meant I had time to change her mind about being mine. Not that I was gonna give her a whole lot of fucking choice in the matter. And the girl was in serious trouble for being an ungrateful little brat right now. But first, I just needed to see that she was okay before I went volcanic on her ass.

  She was turning me into one hell of an unpredictable bastard and it made me feel all kinds of uneasy. My ways were set in stone. I had systems and rules and the fucking code to think about. But with her, it all just went tits up. She’d only been back in my life a week and I was already losing the plot, trying to hold onto her with all I had. But the fear of losing her was just too fucking raw. It didn’t matter if it was ten years ago, nothing had healed the loss of her. She’d owned my heart this entire time and it didn’t matter if it was just a bloody lump of meat that had been carved up by a butcher because of her absence. It was still beating, so it was still hers. And even after it stopped it would remain hers until it was nothing but ash in her palm.

  I started to stew as I raced along the roads, the morning brightening up all the dark spaces in this end of town, but it couldn’t chase away the monsters that lived here. We were always in plain view, night or day, bad deeds trailing in our wake. Mine were miles long and painted a picture of me which had children and adults alike cowering in their beds. I was a living nightmare that reminded everyone to fall in line with my crew or they might just find themselves as bait for the sharks out in the deep blue sea with a fishhook in their thigh. My enemies were those who disobeyed the laws I laid out. For no empire was great without order. And this town was mine to rule. So I ruled it well.

  I headed down The Mile and turned off the road down a track that led onto the beach intended for emergency vehicles, the unmade road making my truck jostle as I took the bumps at speed, anxious to reach my girl. I was getting more angry at her by the second, furious that she’d show me up like this.

  My worry that she was gone was fast fading into something I knew far better. Rage. And when my temper took me, I tended to be a savage asshole who took no fucking prisoners. But I planned on making an exception this time. Because I sure as shit was going to be leaving this beach with one prisoner. It was time Rogue learned that there were consequences for messing with the king of this town.

  The wheels of my truck hit sand and I slowed to a halt, gazing out at the surfers on the water catching the morning tide. There was a smoking bonfire in the distance and a bunch of passed out people lying around it. Among them was a girl with rainbow hair sitting with her knees pulled up as she pulled off her shirt to reveal a tiny baby blue bikini top.

  I slammed my foot to the accelerator, my focus pinned on her as I drove across the beach like a fucking maniac. Some of the surfers had to leap out of my way and they got a face full of sand as the huge wheels spat it back at them. A few of the people sleeping near Rogue woke up, spotting the oncoming vehicle and scrambling to their feet, running for their fucking lives. Rogue looke
d to me, her lips popping open, but she didn’t move. Not a fucking inch.

  I pulled the parking brake, half doughnutting the truck as I spun the wheel and coming to a firm halt several feet from her. I shoved my door open and got out before tossing it closed behind me, taking in a deep breath of the morning air as I marched toward her.

  She gazed coolly up at me as I came to a stop in front of her, my shadow consuming her as her little dog yapped furiously at me.

  “Good morning, Badger,” she said airily, reaching into a sports bag beside her and calmly taking out a bottle of sunscreen. “Help a girl out? I don’t wanna burn.” She reached behind her back and I choked on my own breath as she yanked on the bikini string, undoing it so the bikini top slipped forward. Half a second before her tits spilled out, I did the only thing I could think of and leapt on her. I crushed her down onto the towel she’d apparently slept on, baring my teeth in her face.

  “Hey!” she yelled.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, so close to her that I could count every eyelash framing her large navy blue eyes. The curves of her near naked body pressed to mine and I could feel that the bikini top had slid down so her bare breasts were crushed against my chest. Her nipples were hard and her widening eyes told me she’d noticed it too. So I smirked, gripping her jaw in a tight hold as my cock jerked to attention in my pants.

  “Get the fuck off of me,” she growled and I reached between us, my fingers grazing over her soft flesh and getting me rock hard for her as I searched for the bikini top.

  “You don’t get your tits out in front of strangers,” I ordered her and her lips popped open indignantly.

  “Firstly, I wasn’t. I was making sure you could put the sunscreen on my back and not miss the fucking strap line. And secondly, I can get naked anywhere I want because I’m not your damn property. But I wouldn’t get naked for you if you paid me.”

  My fingers grazed over her flesh as I ignored her and her palm crashed against my cheek. I growled irritably before finding the slips of material and manoeuvring them up over her breasts, keeping her concealed as I did so. I tied the knot firmly behind her neck as she continued to struggle which only meant she was grinding on me harder and was getting a feel for every inch of me.

  I was seriously fucking satisfied when I returned my gaze to her face and realised she was blushing. She clenched her jaw though and anger pulsed in her eyes while I took in her pinking cheeks with a thirst that would never be sated.

  “Well enjoy standing up and showing everyone your boner for me, asshole,” she said in a sharp tone that contradicted her blush and I rolled my eyes.

  “As if I give a fuck that everyone knows my girl turns me on.” I got up and headed back to my truck in search for some clothes I could put on her, but when I came up short, I pulled my own shirt off and turned back to her. Finding her fucking gone.

  I clutched my shirt in a death grip as my eyes fell on her ass hanging out of the bikini bottoms which were apparently a fucking thong as she walked past the smoking bonfire. She started talking to some of JJ’s girls from the club as they returned from the water with their boards under their arms. She took a long purple board from Diane and jogged towards the water, giving me no option but to wait here for her.

  Her dog sat on her towel, looking like it was guarding it from me, especially since the little bastard was glaring right at me.

  Did she sleep here all night like a fucking hobo? What did she expect me to do, just let her live on the streets? Maybe a night sleeping rough had knocked some fucking sense into her and she’d gladly dive into my truck and come home with me just as soon as she was done surfing. I took out my phone to call JJ, wondering where the fuck he was, but was saved the bother when he came running out of the water with Chase, their boards tucked under their arms.

  “Nice to know you’ve been enjoying yourselves,” I gritted out. “Did you just pop back home for your boards and shit before you even bothered to call to let me know you’d found her?”

  “Chill, bro,” JJ laughed. “I got Piston to grab our shit and bring it down here for us. We never took our eyes off of her, I swear. We kept an eye on her from the ocean.”

  “What if she’d run off again?” I growled.

  “Then we’d all be back to living the good life,” Chase muttered, walking on past me and I watched him go with a scowl as he reached the edge of the beach where Piston’s truck was parked up with the man himself smoking behind the wheel as he watched the surfers.

  Chase rested his board against the truck, pulling off his wetsuit and leaving it to dry on the hood so the artwork of Sunset Cove on his back gleamed wetly in the morning light. His dark red trunks were soaked through and more than one girl was staring at him as he took his pack of smokes from the car and walked back toward us, lighting one up.

  JJ stripped out of his suit too, hanging it to dry on my truck before he moved to stand beside me, looking out to the water where Rogue was diving under the waves with her board to get beyond the break. My teeth ground in my mouth as I watched her round ass disappear.

  She turned her board around and started paddling as a wave built up behind her, her arms carving through the water as she fought to catch it and as it pushed her forward, she jumped up, her knees bending as she rode the wave, looking like a fucking dream as I just stood and stared at her toned body tensing and flexing, forgetting everything as I just fucking watched.

  She was smiling so brightly that I swear it made my heart skip a beat and I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been able to get out on the water much wherever she’d been for the last ten years. We’d all used to joke that she should have been born a mermaid because she was so obsessed with the sea, and I really hoped she’d at least had this wherever she’d been.

  Her little bikini was garnering her a lot of attention and my eyes flipped over to the assholes she’d been out here with last night as several of the guys elbowed each other, pointing her out in the water.

  I stuck my fingers in my mouth, whistling for her and as her eyes met mine, I beckoned her in, my possessive anger raking bloody claw marks across my insides. I itched to put a bullet in the skull of every man staring at her. And as I started striding toward the water with the intention of dragging her ass back into my arms, she flipped me off with both fingers.

  “Rogue!” I bellowed, my head snapping around to take in the wolf whistling guys as my brain came close to combusting. Anyone who saw me promptly shut the fuck up, but my gaze locked on one asshole in particular who had his phone out, recording her.

  Carter Jenson. The hippy junkie douchebag with his harem pants and cuntbag attitude.

  I tore my attention away from him and waded out into the sea, swimming for Rogue as soon as I got deep enough. She wasn’t fast enough to escape me. I upended her board with a sharp tug on the nose of it and she screamed as she fell under the waves. I shoved the board behind me, letting it sail back to shore as I caught her waist and clutched her against me to shield her body from view.

  “Let me go you psycho!” she shouted, clawing at my back as I flattened her against the plain of my chest. She wasn’t nearly strong enough to fight me off as I waded back to shore and caught her wrists, pinning them at the base of her spine. She sank her teeth into my shoulder and I groaned, unable to help liking that as I walked her up to my truck and JJ helpfully opened the door for me. I dumped her inside, climbing in after her and JJ tossed my shirt into the footwell, laughing his fucking head off.

  I grabbed it and dragged it over her head while she kicked and screamed and writhed, but I wasn’t letting her go anywhere until she covered herself the fuck up.

  “If you wanna stay here with your friends then put the fucking shirt on or I’m taking you home this second,” I snapped and she stilled in shock.

  “You can’t treat me like a child,” she hissed, her body writhing beneath me and the scent of sea salt clinging to her flesh.

  “I can if you behave like one,” I
shot back. “What the fuck kind of stunt was that? You were trying to bait me.”

  She narrowed her gaze then her eyes became hooded and she wet her lips. Her legs curled around me, drawing me flush against her body and my breathing came heavier as I considered how she might like being fucked on the bench of my truck. No one would question who she belonged to ever again if they heard her screaming my name.

  “No Fox, I didn’t want to bait you,” she purred and my throat thickened as my gaze fell to her full lips, my dick grinding into the thin material of her bikini bottoms through my jeans, but it was all too much material for my liking. “I wanted to remind you that I’m not yours. And you can’t tell me what the fuck to do.” She slammed her forehead into mine and I cursed as I reared back while she tried to wriggle free and open the door behind her.

  But she wasn’t getting away that easily. I clutched her hair in my grip, just tight enough to restrain her and she unhooked her legs from my waist, though the panting breaths leaving her were an obvious giveaway to how much she wanted me. So why couldn’t she just fucking admit it? Who cared if she hated me? She’d get over it once I was inside her making her scream.

  “Do you wanna stay here and play with your friends?” I asked again and she locked her lips tight together. “Then I guess I’m taking you home.” I got off of her and she sat up, shaking her head, looking just as agonisingly tempting in my shirt as she had without it.

  “No,” she blurted. “I wanna stay.”

  I pressed my tongue into my cheek, stepping out of the truck. “Test me again and you’ll regret it,” I warned and she nodded, though I didn’t trust that innocent look for shit. I guessed I was soft for this girl though. I didn’t give second chances to anyone, let alone third or fourth chances. I mean, I was still considering a mass killing spree on this beach for anyone who had looked at her out on the water. But as I didn’t fancy spending the rest of my life in prison, I only had one particular asshole in my sights right now.