Page 38 of Penance

I cross and re-cross my ankles, wriggling my toes inside my fishnet socks. I repainted my chipped toenails, black to red. As scarlet as blood, the rich colour makes me think of oozing insides and bloodied knives and all things gruesome and nice. It was an obvious choice.

“You’re upside down,” he states solemnly, as though I, myself, am unaware of my current position.

My back flat on the seat, thighs pressed against the back of the white couch, the top of the seat supporting the backs of my knees, feet upright in the air. My head hangs off the edge of the cushion, long silver hair trailing over the floor. I honestly don’t see the issue if I’m comfortable, I’m not hurting anybody.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I mock in my best sergeant major voice.

Slapping my book down on the floor beside my head, saluting him stiffly with two fingers, my brow drawn, eyes hard. His sea-blue eyes narrow on me, wrinkling at the corners. I try not to look directly at them, although I could paint you a picture of their colour just from memory. I’m intimately familiar with everything about this man. Instead, I focus on his nose or his eyebrows, sometimes his lips, I can’t look at those for long either, they’re too perfect.

God, I hate him.

I continue with my book, sipping on my shake. Kacey says I fill my body with too much crap. He’s been trying to get me to drink his weird puke-looking protein shakes.

I told him they taste like grass.

He laughed.

I wasn’t joking.

Anyway, whilst Kacey’s at the garage, being a sexy, grease covered mechanic, I’m consuming as many full fat vanilla shakes as I can cram in. You know, to balance out all thehealthyshit he’ll make me eat later. Poor Hazel will start to think she’s out of a job, not that I ever eat much of what she cooks anyway. Huxley just likes food. He’s currently out getting me little vanilla yogurts. I’m certain they wouldn’t taste the same if anyone else were to buy them.

“You’re so fucking weird, divvy bitch,” Max grunts, finally stepping fully into the room, his heavy boots carrying him over to the wet bar in the corner.

“Ooo, I haven’t heard that one before,” I sass back with a dismissive shake to my head, although, any insult from Maddox Sharpe cuts me a little.

I secretly follow him with my eyes. Cataloguing the way his shoulders tense as he passes by my place on the couch, relaxing again when he’s a safe distance away. He shrugs his leather jacket off, hooking it over the back of a bar stool. Leaning over the sink he washes his hands, he dips low, splashing his face. Running wet hands through his flop of thick black hair, pushing it back off his face. The taps going off, standing, he dries his hands on the bottom of his t-shirt. The rough action revealing a sliver of tattooed skin, giving me a peak at those delicious dimples in his lower back.

“Why are you so grumpy, Maddox? What’s up your arse?” I ponder loudly, “or is it the lack of something up there? Which is it? I can certainly help with the latter,” I sing-song my offer, batting my lashes as he turns sharply to scowl at me.

His bulbs of turquoise narrowing, his lip curling into a snarl.

“Oh! Not into arse play, Maddox? Whoops! Sorry! My mistake!” I fake giggle, once again turning my attention back to my book.

Not that the book is very interesting, it’s one of Jacob’s. One of the only ones I could find on the top of some of Jacob’s unpacked boxes currently residing in one of my spare rooms. I would have dug a bit deeper, but it was kind of exhausting riffling through all his stuff with only one hand. I wish he’d just fucking move in downstairs already and take all his crap with him. Why he feels the need to take up an entire room with boxes full of old paperwork and shitty books is beyond me.

Anyway, the book’s about boats, I’m sure it’s great if you like boats. Not that I have anything against them, obviously, I mean, they get people places and stuff. So that’s, urr, helpful? God, I need something else to fucking read.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” he spits.

I tuck my lips between my teeth to stop myself grinning at him like the maniac we both know I am.

“I doooooo,” I hum, lazily rolling my eyes back over to his. Hiding the fact that my breathe catches every time I look at him, even upside down he’s fucking beautiful. “But I’m not allowed to do them, soooo,” I shrug my shoulders gently, going back to my book.

“Sooo,” he mocks in a high-pitched tone that sounds nothing like my own. “You’re just gunna sulk and hang upside down on the sofa?”

“I’m not sulking,” I inform him. “And there’s nothing wrong with the way I’m sitting,” smooth voice remaining calm even as my irritation spikes.

“Oh, you’re not?” he chuckles, the piss-taking sound making me grit my teeth. “Sure seems like you’ve got your knickers in a twist, Princess,” he hisses from behind the bar.

I slam my book down onto the couch beside my thigh, huffing out an exhausted breath, hating the fact he can get to me so easily.

“Okay, what do you want, Maddox? Hmm? You’ve got my unwavering attention, what do you want?”

“Me?Want? Nothing,” he chimes innocently, making my eyes pinch tightly.

“Nothing?” I mimic back to him. My glare finally making its way up to his face, -his chin to be exact- “you’ve worked this hard to get my attention. You’ve got it, and now you wantnothing?”

“Oh, no, I already got what I wanted,” he says quietly, his all too familiar deep timbre wrapping me up so tightly in heat, I want to scream.

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