Page 24 of Sinner (Priest 2)
“Hey, Sean,” a low voice says from behind me. I turn to see Scarlett, a pale-skinned, befreckled dancer that I like very much. Her hair matches her name, by the way. Everywhere.
I give her a slow smile. “Hey yourself.”
She’s wearing a silk robe, but she lets the middle gape open as she walks toward me and presses her hands flat to my chest.
“How about a private dance for my big boy?” she purrs.
The city lights twinkling in from outside make her look quite pretty; even so, I can’t help the way my mind wanders to this morning, to Zenny in the sunlight, to Zenny perched on the edge of the counter. To Zenny’s lush mouth and copper-ringed eyes and tiny little nose piercing. To the intoxicating mix of boldness and shyness that Zenny betrays every time she speaks.
I can’t help the way my body follows my mind, my cock reminding me rather churlishly that it’s had no relief since my episode with Zenny this morning, that it’s had nothing but my own hand for the past two weeks.
“How about more than a private dance?” I say, taking Scarlett’s elbow and leading her back to the hallway that leads to the private rooms. “I need to relieve some tension.”
“It’s extra,” Scarlett tells me, looking pleased. “But for you, I’ll throw in a discount.”
We go inside the private room, and Scarlett pushes me onto a small couch, crawling into my lap and tugging at my tie, and I breathe a sigh of relief that has nothing to do with the fact that my neglected cock will soon be getting the attention it needs. (Well, almost nothing to do with it.)
No, I’m relieved because things are back to normal now, after this crazy day. I’ve figured out a way to avoid Zenny, to keep Valdman happy, to keep my promise to Elijah, and now I’m exactly where I should be—relaxing with a glass of scotch and waiting for a warm mouth to make me feel better.
I’m a fixer. I fixed the problem, and now I’m done and I can stop thinking about it.
About her.
Chapter Seven
Except I can’t stop thinking about her.
I can’t stop thinking about her as Scarlett kneels between my legs and makes me feel good. I can’t stop thinking about her as I go back to my penthouse and clean up the dishes Aiden left in my sink. I can’t stop thinking about her as I shower and fall asleep, and then the next day when I go into the office and after, when I help my mom get discharged from the hospital. And the day after that.
And I especially can’t stop thinking about her as I sit in my mother’s infusion room, reading aloud the most recent Wakefield Saga novel, In the Arms of the Disgraced Duke.
“‘And what about my dowry?’” I read. “‘I suppose that means nothing to you?’”
“‘It’s meant nothing since the day I first laid eyes on you,’” I continue, adopting the disgraced duke’s deep baritone. Or at least the deep baritone I presume a disgraced duke would have.
“‘Which day would that be, my grace?’” I say in the young Eleanor Wakefield’s voice. “‘The day I was born and my father promised me to you in order to satisfy his debts with your family? Or the night you first saw me as a grown woman at my coming out?’”
“‘I don’t suppose you’
d believe me if I told you both?’” I read as the duke.
“He’s lying,” the oncology nurse says. “He didn’t think of her as anything but a cash cow until the party at Almack’s.”
“No, no,” Emmett says from the recliner next to Mom. He adjusts the blanket around his legs and sticks up a pale, knobby finger to emphasize his raspy words. “His feelings about her were always complicated, because here was this girl he was betrothed to, but she was too young to do anything but ignore for so many years. But then he lost everything and saw her again in the same week—”
“I think he always felt like he could love her, money aside,” my mom interrupts, waving her bottle of Mountain Dew, “but he didn’t want to fuck her until the party.”
“Mom.”
“What? It’s true.”
“I know it’s true, but—” I make a gesture around the infusion room, where the ten or so people inside are all my mom’s age or older. “We’re in public. And you know…” I lower my voice to a discreet whisper “…the aged.”
“Son, I fought in Vietnam,” Emmett rumbled. “You think I haven’t heard the word fuck before?”
“It’s in the book,” the nurse adds. “I think the duke even says something along the lines of, ‘I want to fuck her right here on the balcony, dowry be damned.’”
“Sean, look at me,” my mother says, and I look at Carolyn Bell. At her slightly-too-wide mouth and her dimples—just like all of my brothers and I have. At the smooth, barely wrinkled lines of her face, rendered unearthly and strange by her lack of eyebrows and eyelashes. At the silk scarf wrapped around what used to be thick chestnut hair and now is nothing but scalp.
