Sins & Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1) (32 page)

His gaze was starting to eat away at my insides. Razor-blade butterflies whirled in my heart.

  “I hate you, Ellie Watt,” he whispered, lips coming closer to mine, “because I still love you after all these years.”

Shock seized me first, the butterflies shredding me to pieces. Then he grabbed my face and kissed me, hard. His lips devoured mine as our mouths pressed
against each other in a painful frenzy. It was fire itself, our tongues and lips fanning the flames, our teeth nipping each other like sparks. I ran my hands up and down the back of his head, over his shoulders and back, pulling him to me; I couldn’t get close enough. He reached down and pulled my dress up over my waist, leaving me bare, my legs straddling him.

With one hand he began thumbing my clit, rubbing me until I was slick with desire and throbbing for release. He kissed, licked
, and bit down my neck. With each groan, his hot breath flared against my skin. Once he reached my lacy neckline, he grabbed it with both hands and ripped it straight down the middle. My designer dress was left in tatters as it fell off my shoulders, leaving me naked. I didn’t care.

He worked his way down my chest and stomach, then buried his head in my cleft. He ran his tongue down the insides of my thighs, teasing me until I was grabbing his hair and forcin
g his dripping mouth onto my clit. He obliged with a grunt and I moaned in response, my back arching into him.

Just when I was about to come, he pulled his tongue away. He deftly unzipped his pants and positioned his cock into my opening. I was more than ready. I grabbed him by the ass and back and thrust him into me. I wrapped my legs around him, holding him until he was
deep, deep inside. I ignored the pain from the tattoo and just kept him as close to me as possible while he started pumping in and out of me, my hips in his vice-like grip. He worked faster, harder, and was pounding me back into the hood, deepening the dent. I’d never been fucked so thoroughly before; I felt like I was going to meld into the metal.

“Fuck!” I cried out as we came together, my yelping cries soaring high into the desert sky, joining those of coyotes. He came hard into me, his fingers digging into my ass as he pumped his load into my spasming body. My convulsions milked him dry until he collapsed on top of me, pressing me to the hood. It felt deliciously cold against my hot and sweaty bare back.

We lay like that for a few minutes until the chill got to us. He pulled up and ran a finger over my lips. I kissed it, smiling, enjoying the taste of me on his fingers.

“We’ve thoroughly ruined this car tonight,” he murmured, planting a kiss on my forehead and down my nose.

“Everyone needs a little excitement,” I said, running my hands through his thick, soft hair. “Even cars.”

He smiled, soft and sweet, and studied me. I had seen that look before, one we’d shared on his trampoline. I never knew what that look was at the time, but I knew now.

“How can you still love me?” I asked quietly as I traced circles into the back of his head. “After everything I did to you.”

God, he was wonderful when he grinned like that.

“There’s no one else I wanted to love,” he admitted. “No one who deserved it more than you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know how to feel, other than my heart feeling like it was pressing against my chest, up my throat, until it was stretching my mouth into a smile. I let out a little laugh of joy. He stroked his fingers down my face, peering at me intently. He didn’t need his glasses on for me to see the honesty in his eyes.

“I hope one day I’ll deserve it too,” he said.

My heart broke, jagged and sharp mixed with the warmth that was flooding through me. I held his head tight in my hands and looked deeply at him. “You will, Camden.”

I couldn’t promise when it would happen. But I wasn’t going anywhere. We had time.

At least, I hoped we still had time.

I let go of him and he straightened up. “Time to go?” he asked, reading me.

I nodded. “I might as well get changed here.” I sat up.

“I’ll get your clothes,” he said. He zipped up his fly and dusted off his tux. Aside from his bowtie that I had yanked loose, he looked calm and collected and ready to take on the night. He went inside the car and came back with a pair of boxer shorts, a shirt, and sweater. “You should probably still keep the area around the leg loose. For now.”

When I was done changing, having left the ruins of the dress on the desert floor, we got back in the car and drove off, heading for our next destination, wherever that was. In the side mirror I watched the dress blow away in the night wind, black wings on a black sky.

Then

The girl hadn’t meant to go home early. Even though Javier was taking care of her, both physically and financially, she felt strange without having a job. She felt even stranger that he wasn’t some sugar daddy that had come into money, but that he got his wealth through criminal means.

In some ways, the girl could relate to her lover. After all, she had been conning him the whole time they were together. Sure, she never took any money from him, but she was still keeping tabs. She still wanted to get even with Travis, his boss, the man who ruined her all that time ago, but as the year went by, she felt she was less fueled by vengeance. Being loved by Javier—being in love with Javier—stifled the anger she felt inside. For the first time in a very long time, someone was able to take her hurt away.

So, because she didn’t like relying on Javier for everything, because she felt he was already giving her so much through his romantic gestures, constant attention, and charming personality, she had gotten a job as a waitress. It was just a local bar and she only worked weekends. It didn’t matter that her weekends were
taken up when Javier didn’t work business hours anyway. Breaking fingers and running drugs could be done at any time of the week.

That day, the day that everything changed for the girl, she was sent home early. There had been a small fire in the kitchen and they were closing it down for the evening to assess the damage. The girl got into her Chevy truck, something she still drove despite craving Javier’s car, and went home. She stopped at a mini-mart, picking up a six-pack for them to split. Javier had been stressed out lately
—why, she didn’t dare ask—and thought it might be nice to surprise him. They used to love taking drinks onto the white sand beach and watching the waves roll in, something they hadn’t done for an awful long time.

The girl was pondering why they hadn’t been together as much lately, doing the things that used to bring them joy, when she pulled up
to the house. It was completely dark and looked like no one was home, though she had only left him sitting at his computer two hours earlier.

Maybe he’s napping
, she thought to herself. He often went out into the wee hours of the night to do his business. She didn’t once have any suspicions. Why would she? Even though she and Javier weren’t spending as much time together as they used to, their sex life always kept them connected. He was a powerful and insatiable man in the sack—dominant, sensual, slightly kinky, and extremely vocal.

For a long time the girl’s mind would go back to that moment, the moment she decided to get out of the car and
walk into the house. If she’d stayed in the car, perhaps even for a few more minutes, the whole thing would have been avoided. Perhaps her life wouldn’t have changed. She looked at that blissful ignorance and wanted it back. The truth was too painful.

But she got out of the car and walked in
to their house, facing the truth that was hidden in the bedroom. She quietly closed the door in case he was taking a nap and tiptoed through the hall. She gently laid the cold beer on the kitchen counter and pulled one off the ring for herself. She walked down the hallway toward the bedroom—and stopped dead.

She heard him moaning first. For a split second she thought he was having a nightmare. Then the moan became all too familiar. So in the next second, she thought he was whacking off. She liked it when he did it in front of her, or as it often was, on her. But her assumption was short lived. A woman’s cry and groaning were quick to follow.

The sound, she’d never forget the sound of that woman, made her heart bleed in her chest. Her tattoo itched. She was frozen to the carpet, unable to move. She must have stood there for minutes, hearing the whole thing, trying to comprehend how the hell this could happen.

Then they came, her cries drowning out his. The girl finally snapped to attention, just as the beer was about to fall out of her hands.

The woman in the room made some sweet talk to the man, to her Javier, and Javier sweet talked back. He called her beautiful. His voice was gentle. He was being sweet. That hurt the girl more than their blatant fucking ever had.

The girl was so angry. All her pain, her humiliation, her revenge, came flowing through her. She was going to kill them. Kill both of them.

She crept down the hall, wanting to barge in on them and catch them in the act. She wanted them to be as humiliated as she was. But something happened.

As she pushed the door open a crack and peered into the bedroom
—her bedroom—she saw them both naked, lying face down on the bed. They were facing away from the door, so the girl couldn’t see the woman’s face. But she looked curvy, silky, with a wild mane of auburn hair that cascaded down her golden back. Javier’s foot was hooked around hers and they swung it up and down, like two children who were sitting on a bridge. They looked intimate. They looked…happy.

The girl decided she couldn’t do it. She had one thing left
—one secret of her own—and that was the fact that she was Ellie Watt. Javier had never known the real her, so he’d never loved the real her. He loved a woman who wasn’t a con, wasn’t a spy, wasn’t there because she wanted to bring down the man who ruined her.

She wanted to hold onto that secret for as long as she could. This other woman, this infidelity, it changed her heart. It made her the cold, heartless person she was supposed to be. The person she needed
to be to survive.

The girl quickly slunk down the hallway before she could disturb them, plucking the beer off the counter. She went back to her truck and drove just a few houses down. She cracked open the beer and drank it while crying and watched in the rear view mirror as the woman eventually left the house and drove down the road in her Mercedes Benz. She never even looked the girl’s way.

Later that night, the girl pretended she had worked her whole shift. She brought Javier the beer. She pretended everything was okay, lying through her teeth. She kissed him goodnight and they fell asleep like nothing was wrong.

The next morning, Eden White stole the extra cash that Javier kept hidden in the house. Then, while he was off on his morning jog, she stole his car.

She never looked back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

We drove all through the night, heading west while the sun came up in the sky. Though we were both exhausted to the bones, neither of us slept. We didn’t talk either. We just listened to Guano Padano and tried to hold on as long as we could. I was worried about Javier still, wondering how I was going to avoid him down the line. I’d need a new identity again, a new look. He’d never stop trying to find me, I knew that for a fact now.

Camden, too, needed to start becoming Connor Malloy soon. Any day now someone would report him missing and perhaps that same someone would report the money missing too. We had checks in his name from the casino
, but there was no way he could cash them until he had more ID and papers that could only come from Gus.

Now that it was a weekday, we were closer to getting everything ready. But we couldn’t do anything until we picked a place to hunker down for a while. Camden had Gualala on his mind and at times seemed convinced we could drive another ten hours to get there. But by the time the sun was high in t
he sky and we’d passed Tulare, we had to find a place to crash or we would crash ourselves. We would have gotten there quicker but the headlight and the windshield had to be repaired. We were lucky it was even done in two hours (though we were several hundred dollars poorer).

We pulled into a small motel on the roadside, making sure to park Jose behind the buildings and out of
view from the highway. We must have looked quite the sight to the front desk clerk as he observed us behind coke-bottle glasses; me in boxer shorts and a bandaged leg, Camden in a tuxedo. But he didn’t give Connor Malloy or Emily Watson any grief.

Our room was shabby and smelled like too
much Lysol, but it didn’t matter. Camden and I crawled into bed—now we were sharing
—
and passed out in each other’s arms. Our sleep was deep and we didn’t wake up until I heard my cell phone ringing.

I groaned and frowned at the clock, all messed up from the nap. It was 6 p.m. and the light outside had faded. I got up and looked for my phone, then remembered it was in my clutch. It was a bit unusual for my phone to ring
—everyone I knew almost always texted me.