Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance Savannah Rose (readnow TXT) 📖

I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the fluids in my cranium to stop sloshing around. Opened them. Saw Sofia still sitting on the rock, still waiting for a fish. She wasn’t decked out in Hawaiian wardrobe, but she was still looking straight at me. Making sure I was where she'd put me, no doubt.

As if I could go anywhere, Sofee. But I will. I'll get out of this, and even if I don't, there will be people coming by soon. They'll find us. It won't be long, now. This kind of shit doesn't happen. Even if it does, it doesn't happen for long.

Something bit the end of her line. She stood up, quickly, and pulled up a decent sized bass.

How the fuck does she do that? I went deep sea fishing once. Just once, and all I could catch was what they called a 'rock fish'. Meaning all my hook snagged were the rocks on the bottom of the ocean. Hah-hah. Josh, on the other hand, came away with a virtual fucking school of haddock, and when he'd held them up for the photographer, it looked as though he was raising one of his trophies.

Such a one-upper. The little shit. I missed him. How long had he been gone? Jesus Christ, could it be ten years now? Over ten years? And what would he say if he could see me now? Something smart-alecky and wise ass, and I'd deserve it. I was a bad brother. I never really cried after he died. Not even at the funeral. I was too pissed off at him. Because suicide was for losers and he wasn’t supposed to be a loser. But more importantly, he wasn’t supposed to leave me alone. I know, it sounds selfish, but that was the fucking truth of it. He left me to deal with a life that loved and hated me in equal measure.

Neither of my parents wanted much to do with me after that. There were the usual holiday obligations, an acknowledged birthday, but nothing much else to speak of. It would be easy for me to conclude that they wished I was the one with the short time span on the headstone. And I'd be right. I was always right.

“You hungry, Maddy?” Sofia called out, showing me her bass.

Thirsty, too, but you already know that. You just don’t give a damn.

She laid the fish out on a flat stone, took up her knife, then for some reason, changed her mind.

Holding up her index finger as if she were just met by a brilliant idea, she removed my shaving kit from the duffel. Took out my razor. And proceeded to scale a fish with my four hundred dollar Fendrihan.

That's a custom blade from Neiman Marcus, I thought, because I was going batty. Who could blame me? Going on twenty four hours of immobilized captivity, there wasn’t really anything else to be expected.

There was a guy in our office, I couldn't remember his name, but he was a veteran. Afghanistan, or Kuwait, someplace like that, and he'd been taken captive for a couple months.

Alan. Alan Forsthye. Big black guy, worked in sales, was a Sergeant First Class, and I think he got a purple heart award back in the day. Great. Forsthye, I could remember. My brain wasn’t as fried as it felt.

Sofia scraped the scales from the fish like a professional chef, covered it with a palm fawn, and wiped her hands. She stood up, stretched her back, and cast her eyes in my direction. Everything inside of me stirred. Irritation, fear, anger, I felt it all, swirling in a pond of vengeance. One way or the other, I was going to get it. And little Sofia wouldn’t know what hit her when I got the upper hand back.

She took two bottles of water from her stash, stuck the straw in one, and carried them over to me. Leaning in, she pulled the gag down, and stuck the end of the tube between my lips.

I drank, the cool delicious moisture coating my throat in merciful relief. I sipped slowly, wanting to savor it. It wasn't much, but what I did have helped alleviate a small portion of the fog.

She set the water aside, gave me a quick look up and down. Contemplating something. Her left eye twitched, just slightly.

Maybe… maybe I could try reasoning with her. Nuts or not, perhaps I could find a sympathy I could play on.

I cleared my throat. No need to try to sound pathetic – my current physical state would help me achieve that all on its own.

“Hey, Sofia…?” I asked, my voice cracking a little. “Could you… unlock me? I can't feel my arms.”

That was the funniest thing she had ever heard, apparently. She laughed, gutturally, unscrewed the cap of her water bottle, and took a long draw. Her eyes sparkled.

“You either have a very stupid sense of humor, or you're just very stupid,” she said. “I think it may be both. No, wait. Scratch that. I know it's both.”

“You want me to apologize? I will. I'm sorry, okay?”

“Oh, that was sincere,” she let out a bitter chuckle. Then a dark, terrible expression crossed her face. It was sort of frightening, to be honest. “What do you think you should be sorry about?”

It was a trick question. The way she looked – her intense, base hatred behind those beautiful brown eyes – I needed to be extremely cautious here.

“The way… the way I treated you. I had no right to do that. But, you'd pulled a gun on me, you know? So I was… confused.”

She pursed her lips to the side, and threw the rest of her water in my face.

“You're such a fuck, Petersen. A pathetic, asshole of a fuck. You call that an apology? Huh?