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NINETEEN
orion
I’m a thousand different types of asshole. A thousand different types of doomed.
We had sex that night because I fucking couldn’t help myself. And I wasn’t going to come back to her afterward except I figured there’s a special and nasty place in whatever serves as hell for men who take advantage of young, sweet, tempting twenty-year-olds and just walk out the door.
So I went back to her after a quick word with the captain and brought her water. Thank fuck she’d tucked herself in bed so I could control the temptations of having her all over again.
I made sure I was out of her room before she woke up. Since docking, I’ve negotiated a place for the captain and his family away from all watery jobs—I still have friends who’ll take care of disappearing them and setting them up for the future so they’ll be safe from the monsters who hired them.
I also took care of the tiger, making sure it went to the right people to be evaluated, and hopefully either returned to its natural habitat or one of those wildlife enclosures.
Dakota and I took a private plane to New York, pretty much in silence. And now, as we sit side by side in the back seat of the car I hired en route to the Lower East Side, I stare at her.
“You okay?”
She nods, shoulders stiff, hands on her thighs in tightly clenched balls. “Just wondering why you’re abandoning me to Smith here. The Lower East Side isn’t really his jam.”
And here’s why I’m such a fucking dickwad.
“We’re not meeting him.”
This time she looks at me as we pull up to the curb way down on Columbia Street. “We’re not?” She peers out the window. “What… why are we here?”
I take her face in my fingers and bring her in close. “Because I’m not done with you, baby girl.”
The place is nondescript, a dive of a hotel from the outside, and looks every bit the part of a hotel that rents by the hour. It probably does.
But I like it for the anonymity. Cash is the only currency it accepts.
I paid for the car by card and the private plane was a last-minute hire.
Sometimes, details matter.
I slide a wad of cash over to the tired-looking woman who’s packing a high-end gun under the desk. I know that because I also know the majority of clientele who use this place aren’t your regular people.
“Delivery for Jaxson Carter?”
She nods, points to some bags on the end of the counter, and slides me the key.
I grab the packages, my just beyond jailbait twenty-year-old, and I head into the hotel.
“This is…”
“What we need,” I mutter, pushing the key into the door of the suite. “To sell the lie.”
She looks around and wrinkles her nose. “It’s a little?—”
“Not up to your princess sensibilities?” I open the packages and pull out an outfit like the one I have on and head to the bathroom.
It doesn’t take me long to shower and change, and when I come out, she’s in the dress I got her. Just a simple black one with some matching underwear. I had to guess the shoe size, but they seem right.
She crosses her arms. Her hair’s pulled back and tied with elastic from a sewing kit she must have found in the drawers. She looks eighteen, and fuck, I feel like an absolute pervert because somewhere in the back of my head I’m fantasizing about stripping her out of the outfit.
“No.” Her eyes narrow. “Old-world.”
“So last century, then.”
