Page 5 of Midnight Curfew

I love dreaming about it when I know I’m going to have it. What I’m going to say, where I’ll take them, how I’ll taunt them…

I love the foreplay and wondering if I’m going to get it.

And I really enjoy the feast. The smell of their skin, the look of their bodies, the taste of their mouths, their necks…I don’t think about anything else when I’m doing it.

Afterward, though…the desire to play a character leaves me, and it’s just…

Empty.

I could be watching a car insurance commercial right now, and I just want to get on to the next thing where I’m in a new performance. My family, my job, my friends, drinking…It’s rare that I just want to be me. It’s rare that I just want to hang out and talk.

Thirty minutes later, we’re finished, and my friends wait for me outside.

“Well done,” Timothy Coldwell says as he swipes the ball of his pen across the check. “I don’t think she’ll be able to wait for another birthday before having that again.”

Yeah, it was fun. But it’s never quite the same the second time.

He grins, handing me the payment as his wife soaks in a bath upstairs with a glass of champagne. “You all played it exactly how she asked.”

I take the money, folding the check in half. “It was a pleasure.”

Leaving them to it, I walk out of the house and jog down the five marble steps. Rip blows out a breath of smoke and tosses his cigarette into the fountain in the center of the driveaway, a fire pit bowl blazing in the center. Tyson turns, all of us back in our clothes, my black necktie hanging loosely around the collar of my white shirt.

“You think he was filming that?” Tyson asks, both of them walking with me.

“I was.” And I throw them a loaded look.

They chuckle, not even asking for details. Maybe I set my phone out in the room and they didn’t notice or maybe the Coldwells’ maid—one of our own from our side of the tracks—set up cameras in the house after I knew we were coming here. It doesn’t matter. Our eldest brother, Macon, has three rules for his brothers now.

Don’t complain about anything unless you’re gonna fix it.

Work.

And don’t fuck a Saint without proof of consent.

Oh, and…Don’t make babies with dumb people.

Four rules.

Or five, if you count…Knock before you come into my bedroom.

As if I’m not drowning in ass and need to see his wife naked.

So, yeah. Five rules. None of which apply to the youngest, our sister, Liv. Macon thinks she’s a responsible little angel. I’ve yet to be convinced.

“Go back to the Bay.” I toss Rip the keys as we traipse across the driveway of square slate tiles, each outlined with grass.

He narrows his eyes. “How are you getting home?”

“I still have work to do.”

They rumble with laughter as they head through the open gates and veer left, out of sight, to where we parked our cars. Tyson will take the truck he and Rip came in, while Rip returns the Jag I drove here. My brother’s wife came into their marriage with a lot of money, and last year, after a round of “if you had unlimited money and everyone in Sanoa Bay was fed, safe, and had cash to burn, which car would you splurge on?” he finally replied with a gruff “Jaguar.” It didn’t sound like him at all, but he said they were fun to drive and he’d like seeing his wife arrive to dinner at a fancy restaurant in an equally fancy vehicle. She bought him the car the next Christmas, and while he does bring it out for the rare occasion of setting foot over here in St. Carmen to dine with her at Le Jardin on her birthday, he doesn’t drive it otherwise. He probably feels like a poser.

Shit, I’ll drive it, then. No one ever thinks I’m trying to be something I’m not. I can do anything.

Listening to my friends drive off, I pull out the check, open it, and stare at the amount, which is just short of a down payment on a Honda Civic.

Or I could save it instead or buy some clothes or go party in Miami for a weekend, but the things I want don’t have a price, and anything I need is easy enough to take.