I picked up the meat between my fingers, but it slipped back to the plate with a sad, greasy splat.
Salmon is a very flaky fish, it barely cooperates with utensils. Without them, it’s a disaster to eat. But I was hungry. So damn hungry. Now was not the time to pretend that I was too good to eat with my hands or not hungry enough to go against whatever stupid as shit rules Maddox wanted me to abide by.
I would do him one better, though.
I brought the plate to my face, and began shoveling the food into my mouth. Like a barbarian. A monkey. A chained, naked animal here for his pleasure.
I never took my eyes off him.
“You enjoy looking at me,” he said, pleased with himself.
I licked the butter from my finger.
“No. No, I don't. Not even a little bit,” I replied, not looking away.
He seemed to enjoy watching me suck my fingertip, however. Of course, I wasn’t going to do anything he liked on purpose. I picked up my napkin, and wiped my hands.
“I enjoy looking at you,” he said.
“Whatever. Prick.”
“Nasty girl, aren't you?” He put his elbows on the table, steepled his fingers together, and smiled. He was enjoying the unobstructed view of my boobs, and as he spoke, it was as if he was talking to them rather than me. “I couldn't find out who you really are, Sofia. And as nice as I've been to you, I don't think you're going to tell me the truth.”
“You can't handle the truth.”
His smirk grew wider. “Jack Nicholson, A Few Good Men. Pretty good flick. Totally overrated, though.”
“It's a great movie, asshole, and why the fuck are we on a boat?”
“You're feeling better, with some food in you. That's good. That's… really, really good.”
I picked up an asparagus spear, and bit the tip off. “What I don't understand is how an idiot like you got so rich. Must be Daddy's money. That's what you're playing with, isn't it? Martin's the brains behind the operation,” I waved the half-eaten asparagus at him. “What does that make you?”
“Something terrible, apparently. Something bad enough for you to try some half-assed, retarded assassination plot. That was fucking sad, Sofia. I'm so glad it didn't work out for you.”
I threw the asparagus onto his plate. “What if I have people wondering where I am, shit head? You ever think of that?”
“Everything's been taken care of, darling. Don't you worry your sweet, sweet, Mexicali cabesa over it.”
“Don't ever call me 'darling', and while we're at it, my parents were from El Salvador.”
He licked his lips, drawing his tongue across that fucking dumb ass smirk of his.
“You seem to forget who’s in charge here. And you know what the beauty of being in charge is? No. For starters, I can call you whatever the fuck I want. And I don't give a damn where your parents were from.”
Maddox smoothed the front of his shirt, stood up, and walked over to me. With his hands on either side of my head, he curled his fingers into my hair.
“Would you like dessert? Or should I say, would you like to be dessert? I mucho gusto dessert.”
“Your Spanglish sucks. Maddy.”
He'd reacted badly the last time I referred to him as 'Maddy'. Like a tiger in a cage. There was something about the name that bothered him, and I wanted to keep poking at it.
That last time, however, I had my sexuality as a weapon. Dropping my shirt stopped the tiger in his tracks. I really should learn to think these through before I act on them. Because now, I was unarmed.
His face grew dark, angry. The cut I'd inflicted only added to the overall macabre of his presence. His huge, shadowy presence. Like a villain in a slasher movie, waiting beneath the stairs.
“Do not. Call me. Maddy.”
“Why not? Maaadee?”
The thing about being in a depleted, depressive mental state such as mine, was that I didn't care anymore.
I didn't care about prison.
I didn't care about dying.
I didn't care about caring.
I had nothing to lose by poking the tiger, so why the hell not?
Maddox yanked me off the lounger as if I were no more than a doll. His biceps were rock hard, nothing but muscle, no skin to pinch or twist and so large I may as well have been trying to wrap my hands around a tree trunk.
He spun me around, driving me into the side of the cabin. The side of my face squished against the window. His solid, brick wall of a body crushed against my backside. For the first time, I could feel his sex against me. Harder than those arms of his. And maybe, just maybe, just as big.
His idea was to teach me that lesson from behind.
My shackled leg, however, was preventing the intention. It was almost comical, the way it must have looked. My leg pointed out straight behind, as if I were striking a pose for the balance beam.
He started cursing. Damning me, damning the boat, and fumbled for the buckle of the restraint.
Undoing a buckle can be difficult enough on its own. When you’re angry or in a rush, though, it’s a game that drags on. Your fingers fight against themselves, and nothing works. The more you struggle, the worse it gets, and trying to unlatch a hook with a gargantuan erection, a flailing woman, and a rocking boat was making it even more impossible for him to get the chain off my leg.
That's what was so strange. The boat was pitching forward and backward. This was a huge fucking vessel. No way would two people wrestling with each other be enough to cause it to sway the way it was. I couldn't understand. It made no physical sense.
The shackle fell away just as the alarm began to sound.
Breep, breep, breep...
I was still squashed against the cabin, Maddox was as big as a linebacker
