Sinners Retreat (The Slaycation #1)

Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Ezra

W ith some of the weight lifted from her shoulders, Kindra seemed a lot lighter after the boat ride back. She even joined me for a round of mini golf before heading back to her villa for a nap. I don’t blame her. We were up very late last night.

After she was gone, I sought out Cat. She would be my alibi so that Kindra wouldn’t suspect I’d put the meat hooks in Eighties’ cabin. After spending several hours with her, I’m not sure why my brother doesn’t get along with her. She’s pleasant enough to be around.

She’s no Kindra, though.

I haven’t stopped thinking of my raven-haired goddess since we parted ways this morning. Even now, sitting at the tiki bar with Cat as the sun sets over the water, my thoughts are with her. I’m ashamed to admit that many of these imaginings are X-rated in nature, and I’ve worked myself into a proper case of blue balls.

Tonight isn’t about sex, though, and I’ll need to take care of this raging lust so that I can focus. If I don’t rub one out before she shows up at my villa in a couple of hours, I’m liable to rip off her clothes before she even gets through the door. That’s how badly I yearn for her.

“It’s been fun, but I need to get back and prepare for tonight,” I tell Cat as I rise from the bar stool.

Her lower lip forms a pout. “I wish I could tag along.”

“I know, pal. You’d get bored, though. We’ll just be poking around a dead man’s things.”

She groans. “Stop it. That sounds so exciting.”

Has she lived under a rock for her entire life? Nothing about this sounds exciting to me—aside from being with Kindra. That’s always exciting.

“Don’t forget your drink,” she says as the bartender arrives with the pi?a colada I ordered almost thirty minutes ago.

I grab it from her, nod, and head toward the strip of villas.

A full moon would be fitting for a night like this. It’s always a full moon in the books and movies. But this is real life, and a slender crescent of light hangs in a sky full of stars. The storm stayed far offshore, but the storm inside me rages on.

As I clear the steps on the little porch, I’m already undoing my khaki pants with my free hand. The door clicks shut behind me as I place the pi?a colada on a side table and grip my cock. With all the shutters closed, this seems like a good enough place to jerk off and clear my head.

Leaning my weight onto the side table, I work my dick to thoughts of Kindra. I imagine tying her up. Biting her soft flesh. Licking her pussy until she begs me to stop. I even imagine drowning her again.

The way she looked when she came from that...I can’t describe it. Beautiful. Perfect. Nothing seems to fit. Even though I can’t put a word to what I’ve seen, the images burned into my brain bring me right to the edge.

Right as I hear footsteps on the stairs outside.

I’m too close to stop now, so I lean over the glass rim of the pi?a colada as come jets from the head of my cock. Despite being the same color, it doesn’t blend or sink to the bottom. It just floats like an ominous glob on the surface.

Oh god. It looks like phlegm.

I nearly break my neck as my head whips around, searching for something to disguise it. My eyes land on the tiny purple umbrella lying beside the glass. I mix it up, the contents blending just as I hear a knock on the door.

I fasten my pants and continue stirring the evidence into the drink as I open the door. It’s too early to be Kindra, yet there she stands, looking incredible in a skin-tight all-black outfit. She’s even smudged a bit of dark eyeliner around her eyes. She’s the picture of an assassin.

God, if I ever have to die by someone’s hand, I hope she’s holding the blade.

“You’re a bit early,” I say as she enters my villa.

“I’m happy to see you, too,” she says. “I couldn’t sit still, so I figured I’d come over.”

She goes for my drink, and I pull it out of her reach. She looks dumbfounded and, frankly, a little bit offended as I tip it against my mouth and force some down my throat.

“I really need a drink, Ezra.”

“So do I,” I say, because I for sure do now. I’m sacrificing my own taste buds to preserve hers.

“Don’t be a dick,” she says, wrapping her hand around the base of the glass and tugging it toward her.

I relinquish it. I did my best to keep her from drinking the monstrosity now in her hand.

I watch with bated horror as she brings the rim of the glass to her mouth and takes a long gulp. This is a come-laced defeat if I’ve ever seen it. She moves the liquid around in her mouth, as if she’s savoring a fine glass of merlot on a fancy wine tour.

“What is this?” she asks, taking another sip for good measure. “Did you make this yourself?”

“You could say that.” I try to take the drink away, but she pulls it against her chest once more.

My chest tightens as if I might have a coronary right here. Sweat drips down my temples and rolls toward my cheeks. All I want is for her to stop drinking it so that she doesn’t ask me any more questions about it. It’s not my proudest moment, that’s for sure.

“Let me have one more swig. I’m under a lot of stress right now.” She tips it back and downs a quarter of what was left, then coughs. “Well, that was a little tangy...”

“Because it’s a pi?a cum-lada.”

She blinks and looks up at me. “Come again?”

“I don’t think I can because I already did. In that glass. Just before you arrived.”

To my surprise, she shrugs her shoulders and takes a parting sip. “Is that why you look so ill?”

“I do not look ill.”

“I didn’t realize a human could sweat this much. You’d be less distraught if police were questioning you about your murders.”

She’s right about that. I wipe the sweat from my brow.

“Besides, I’ve already had your come in my mouth,” she says. “At least this is more palatable.”

I’m too stunned to speak, so I just stand there as she finishes every last drop. Wonders never cease with this woman. And I don’t know how I’ll ever let her go.

That’s a fucking problem.

Kindra eyes me up and down, examining me from head to toe. “Are you doing recon dressed like that?”

I look down at my shirt and khakis. I didn’t think it mattered what I wore to a dead man’s villa.

“Yes?” I say.

“No. Absolutely not.”

She heads to my bedroom, and I follow because there are things she shouldn’t see in my room. In my luggage, to be specific. Which is exactly what she begins dragging onto the bed and unzipping.

I try to stop her. If Bennett didn’t make good on our deal, she’s about to see something very damning. “I can dress myself, pet.”

She eyes me. “Not properly.”

“Must we shit on what a man wears to a crime scene? This is a deeply personal choice of attire.” I try to squeeze her out of my luggage’s personal space, but she won’t be moved.

She whips my suitcase open and dives headfirst into the thing. She begins tugging out clothes, ruffling up my perfectly folded fabrics and leaving them discarded on the bed.

“I feel like I’m pulling shit from a Men’s Warehouse magazine, dude. Do you have anything that isn’t so...business casual?”

“I have t-shirts.”

She reaches the bottom of my suitcase, and I finally take a breath. Bennett came through for me. Thank fuck.

I step closer to her. “I don’t want to look ridiculous, pet. Can’t we just go like this?”

“Are you saying I look ridiculous?”

“No, that isn’t what I meant.”

Kindra’s eyes widen as she comes up with an idea that I’ll surely dread. She leaves me alone with my decimated suitcase, and I hear every cabinet in the kitchen being opened and closed. She reappears with scissors and a devilish expression.

I fear for my life.

She comes at my crotch with the scissors, but I put my hand on her head to keep distance between us.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m making some khorts,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

“Khaki shorts.”

“I have khaki shorts. You cast them aside.”

“Shorter than those.”

“I am not rifling through a dead man’s things with shorts that your friend would wear. It’s not work appropriate.”

“You have to.”

“I don’t have to do any such thing.”

“Well, you don’t have a leather catsuit, and I won’t be the only one dressed ridiculously .” She darts forward again.

I try to stop her, but she’s already at my crotch, and all I can do is defend my balls from the dual blades. The legs of my expensive pants fall, and jagged, frayed fabric hangs at heights it shouldn’t. I look like a plonker.

“My khaks,” I whisper in mourning.

Khaki booty shorts shouldn’t be a thing. For anyone. Ever. They aren’t so short that my balls might hang out like Grim’s, but they’re still a little too Richard Simmons for me to pull off.

But if it makes her feel better and brings that smile onto her face, I’ll wear the damn things.

With that settled, we exit my villa and start toward Eighties’, which is at the end of the row. Kindra’s sneakers are silent on the boardwalk, but my thongs make a racket on the worn boards.

Flip, flop, flip, flop .

Kindra looks back at me and stares at my feet.

“What? I would have looked ridiculous in my nice shoes and these khorts ,” I say.

“You look ridiculous anyway,” she whispers.

“I wouldn’t have if someone had let me wear what I was comfortable in.”

“Try a hoodie next time. I promise you’ll never go back. Besides, you look pretty comfortable in those shorts now,” she says, waggling her eyebrows at me.

“Tell you what. I’ll buy a t-shirt just for you if you promise you’ll never cut my clothes again.”

“Make sure it’s an extra-large so I can wear it too, please.”

When she says that, the light flip-flops become lead weights on my feet. Kindra may not realize what she said, but I did. She’s planning for something outside of this retreat. On some subconscious level, she’s thinking about a future I absolutely cannot be in. And that’s the most tragic part of this whole thing.

We continue on in silence until we reach the villa. His door is unlocked, and we slip inside.

Kindra pulls out her phone and types into an app of some kind, documenting things about Eighties for her article, I guess. Jim agreed she could out Eighties as long as no photographs were involved, and she’s holding up her end of the deal. What the organizer’s short-sightedness fails to realize is that words can be more powerful than a photograph.

And what my short-sightedness has failed to realize is that I’m only digging myself into a deeper hole.

When she finds those meat hooks, she’ll believe she’s discovered the identity of the Abattoir Adonis. She’ll write an entire article—likely a very extensive exposé—and it will all be for nothing when I tell her the truth on the last day.

If I can figure out why I killed her brother, I might be able to give her the information that will help her process his death, but this? I don’t know how I can make up for it.

While she’s busy typing away on her phone, I step into the kitchen and realize that Bennett is a lazy sack of shit. He left the meat hooks somewhere, all right. They’re plopped under the light on the counter. He had to walk maybe ten steps max to plant these here.

Who just leaves their meat hooks lying around like this? Not me, and I actually use meat hooks.

Kindra steps into the kitchen, and her eyes widen as she leans over and spies the gleaming metal. Her head tilts and pivots as she examines them without touching them.

“Eighties was the Abattoir Adonis?” she whispers, and the slight crack in her voice breaks my heart. Those metal hooks have thrust her back into some terrible memory that I orchestrated. And I still don’t know why I did it.

“It sure seems that way,” I say, and a lie has never tasted so bitter on my tongue.

“He doesn’t seem strong enough to have strung up my brother, though. And he’s not exactly what I would have considered an Adonis.”

Her jab at Eighties’ meager physique is a compliment to me, but instead of stroking my ego, it twists the knife in my heart.

“Maybe he used hoists or pulleys?” I reason.

“I didn’t see anything that would suggest that.”

“I don’t know, Kindra. He must have done it somehow. Who else would have meat hooks like this?”

Me. I have meat hooks like this. I have these meat hooks.

“Can it be this anticlimactic?” She leans against the counter with the most heartbreaking look of defeat on her face. “I imagined it would be more glorious than this. I wanted to find him and make him suffer for what he did. Maybe not here on the island, but back in the real world. I could have gotten the vengeance my brother deserved.”

I feel fucking awful about this. Eighties being her brother’s killer is great for me but absolutely devastating for Kindra.

“You got to kill him,” she says, her eyes rising to mine. “Not me.”

“I’m sorry, pet. If I knew, I never would have killed him. I’d have served him to you on a silver platter.”

That’s a lie because I’d have to serve myself on the silver platter. And for some reason, I’m struggling to do that. Self-preservation?

Or something else . . .

I go to her and put my arms around her. Instead of pushing me away, she leans her head against my chest and winds her arms around my waist. While I don’t want to take advantage of this moment of weakness, I’m running out of time to figure out why I did what I did.

“Do you think you could talk about what happened to your brother?” I ask. “I know it’s a sore subject, but it might help.”

She nods, and I seize the opening.

“When was he killed?” I ask.

“It will have been a decade ago next month.” She mumbles the words into my chest, then sucks in a deep breath. “Actually, I don’t want to talk about it right now, if that’s okay.”

I stroke her head. “That’s fine, pet. We don’t have to.”

It’s a hint, at least. Ten years ago. This narrows it down a bit. I believe I killed four people that year. Or maybe it was six. Who the hell even remembers that long ago?

She does, that’s for sure, and her brother’s murder is slaying any chance of a relationship between us.