Margarite stumbles, groping hold of a mooring post to steady herself as the dock rocks from side to side. “I mean it, Paxton. Do I look like I’m fucking joking?”
Automatically, my lips pull back. I was raised to be polite. Countless hours and an exhaustive amount of money has been wasted on me, in an attempt to equip me with ‘proper’ manners. In well-heeled society, I know how to play the part: smile like a good boy. Maintain my cool. Make sure I keep a civil tongue in my head. But rub me the wrong way and I react like the savage, wild animal that I am beneath the expensive clothes and my extensive education. I bare my teeth. I growl. I fucking bite. “Pax. Three letters. P. A. X. It’s not difficult to remember, sweetheart.”
“Do not call me that,” Margarite spits. “I’m not your sweetheart. I’m just some girl you fucked on a boat.”
She’s got that right.
“Get the phone back, you prick, or I am going to scream.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “What are you going to scream?”
“That you’re hurting me. That you’re trying to attack me. That you forced me to fuck you.”
Poor girl. Her brain must be one dark, miserable, lonely place.
I offer her a bland, tight smile. “I’m standing eight feet away from you with my hands jammed into my armpits. You start hollering that kind of shit and you’re gonna wind up getting yourself in trouble.”
She narrows her eyes, her chin jutting out defiantly. “Are you threatening me?” she hisses. “I don’t like the way you’re speaking to me, Paxto—”
Fuck.
This.
Bitch.
She’s screwing with me, purposefully trying to provoke me, and I do not tolerate that kind of bullshit. She wants to do this the hard way? Fine. I’ll give her what she wants and then some.
The girl squeals as I lunge for her, take hold of her by the hips, and throw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She hammers her fists against my back, demanding that I put her down. Suffice it to say, I decline her petition, using a few choice words of my own.
“For someone who doesn’t speak English very well, you sure know all of the curse words.” I cover the twenty feet back to the boat in record time, taking a calculated risk by hopping the distance between the dock and The Contessa’s deck. Margarite snarls in frustration, attempting to bite the back of my arm. Her teeth graze my tricep, warning me of her intentions, and I tip her over my shoulder, ass-first onto the deck.
Outraged, she takes off her espadrilles and hurls them at my head. She’s a terrible shot, though, so they go sailing over my head into the water, just like her phone did fifteen minutes ago. I’d have thought she’d learned her lesson by now, but it looks like beautiful Margarite is far too stubborn for that. Instead, she lets out a furious wail and tries to scramble to her feet. Tries being the operative word. She’s like a beetle, stuck on its back, wriggling and struggling to right itself and having no luck whatsoever. If she’d only had the coke, she might have been able to manage it, but there’s the forty of vodka she was carrying in her hand when I met her as well. She’d hit that thing like it was ice cold water on a blistering-hot summer’s day. Honestly, I’ve been impressed this entire time, admiring how well she’s handled her shit after putting away so much hard liquor. Turns out my admiration was premature; the combination of alcohol and narcotics was just taking its sweet time to hit home.
She’s a fucking train wreck.
With a practiced ease, I unfasten the rope securing The Contessa to the dock, and shove off, gritting my teeth together. We’re only twelve miles from Calvi. The wind’s died down now—the air’s so still, it feels like I’m breathing honey—but that’s no big deal. The Contessa has an engine and a powerful one at that. I’ll have the girl back with her giggling, drunk friends in about forty minutes. But Jesus, those forty minutes are going to be pure hell.
“You…mother…fucking…asshole!” Margarite yells. “I hate you. I’m going to tell my—”
The rumble of The Contessa’s engines drowns her out. A part of me would have happily left her standing on the dock in the dark, drunk and turned-around, with no way of calling her friends to come and find her. Eighty percent of me would have been totally fine with that. But that other twenty percent? Urgh, that part of me would never allow it. Where that twenty percent came from, I’ll never know. And now’s not the time to be analyzing my moral compass, anyway. It’s only ten p.m. If I hurry back to Calvi, I’ll still have time to grab some food and a drink before the restaurants start to close. And maybe even find myself a less inebriated, less crazy new friend to spend the night with if I’m lucky.
The Contessa pitches as I navigate her out of the harbor and into open water. Fifteen minutes later, I hear Margarite heaving over the side of the vessel and puking into the water. For fuck’s sake. If she’s splattered vomit down the side of the yacht, I’m gonna be pissed. That shit’ll be baked on by the time I wake up in the morning, which means I’ll have to make sure I hose it off before I go to bed. Not how I was planning to spend my evening.
The Contessa’s state of the art navigational systems takes care of piloting the ship. The damn thing can practically moor itself, it’s that advanced, but I sullenly remain seated behind the controls, refusing to venture up to the prow to check on Margarite. The girl’s fucking twenty-one. Three years my senior. Should definitely have her shit together by now. I’m not gonna baby her. No fucking way.
It doesn’t take long to get back to shore. I watch Margarite pull herself up the railings as we approach the dock. She doesn’t even wait for The Contessa to come to a stop in the slip before she’s clambering over the side of the handrail and jumping onto the much studier dock. Her stupid little purse swings from her shoulder; she appears to walk in a relatively straight line as she hurries off, barefoot, toward the row of bars where we saw her friends last.
“Bye, then,” I mutter to myself as I watch her go. Do I give a shit that she doesn’t look back once as she books it for civilization? That would be a hard no. I’m still livid at the prospect of having to clean up her puke to give a flying fuck. Once I have the boat anchored and properly secured, I hop down onto the dock and survey the damage. It’s not as bad as I expected. Just a few bright orange streaks of…god only knows what the girl ate to produce puke that color. I slosh a bucket of water at the side of the yacht, pleased that I’m not gonna have to explain to Wren why his father’s pride and joy managed to be defiled in such a way. Because, no. The Contessa is not mine. Sad but true, and also the reason why Margarite started screaming at me back in Île Rousse. Along with the fact that she’d just discovered I was only eighteen, the news that I was only borrowing a boat as magnificent as The Contessa really didn’t seem to make the girl happy at all.
Hardly matters now. I mean, I came out to Corsica to party, get fucked and have a good time. I didn’t come here to meet my future fucking wife. And nice though it might have been to spend another day dipping my cock into all of Margarite’s perfectly formed, tight, pretty little holes, there are plenty of other attractive women on this island just waiting for someone like me to come along and sweep them off their feet.