Stolen Lust (Beauty in the Stolen 1)

Leon sits in a chair on the darker outskirts of the circle with his face in the shadows, nursing a drink. I drag a chair closer and sit next to him.

He leans over and pulls a bottle of rum from a cooler box next to his chair. “Drink?” Leaving his glass in the holder in the armrest of his camping chair, he pours a rum and Coke over ice that he hands me. “Cheers.”

Stretching out my legs, I cross my ankles and sink deeper into the chair. The semi-permanent tension in my shoulders gives. Crickets chirp in the grass, reminding me of another night and a pool in Rustenburg, South Africa.

“You missed the sunset,” Leon says.

He knows how much I love the sunsets here. It looks as if the sky is ablaze with flames over the dark surface of the river.

“It couldn’t be helped.” Business comes first. There will be another sunset tomorrow.

“Do you miss them?” he asks, staring non-seeingly at the people dancing around the fire.

“Who?”

“Damian and Zoe.”

I look at my brother. “Do you?”

He shrugs.

My voice is a tad harder than I intended. “It’s safer for them like this.”

“Damian is out of prison. He’s been out for two years. I just heard.”

Some family we turned out to be. Zoe seems to be the only one who ended up walking the straight and narrow. “I know.”

He leaves it at that. Leon knows as well as I do dragging them into our lives will only leave them drowning in shit if we go down. That was what we decided the day we left. There are many days I still regret taking Leon, but I couldn’t bear leaving him either. Damian and Zoe had been too young, but Leon was almost fourteen and already earning his own way by pickpocketing and selling the coal he collected on the train tracks. When he’d stood on the landing in his threadbare jersey with the holes on the elbows, wearing a frantic look on his face, I couldn’t turn my back on him, go down the stairs, and walk out into the street. Only a person who grew up like us can understand that look. It’s one of desperation and fear, of being left behind. Alone. So I dragged him along and turned him into a criminal.

Leon isn’t sentimental, but I understand his sudden bout of nostalgia. For the first time in our lives, I’ve chosen someone else over him, and he doesn’t know what to make of my choice. He’s no longer certain of me.

“I’m not going to let you down,” I say.

He doesn’t look at me, but his lips tilt in a wry way. “Is it over?”

I know who he means. It cuts my heart open, but if he wants to see me bleed, I’ll give him that. I owe him much more. “Yes.”

He squeezes my shoulder, a quiet peace offering.

Ruben walks out onto the deck. He scans the crowd and gives me a nod when his gaze finds me. He bounces down the steps, grabs a chair in the walk, plants it next to me, and flops down onto the seat.

“How did it go?” Leon asks, pouring another rum and Coke, which he hands to Ruben.

Ruben grins. “Smooth as Palmolive soap.”

In the glow of the fire, the tense lines of Leon’s face even out. He clinks his glass to mine and Ruben’s. “To the three musketeers.” Shouldering me, he says, “Right?”

“Yeah,” Ruben and I say in unison.

The Sun City heist was big. We’ve stolen enough through the years for all of us to retire, but the stealing has long since been about something other than the money. Yes, I need money, lots of money, to feel safe in this world, but it’s the challenge that keeps me going. It’s getting a kick out of outsmarting the cleverest systems and the most advanced technology.

We watch the festivities in silence for a while.

One of the young women, Danai, breaks away from the group. She saunters over and stops in front of my chair. “Come dance with me.”

She’s twenty, by her tribe’s standards old enough to know what she wants, and very pretty. A week ago, I may have accepted the hand she holds out at me and taken her up on the offer, but I don’t put my drink aside or move my feet out of the way to make space for her.

“Not tonight,” I say.

She flings a leg over my thigh, standing wide-legged over me. The grass skirt shifts. The beaded blades part to give a glimpse of the smooth skin of her thighs. Her breasts dangle in her bikini top when she bends over me. Placing her palms on my knees, she slides them up my legs.

I grip her wrist. Her sultry look drops. I don’t have to reject her with words. She gets the message.