Sinful Dance in His Bed | 18+

Hey guys You can also read my book on Stck Reader, where new chapters are released first before they are published here. If you'd like early access and don't want to wait, feel free to check it out there. Link and Id will be on top of each chapters

Stck.me - https://aiko66922.stck.me/story/1801659/Sinful-dance-in-his-bed-18

Stck.me id - aiko66299.stck.me

Valentina pov

A little over a year and a half ago

There's nothing quite like a self-care day after a trying week. A little wine, a little candle, a comfy hoodie, some killer snacks, I mean, there's really nothing like it.

And I'm proud to say, there's no one better at assuming the self-care position than me.

I'm sitting on the couch of our Airbnb, my leg bent and placed in front of me, my fingers gingerly clutching the corner of a wax strip I slapped on my shin, my eyes glued to the TV as I wait to find out if Rachel got off the plane.

Spoiler, I already know she did-I've seen every episode of Friends a cool fifty times-but the moment of suspense before the big reveal never gets old. Real romance might be dead and buried, but at least I'll always have fiction to keep me company in my unmarried old age.

I'm pretty sure my lips are parted as I wait with bated breath for the big reunion. I've got the perfect hold on the wax strip and an angle of attack to minimize the pain, all I need is to muster up the courage to yank and it'll be over before I know it.

Easy, peasy, pain-free.

Hopefully.

"Did she get off the plane?" Ross demands, pressing every button on his phone to try and hear the rest of the message that doesn't exist. "Did she get off the plane?!"

Ugh, this part is so good.

There's a sheen of tears in my eyes and thoughts about how yearning in men is so hot on my mind when the front door bursts open, surprising me.

I shriek, caught off guard, and accidentally yank the wax strip clean off without any mental preparation.

There's a pause, and then the pain hits.

I shriek again, this time for an altogether different reason, and fall back onto the couch, clutching my leg to my chest.

"Puta madre," I curse at the searing burn.

An hour's worth of hard self-care work gone right out of the window, just like that.

"What the hell, Adri?" I say, peeking through my lashes to look at my best friend, adoptive sister, and roommate.

"Valentina," she says, breathless.

I groan, sitting up and reaching for the remote to pause the episode.

"Oh god, using my government name. What's up?"

"I don't want you to panic, Leni, but I've just seen the sun." She walks over to the window in the front room of our flat and presses both palms dramatically against the pane to emphasize her point. "The sun. The sun is out. Can you believe it?"

What we've learned thus far in our two weeks here is that London is wet. Even when the sun is supposedly out, it's half hidden behind the clouds and the air is still damp and misty.

For two girls from Colombia, it's been an absolute culture shock being here and hampered by the unforgiving weather. Not to mention the absolutely devastating effect the humid weather is having on our hair.

"Look at her, isn't she so beautiful?" Adri coos, now nearly hugging the window. "I haven't seen her in so long, I missed her, Leni." She whips around, giving me one of her signature mischievous grins. "Grab your stuff, we're going for a picnic at our spot." She starts humming and twirling around the apartment, reinvigorated by the promise of some vitamin D. "I think after the picnic we should do some sort of dance in thanks to the sun, kind of like they do in The Proposal."

"Only if ours is also to Lil Jon," I say, before adding, "But unfortunately, I'm very busy." I point to the wax strips, bottles of nail polish, and under eye masks strewn across the table. "I have big self-care plans for the rest of the afternoon."

She parks her hand on her hip and lifts an unimpressed brow at me. "If you get any paler, you'll be see-through, Leni. Papá wouldn't even recognize you if he saw you right now." Her voice drops into that authoritarian tone she gets when she's made up her mind. "We're going for a picnic."

I try to look outraged but fail, and a resigned laugh leaves me instead. "Okay, okay, you win. Give me fifteen minutes?"

Her warm, chocolate-brown eyes twinkle at her victory. "Ten," she counters.

I jump up onto the couch and run the length of it, launching myself off the armrest and down the hall to my room, screaming, "That's barely enough time to make myself look presentable!"

"You don't need to look presentable. We're having a picnic, not sitting front row at London Fashion Week."

I peek out from the doorway of my room. "If we were, would I have more than ten minutes?"

"Nope."

"Monster," I quip back.

"You're losing precious seconds arguing with me," she says, looking down at an imaginary watch on her wrist. "Eight minutes left."

I dive back into my room and try to transform myself visually from 'chill self-care afternoon' into 'could potentially bump into my future husband at the park today'.

Unlike Adri, I'm not comfortable going outside without some level of makeup. She's unconcerned and unbothered, more interested in plants and nature than she could ever be in cosmetics.

Not that she needs it-her bare, fresh-faced look has stopped many a man in his tracks before.

Literally.

Just last week, we were crossing the street as a man was coming the other way. One glance from her stopped him in his tracks, resulting in a near catastrophe when a passing bicyclist nearly collided with him.

"Five minutes!" Adri calls from the living room. "What episode were you watching?"

"The Paris episode, don't you dare finish it without me!"

"Fine," she grumbles in return, and I can't help but smile.

Adriana is, for lack of a stronger word, my soulmate. She's my friend, my sister, my savior. Everything good in my life, I owe to her.

When I lost my parents as a child, Adri brought me home with her. I remember getting into the back of a fancy black car and being taken to a compound with what looked like a veritable princess's castle to my four-year-old eyes.

There, Adri had dragged me to an office where a towering, terrifying man dressed in black sat in a large chair and seemed to loom over us.

That was my first time meeting Papá. In retrospect, one of his bodyguards must have warned him I was being brought to his house because he didn't seem surprised to see me. He'd stood and rounded his desk, then dropped down to his knees before me.

"Hola, Valentina," he'd said, his big burly voice curling comfortably around the syllables of my name. He'd wrapped his arms around me and hugged me into his big chest. "Welcome home."

Scared, abandoned, four-year-old Valentina had melted into his embrace and accepted everything he had to offer.

It's been my home and he's been my Papá since that day just over nineteen years ago. My heart squeezes thinking about him.

This is the furthest Adri and I have been from home. As our graduation gift, we'd asked for a girls' trip to London. Papá had agreed, always willing to give his girls whatever we wanted, even as Thiago, our older brother, grumbled in the background that it wasn't safe.

Papá is the head of the Da Silva cartel, the largest criminal organization in South America, but neither Adri nor I are involved with the cartel, so we did what all sisters would have done and told our brother to mind his own business.

"Two minute warning," Adriana calls. "Shit."

Alarmed by her soft cry, I go to her room and find her sitting cross-legged on the floor, clutching her hand.

"What's wrong?" I ask. "What happened?"

"Nothing serious, don't worry. I just burned myself on my straightener." Adriana waves a defeated hand in the direction of her hair and sighs. "I was trying to tame the frizz. Stupid humidity."

I head to our bathroom and pull out our makeshift first aid kit, digging around until I find the antibiotic cream. I squeeze some out and gingerly apply it to the raised pink mark on her fourth finger.

"How did you manage to burn yourself here?"

"I wasn't paying attention," she admits, pointing at an open book in front of her. "I was reading about plant ecology," she adds with a guilty smile.

I laugh. "You know we graduated right? You don't have to study anymore."

"That's the best part - I want to!"

I envy both Adriana's passion and the certainty she has in her chosen field of study.

All our lives, she's been obsessed with the outdoors and with nature in its many forms. When she decided to study botany, it came as no surprise to any of us, and over the past four years, she's truly flourished.

Meanwhile, like all students who don't know what to do with their lives, I studied marketing. I enjoyed my classes and got decent grades, but I can't say I've ever felt a kernel of passion for driving consumers through the purchase funnel.

I'm excited for this next stage of our lives. We're real adults now and hopefully that means I'll finally discover my purpose.

"Come on, Adri. I'm ready."

"Really?" She claps her hands together excitedly. "I can't wait! I packed a few towels and other necessities, but we should stop by Waitrose and get an assortment of snacks."

"Their cheddar twists are a must," I call over my shoulder as we head out into the hallway.

"I love how you already know the best snacks when we've only been here two w-"

The very loud, very recognizable sound of a crack of thunder interrupts her.

I turn towards Adriana. "Is that..."

"No." She shakes her head emphatically. "No."

We round the corner into the living room where we see through the window that the brief sunshine has gone, now replaced with torrential rain and the gray skies we've grown very accustomed to.

"Noooo," Adri laments, face pressed against the window in despair. "Our picnic plans," she mourns.

I let myself fall back onto the couch, pulling out my phone and bringing up the weather app.

"We can go tomorrow. It says there'll be clear skies all morning."

She drops dejectedly next to me, crestfallen. "Probably a bunch of lies once again."

"No, look." I show her my screen. "The forecast is completely clear, not one cloud in sight. In comparison, today's is decidedly more depressing." I bump my shoulder against hers to get her to smile. "I say we wake up bright and early and have ourselves a little breakfast picnic, how does that sound?"

Adri seems to cheer up a little. "Okay."

Sweetening the deal, I add, "I'll even make some arepas boyacense for the occasion."

Her eyes widen in sudden interest. "Are you serious?" I nod and she adds, "Okay, deal." She waves a threatening finger in my face. "You can't back out now."

I laugh. I knew mentioning arepas was going to cheer her up.

"Now that we've got that figured out," I start.

"Uh oh," she cuts in. "I know that tone of voice."

"What?" I ask innocently. "I was just going to suggest plans for tonight."

She groans and falls back onto the couch, placing her head on my lap and waving at me to play with her hair like a little dictator.

"I don't feel like going out."

"Please," I plead, putting my hands together. "Please, please, please. I haven't even told you what it is yet."

"You can tell me but I'm not committing to saying yes."

"Of course not, but you will once I tell you about it," I say, fingering strands of her hair. "It's Carnivale night at Firenze tonight. You know I've wanted to go to that club since before we even got here - what better night than a Carnivale theme?"

"That does sound fun," she admits. "But I'm too depressed. My mood is gray like the sky."

"I can't hear you over the sound of the music I'm imagining in my head," I answer, shaking my hips to an imaginary song and making her head bounce in the process. "Oh look, I see really hot guys who want to dance with us too!"

She laughs and swats at me.

"What would we even wear?" she argues. "Sounds like a pretty intense theme."

"You think I didn't come prepared for this conversation?" I ask. I motion for her to sit up and then go into my bedroom, coming back out with two Venetian masks and dresses.

One of the masks is butterfly themed, with dozens of monarchs affixed to and flying off the sides. The other is peacock themed, with colorful feathers coming off the top. They each have matching dresses that I spent weeks perfecting with costumers.

Based on the way Adriana is eyeing the butterfly dress, I think I just made a winning argument.

"Oh, wow," she whispers.

I'm not going to take no for an answer, even if Adriana is more of a homebody than I am. I love to party. I love to dance and meet new people and have a few drinks and just have fun.

"Come on, Adri. We're young, dumb, and temporarily responsibility-free. This is what life is supposed to be all about right now." I waltz around the living room holding the peacock dress up to my body. "Imagine dancing in these," I say with a giggle, adding, "Pretty please? It's been way too long since I flirted with anyone. That's actually depressing. And what better place to get back in the game than London? You know I love an accent."

She jumps to her feet and walks over to me, a twinkle back in her eye.

I grin.

I know my sister, I know I just won the battle.

"Fine. But dibs on the butterfly dress then."

I hand it to her. "It's always been yours, plant queen."

She squeals excitedly and runs to the bathroom. "I'm glad I didn't straighten my hair for nothing!"

I watch her go with a smile on my face, happy I got my way.

If I'd known then how the night would end, I would have changed everything.

If I'd known even one tenth of what would happen, I'd have taken her hand and run into the rain. We'd have danced and laughed and gotten dirty and probably ended up with a monster cold.

But we'd have come back inside and prepped the arepas, and put on the kettle. We'd have made popcorn and turned on the TV and cried watching Rachel show up at Ross's apartment.

If I'd known, I would never have forced her to go somewhere she'd end up being murdered.