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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Synopsis

  Dedicaiton

  PART I

  Letters

  Letters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  PART II

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part III

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Violent Things

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  “Sloth: A Sinful Secrets Story,” by Ella James.

  ©2015, Ella James. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Ella James.

  Interior Formatting by Kassi Cooper of Kassi’s Kandids Formatting

  She writes me back.

  I didn’t expect that.

  She tells me she’s a lover of chicken pizza and video games, a hot sorority girl with the nickname Sloth. She wants to know something about me in return. She says I owe her.

  This is how she saves my life. She doesn’t even know it. We’ve never even seen each other. But I need a reason. Just one reason to continue. She becomes mine.

  The anonymity is good. She doesn’t need to know me, but I need her kindness. We both live our lives: a letter here, a post card there. For three years, I escape my demons. And then one day I’m pulled back in.

  I’ve resigned myself to what I know is coming. Until the girl I’m spanking gives her safe word: Sloth.

  And then the lie I’m living starts to unravel.

  Sloth is an erotic romance. It’s a dark mystery, so if you’re sad, read another book. This one is real, and hard. Not that kind of hard. (That kind of hard, too). Consider yourself warned.

  P.S. The book ends on a beach. That’s all I’m saying. As for an HEA, you’ll have to read and see.

  To Jamie Davis—

  For Much Slothing

  I MIGHT AS WELL BE a vampire. That’s how much time I’ve been spending in my closet lately. Being a college girl, constantly surrounded by dumb college guys, I can already hear all of the dumb-college-guy-caliber comments, so let me say, for the record: I’m not gay (I still fly the flag), and I’m also not rubbing one out.

  I’m in here writing letters I then shred, and packaging one of the Seven Wonders of the World into Mason Jars. Also, obsessively Googling the name “Robert,” paired with a few key phrases.

  Weird, I know. But weird is not a bad thing.

  The letters are personal. Private. I don’t write them very eloquently, but that’s okay, because no one is ever going to read them. I can’t seem to make myself mail any of them. It’s a good thing, I guess. A practical thing. But every time I listen to the grinding sound my shredder makes, I find myself rubbing my chest, because it hurts a little.

  The name “Robert”—well, that’s personal, too.

  As for the wonder, and the Mason jars... it’s business, baby. My business.

  Yeah. I have my own business. I’m proud of that. I never have to ask Mom or Grans for money. I never have to want for anything material. Sometimes I buy things I know my sister Mary Claire wants, pull off the tags, and mail them home, posing them as “second-hand.” One day soon, I hope to set up a Chattahoochee College grant for a hearing impaired student from my hometown. Yeah, you guessed it: Mary Claire.

  I do business on the black market, but I keep it as classy as possible. When I deliver orders, I have everything all cute and tidy: product inside a baggie, tied at the top with a little strip of ribbon (sometimes I even do different sorority colors), then the baggie tucked into a Mason jar with an adorable colored lid. (Sometimes, I make the lid match the ribbon—if that’s possible, given my limited selection of colored Mason jar lids).

  Like most things I do these days, I make dealing drugs look effortless. And it is—mostly.

  For the record, it’s not really “drugs.” It’s weed, which is legal in some states and will probably be legal everywhere in another decade. That makes me a trailblazer.

  Getting my cute Mason jars organized and ready to blaze is no easy task. For starters, my bedroom is the size of a square of Chiclet chewing gum, and located in a sorority house, which is officially drug free. Even worse, it’s wedged between the bedrooms of Milasy and Stephanie—my sorority’s president and vice president, neither of whom, you might have guessed, is showing up for any pro-marijuana rallies.

  So yeah. I have to be covert. And that means packaging in my closet. It’s not a big closet. It’s where my desk is, and also where I keep my LELO. The walls are bright pink, courtesy of the last Tri Gam treasurer.

  Right now, I’ve got less than thirty minutes until our Wednesday night chapter meeting, and here I am: slaving away over my precious buds. Picking out stems and seeds that Kennard told me wouldn’t be there this time. Freaking Kennard. Medical grade my tight, tanned ass. This shit is barely even mid-grade. Bitches like Holly and Neda will probably try to get a discount. I can’t do discounts. Not this week or any week.

  I look down at myself: at my Seven jeans, my Gucci boots, my pink Kors sweater. These things don’t buy themselves. I need money to survive here, in this lifestyle. Without my dealing, I’ve got nothing but a scholarship and a room down at the mold-infested swamp dorms. I might have good grades, and I might go to a lot of trouble to keep myself in good physical condition, but you think the campus’ most exclusive sorority would let me in if I wasn’t forking over giant quantities of the green stuff? (Not that green stuff. I’m talking about Benjamins). Not a chance in hell.

  People here think I’m a rich girl. A rich, delinquent girl who likes pushing boundaries and breaking rules. It’s so not true. I was the girl found crying in the first grade bathroom because I wasn’t coordinated enough to put one foot right in front o
f the other as the students in my class filed, in a line, from our class room to the lunch room.

  My mother is a seamstress, and my dad died when his eighteen-wheeler rolled over, hauling logs from Dawson up to Memphis. Mary Claire gets free lunch at school. I did, too. And it was fine—for high school. I made up for being poor as dirt by being reasonably well-put-together and doing really well in gymnastics and concert band. Oh, and dating Brandt Kessler, a doctor’s son. But college is different. Poor girls don’t rush, and on my campus, girls who don’t rush have a hard time getting noticed. After a lifetime on the outside, window-shopping, I want to be an insider here at Chattahoochee College. So when I graduate, I can start a life that doesn’t include a sewing table.

  I place the last of my Mason jars in a little row on the edge of my desk and mentally tick off my regulars. My sorority regulars, that is.

  Holly buys half an eighth a week, and so do Megan, Kelsey, Lora, Chole, Amber, Ricci, Katy Peterson, Hannah, Solena, and Lindsey. They all get charged $65 instead of my regular $70. Greek discount. Neda only buys a three-fourths of a gram, because she says when she smokes at the same time she’s Vyvancing, she gets a rash. I charge her $50, because geez, I’ve gotta make some money off her. And then I’ve got a bunch of quarter-ounce customers. I walk my fingers over these jars: Julie, Sarah, Molly, other Molly, Forrest, Anna Maria, Christy, Elizabeth, Joanna, and Jordan. These chicks are where I make some real money. I make them cough up $145 a jar for a quarter of an ounce. More, when the weed is really good.

  This week, it’s pretty much my norm: some barely mid-grade diesels, purchased from Kennard, my old across-the-street neighbor down in Albany. Chattahoochee College sits right on the Alabama-Georgia line—about one hundred miles southwest of Atlanta, and one hundred miles northwest of my hometown of Albany, Georgia. Every Sunday afternoon, I drive an hour and a half home in my ancient, white Mazda Miata, and drive back up with several grocery bags full of my Grans’ cookies and brownies, plus a pound of bud concealed in patterned Tupperware.

  I peek into the portable cake carrier on my closet floor and cringe.

  Just like last week, I’m running through my stash too fast. I take the Ziploc freezer bag out of the cake carrier and sit it on the scales that stand on the carpet, in the nook under my desk. These are adjusted for the weight of the bag, and...

  Shit. After I get rid of all my Mason jars tonight, and if I sell about a fourth a pound tomorrow at the bars, I’ll be running really low. And I still have to make it through the Friday frat parties, and there’s a home game this weekend, which means I could make a mint at Saturday tailgates. But I’ll almost definitely be out by the Saturday night post-game frat bashes.

  It happened last week, and I used up all my emergency, just-incase-Kennard-dies-suddenly stash.

  I guess I should be glad. I’m growing my client base. Instead, I feel anxious.

  I pick up my phone and scroll to “K.C.,” but I don’t dial. K.C. is this sketchy guy I met at a bar last year. When I get really low, can I buy a few ounces from him, but I don’t like to. He’s not like... cop sketchy. He’s more the looks-only-at-my-boobs kind of sketchy. Let’s just say I don’t want to be alone with him in a broken elevator.

  I rub my lipsticked lips together and decide I won’t call K.C. unless I get a surprise order tonight. At this point, almost all the girls in my sorority and our BFF sororities know I deal, and so do some of their boyfriends, so I’ve got about a dozen frat clients. I also deal to some people from my classes. Add that to a handful of townie adults, plus my yoga instructor and a few guys at the ten-minute oil change place downtown... and I’ve got a pretty big client list. For a one-girl operation.

  I look once more at the digital clock on my desk, then grab my Kate Spade overnight bag—the one that looks like a big, straw purse—and dump its contents—a tube of toothpaste and some PJ pants—onto the floor. I grab the PJ pants and put them back in, because I just remembered these dumb jars always clank together. I add a sleeveless shirt and some running shorts to the bag, to keep the Mason jars from bumping each other as I move. Then I hustle out of my room, into the shared living area of the “officers’ suite.” It’s empty except for our leather couch and chair, the fluffy rug, the round coffee table. Because everyone else is already downstairs at chapter.

  Oops.

  I amble down the rubber-lined, hardwood stairs, moving from the top story of our four-columned antebellum house to the large parlor on the first story. I know it’s weird, but I’ve found that when I’m late, moving fast makes me feel more stressed out. So I pretend I’m right on time and focus on the motion of my feet.

  When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I hear Milasy’s drawl from around the corner and confirm that the meeting has already started. I move through the foyer, through the small, square doorway, built at a time when no one gave a damn about an open floor plan, and get a straight-line view of Milasy and Steph, sitting on one of the antique sofas in the parlor. Their backs are pencil-straight, their ankles crossed. I stand behind the crowd of perfume-sprayed, lotion-slathered Tri Gams and try to paste an interested—or at least neutral—expression on my face. Milasy talks about our grades. Steph remind us (as she does every week) that ladies drink alcohol from plastic Solo cups instead of beer bottles or cans. Cassie tells us to prepare to vote on our Thanksgiving and Christmas charity events next week, and then she stands on her tiptoes and looks around the room for me.

  Her brown eyes meet mine, and we share a conspiratory smile. Cassie is Type-B, and more like me than Steph and Milasy. She’s the officer most likely to be late at any given time.

  I square my shoulders and project my voice, and tell the room full of Tri Gams that they only have another week to pay first semester dues. After that, I sink back into myself and allow my mind to wander. Which it does, right back to my current read: a novella called The Private Club, by one of my favorite romance authors, J.S. Cooper. Mmmmm.

  I remain in la-la land until my good friend Lora elbows me. I jump and apparently gasp, too, because a few girls in front of us turn around to see what’s up. When everyone has settled down again and I’ve had a few seconds to get over my embarrassing outburst, Lora leans over and whispers, “What’s in your bag, lady? Cake?” She wiggles her brows and grins.

  She knows what’s in the bag, but her comment reminds me: We’ve got a cakewalk right after this in the student center. Shit!

  How am I supposed to hand out my bud at an organized event—one where I’ll need to oversee the three girls who’ll be handling the cash boxes?

  That’s really annoying. I can’t believe I forgot. I rub my head. I didn’t even bring a freakin’ cake.

  After the meeting winds down—all the low-fat snacks have been eaten, all the lemonade lite sipped—I chat with Milasy, Steph, and Cassie. Nothing interesting. Just the usual business stuff that sometimes makes me wonder why I even joined a sorority. I’m reminded almost instantly, when I walk with some of my pot posse across campus, toward the William Harrison Memorial Student Center.

  On the long trek there, as we migrate across brick walkways and under giant, moss-strewn oaks, I manage to drop three Mason jars into three oversized purses, and receive three cash payments. In the chaos of everybody trying to fit through the glass doors on the front of the student center, a two-story brick eyesore from the seventies, I dole out two more jars and get two more wads of cash.

  I’m trying to strategize how to get the rest of my illicit goods where they need to go when I step into the carpeted common room and stop in my tracks.

  There are guys here. Like... a lot of guys.

  I glance at Lora, and she arches her brows. “You don’t remember we’re doing this with Sig Alpha?”

  I chew my lower lip. “No, I did.”

  She elbows me. “Pants on fire. I can tell you’re surprised. Don’t worry, though. Harrison said Brennan was skipping.”

  I let a slow breath out and nod.

  Harrison is Lora’s boyfriend
, and until the end of June, Brennan was mine. Both guys are Sig Alphas, but Harrison is the president. Meaning he’ll definitely be here.

  I’m glad Brennan won’t. Our breakup... sucked. So yeah.

  I give Lora a paste-on smile. “That’s good.”

  “The best,” she says, bumping my shoulder.

  Despite this first-floor common area being the most logical place to hold a cakewalk, we’re not cakewalking here because Milasy couldn’t book it. I can’t remember why, but the cakewalk is in a large study hall on the second floor. I’m pretty sure it’s near some bathrooms, plus a lot of little conference rooms, which works out perfectly for me.

  We ascend the stairs slowly, as Lora and a few of the other junior girls chat about the effectiveness of the Diva Cup. The yucky conversation ends when we reach the top of the stairs, walk between two giant ferns on either side of the staircase, and behold the sprawling study area.

  It’s got industrial mauve carpet and is normally cluttered with couches, recliners, and tables. Tonight, the furniture is pushed up against the gray cinderblock walls. A chunk of the floor is partitioned into masking-tape squares for the cakewalk. All around the squares are fold-out tables bearing cakes and refreshments.

  I make a beeline for the younger girls who’ll be working the cash boxes, and give them specific instructions for how I want them to keep track of everything.

  Then I walk around the bustling room, smiling and chatting like the biggest thing on my mind is how much money this dumb cakewalk makes. I’m also looking for Brennan, who indeed seems to have skipped tonight’s event. Thank the Lord.

  After a few minutes, I slip into the bathroom with two clients. I emerge with fresh lipstick, then chat with Steph about her disastrous calculus exam while the guys set up the sound system. I don’t really remember what a cakewalk entails: some sort of hop-scotch kind of thing and numbered slips of paper, plus a boom box. A quick look at the tables around the cakewalk floor reveals two dozen or more cakes, and I guess people think this is a cool pastime, because girls and guys from other sororities and frats start spilling into the room.