But it was also murky and distorted with ugly truths. He’d purchased her, beaten her against a post, and refused to talk about his job. He was a slave trader, yet he’d helped her dispose of the bodies of slave buyers. Because he cared about her? He was an infuriating contradiction. As much as she wanted to luxuriate in their reconnection, doing so would be a death sentence for the women he preyed on next.
She needed to be smart about it. Nurture the bond. Manipulate it. Keep her fucking heart focused on the reason she was here. Except she wasn’t a manipulative person. She was better than that, and at one time, he’d been a better person, too.
She lifted her hand and clutched his. Their fingers entwined, grasping and shooting tingles up her arm.
With a sudden shift that made her gasp, he yanked her up the bed and put them at eye level on their sides, fingers laced between them and his arm locked around her back.
“I know you felt it.” He searched her face, lips parted. “Last night when I was inside you, and now. You feel us.”
Her chest ached. She tried not to feel anything at all, gulping down her breaths to stay quiet.
“Just stop for a second.” He rested his forehead against hers. “Give yourself this, Camila. Let it happen.”
“I can’t.” She leaned her head away. “It’s like dangling a prize in a trap.”
She desperately wanted to reach for it, to hold him, knowing if she did he’d break her, painfully and irreparably.
“What’s the prize?” He watched her intently.
“Happiness without fear. Love without cruelty.” She closed her eyes, voice raw with honesty. “You without slavery.”
He let go of her fingers and smothered her against him in an embrace that buried her face in his neck. She wished she could see his expression, but his deep, steady breaths told her enough.
“You like my answer.” She matched the pace of his breaths as if she wasn’t trembling inside.
“Mm.”
“What is Mm? I don’t understand you. You seem to want this, us, but you also want your disgusting profession. You can’t have both, Matias. Don’t you get it? As long as you’re enslaving women, I will never stop fighting.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Then explain it.”
“Not yet.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
“Why not?”
“You need to see it for yourself.”
Fucking impossible. “I need to pee.” She squirmed against him.
He kissed along her hairline, his thumb stroking against her spine. With her nose against his throat, the warm scent of his skin overwhelmed her senses.
She told herself he smelled like rusted chains and broken dreams. “I really need to—”
“Go.” He lifted the weight of his arm with a sigh and rolled to his back. “Return to the bed, and I’ll tell you what happened in the west wing yesterday.”
Images surfaced of him covered in blood, a cane in his fist, and death in his eyes. The cuts on her legs twinged in memory, and she shivered so hard she bit the inside of her cheek.
She slipped from the bed and scanned the floor. Every inch of marble was spotless—his bloody clothes, the broken lamp, corset, and panties nowhere in sight.
Without anything to wear, she made her way toward the bathroom. As she walked along the glass wall that led to the balcony, she spotted another balcony jutting from a separate entrance in the curve of the building. After hiking through the compound, she had a sense of its enormity, but seeing all that exterior glass covering multiple floors and balconies, it reminded her of an extravagant hotel with a steel beam infrastructure.
A table sat on the other balcony, the same one that connected to his living room where she’d scarfed down sandwiches yesterday. Now it was covered with domed plates and pitchers of juice. Her stomach grumbled.
If someone had brought breakfast into the suite and cleaned the bedroom, they had access to come and go. Were the servants around here armed? Maybe it was someone who could be overpowered and get her past the eye scanner.
She paused at the bathroom doorway and turned toward Matias.
He lay in a tangle of sheets around his waist, the white bedding aglow against his tawny skin and black hair. With his arms folded behind his head, he looked peaceful, almost harmless. But the way he studied her, his expression covetous and his eyes roaming her from head to toe, she knew there wasn’t a harmless fiber beneath all that muscle.
“How many people have access to your suite?” She held her hands at her sides, fighting the urge to cover herself. “You and…?”
“Three others. Nico, Anacardo—”
“Anacardo?”
How did they take themselves seriously with these nicknames? Picar, Chispa, and Anacardo translated to Chop, Spark, and Cashew. Apparently, the use of sobriquets was a thing among narco-killers?
“He manages my domestic stuff—food, laundry, cleaning.” His gaze rose to her face. “You’re the third person.”
“Me?” A flush of excitement tingled through her, quickly followed by suspicion.
No way would he make it that easy to escape. It wasn’t like he handed over keys to the helicopter. Or a training manual on how to fly it.
“I can get past the scanner things?” She shifted her attention to the hall beyond the doorway. If she found a computer or phone, she could contact Tate.
“Your eyes were scanned before you woke yesterday. You have access to certain areas of the property, including my suite.”
“Can I go outside?”
“Of course.” With his legs spread wide and hands laced behind his head, he didn’t seem to have a care in the world. “I thought you had to pee.”
She slipped into the bathroom and used the toilet, buzzing with the new information. While she brushed her teeth—with his toothbrush because fuck him—she entertained scenarios of freeing all the slaves in the compound and leading them through the rainforest like a Rambo woman. She needed a badass rifle and a bandanna headband for maximum effect. Oh, and some survival skills, because she didn’t know shit about trekking through two million square miles of jungle.
The dangers that lurked amid those majestic palms were so beyond anything she’d prepared for. Not to mention, her escape would provoke a manhunt. If Matias was willing to let her go outside, the odds of getting out were probably not in her favor.
But her goal had never been to save herself or existing slaves. She’d come here to stop them from taking more women. If she couldn’t persuade the cartel to end that business, she would have to kill them.
Nausea curled in the pit of her stomach.
She rinsed out her mouth and stared at the wide brown eyes in the mirror. The anguish in those eyes was everything. Matias could be the most atrocious man on the planet, but there was no use lying to herself. She didn’t have the emotional strength to end his life. Not now. Not ever. As inconvenient as that was, it loosened some of the knots inside her.
When she returned to the bed, he’d shifted into a half-sitting position, his back leaning against a stack of pillows and a tube of ointment in his hand.
As she crawled toward him on the mattress, he tracked her movements and patte
d his thigh. His ever-present desire to be all up in her personal space might’ve been a coercive tactic, but there was more to it. Maybe that was the key. She just needed to find a way to peel back the layers, starting with his obvious attraction to her.
Reaching for his waist, she dragged the sheet off with a quiver of fear darting down her spine. She pushed through it, lifting a leg over his nude lower body and straddling his partial erection.
His hands gripped her ass before she sat down, holding her upright on her knees.
Confused, she looked down at his swelling dick.
“Hold still.” He squeezed a dollop of ointment into his palms and rubbed the icy balm over the backs of her thighs.
Instant relief shivered into her skin, and she swayed, dropping her hands on his chest.
“This is new.” She twitched her fingers, indicating the sprinkle of dark hair on his sternum.
“So is this.” He met her eyes as his caress glided over her ass, making wide circles to encompass the curves of her hips.
“Not the scrawny girl you remember?”
“You were never scrawny.” The corner of his mouth lifted, and his gaze wandered over her body. “I spent the majority of my teen years hiding a chubby from you.”
“You did?”
“You have no idea.” He added more ointment to his hands and massaged the fronts of her thighs. “Last night…” His chest rose, fell. “The empty chair at our table belonged to a close friend.”
The sudden somberness in his tone stiffened her muscles. She held still, focused on the movements of his hands, willing him to continue talking.
After a nerve-racking pause, he told her about Gerardo’s betrayal, the information leaked to a rival cartel, the dismemberment, the blood, and the spy who still lived among them. His voice became rougher, angrier, with every word, leaving her cold long after he fell silent.
With the nudge of his hands, he lowered her to sit back on his thighs, his semi-flaccid cock resting in the V of her legs.
“There are other secrets.” His jaw shifted. “Valuable secrets that Gerardo may or may not have released.”