“Suit yourself.” With a shrug, he retreated into the apartment and flipped a light switch. “I’m Van, by the way.”
The fluorescents flickered on, illuminating a sleeper sofa converted into a bed, an open kitchen, a bedroom door, and leaning against the frame of that door was the man who had fucked her so soundly she still felt him in her teeth and her legs and everywhere in between.
Head tipped down, he stared at her from beneath heavy brows. His arms folded across his chest, with one sleeved in tattoos. Like his friend, he was clad only in fitted boxer briefs, his short hair disheveled and eyes sleepy.
She must’ve woken them. Neither man was armed, and the weapons they carried earlier were out of reach on the kitchen table. There were probably more firearms, but hers was out and ready.
Drawing the second Beretta from her back, she trained a gun on each of them, stepped into the apartment, and kicked the door shut behind her.
The one with the toothpick—Van—tilted his head as he watched her approach. “I expected you to walk funny. With more of a limp.” At her confused look, he said, “As small as you are, it wouldn’t have been easy to take Tate’s beast of a cock.”
Tate. The name fit him, and his cock… Her inner muscles clenched in memory, reawakening the delicious soreness there.
“How was it?” Van asked. “Did he ram it inside you with all the ferocity and pain it deserves?”
“Boundaries,” Tate growled. “Heed them.”
“Did the ol’ dog at least make you come?” Van asked conversationally, as if she weren’t aiming a bullet at his chest.
“That’s enough.” Tate lifted his chin in her direction. “Lucia, lower the weapons.”
“Who are you?” She steadied both guns, ticking her gaze between them.
Tate straightened from the doorframe and slowly closed the distance. His strides were slow but long, eating up the floor with muscled nonchalance. But there was nothing casual in the way he looked at her, those blue eyes seeking her most intimate places and setting her on fire from the inside out. He looked at her as though he were recalling the feel of being sheathed inside her, like he wanted to feel her again.
She took great pleasure in the knowledge that such a ridiculously handsome man was attracted to her. But the stupid, girly, instantaneous attachment she felt for him was an embarrassing sentiment, so very un-Lucia-like. What was her deal with this guy?
It had just been sex, really fucking good sex, with a beautiful stranger. She wasn’t here for a repeat.
She was here to save her sister from more heartache.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
Two feet away, Tate pressed his chiseled chest against the barrel of the gun. “I’m Camila’s best friend.”
He could’ve been lying, but there wasn’t a trace of deceit on his stunning face.
Everything inside her cried with joy. Not only was Camila alive, she had a strong, protective friend who cared for her enough to track down her only family.
It was more than Lucia could’ve ever wanted for Camila, and she felt the sudden need to sit down. Hard. But her arms and legs remained stubbornly locked.
“What about him?” She gestured at Van with the gun she trained on him.
“He’s…uh…” Tate gripped his nape, stalling, holding something back.
“He’s what?” Her stomach tightened.
Van lifted his chin, giving her the full force of his icy eyes. “I’m the one who kidnapped your sister.”
CHAPTER 10
Confusion spiked through Lucia, followed by furious understanding. This scary-looking, scarface motherfucker abducted her sweet, innocent, seventeen-year-old sister.
“What did you do to her?” She directed eleven years of pain into the scalding glare she aimed at Van.
A day hadn’t passed without the loss, the torment, and the dire unknowns that surrounded Camila’s disappearance. She hadn’t saved Camila from being taken, but dammit, she could avenge her, right now, with the squeeze of a trigger.
“You won’t shoot him,” Tate said quietly, his chest pushing against the other gun barrel. “Think about it. He captured Camila and me with the intent to sell us into slavery. Yet I’m here. Camila’s with Matias, and Van’s still alive. There’s a good reason for that.”
“He captured you?”
Tate nodded, his eyes growing heavy and dark. “Six years ago.”
“Put down the guns, little girl,” Van said, “and I’ll confess all my sins.”
She held her ground, seething with venom. “How dare you?”
“The weapons, Lucia.” Tate held out a palm. “Now.”
The command in his deep voice was meant to subdue her, but it was the compassion softening his eyes that urged her rage to creep back into the darkness and go dormant once again.
It took longer to lower the guns, but after a few calming breaths, she placed them in his huge hand. “Don’t make me regret this.” Please don’t abuse my trust.
He set the weapons aside and twined his fingers around hers. Then he steered her toward the bedroom. “Give us a minute, Van.”
In the bedroom, he left the door open and directed her to sit on the foot of the bed, out of view from the main room.
“We’ll tell you everything you want to know. Every secret. Every crime.” He pulled on a pair of jeans, zipped, and left the button undone. “But first, I want to make something clear.”
She stared at him, mesmerized. How could she not be? It wasn’t just his sculpted perfection. There was something extraordinary beneath the physical strength. Something in the tenderness of his touch, the vigilant way he watched her, the gentle inflections he wove into his commands. As if no matter how damaged or sick she was, he would still hold her hand, hold her close, and let her lean on him as hard and as long as she needed. He was that person.
She never had a person and didn’t know what to do with the warm feelings it soaked into her bones.
He perched on the mattress beside her and touched her face, studying her eyes.
“Tonight was…” He rested his forehead against hers and inhaled deeply. “I’m not going to label it. Just know that I didn’t fuck you as part of some scheme. I went to the club, willing to do exactly that to get you alone. To talk to you. But once I had you…”
He edged closer and dragged his nose along her neck, sniffing her. It was such a primal gesture, animalistic, and the reverberating groan in his throat produced a groan of her own.
Sliding her cheek against his, she indulged in the scratch of his whiskers. His proximity instilled her with an addictive sense of security—something she didn’t even know she craved until now.
“When I was inside you,” he breathed against her ear, “it was real and natural and just us. Understand?”
She nodded, her throat too tight for sound as she floated to an imaginary hinterland where everythings and forevermores glittered like stars in the sky.
“Sex between us… That was a straightforward thing. But everything else…” He leaned back and rubbe
d the crease between his eyebrows. “There are complications, histories.”
“My sister?”
“Yes. And Tiago Badell, the work you do for him. We have a lot to discuss.”
The mention of Tiago made her wonder how Tate found her, but more importantly… “Does Camila know I’m alive?”
“No. We need to talk about that, too.” He clasped her hand and stood, leading her to the sitting room. “Did you run into trouble on your way back?”
“My way back…?” She stopped and released his hand, her mind spinning to understand his meaning. “Wait. You knew I followed you earlier?”
“Of course. And I knew you had to return to the club where your guards were waiting. How did you dodge them again to get back here?”
She could tell him. She could lay bare all her secrets and ugly truths and hope she was right about his compassion. But that required trust—something he had to earn.
She left the question adrift and stepped along the window in the main room. Below, two of Tiago’s guards stood across the street from her apartment door, smoking cigarettes and shooting the shit.
Could they not see her up here? She flattened a hand against the window, studying the glass.
“There’s a film on it.” Tate stood so close to her back his breath stirred her hair. “It makes the apartment look dark from the outside.”
No wonder she hadn’t noticed movement in the window when she came and went in the alley. “How long have you been watching me?”
“Ten days. The man I hired to find you watched you for weeks.”
“Tell me about that, about your relationship with Camila, all of it.” Shifting away from his intoxicating presence, she sat on the unfolded sleeper sofa and settled in. “Start at the beginning.”
“It started with me.” Van, now dressed in athletic pants and a shirt, brought her a glass of tequila, which she refused. “My father was the Police Chief of Austin. But in the criminal underground, he was known as Mr. E.” He swallowed the tequila and set the glass on the coffee table. “He trafficked sex slaves, and I was the kidnapper and trainer for the operation.”