“Get me to Corpus Christi and we will have money. Money’s not the issue.”
“It will be when you have to start paying bribes.”
She turned to him sharply, scrutinizing him, as though seeing him for the first time. “There is enough money to bribe our way out.”
Arabs in a mountain village will gladly take a handful of bills that don’t amount to more than fifty dollars, but the U.S. was a different place. Customs officials, hotel attendants, travel agents, all those people you come into contact with … dammit. He could see it coming and he didn’t like it. They’d have to go to ground, like fucking hobos.
If that was the case, then he was going to have some me time before the rest of his life turned to complete shit. He pulled into the parking lot of Walmart. “Wait here. Stay low. Don’t let anyone see you.”
“What are you doing?” She tried to grab at his arm, but he moved too fast sliding off the seat.
“Just do what I tell you, for once.”
Her eyes squinted in suspicion and she glanced around the parking lot. “You better hurry!” She lay down on the seat, still looking up at him as he stared at her through his driver’s side window.
He took his sweet fucking time shopping.
* * * *
She watched him get in the truck and throw a couple Walmart bags behind the seat as if the fifty minutes he spent in there was no big deal. Bastard.
It was her fault. She had pushed him to the edge. He’d been so … accommodating. She had let down her guard, stopped trying to hide her true nature.
She gritted her teeth and swallowed all the things she wanted to say. Now was not a good time for words. They were both too high strung. She sat up in the seat, shivering a little with the cool night air. Her shirt was wet and cold, and she had nothing else to wear. And he didn’t say a word, just drove, to where she had no idea.
The man could be maddening.
He pulled into a hotel off the Riverwalk, right in the middle of downtown. San Antonio River was a mecca of shopping and restaurants, and the Riverwalk nightlife teemed with parties, dance and music over the weekends. How could Adrian expect to fly under the radar in a place like this?
She could no longer remain silent. “We can’t stay. We have to go now. Right now. I just need clothes. This is way too high profile. We’re supposed to be hiding!”
“Shut up. Get low and wait here. I’ll be back in a minute with a hotel key. I brought you some clothes.”
She moved to dig into his Walmart bag and he grabbed her hand like a kid reaching in the cookie jar. “Wait until you’ve had a bath.”
His eyes glanced at the sticky blood on her chin, and he shuddered slightly. The clean freak was always so worried about germs. She just wanted to get out of this shirt, so large it could have fit two of her, and get something on that didn’t let the cool air up her crotch every time she moved.
Again she held back her words. She did need to clean up and change, and this place was good as any.
“Stay down. I’ll be right back.”
This time he was true to his word, he popped back in the truck after five minutes and drove around to the backside of the Hotel Valencia. Three stories high, art deco stucco in three matching color tones, with palm plants on every corner of every floor and samba dance music blaring from the packed lounge, the place looked expensive. She couldn’t help but smile that he’d brought her to somewhere this nice, instead of a dive motel.
“When we get to the coast, you owe me three hundred bucks for this suite.”
She bit her tongue, literally, and the taste of her own blood kept her from saying something she would probably regret. She’d rather not strain the tenuous civility they had.
She sat brooding with memories she wished had happened to someone else while he dashed up to their room and came back down with a blanket. Smart. She wasn’t exactly fit to be seen.
“Keep this around you. We don’t want to scare anyone.” He wrapped the blanket over her head and shoulders, hiding the lower half of her face.
She followed him upstairs, around the corner of a covered walkway, and into their cream colored, warm suite. A pair of brown leather chairs sat across from a glossy burgundy bedspread, and the tan carpet squished soft and thick under her toes.
Every bit of a three hundred dollar suite, and there was only one bed. Obviously he had no qualms about sleeping with her. The man was a constant puzzle. Ready to punch her one minute, then rented her a deluxe hotel room the next.
“Here, try not to get any blood on it.” He tossed her a pair of black leggings and beige, long-sleeve top.
She held up the warm-looking garment with genuine pleasure. “Thank you so much. It’s very nice.” She smiled at him, and glanced in the mirror to find a ghastly pale woman with a blood-wet shirt and blood-smeared face, grinning like a fool. A little too much in the fang department.
He caught her scowl and snickered. He pointed at the bathroom. “There’s complimentary soap and shampoo. Use it, liberally.”
God, he was such a bastard.
She set the clothes down and growled to swallow her words. This is what she deserved. After all that she had done to him, and feeding like a wild animal, what should she expect? She flung the shirt off and treated him to a view of her bare backside as she slipped into the bathroom.
If she couldn’t scream at him, and tell him what she thought, how he made her feel, then she would have to use other means to get him under control. She had already sold her body once for his help.
She barely waited for the water to warm up before stepping under the shower, feeling the glorious heat wash away the residue of her mistakes. She soaped up all over, repeatedly, not for him, but for herself. She wasn’t normally such a messy eater, but those men had deserved every ounce of her wrath.
She had just added shampoo to her hair when he entered the bathroom and stripped. Interesting. How could he be such a cold bastard, and then step in the shower with her seconds later? Would she ever understand this man?
He didn’t bother trying to wash himself. He grabbed the soap and went for her. “I think you missed a spot. His lathered hands smoothed all over her nipples as his hard cock pushed against the small of her back.
“I’m pretty sure I missed here too.” She pulled his hand down between her legs, and guided his fingers to where she wanted him. He followed that lead without complaint.
His other hand reached for more soap at the same time he slid one finger up inside her. Water rolling down her back, Adrian’s strong arms around her, she sighed in pleasure and leaned her forehead against the marble tile. She could do this. Oh yeah, she could do this every night.
He leaned back a little and stroked down her back with soap, working lower until his finger skimmed the rim of her anus. Slipping and sliding around in the soap, he worked his fingers in, front and back, and she had found a new favorite thing to do.
“Oh that’s … that’s so good, don’t stop.” He had her heaving, grinding back and forth as his fingers worked their magic. Suddenly he pulled out from behind, and she grunted her disappointment.
Then he was there, pushing. Not his finger, the real deal. He spread her cheeks slightly and then he pushed in more, little by little. “Damn, give a girl some warning.” She slumped against the tile, one of his arms still holding her, fingering her, and that monster cock gliding into her ass, slow and steady.
His lips brushed her ear as he growled in pleasure. “This is perfect. We don’t have to worry about the whole virgin thing.”
He pushed more and more of that thing inside her and she wondered if she might be better off with the one-time pain of virginity. Then he slipped two more fingers in her pussy and rubbed in an agonizingly wondrous semicircle. She couldn’t help but grind into him, and push that cock even deeper in her ass. The sense of fullness made her gasp.
She had honestly never been fucked like this, so thoroughly, so completely, filled in every way, and it was wonderful. Until he p
ulled out, and shoved it all right back in. “Oh my god. You’re … that’s just too … oh god don’t stop.”
She came hard, humping him, his hand, his cock, whatever she could get. “Dios mio, don’t stop!” She screamed, needing to bite something, anything.
She craned around and shoved her ass into him hard, taking that last little inch he’d been sparing her. She didn’t care, because she got what she wanted when she bit into his right arm.
This was life, everything she needed, all at once. She held on, suckling Adrian’s delicious blood as she came all over his hand, repeatedly. She felt the glorious warmth of his seed as he bellowed and came inside her.
She somehow found the will to let go of his shoulder, knowing she needed to be extra careful with him, if the two of them were to survive, somehow. She was going to be feeling this one for a while. She was a little too small for his size. In the future, she’d have to teach him to slow it down a bit.
“Woman, you really know how to do it. I hate to admit, but it’s not the same if you don’t bite me.”
As he slid out, she shuddered and moaned with every inch of him. She looked over her shoulder to see his face. The man was happy. Very happy. And high as a kite.
I did that to him. I made him that happy. I could learn to live with this man, to make him this happy every single night.
* * * *
Chapter 16
She cuddled with him in the last hour before dawn, happy, sore, wishing they were on their way to Corpus Christi, but didn’t regret that he’d gone to the trouble to rent this room. It was … sweet. Like the world and all her problems had been put on hold, for him, to give him time to adjust. It was just sweet enough for her to set all those nasty memories on a shelf.
That was not her life, not anymore. It seemed like the life of someone else, as if she’d watched a long, horrible soap opera, but now it was over, and she could live her life with Adrian. Something simple and decent, a world of difference from La Reina.
La Reina was a hard woman, forged into a razor-edge weapon by the will of her master. She had used men when it suited her purpose, but La Reina never had the luxury of finding a man for herself. Though she was acknowledged by several cartels across Latin America as ‘The Queen’, no one knew the truth. She had only ever been a servant, fulfilling her master’s directives.
She nipped at the back of Adrian’s shoulder, not drawing blood, but playing with him. He lifted his arm up and around her to pull her nose to nose. “No more biting, you’ve had enough. Hey, what’s your real name? Or should I just stick with Your Highness?”
Right when she was getting all lovey dovey with him, he had to go and open his mouth. “There was once a time when I was known as Samantha. About thirty years ago, in another life.”
He grinned wickedly. “I think I prefer Your Highness. Feels like I’m banging royalty.”
She snorted and shook her head. She always hated digging into those memories. How much better would she be if she could lose her memory all over again? Well, there were some good memories, before her master, when she was just a girl who foolishly applied for a foreign student visa on a high school exchange program.
“Please don’t call me that. If you knew how messed up that is … call me Samantha. That’s what my friends and family used to call me.”
“Where are they now?”
“I haven’t seen them since 1984, when I left for Brazil. That was probably the single stupidest thing I’d ever done, being an American student in Sao Paulo. It was only supposed to be a semester as an exchange student, three months, but I never made it home.”
“So … do they know you’re alive?”
“What good would that do? I haven’t aged a day since then. I look in my twenties, which is one of the reasons I was kidnapped, I looked older than I was. At sixteen, being sold into slavery to Colombian drug lords is not a fun experience. I guess I was lucky I didn’t get killed, or worse, end up a prostitute passed around to all of them.”
“So what happened?”
“He bought me before anyone else could get to me. They called him El Vampiro, the vampire, like it was a joke. He played it up, his nickname. I don’t know what his real name was. Everyone called him El Vampiro, because he never came out in the daylight. Nobody knew that he actually was a vampire.”
“You’re kidding right? Reality is stranger than fiction.”
“Down there all the cartel guys have nicknames, a celebrity identity of sorts. It’s a different world from the U.S., especially in Mexico. The most famous you’ve probably heard of, El Chapo – shorty, El Lobo – the wolf, El Rambo, and even La Barbie, a blond-haired blue-eyed guy who they say looks like a Ken doll, but I never saw the resemblance. Then there’s me, La Reina. You don’t want to know how I got that name.”
“Humor me.”
“It’s mainly because I wouldn’t sleep with any of them. My master sent me abroad from Colombia to manage certain aspects of his network. I was out there, side by side with these people, and they all looked at me as a juicy piece of ass. After I killed the first couple of men with my bare hands, they figured out to leave me alone. First, they called me the Ice Queen, La Reina de Heilo. That caught on for a while. Then it was shortened to La Reina, and that stuck, permanently.”
“So where did my little virgin Samantha learn her skills, if she wouldn’t sleep with anyone?” He pinched her ass and she giggled.
“They tried. Oh how hard they tried. But I couldn’t disobey my master. I was forbidden to have sex with anyone but him. It would’ve been a problem anyway. Imagine if any of them found out they were answering to a virgin, even after they popped my cherry a couple of times? None of them knew I wasn’t normal. All they understood was violence, and I gave them that aplenty … but that wasn’t me, it was him, my master.”
“What the hell do you mean? You couldn’t disobey your master?”
“It’s difficult to explain. He had a hold over me, a form of control. I simply could not disobey him. It was like his words bound me, physically. He’s the one who made me, at sixteen, and obviously still a virgin. He loved that. He liked to brag when no one else was around, how I was his perfect virgin for life. He loved to see my pain every time he forced me.”
“Sounds like a fun guy.”
She chuckled, and his hands squeezed her ass firmly, possessively. She used to feel like a dog on a chain when her master touched her, forcing her to submit to his depraved demands. But not Adrian. She loved to feel his touch, be it soft or rough, it was genuine. No one could ever force her to do anything against her will ever again. And Adrian was hers, with full access to her body, a mutual benefit.
Though her claim over him would burden her for as long as he lived, she knew it was a decision she’d never regret. This strange man did something for her that no other man had ever done.
The L word wasn’t really what came to mind. She figured it was probably an infatuation of sorts. He had this animalistic, unapologetically male attitude. It was impossible to offend him, and he didn’t seem to give a shit either way.
She found him liberating. In the world of Cartel and mafia, everyone had an agenda, everyone wanted something from her, or wanted to kill her. Adrian wore his agenda on his sleeve, without a care in the world, nothing to hide. He just wanted to get laid, and she was perfectly happy accommodating him. Only a momentary pain.
His hands slid down between her ass cheeks, one finger teasing her anus, another finger reaching down deeper. “Wouldn’t you like to know where your family is?”
Sighing with his massage, she wished he would not ask this question. She had thought about her mother, father, and brother, so many times in those first years, probably for the first decade. Eventually, life taught her that there was no room for sentimentality, not if she wanted to survive. Her master had ordered that she never attempt to contact or seek out her family, and that was final. They might as well have been dead to her, and her to them.
Ah, but now she was f
ree. “Yes, I would like to know how they’re doing, where they are, who got married, who had kids … who died.” She looked at him and caught a sense of what he might be getting at. “No! We are not going to look for them. We are leaving the country at sunset tomorrow. Staying here was a mistake – a very fun mistake.”
He slipped one finger into her ass, squeezed her butt cheek and then flipped her over. She squeaked in surprise. As he spread her legs, her hand found him rock-hard, again. The man never let up. She guided him in, helped him push inside her.
His grinning face leaned in as he settled his weight between her legs. “The only mistake would be to not take your virginity at least once more before sunrise.”
She clawed at the sheets, gasping as he finally broke through her barrier. She grunted through the pain, but then he sank in slow and deep, filling her completely. He filled her body and her soul, and she knew the pain was worth it. Adrian was worth it.
* * * *
Chapter 17
Buzz, buzz, buzz, Adrian’s cell phone went off on the hotel nightstand. He ignored it.
Buzz, buzz, buzz. “Fuck!” He snatched it up and answered it. “Who the hell is calling me this time of day?”
“I know it’s early and all, but, you gotta turn on the television, dude. Now.”
“Crenshaw?” Adrian looked at his phone. His caller ID didn’t show a name tied to the San Antonio area code phone number.
“I’m serious, dude. If you’re near a TV, turn it to Channel Five news, right now.”
Adrian grumbled and grabbed the TV remote off the nightstand, turned on the TV and flipped through the channels. “Can’t you just tell me what’s going on?” A sick feeling crept into Adrian’s stomach at the urgency underlying Crenshaw’s voice.
Channel Five news were filming outside the apartment complex, right at the front of Adrian’s apartment door. There were police swarming in and out of his apartment. He sat up and pushed Samantha’s sleeping body off his chest. “Son of a bitch!”
The Nightlife: San Antonio Page 11