by Pam Godwin
Hold off? He’d been fucking her all night.
He shoved up just enough to reach between them and rub her clit. His fingers had gravitated there countless times since he began, constantly focused on that overly-sensitive nub. He’d loved it so hard it hurt to the touch.
Then it dawned on her. “You’ve been waiting for me to come?”
Stormy, hungry eyes hardened and flared, as if he had the right to be offended by her ignorance.
“Well, don’t!” She slapped his hand away from her abused clit. “In case you forgot, I was a virgin, and I don’t want this. I’m not willing. You’ve pounded my insides into hamburger. I’m sore, raw, and bruised, and I will not come for you.”
“You came on my tongue.”
Shame. It crashed in from all sides and collided in her gut.
“No more.” She pushed at his shoulders, unable to move his bulk. “Please, just stop. Or finish. I don’t care. Just do it without me.”
“Only with you.” His hoarse, gravelly voice brooked no argument.
“I’m with you in all my hatred and venom.”
A huff released from his throat, and she heard the relief in it, the smile.
She didn’t expect him to relent so easily, but as he folded his arms beneath her back and pulled her deeper into the heat of his body, she felt the twitchy, fiery fatigue in his muscles.
With a hand flattening on her spine and the other cradling the back of her head, he rested his brow against hers and began to drive into her with purpose.
Flexing his hips, he caught a fast, steady rhythm. The warm softness of his tongue traced her lips. His heartbeat thundered against her chest. Breaths heavy, grunts deepening, eyes locked on hers, he chased his release.
She hadn’t moved her hands from his shoulders since he’d freed her, but his unguarded expression compelled her to move them now.
Feathering fingertips along curves of biceps and brawny ribs, she suppressed the moan that rose in her throat. Feeling brave, she sought out his hip bones, and around to his lower back, marveling at the sinewy strips of muscle and sculpted grooves she would never find on her own body.
Dipping lower, her fingers bumped the cleft of his ass. Tentatively, she explored the tight divide between rock-hard glutes. Hot and sweaty, his buttocks squeezed with the smack of his hips. Each cheek formed a globe of steel wrapped in silky satin skin.
What a magnificently built man, all bold lines and chiseled strength. And so responsive. He groaned and shivered as she caressed his backside. She knew it was wrong, stroking such a private part of him, especially since she didn’t want this.
But she reveled in the feel of his body, feasted on his reactions.
How incredible that her fingertips could alter the tempo of his breathing and spread goosebumps across his flesh. It felt powerful and strangely addictive.
Four years ago, she’d learn how to touch and please a man in every way. Van Quiso had seen to that. But he’d never responded to her hands, and she’d never responded to him.
Why was this so different? The circumstances were the same. Captor and captive. Abuser and victim.
The difference was the man behind the sins. The soul beneath the skin.
The heart of Tiago Badell lay hidden under blood, teeth, and vicious threats, but it was there, calling to her, beating for her. She felt it every time their eyes connected.
Like now.
“Kate.” He clutched her neck and tilted up her chin, his thumb stroking the hollow of her throat as he stared, pupils wide, his pelvis slamming her into the bed. “I’m going to blow my load. Fucking fill you up with my come. Tear up that pussy.” His accented English stumbled into Spanish, rolling together syllables that sounded like a vulgar plea to God. “Fucking fuck, fuuuuuuck!”
His hips lost rhythm, jerking wildly, and his jaw turned to stone. He pushed up, his gaze dropping to where they were joined as he pumped, coming without sound or breath, the length of his body shuddering, stiffening, strung like a bow.
Then he groaned, long and deep, his eyes finding hers and his lungs releasing in a guttural whoosh. “Jesus, fuck.”
She’d never experienced anything like that and didn’t know what to expect or how to react. So she just lay there, motionless, quiet, and invisible.
He pulled out and stared at his flagging erection soaked in their combined fluids. Her first glimpse of his cock didn’t leave her gasping at the generous length and thickness, because she already knew it so well. She’d felt every fat inch inside her.
Sitting back on his heels, he dragged his gaze over her flushed body, probing, scrutinizing, heating her skin anew. Hadn’t he seen enough?
The only blanket had been tossed out of reach. With nothing to cover herself with, she pressed her arms to her sides and met his hooded eyes.
Without looking away, he cupped a hand between her legs. Placing his other over the juncture between her shoulder and neck, he curled his fingers around her nape. A covetous hold. Possessive and weighty.
Neither of them spoke. There were only the sounds of their breaths, the slam of a door downstairs, the wind whistling across the thin roof. And something else. The stillness between them. It swelled with hurtful words, conflicting thoughts, and promises she didn’t want him to make.
With his hands at her throat and pussy, he held her there for a long moment as his gaze made a vow he didn’t need to voice.
He would never let her go.
Then his face blanked. He pulled away and shifted to the foot of the mattress. There, he lowered to the floor beside his clothes but didn’t pull them on.
He sat with his back to her, unabashedly nude, with his legs bent and his arms dangling over his knees. He seemed to be finished with her. At least, for tonight.
What now?
She wasn’t restrained, didn’t have anything to wear or cover up with. Every part of her ached and burned from hours of his brutal attention. She just wanted to curl up in bed by herself and escape into sleep.
Staring longingly at the door, she started to climb to her feet.
Until his low, creaky rasp shuddered the air.
“My wife was murdered twelve years ago.” His voice lapsed to a monotone, and every word pulled his shoulders down, slumping his powerful body. “I walked in while it was happening. Too late. Too slow. Couldn’t put her back together. Didn’t save her. I failed her in every way.”
Ice trickled down the base of her skull, and her throat tightened around a hot ember.
His wife.
He was married.
She couldn’t wrap her mind around it, even as she’d known there was something. Something horrendous that had left a bleeding scar on his life.
Tucking her thighs to her bare chest, she hugged her legs and watched the painfully slow break down in his posture.
An elbow wobbled on one knee, his head sinking toward his chest with a hand over his eyes. She guessed they were closed, his expression lost in memory. Or maybe his face was as tortured as his body language.
She hated that she couldn’t see his eyes, but she didn’t dare move.
He was quiet for so long she didn’t think he’d speak again. When he finally stirred, it was a jerky movement. His arm moved out to the side, sifting through the pile of clothes and disappearing in front of him again. He shifted, shoulders twitching, his hands fidgeting or doing something out of view.
His silence loaded the space between them, a roaring freight of heaviness, too loud in her ears.
She swallowed. “What was her name?”
His back tensed, relaxed, and he raked a hand through his hair. “Semira. She was a doctor, like her father. Grew up in a small village in…” He cleared his throat, his tone strained with pain. “In a faraway place.”
“What happened?”
“Someone I trusted turned on me. An assassin came. Gutted her from hip to hip. Let her insides just…spill out. He made sure I saw her bowels hit the floor as I walked in the door.”
�
�Why?” An outcry of emotions tangled in her chest, and she pressed a fist against her mouth to keep it all in.
“Why does anyone rape and butcher innocent women? Why am I hurting you? Everyone has their reasons. Pain is constant and everywhere. All you can do is endure and fucking accept it.”
God, that was heavy. Some of it echoed her own sentiments, slicing like hot knives in her chest. But he didn’t just accept the pain in the world. He added to it, made it worse. She couldn’t reconcile that.
“Before Semira died…” He hunched forward, further hiding his expression from her line of sight. “I was what society considered a good man. I had a lawful job, paid my taxes, and followed all the fucking rules. But there were conversations I should’ve had with my wife. I should’ve asked her if she was conflicted about the things I did and the man I was.”
So many questions piled up, most of which she knew he wouldn’t answer. “Why would you become like the man who had her killed?”
“I didn’t. He was my colleague. When he betrayed me, I became the opposite of him. I became his enemy.”
“It doesn’t make sense. What was your job?”
“This isn’t about the job. It’s always been about her.”
“I don’t understand.”
His arms twitched with movement, his torso blocking her view. What was he doing with his hands?
“When she looked at me,” he said, “she saw what I was. What I am. I didn’t even know it was there, this egregious thing inside me. But she saw it.”
Had his wife seen the rapist, the murderer, the gruesome artist who carved images into living victims?
She squinted at the back of his head. “You said you were a good man.”
“Whatever she saw when she looked at me was neither good nor evil. It just was, and it killed it for her. It killed the love she wanted to feel for me long before that knife killed her.” He drew in a breath and let it out. “Some men simply have something inside that makes them impossible to love.”
“I don’t believe that. All humans are capable of giving and receiving love. Everyone has a someone out there.”
“Semira believed the same when she married me. I loved her deeply, and no matter what I did to earn her love, her feelings never developed. It was hard for her to bear, knowing that while I cherished her above all else, she couldn’t bring herself to reciprocate. She wanted to fill that void with children, and I would’ve done anything to give her that. But I couldn’t. It was another part of me that didn’t work. Another thing for her to resent.”
Jesus. He had years to dwell on this, to let it eat at him, and now his infatuation with the romance between Tate and Lucia had an explanation. It seemed his own failed relationship had fostered a fascination with happy endings.
Was it possible that he craved love?
She wanted to know about his wife’s death. It seemed that was the key to everything. “Why did your colleague betray you?”
“Because the good guys aren’t always the good guys. Integrity isn’t a guarantee, just because you’re fighting on the right side of the law.”
“So your colleague was a traitor?”
“I can’t talk about the fucking job.” His voice vibrated with so much threat it stopped her heart.
“Will you just explain one thing?” Swallowing hard, she sat taller and glared at his back. “You went from a straight life to that of a crime lord. It changed when your wife was murdered?”
“Yes.”
“You said it isn’t about the job, yet the job was connected to your wife’s death. You must hold resentment for everything that life represented—the legitimacy of it, the paid taxes and moral righteousness. Could it be that if you let go of that grudge, you might—”
“Be a better man?” He barked out a self-depreciating laugh. “When I held Semira in my arms, with her intestines in her lap and her life spilling through my fingers, it was neither love nor hate that shone from her eyes. The last look she gave me was saturated with pity. Pity for a husband she couldn’t love, even in death. Pity because she knew that without her, I would forever be alone, because no one would put as much effort into me as she did. I hated her for that. I hated her pity to the depths of my soul, and I made damn fucking sure no one would ever give me that look again.”
He became a monster.
In a deranged, fucked-up way, it made so much sense. Monsters were abhorred and feared, but never pitied. In that, he’d succeeded.
Kate had never felt bad for him. Never felt sorrow or disappointment. Not even now. Because it was inconceivable to think of him as weak or helpless. He didn’t evoke that oh-you-poor-thing, head-patting kind of emotion from anyone.
What she did feel was compassion. That innate goodness that most people possessed was what compelled her to sway toward him, filling her with the perverse need to comfort him for the pain he had inflicted on her.
Talk about messed up. But the more she thought about it, the more she understood. For the first time, she felt a real sense of hope.
Hope for him.
He was a self-aware bully, open-minded and regretful, imperfect and human. She could work with that, relate to it, and maybe, just maybe, she could convince him to let her go.
“A terrible thing happened to you.” She quietly inched to the side of the bed. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can change the course of your life. Stop kidnapping and terrorizing people.”
His neck slowly turned, bringing the intensity of his eyes over his shoulder to grab hold of hers. “I’ll stop being heartless when you stop looking at me like it’s the only thing I am.”
She emptied her expression but couldn’t clear the guilt. It stuck in the press of her lips, accusing and judgmental.
“Or don’t stop.” He jerked back around. “Either way, it doesn’t change your circumstances.”
Reality crashed in, banging in her chest. What was she doing trying to reason with her captor? He just fucked her ruthlessly, while she screamed no until her throat bled. He didn’t give a shit about her.
Except something was happening deep in her gut. She felt this coiling, fierce objection to putting him in a category marked Irredeemable. He was so much more than a bad man, and she’d only scratched the surface.
Or maybe she really was just suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
Why had he shared his past with her? Was it a call for help? Was he begging her to see past his imposing, brutal good looks? Or was it a trick? A ploy to engender feelings from her so he could use them against her later?
An unusual sound broke through her introspection.
The plop of wet drops hit the floor near his position.
Plop. Plop-plop.
Was the ceiling leaking? It appeared dry.
Was he crying?
She craned her neck, straining her senses, listening.
The wet sounds sped up. More liquid. A slow trickle.
“What is that?” Chills swept across her scalp as she stood from the bed.
Scanning the room, she scrambled for the closest thing she could grab. His shirt. She spread the crisp material against the front of her body and slowly stepped around him. And lost her breath.
Blood.
Oh God, it was everywhere.
Rivers of crimson snaked along his forearm, forking stained lines down his fingers and dripping to the floor.
Hot red splatters. There were so many dots between his feet they overlapped.
She teetered, lightheaded, and focused on the source of the bleeding.
A razor. He wore that damn finger blade like a claw, dragging it over old scars.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
He was cutting and not answering her, because it was a stupid question.
She took a shaky step closer. “Why?”
“Punishment.” His voice lacked all emotion, and the blade continued to carve.
Balling a fist in the shirt, she clutched it tighter against her chest. “Punishment for wh
at?”
“You.”
She flinched, and her gaze flew over the scars on his arms. So many marks. Faded ones. Newer ones. “Do you do this every time you fuck a woman?”
The razor paused. He lifted his head, his expression empty, voice emptier. “The last person I had sex with was my wife.”
“What?” Her naïveté plummeted to the floor and shattered. “That was—”
“Twelve years ago.” He returned to his cutting.
“You haven’t had sex in twelve years?”
“That’s what I said.”
She recalled how incredibly experienced he was in bed and stared at him in disbelief. “You’re lying.”
His nostrils flared, and he dug the razor deeper into his arm.
Thick droplets oozed free, flowing off his skin and soaking the flooring.
Dark red against dark wood.
The scent of copper in the air.
She wished it would stop. She needed it to stop.
“Tiago, can you just…” Now within reach, she stretched an arm toward him and held the other against her chest, trapping the shirt. “Please, just stop for a second and talk to me.”
He looked up, stared blankly at her face then her outstretched hand. She wanted to yank her arm back, but she refused to look scared, even if everything inside her screamed to run.
His bladed finger twitched as he raised his slashed arm and curled a bloody hand around her wrist. He pulled, forcing her to shuffle into the space between his legs.
The soles of her feet sopped up the gore on the floor. She tried not to think about that, and instead focused on what he’d said.
“You fucked Iliana.” She held her arm still in his grip. “In the backroom, every day.”
“I’ve never touched that woman.”
Cycling through her memories, she couldn’t identify a single time he put his hands on Iliana. Not even tonight in the kitchen. It was always the other way around.
“She’s all over you,” she said.
“Iliana throws herself at everyone.” His fingers tightened around her arm. “She will never touch you or me again.”
“What about Lucia?” She squinted. “She was your captive for eleven years. You can’t tell me nothing happened.”
