by Pam Godwin
“I’m not.” Her eyes snapped to his, her expression a composition of longing and moxie, at odds with the tears flitting down her cheeks.
“What are you doing, Kate?” He released her hair.
“I don’t know.” She sniffed and tugged his briefs down his legs, freeing his erection. “I guess I’m trying to properly thank you, but also…” She clutched the base of his erection and gave him a hard, confident stroke. “I want to do this for myself.”
His head rocked back, and he gasped for air as his entire body stiffened and throbbed, strumming beneath her wicked touch.
He tolerated it through a few more strokes before he closed a fist around hers and took over. Kicking his hips, he drove hard and fast into the clasp of their hands.
Her eyes found his. She yanked her grip away, and in the next heartbeat, she replaced it with the hot, wet heaven of her mouth.
“Holy fuck.” He clutched her head and worked himself deeper into the back of her throat, shaking and thrusting with urgency. “Jesus, Kate. That feels fucking incredible.”
It had been twelve years since he’d let anyone suck him. It was long enough ago that even a half-ass blow job would feel extraordinary right now.
But nothing about this was half-ass. The swirling, sucking motion of her lips and tongue delivered the perfect pressure and rhythm, just the right amount of teasing and manipulation to drive him out of his fucking mind.
He couldn’t stop his hands from holding her in place as he fucked hard and deep into her throat. She swallowed through it without gagging, but after a few breathless seconds, she smacked her palms on his abs and pushed away.
Leaning up, she got in his face and growled. “I was trained how to do this by a scary, cold as fuck sadist.” She wrapped a hand around his length, torturing him with diabolical strokes. “I want to do it my way, for me, and I don’t need your damn guidance.”
“Christ, you’re fucking fierce.” He was so goddamn hard his dick felt like cement beneath the pressure, like any moment he might crack in the vigorous vise of her hand.
“I’ve never done this without…” Her brows furrowed. “Without giving my consent.” She edged back and lowered her head, her gaze locked on his. “Let me do it.”
“Okay.” He relaxed into the mattress, his head tipped back against the headboard and his hands at his sides. “Do it. Suck me.”
She did. She sucked him until every nerve in his body sparked and sizzled with need. The rolling sweep of her tongue brought him back from the dead. The suction of her lips banished the nightmares, and her tear-stained cheeks filled him with an overpowering sense of responsibility.
His love for her resembled a blade, a source of pain, but vital. He would always protect her, however she needed him, even when he was the cause of her suffering.
Their relationship was unconventional, dark in nature, almost unworldly. Although she resented it, he knew she cherished it just as deeply.
He felt it in the veneration of licks along his cock, heard it in the emotion-soaked panting of her breaths, and saw it in the sodden depths of her watchful eyes.
She wasn’t just giving him a blow job. She was surrendering pieces of herself. Tiny, rare, invaluable pieces of her soul.
Possessiveness growled in his throat, and his muscles clenched with desire. He wanted to erase her past and be her forever. He wanted to disintegrate everything from her life until he was the only thing she needed to breathe.
He wanted her to love him.
As her mouth moved along his shaft and her gaze clung to his, he could almost pretend she was with him willingly, that she wasn’t locked in his penthouse with twenty guards preventing her escape.
Sucking in air, he swallowed the urge to flip her over, sink into her heat, and pound home the message that she belonged to him.
Instead, he simply let go. He let her set the torturous pace, let her add a teasing nip here and there, and let her decide when to send him over.
The moment she took him to the back of her throat and kneaded his balls in the cup of her hand, she knew she had him.
He surrendered, gasping for breath, groaning incoherently, and coming for the woman he wanted to fuck for the rest of his undeserving life.
She swallowed him down, every single drop, and by the time her sexy lips slid free, he only vaguely remembered how he got there.
“Hostia puta.” His lungs stuck together, gasping for oxygen. “It’s never been that perfect.”
“Well, you have no recent comparisons. It’s been a while since someone gave you head, right?”
“Twelve years.” He stared at her mouth, obsessed with every little twitch within those lush arches.
“I like that.” She crawled up his chest and rested her head on his shoulder. “I like that there hasn’t been anyone since your wife. But it also feels intimidating, like her shadow is constantly hanging over me. No matter what I do, I’ll never be her in your eyes and—”
“Stop.” He crushed her close, forging them together as her fragile truths winged through his soul. “I haven’t thought about her nor will I ever think about her when I’m with you. My past is where it belongs. I don’t want it or her, not even a little. I want you.”
The fact that she was dwelling on this at all was progress. Huge fucking strides in the right direction. If she didn’t care about him, she wouldn’t have brought up his sexual history, marriage, or any insecurities about it.
She was jealous, and she hated him. He was possessive, and he loved her. Together, they were a combustion of extreme emotion that burned without boundaries or expiration.
Didn’t matter how far he took her or how hard she fought, she was with him, kicking and kissing, punching and fucking, with her heart engaged and her mind challenging him as nothing less than his equal.
He ran his fingers down her side, veered around her hip, and dipped into the valley between the firm globes of her ass.
“Lie on your back and spread your legs.” He clenched her buttocks hard enough to make her squeak.
She lifted her head, and it wasn’t resistance that glowed in her gaze. It was heat. Desire. Acceptance.
“I want to come.” Her lashes lowered, transforming her petite features into pure seduction. “I like that you always give me that.”
As she slid off his lap and stretched out on her back, a second heartbeat took up residence between his legs.
The fluidity of her lithe figure made his mouth water. The tight buds of her nipples pinched erotically between the precious stones, and if that weren’t enough to make him hard again, she had the brazenness to meet his eyes and open her thighs.
In a blink, he shifted from man to beast. His hands landed on her knees, spreading her wide as he went after her pussy with tongue and teeth.
She moaned beneath the attack, and her body trembled against him, filling his mouth with feminine hunger.
No matter how many times he went down on her, it was always explosive. Her responses, his need—the air crackled and sang with the sounds of fighting, snarling, mating animals.
As she climaxed, she did it with her entire being. She let go of everything—her hatred, her fear, her painful past—and for those few fleeting seconds, he glimpsed a woman who was capable of seeing what he was and loving him despite it.
In that moment, something awoke between them. Something deep and untouchable. On the surface, they were captor and captive, but at the heart of their connection, they were one.
“Tiago.” She opened her arms, panting through the remnants of her release.
He prowled up her body, lowered onto her, and buried himself in her hot, tight pussy.
Pleasure zinged through his veins, and he snapped his hips into a frantic, urgent rhythm. She answered with a cry, and her hands gripped the muscles of his ass.
But it was her eyes that held him. Those vibrant oceans of blue called him into the rippling vastness, pulling him in so close and deep he didn’t know where he ended and she began.
/> With his hands tangled in her hair, he thrust again, and again, harder, faster, with a desperation that echoed in his heart.
All his life, he’d been alone. In marriage, he’d been alone in love. In his career, he’d fought his own battles. In hell, he reigned from a solitary throne.
What would it be like to have Kate’s love instead of her hate? To have her fighting beside him instead of against him?
The notion was unattainable but not unimaginable. He imagined it every day, in every possible way.
With a low, deep moan, she came undone. Her orgasm swelled and crashed around him, contracting her inner muscles and tossing him into a delirium of ecstasy.
“Kate.” He groaned, holding her tight as she milked him, draining him into exhaustion.
Spent and sated, he rolled to his back and gathered her in his arms.
It was easy to give up everything for her, but there were some things that required time and planning. He was willing to surrender whatever was needed to earn her love, as long as it didn’t compromise her safety.
Letting Tate go had been the right thing to do, but it came with a cost.
Cole Hartman was no longer occupied with the search for Tate.
Now he had a new job, a new target, and by this time tomorrow, he would know where to find Kate.
Tiago had to leave the penthouse tomorrow, and she would be at his side. It was a risk to take her to his compound, but it was even a bigger risk to leave her in the care of someone else.
No one would protect her like he would.
If Hartman meant to take her, he would have to pry her out of Tiago’s cold, dead arms.
CHAPTER 27
The grungy, menacing atmosphere set Kate’s instincts on high alert as she followed Tiago through his Caracas compound.
The bones of what was once a regal hotel hid behind fumes of cigarette smoke, spray paint, and decay. Sheet metal covered the windows. Bullet holes pocked the ceilings. Brown stains blotted the worn carpet, and sweaty, heavily-armed men stood at attention in the dark hallways.
Hard to imagine Lucia had lived within these claustrophobic walls for eleven years.
The absence of light disorientated Kate, but she stayed close to Tiago’s familiar frame. Not that he would let her drift out of arm’s reach.
He didn’t glance at her, hold her hand, or touch her the way he did when they were alone, but the weight of his attention never left her. Whether he was navigating winding passages or briefing dozens of guards on business deals, he knew where she was and what she was doing at all times.
His awareness of her was an unexplainable sense in her gut, one that had evolved from a collection of shared experiences during their inseparable months together.
Strange as it was, she seemed to be constantly aware of him, too, in the warning tingle across her skin, the rash of heat in her cheeks, and the hum of energy in her chest.
Outside his inner circle, however, no one was privy to the constant storm between them. No one knew she was the object of his dirtiest, darkest, most intimate desires, that she wore his scarred artwork, that she slept in his bed, or that he would kill anyone who tried to take her from him.
Her role at his compound was simply to look the part of Lucia’s replacement.
When he’d strapped an unloaded gun on her hip before they left, his expression had been strained so tightly with worry it bordered on anger.
He couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving her in the penthouse, where he couldn’t watch her. At the same time, it terrified him to take her into this world. He told her none of this, but words weren’t necessary. She read it in the intensity of his eyes and felt it vibrating from his anxious posture.
Maybe his protectiveness was a symptom of obsession. Or maybe it came from a place of twisted love.
He’d said the words. Three words no man had ever given her. But she couldn’t let his declaration sink its poisonous hooks into her psyche.
As long as he was her captor, love didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
But as she followed him through the dark halls of his lair, she soared on wings of gratefulness. After being locked up for months, she was finally out, even if it meant wearing an unloaded gun and pretending to be one of his guards.
None of his men questioned her presence. In fact, they couldn’t seem to take their eyes off Tiago.
It had been three months since he’d shown his face here. Three months since they’d seen their leader alive and breathing, and he was really something to behold.
The dark stubble on his jaw accentuated his masculine bone structure as he spoke to them in Spanish, the soft J’s and double R’s rolling off his tongue with seductive authority.
Inky black hair raked back from his strong brow in tousled, spiky rebellion. Deliberately rebellious, as if every strand had been commanded into perfect disorder. She felt a disturbing urge to tangle her fingers in all that sexiness.
She’d recently trimmed the sides of his head, making the scars stand out in stark relief. They added a dangerous edge to his appearance, as if he needed more of that with his black jeans, leather jacket, and shit-kickers.
Strength and power radiated from him, and it wasn’t just for show. He’d returned to full health, exercised daily, and stood before his adherents with all the potency of a confident, merciless crime lord.
And so he was back to work. For the next week, he spent every waking moment at the compound, catching up with his men. She remained at his side from the second they left the penthouse to the moment they returned, sitting through business meetings held in languages she didn’t understand.
The night Tate walked out of the shack, Arturo returned to Caracas and resumed his position as her constant shadow. Between him, Tiago, and the hundreds of guards in his regime, escape was impossible.
By the second week, the bustle of Tiago’s return had calmed down. He found some time to give her a quiet tour of the old hotel floors, including the basement cells, where he’d held Tate and Van and countless other victims.
As his monotone voice recounted the things he’d done over the years, his expression lacked smugness and aggression. She hunted for hints of regret in his eyes, hoping to glimpse something human during his narration, but he remained guarded and closed-off.
Until he took her to the room where he used to sleep.
“This is it.” He shut the door behind her, leaving Arturo in the hall.
She paced through the sparse space, marking the empty safe, the bare mattress, and the wooden chair at the center.
“It’s almost an exact replica of your room in the desert.” She paused beside the dumbbell on the scarred floor, and her stomach caved in. “Except this.”
He leaned his back against the door and tilted his chin down, wearing a pensive, darker-than-usual expression. “She should’ve hit me one more time and made it count.”
“What?” Her head kicked back. “Why would you say that?”
“You think I deserve to be alive?” His jaw flexed, and his eyes lifted, glowering from beneath thick lashes. “Look around. This room sums up the last twelve years of my life.”
She scanned the impenetrable lock on the door, the empty bed, the scarred surfaces, the suffocating darkness, utter vacancy, and isolation.
Maybe the space defined his experiences, but it didn’t personify the man.
He’d committed unforgivable crimes. Heartless acts. But over the past few months, she’d come to realize Tiago Badell was in full possession of both a conscience and a heart.
Complex, sentient, and deeply honest, he had the capacity to hurt and love in equal intensities. He gave and received all ranges of emotion, more so than any person she knew.
And to think, he spent twelve years in this empty, lifeless, dispassionate cell.
She hated it.
Even as she knew it was a means of self-punishment, it hurt to imagine him sleeping here alone for so damn long.
She rubbed her chest, and her gaze landed
on the dumbbell, a symbol of his constant drive to be strong and invincible. It also represented his pain.
Lucia had every right to attack him with it, but from his perspective, it probably felt like a terrible betrayal. His closest confidant had turned on him, and from what Kate understood about his wife’s death, it wasn’t the first time he’d been betrayed.
“When we leave this room,” he said in a rough, heavily-accented voice, “I’m going to lock the door and never open it again.”
“Good idea.” She stepped toward him. “The past stays in the past, where it belongs.”
“I have a lot of regrets, Kate.” He rested the tips of his fingers in his front pockets. “Too many to fit inside this room.”
Agitated energy, his energy, swarmed around her in dizzying waves as he stared at something behind her.
She followed his gaze to the chair. Not just any chair. “That’s where you sat with Lucia on your lap every day?”
“Yes.”
Right there was where he gave Lucia the injections that counteracted the poison he put in her food.
Her insides constricted.
“You know my sins. I’ve disclosed them all in detail.” He pushed off the door and prowled toward her, quickening her breaths. “What I haven’t done is repent for them.”
She held still as he circled her, every cell in her body pinging at his nearness.
“I’m sorry for what I did to Lucia.” He paused before her and curled a finger under her chin, lifting her gaze. “I’m sorry I kicked you the night we met.”
Her lips trembled, and she locked her knees to prevent them from wobbling. It wasn’t his words that knocked her off-balance so much as the raw contrition shining in his eyes.
“I’m sorry for letting Iliana touch you.” His hand skimmed along her jawline, making her pulse sputter. “I’m sorry for raping you. I’m not proud of it.”
She sucked in a slow, shaky breath, bringing the dark scent of leather, cypress, and dangerous man into her lungs.
“I’m not asking for forgiveness.” His fingers wove through her hair and clenched. “I just needed you to hear it.”
