Their Cartel Princess: The Complete Series: A Dark Reverse Harem Box Set

by Logan Fox

  For a moment, the briefest of fucking moments, he felt like a douche bag for selling her out. She’d been all chilled, living her life with a harem of men at her beck and call, and he had to come and tear that world apart.

  With his teeth.

  That, or suffer the embarrassment of having nothing to show for his five years of deep cover, but also his ineptitude at being an agent.

  Fredericks wouldn’t have been mad… he’d have been utterly disappointed.

  Somehow… that was worse.

  “You hungry?” Kane asked.

  “No,” Cora said, but she didn’t look sure about anything right then— perhaps even what planet she was on.

  “Well, I need coffee. We’ll be at the hotel in a few minutes, so we’ll grab a room and order some room service.”

  She stared through the windshield for a second and then nodded at him with a coy smile touching her lips. “Sounds good,” she murmured.

  “And…” Kane said, as he turned the SUV toward the freeway, “if you manage to eat something, we can make a point to call those boys of yours. Let them know you’re safe and sound.”

  Her eyes blazed golden hope at him, so overwhelming that it sickened him.

  God… what would it feel like to have someone love him like that?

  23

  Ultradian

  A few weeks earlier

  “This makes us square, got it?”

  Kane looked up at the sound of Lars’s voice. He gave the lanky man a grin that was wider than it should have been. Lars’s eyes narrowed.

  “Got it,” Kane said, holding out a hand. Neo Martin, capo of El Calacas Vivo, thrashed futilely against his bonds as he exchanged hands like a parcel. Kane gave Lars a mock salute. “You have my word.”

  “I don’t want to see your face again,” Lars said, stepping closer and pointing a finger in Kane’s direction. “I don’t even want to hear your name. You tell them ECV is dead, buried. She’s gone.”

  Kane raised a hand, the other holding tight to the rope binding Martin’s hands behind his back. “Who?”

  Lars lifted his chin, eyes flashing a startling green as he studied Kane for a second before swinging around and climbing into the SUV.

  Kane felt eyes on him, but the SUV’s tinted windows made it impossible to see whose. Ana and Bailey were in the SUV, Ana having kept Neo company until they’d returned from Zachary’s Island. But the blond chick wasn’t staring at him; she’d been too distracted and shell-shocked. And no wonder, having to spend three days in this shoddy farmhouse with Neo.

  But no, it wasn’t Ana’s eyes on him. Bailey had it out for him — had since the day they’d met. Kane shrugged to himself as he led Martin to his Jeep and shoved him in the trunk, closing the lid over Martin’s astonished expression.

  The yelling began immediately.

  Kane popped the trunk, came around, and gagged Martin with his own sock and belt. He started up the Jeep’s GPS and centered it on the DEA’s office in Albuquerque.

  “Continue straight for two miles,” the androgynous voice droned at him. “Then, turn right.”

  Kane put the Jeep into gear and drove off, taking a quick glance at the farmhouse behind him. He had to include all those dead bodies in his report, too. That would take some doing.

  All of this would take some fucking doing.

  He shrugged his shoulders, trying to ease the tension growing between his shoulder blades.

  Why the fuck was he so nervous? This was what he wanted — ECV destroyed, a capo in figurative chains, and him leading the charge.

  That was what he’d put in his report, anyway.

  Fredericks would shit his pants when he told him about this.

  They’d have to accept him back now. Granted, it wasn’t like they’d just suspended him. He’d been…

  Kane blinked hard.

  No, they had suspended him. That’s what Fredericks had said.

  Leave your gun and your badge. You come back when you’ve sorted your shit out.

  What shit?

  Kane shook his head. Stars dashed his vision for a few seconds, blinding him. He slammed his foot on the brake.

  The Jeep skidded forward a few feet before coming to a stop in a cloud of dust. There was a dull thump from the trunk as Neo rolled around in there.

  It was overcast today, but bright enough that the world glowed with a surreal fog. Kane glanced about, trying to see what shone in his eyes.

  Trees.

  A fence post outlining either side of the dirt road leading away from Zachary’s farmhouse.

  His gaze darted to the rear-view mirror. Martin wasn’t visible from here. Couldn’t hear him either.

  Had he tied the gag too tight? The last thing he wanted was Martin suffocating before he could—

  “Ah!” Kane cried out, doubling over so his head touched the steering wheel as a jolt of pain burst through his skull. “Fuck!” He slammed a fist against the Jeep’s console, gritting his teeth as he waited for the agony to subside.

  It didn’t.

  Mercy—he couldn’t handle a migraine right now.

  It was too bright out.

  Warm, humid even.

  He had to be somewhere cool and dark.

  Shadows, wrapping him in night.

  He opened his eyes to slits. Despite the film of clouds over the sun, everything glowed white.

  The road was too narrow for him to turn around. Kane threw the Jeep into reverse, hung his arm over the passenger headrest, and reversed back to the farmhouse.

  Hopefully, El fucking Lobo had painkillers in his house. He didn’t look forward to spending more time with that maggoty corpse or the stink of deep-fried flesh clinging to the air, but he’d cheerfully spoon that bloated body if it meant he didn’t have to suffer through the coming pain.

  Neo’s face was pale when he opened the trunk. Wide eyes begged for an explanation.

  “Change of plans,” Kane said through his teeth.

  Neo strained against his bonds, but the dark-haired man who’d bound him in it had been ferocious at tightening the ropes around his wrists and ankles. The chair creaked alarmingly when Neo rocked it, but he’d barely built up enough momentum to lift it an inch from the floor before his captor returned.

  “So, you’re s’posed to be one of ‘em capos then?” Kane asked, striding up to Neo and studying him like an abstract painting.

  Neo would have said something. Would have begged for his life, or warned off this psycho by reminding him who the fuck he was.

  But there was a sock in his mouth, held in place by his belt. The belt so tight his cheeks were numb where it cut into him.

  He nodded, doing his best to convey how fucked this guy was if he didn’t let him go.

  The man crouched in front of him, madness gleaming in his hazel eyes. “Kane wanna’d to take you to the feds. How d’you think that would work out for you?”

  Neo froze.

  He thought this was Kane. Isn’t that what they’d called him, Finn and them?

  And now the feds? Fuck.

  But wait… they had nothing on him. He’d made a few phone calls, that was it. He hadn’t even handled any drugs…

  Okay, he’d snorted coke with Sylvia, but that was it. All they could do was slap him with a minor drug possession charge, perhaps aiding and abetting or some shit.

  “Yeah…” the man crooned, grinning crookedly. “Didn’t think you’d like that much. I ain’t fond of the idea either. You know why?”

  Neo shook his head. Sweat stung his eyes, and he tried to blink it away. He was in a massive barn, but the air in here was hot and stifling.

  There were old blood stains on the floor. Rags that looked torn from clothes. What the fuck had Zachary done in here? And with whom? Had they survived?

  Somehow, judging from the state of this place, he doubted it.

  “’Cos if Kane goes and hands you in… you’ll find some way to get out again.” The man shrugged.

  Maybe they were brothers
. They looked alike, but this guy had a permanent sneer on his face, eyes narrowed like he was trying to see into Neo’s mind. From what he remembered of Kane, the guy had been officious and proper feds material.

  This guy… this guy belonged in a fucking psych ward or some shit.

  “Your kind always does,” the man went on. “You use your narco currency — bribes and fucking blackmail — to grease the palms of whatever corrupt agent you need to look the other way.”

  Neo shifted in the chair. He tried for the fiftieth time to push the sock from his mouth. All he did was getting more lint on his tongue.

  “Well that ain’t gonna happen. Not if I can help it.”

  The man looked away as if deep in thought. When he faced Neo again, his brows were drawn together in contemplation. “Also, I can’t let Kane get close to the DEA. He doesn’t know it, but he’d be in a ton of shit if he walked through those doors.”

  Neo’s captor shrugged as if brushing off an unpleasant thought. “See, Kane’s got a bit of a memory problem. He’s real forgetful like. Doesn’t remember anything about the hookers, or the winos, or the beggars.”

  A smile now, one that showed too many teeth.

  “He won’t remember about you, neither. Bet he’ll make up something in his head. He likes his little stories. Those little fibs he tells himself.”

  Abruptly, the man’s eyes narrowed and his gaze laser focused on Neo’s ropes.

  “You know what you are?”

  He wanted to keep still to draw as little attention from the man standing over him as he could, but his body switched into flight mode.

  Except… he was still bound tight.

  He wrenched at his arms and legs, hoping he’d weakened the chair enough it would splinter apart.

  It didn’t.

  In fact, it hardly moved at all. The man didn’t notice his futile attempts at escape because he kept on talking.

  “You’re a roach,” he said conversationally. “You wanna know what I do to roaches?”

  He didn’t. Jesus fucking Christ, he didn’t.

  The man pulled a pair of pliers from behind his back. “I pull off their fucking legs, one by one.”

  The man rose to his feet. “’Cept, you only got two. Now where’s the fun in that?”

  Neo blinked hard again, but this time it wasn’t because of the sweat. Despite a shaft of light a few feet away, the man’s face was deep in shadow.

  Maybe it was his imagination, but he could have sworn that things crawled over his skin. Flies and their newly hatched maggots.

  Jesus, he was losing it.

  He struggled in his chair as the man closed the distance between them. He lifted the pliers and then used them to point to Neo’s hand.

  “But you got plenty of fingers and toes, don’t cha?”

  Neo screamed. It came through the gag as a muffled, frantic sound. The man’s sneer transformed into a sickly smile.

  “Simon says hold still, roach.”

  24

  Make him Wait

  The hotel itself was a modern, tan colored block of a building less than a hundred yards from the ocean. But it sat nestled amid an impoverished neighborhood. Cora stared from the SUV’s windows, watching wide-eyed as people went about their lives through the graffitied streets and ramshackle houses that pressed against the hotel’s walls.

  It was overcast and drizzling outside — but that didn’t inhibit the locals at all. They passed deteriorating food trucks, broken-down cars, and piles of trash that had accumulated in the street.

  But when the hotel’s gates opened to allow them inside, it was like stepping into another dimension. The walls rose tall enough to block out the poverty surrounding them. Palm trees and selected desert cactus interspersed small fountains as they headed for the underground parking.

  “Seems Ronan didn’t spare any expense putting this together,” Kane murmured, ducking his head to take in the ten-level hotel soaring above them. “He must have a serious hard-on for this Benecio guy.”

  “Not him,” Cora said. “The heroin.”

  “Yeah…” Kane guided the SUV into their allocated parking spot. “I kinda gathered that.”

  He hadn’t slipped into his Mexican persona yet. Would he wait until their meeting with Benecio?

  Never mind that, what the hell had she let happen back in that plane? Was she that debase that she couldn’t even say no to a stranger getting her off?

  But he wasn’t a stranger, was he?

  They’d been together plenty in her dreams. He’d done debaucherous things to her. Things she’d never even done with Finn. Her memory of those dreams was as vivid as the climax he’d urged from her in the plane.

  “Get the cash out,” Kane said, gesturing to the pocket of his jacket she still wore slung around her shoulders. She rummaged around until she’d found it and handed him the wad of notes. He counted off a few and gave back the rest. “Let’s go.”

  She followed, because her body responded to his quiet tone of command like a sheep to a sheep dog. He didn’t wait, didn’t see if she would follow — he expected her obedience.

  Kane led her into the hotel’s foyer. “Get us a room under Smith. Something nice with a sea view.” And then he was gone, ambling off to the dining room without a backward glance.

  Cora glanced at the wad of cash and back up at the reception clerk who was watching her with a critical eye.

  Her heart began a slow, steady thump in her chest. A room? Why the hell did they need a room?

  So he can fuck you.

  The thought poured a complex cocktail of emotions into her mind. The way it had felt when he’d been staring at her, so intent on watching the brink of her climax that nothing else in the world existed except her. How he’d clung to her mind ever since that night at her birthday. When she’d touched his rock-hard dick and known he’d wanted her just as badly. That first, bruising-rough kiss she could hardly remember but had recovered from the dregs of the drug-induced sleep she’d been in after.

  The young man at the reception desk straightened when she approached.

  “Hi, uh…” She folded her hands over each other, and drew a deep breath. If she couldn’t even get them checked in to a hotel, how on earth was she going to set up a deal with Benecio? “A room please. With a sea view.”

  “I have a deluxe suite with ocean views.” The clerk glanced up at her. “But we don’t rent by the hour.”

  She blinked. “For the day is fine.” Her brain scrambled as the man frowned at her. “We need to leave early in the morning though.”

  Seeming satisfied, the man worked on his computer. “That’ll be four-fifty. Your driver’s license and credit card please.”

  Cora counted out five bills and handed them to the clerk. “I don’t have any of those.”

  “I need to see some identification, ma’am.”

  She hesitated, glancing about the empty foyer. Either this wasn’t the hotel’s busy season, or they just didn’t have that much patronage. She dug in her pocket and drew out the entire wad of notes. “Then I’ll have to go somewhere else.” She held out her hand.

  The man glanced at the bundle of cash so quickly, she might have imagined it. But then he gave his lips a quick swipe and cast a slow scan over the empty foyer as if checking for hidden cameras. “I could always come and collect your ID later. But we require an additional five hundred deposit for cash customers.”

  She counted out another five bills and added a sixth. “Thank you.”

  He shoved the extra bill in his pocket and typed into the computer again. “Your name?”

  “Heather Smith,” she said, plucking the first name she could think of.

  “And do you have a contact number—”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The man paused as if considering if the hundred dollar bribe was sufficient for the shit he was going to get into for booking her in.

  “Is that a problem?” she prompted.

  “No,” he said, giving his head
a decisive shake. “I can put you in room 908.” He took the key and handed it to her as Kane came around the corner.

  “You come right, sweetheart?” Kane asked, voice loud enough that if there had been anyone in the foyer, they’d have turned to look.

  “Yup,” Cora said, snagging the key from the clerk’s hand before he second guessed himself. “908.”

  Kane put a hand on the small of her back as he ushered her through the foyer to the elevator. They climbed in, Cora giving the clerk a cheery little wave before the doors closed.

  She slumped, letting out a sigh.

  “Tough nut to crack?” Kane asked.

  “I had to bribe him.”

  “Usually how it works.” He turned to her, narrowed his eyes, and said, “You got this, right?”

  She didn’t. No fucking way. But she gave him a small nod and forced herself to look away.

  The elevator let them out on the ninth floor a few seconds later. The interior of the hotel was as modern and luxurious as the exterior. But — no doubt by design — every window faced toward the ocean. The poverty pressed against the hotel’s walls wasn’t visible from any window.

  Maybe that made the guests feel safer.

  She doubted it was to make the hotel owners feel less like pricks.

  Kane opened their room door. Cora wanted to look around, but her eyes stuck on the terrace and the magnificent view of the churning ocean. She went to the balcony’s glass doors and pushed them open, inhaling a heady hit of the sea breeze.

  “Would have been nice if the weather hadn’t been so shitty,” Kane said.

  He was right behind her.

  The past few hours came crashing on her like an avalanche. This man — a man she’d had erotic dreams over for the past few weeks and who’d just given one of the best orgasms she’d had in weeks — stood less than an inch away from her.

  She was in the middle of Tijuana, Mexico.

  And she was about to meet up with one of the largest heroin producers in Guerrero.

  Absently, she laid a hand on her belly as she gazed out over the uneasy ocean. That was what her mind felt like right then — gray and tumultuous and unfathomably deep. Too deep for her to grasp a thought without drowning.