by Edie Harris
She forgot how to smile as she collapsed against the wall, her shaking knees barely holding her upright as she stared at a dead man. A face that was older, harsher, his bone structure almost violent in its blunt masculinity. Dark hair buzzed nearly to the scalp, brows black as a raven’s wings and shrewd gray-hazel eyes. An uncompromising mouth she’d once felt on every inch of her body—begged for, in fact, on countless occasions.
Casímiro Cortez had been a singular force in her life. Not a day passed where she didn’t think of him, not once in four years, and to see him standing within touching distance after believing him to be deceased did not compute. Her brain was on a permanent record skip the longer she stared at him. “What do you mean, I died?”
He appeared shell-shocked. “The chapel...the chapel was leveled. With you inside.”
The memory of searing pain, thankfully dulled with time, slashed across her upper back. “Yes.”
Evidently her simple response wasn’t enough, because he gripped the doorframe in one white-knuckled hand, as if he needed the support to remain upright. “I was there. I saw the satellite footage. No one left that rubble—not the priest, not you. Not you, Ilda.”
“You...were there.” She couldn’t process this. What did he mean, he was there? If he were there, wouldn’t he have gotten her out? It almost sounded as though he’d sat on the sidelines and observed her entrapment within the chapel, doing nothing to help, letting her hurt for what seemed like decades before help came along.
A throbbing started in her temple, and she suddenly remembered where she was, where they were. Barging past him into the hotel room, noting that he practically leaped out of the way to avoid touching her, she whirled, shoving her fists into the pockets of her flowing white linen trousers to keep from reaching for him. He didn’t want to touch her? Fine. She didn’t need her hands anywhere near him, either.
Ilda watched in silence as he bolted the door and drew the chain before moving to the windows to twist the blinds closed and adjust the curtains. The light in the tiny hotel room dimmed, but not enough to lessen the impact of him in all his bare-chested glory. Casí, with his brute strength and the unvarnished power that had always radiated from him. Casí, her Casí.
“Who is Faraday?” An American named Faraday, that was who her handler’s text had said was in this particular hotel room—an American for whom she needed to facilitate an introduction with Pipe. Except Pipe would know this man’s face. “We found a body, in your clothes, with your ID. You...you died in a firefight with the Orras cartel.”
Shaking his head, he tossed his pistol on the bed, and she did her best not to glare at it. “We had to make it look like I died.”
“We?” The throbbing increased, painfully, and she rubbed at the offending spot on her temple. “I ask you again, Casí—who is Faraday?”
“I am.” He propped his hands on his hips—hips with that lickable pair of divots winging from bone to groin—and dropped his head back for a bare instant until he snapped into watchfulness again. A watchfulness directed entirely at her. His Spanish, when he spoke, was as perfect as it had been when she’d known him; she never would have him pegged as an American, though he couldn’t pass for Colombian either. “My name is Casey Faraday. When we met—” His throat bobbed in a swallow. “When we met, I was with the CIA, part of a long-term undercover operation where I reported on Pipe to the US government. A week before...before the chapel, Pipe captured three spies who had sniffed too close to his activities in the city—two American and one British. I was in the best position to rescue those hostages, so that’s what I did. That morning, when I left you, that’s what I did.”
Casey Faraday. His name was Casey Faraday, and he was a spy. She’d married an American spy who saved people for a living. Just as he’d attempted to save her. Attempted, and failed. She massaged her temple, wishing desperately for her mind to finally make sense of all that she was hearing. “Why are you back in Medellín?”
“Because he did it again.” Casí’s—Casey’s—voice was gruff, unforgiving. “Pipe took another hostage, and I have to get that hostage home to his family.”
The man had a savior complex, and she told him as much.
Frustration flushed his face and he paced forward a step. “And you have a death wish. What the hell are you doing, snitching on Pipe?” Too close, but not close enough, he got in her space, emotion bright in his stormy gaze.
Her own anger locked into place, giving her a moment of peace in the hurricane of her current thoughts, long enough to turn that anger into a divining rod pointed directly at this lying American spy. “I’m doing what is right,” she snapped, drawing her hands from her pockets to prop them on her waist, squaring off against him and wishing, not for the first time, that she stood taller than her five-foot-one height. Today’s wedge-heeled sandals weren’t helping much, either. “The information I pass along brings us one day closer to ending the war between the cartels.” One day closer to putting Théa’s soul to rest.
A shiver wracked her as dark memories pounded on the door to her mind. Her sister’s violent death was indelibly intertwined with the culmination of Ilda’s relationship with Casí—Casey—and the horrific fashion in which that relationship had ended. In explosions and fire, bullets and blood. “I mourned you.” She whispered the accusation, as there was no softness in her for him, not in this specific moment when she was forced to question everything she had known to be true for the past four years.
“No more than I mourned you,” but his murmured words didn’t carry the barbs hers had. “I would never have left Colombia without you, fénix.”
“Don’t call me that.” Her skin felt shrunken over her limbs, tight and itchy and not hers. Nothing about her body was hers in this moment, including her feet, which drove her toward him, to him. She stumbled as she tried to halt her forward momentum, but it was too late. His hand shot out to catch her elbow, steadying her with a callused grip that opened the floodgate to their shared past.
They both gasped at the contact.
She had known he wasn’t a simple thug from the moment they met in Pipe’s swanky box at the stadium. His eyes were too intelligent, his hands too careful, and the heat that had forever existed between them flared to life. Her nipples hardened, pressing through the cups of her bra into visible points in her navy silk blouse. Sensual, sexual need as fresh as if they had been parted only yesterday swept through her, from her tight braid to her painted toenails.
He’d always been a big man, looming larger than his six feet with shoulders that blocked out the sunlight and an upper body packed so tight with muscle there wasn’t a spare millimeter of softness to be found. How was it she looked at him now, four years later, and found him bigger, broader and a thousand times more dangerous to her person?
Did she know him at all? The answer was, of course, no. She’d never known him. He’d lied from the moment they had met. He’d lied all the way to the altar, but Ilda had loved him, with such reckless depth and promise that any qualms had been shoved aside in favor of a permanent fix of him.
She was as bad as any junkie when it came to this man she’d married, this stranger. And the threat he posed to her now—not violent but physical nonetheless—was potent enough to send her spiraling.
She’d been so good, she thought desperately. So good. After his death, she had prayed for forgiveness. She had devoted her life to family and good works and the Church and bettering her community, but here stood Satan incarnate, every delicious inch of him, tempting her into sin once more.
But is it sin when he’s your husband? asked a smug voice inside her head. The real sin would be to deny him his marital right. To deny herself. “You’re touching me,” she breathed, unable to silence the voice, her fear, her need. Oh, how she needed him. She ached between her thighs, the years apart disintegrating to dust as she remembered just how perfect the first slide of him into her had always been. The tug of tiny inner muscles, fluttering, stretching, holding him prisone
r. And the sounds he’d made, the groans against her ear with his breath hot and panicked against her skin as he thrust into her, driving her up up up until—
Hell. She fought the urge to cross herself. Because she was about to sin, undeniably and without shame in this moment. “Casí.”
“It’s Casey.”
A stranger. She’d married a stranger. “Cay-zee,” she enunciated, trying to mimic his American pronunciation, before falling back into the rhythm of her own language, Spanish rolling off her tongue in a breathless rush. “If you don’t get me naked in thirty seconds, marido, I’m walking out of here, and you’re on your own with Pipe.”
A noise escaped his parted lips, pained, animalistic, shocking her into stillness as her eyes flew to his. His pupils were blown, his rugged face flushed with more than the heat of a Medellín afternoon, and he grabbed her with both hands, dragging her roughly against that big, bad body. “I never...” His low voice rumbled. “I never thought I’d hear that word again.”
Her palms flattened on his chest, pressing harder when she felt the erratic thump of his heart. “What word?”
“Husband. You called me your husband, Ilda.” A shudder rippled through him, and her, as he bent his head, lips hovering so close to hers that she could taste the salt and sweat and sweetness of him though they didn’t kiss. Not yet. “I’m gonna reward you for that word so good, baby.” Then his strong fingers gripped the panels of her blouse and ripped.
Buttons flew as his mouth crashed down over hers, and her whole world went up in flames. His lips were soft but firm, forcing her to open to him, to his hunger. He moved without finesse, ravenous for every nipped taste he stole, his need infecting her with identical madness. He groaned as he yanked away her ruined shirt, and she answered that thrilling noise with a starved moan of her own.
The years disappeared, old pain evaporating in an instant as he kissed her and she kissed him. Equal partners in the give and take—with far more take than give, until they fought one another for who could lick, bite, suck harder—their mouths a battleground where they met and clashed and struggled for dominance. Ilda didn’t want to win, but she refused to surrender without drawing blood from the man who’d so utterly broken her heart with his death.
A sob caught in her throat as she shoved that terrible thought aside and laid her palms flat on the solid slabs of his chest. His skin sizzled under her touch, hot and perspiring, and she dragged her hands over all those delicious ripples and ridges until she reached the unbuttoned fly of his utility trousers.
“You gonna touch me, baby?” He licked a path along her jaw to catch her earlobe between his teeth, hips thrusting into her hands. “Do it. Put your hands on my cock and make me alive for the first time in years.” His fingers made quick work of her bra before attacking the button at her waistband, racing to get her naked with a desperation she more than recognized, and reciprocated.
Boldly gripping the thick length of his erection through his trousers, she squeezed him, hard, and laughed in delight when his big body trembled. “Oh, Casí, look at you shake.” With her thumb, she drew down the zipper and reached in to heft the significant weight of his arousal. Warm satin skin, insatiable hardness and the slick drip of pre-ejaculate easing her grip.
She grabbed his chin in her other hand and directed his mouth back to hers, losing herself in his kiss as a bubbling brightness, like sunshine, pushed against the insides of her bones, desperate to break free. If it did, would she disintegrate under its unbearable lightness? Would this stolen freedom be the end of her?
Fear coursed in her blood, but the nerves only heightened her reaction as he rid her of everything but her panties...and then those, too, disappeared with the swipe of one greedy hand. He didn’t give her a chance to strip him before shimmying out of his trousers and briefs, needy little sounds leaving his lips as he kissed her wildly.
She remembered those sounds—he’d always been vocal in bed—but they affected her all the more now, standing naked together, soul mates and strangers in the same instant. Crazed by the knowledge that lived in her cells, she flung her arms around his neck and infused her kiss with every emotion running rampant through her vibrating limbs.
Casey wasn’t the only one who shook.
His hands skated over her shoulders, her back and rib cage, until he bent and grabbed her by the thighs and, without any assistance from her whatsoever, lifted her off the floor, urging her legs to wrap around his waist. Linking her ankles over his backside, she squeezed him tight, aligning her upper body with his and whimpering at the sensation of her breasts pressed to his chest. It took him zero effort to hold her, and she loved that. Loved his obvious strength, loved the way he moved her where and how he wanted her simply because he could. Because he was in charge here, as he’d always been.
Sure, she had goaded him. Teased and flirted and flaunted until he’d lost control giving her what she wanted—his body. Those bossy hands and that dirty mouth, and a cock that had filled her better than any who came before him, and all that, combined with the intelligent gleam in his eyes, had done her in. As soon as she waved her invisible white flag, he had taken the reins and never, ever loosened them.
She never, ever wanted him to.
Two strides brought them to the bed, and he knelt on the mattress, settling her none-too-gently to her back and letting his superior mass weigh them down. “Baby, baby,” he breathed past her lips as he slid one hand between their overheated bodies. “Ilda.” His touch found her, parted her and thrust hard inside her, filling her slick sheath with two blunt fingers.
She cried out, her spine arching off the bed, barely aware of him shifting down her body to suck her clitoris between his lips. His tongue flicked the tip, then suckled as though his life depended on making her clit the center of his world. He lapped at her folds, tasting the creamy arousal that elicited all number of rude noises, between the rough, masculine fingers playing her pussy and the wet warmth of his hungry mouth.
But this wondrous aggression was just rushed foreplay, and she didn’t mind one bit as he levered his body over hers, lined up the head of his cock with her entrance and thrust home.
He swore.
She chanted his name. Her fingertips scrabbled for a hold on his head, but that damn hair of his was too short, so she dug her nails into his shoulder blades and scraped. Yes, she wanted to draw blood. Yes, she wanted to leave marks.
Yes, she wanted to punish.
Both hands gripping the wooden headboard for leverage, he set a pounding pace, hips pumping into her with loud, rhythmic slaps, flesh on flesh, sweat against sweat. The bed lurched with every movement of his large body until the frame began to bang on the baseboard. His chest was a veritable wall above her, glistening with perspiration and flexing for her pleasure, working hard to push her to the edge she could sense him testing, already, so soon.
She wanted to push him over the edge, more than she wanted to breathe. So she poked, just a little, using her minuscule still-present consciousness to calculate what, precisely, would accomplish his fall. Because she needed him to fall. She needed him to shatter. “Fuck me harder. You know you can.” Leaning up, she licked at the salty trail of sweat dripping in the shallow valley between his pectorals. “You know how hard I can take it.”
He groaned, another one of those pained-animal noises, and panted. “So hard, isn’t that right, baby? You like my cock when it hurts us both a little.” Rolling his hips, he used that cock to find a certain spot inside her and applied pressure.
Whimpering, she raked her nails down the length of his back, on either side of his spine, and bit the bulging muscle over his rib cage offering sculpted contour on his beautiful body. The muscle gave beneath her teeth, enough to take the branded imprint she offered, and he shouted her name—too loud, warned that tiny corner of her brain, too loud with her name—as she licked her way to one flat brown nipple, sucking hard.
“Don’t forget the other one. Please,” he begged hoarsely. “Please s
uck the other one.”
She obliged, and he moaned, swearing in English, in Spanish, in some other language she didn’t recognize but thought might be Middle Eastern from the cadence of it. Then her ability to think at all disappeared as he released the headboard with one hand and ripped the elastic from the end of her braid. Her hair suddenly free, he wrapped the thick, curling strands around his fist until he reached the base of her skull. Spearing his fingers through the mass, he cupped her head in that one giant hand and held her to receive his kiss.
He took her mouth as though her lips were his property, or would become so given the proper persuasion. His tongue thrust in a naughty mimic of the treatment his cock was currently administering, and so well, too.
Her limbs went loose and liquid, a sure sign her orgasm lurked in the periphery, so she clung to him, open and finally surrendering, proud of the battle she’d waged. He’d earned her body, as he always did, and now she needed to succumb to the ownership he promised with every droplet of sweat that dripped from him to her, wet and hot and a true proof of life.
He tore his mouth from hers and stared straight into her eyes. “I don’t have enough fucking hands to touch you with, baby.” His jaw firmed. “But I’m going to goddamn try.” Releasing the headboard once and for all, he landed that hand between her breasts and trailed splayed fingers down the front of her body to tweak her clit, a particular petting that never failed to send her spiraling.
As her inner muscles fluttered in warning, he grunted and used his grip on her hair to yank her head back, revealing her throat to his licking, tasting mouth. He didn’t mark her as she had him, but she felt scarred all the same, old wounds bursting open as ecstasy spilled over every inch of her body.
Catharsis in every pore, she came, tears trickling from the corners of her eyes, and she scrabbled to hold him to her, take him into her body as deeply and unalterably as possible. “Marido,” she gasped through her sobs, losing her grasp on words, thoughts, everything but the angry emotions rioting in her chest. “Marido, te amo.”
