I moved, capturing a pawn in what seemed like the only move I could make. “Checkmate,” he said, not bothering to use his turn. With the space I’d vacated, I’d given him a clear line to my King as he toyed with me.
He stood partially, pushing his chair back from the little table between us and giving space in front of his body. With his legs spread, he leaned back and looked like the devil on a throne of sin. “A deal is a deal, mi princesa,” he murmured.
I stood on shaking legs, suppressing the desire to deny him what he’d been promised. Walking to the space in front of him, I swallowed back my anxiety as I stared down at him. With his knees to either side of my legs, I touched a hand to each arm of the chair and lowered myself to my knees in front of him. “Good girl,” he murmured, reaching out to stroke my cheekbone with his thumb.
I glared at him despite the nerves making my hands shake as I touched a hand to the belt buckle at his waist. His eyes dropped to the contact as I pulled the leather through. Unbuttoning his pants and tugging down the zipper on his pants came after, his eyes on mine as I stared up at him with a nervous glance.
I chewed the corner of my mouth and hesitated, unsure if I could really proceed. Already the thought of pulling his cock free from his pants made heat bloom between my legs. It was a perversion, a sick twist of my body turning against me in a way that shouldn’t have happened. There was nothing normal about desiring the man who’d kidnapped me.
It all came back to the part of me that should have never been set free. That part that should have stayed hidden beneath the surface until the day I died.
I considered not following through, backing away from him and letting him take it out on my pussy in the way I was sure he would. But setting the tone for our bets to not be followed through wouldn’t work to my advantage, and he’d make me enjoy whatever he did to me. Whether he used my mouth or my pussy should have been inconsequential.
I slid my hand inside his pants and reached into the boxer briefs that covered him and helped hide his bulge from innocent bystanders as he went about his day. He groaned as my palm wrapped around him, pulling him free from the layer of fabric until he hung free, heavy in my hand. I stroked him from his balls to the tip of his head while I held his eyes.
He reached out one of his hands, tangling it in the hair at the back of my head and pressing me down until his head brushed against my lips. I opened my mouth, letting him guide me down until the taste of him exploded in my senses. He slid over my tongue, releasing his grip at my head to grab the arms of the chair and leave me to do it on my own.
Filled with the knowledge that he’d meant his words about wanting me to worship him, I knew it would be different than the time in the shower. He’d used my face then, pushing me to take him harder and faster as his hips thrust in and out of me.
Now he leaned back in his chair, watching me with rapt attention as I stretched my mouth wider to accommodate his girth and slid up and down on his length of my own will. He took my hand in his, wrapping my fingers around the base the best I could and guiding me into working what I couldn’t fit into my mouth.
There was something intoxicating about his eyes on me, about the heat in his stare as he watched me hollow my cheeks and suck. I shifted my hips as it brought a physical reaction in my belly that begged for relief.
I closed my eyes, focusing on the mechanics of what I was doing and trying to tune out the rest of everything. “Look at me,” Rafael commanded in his deep voice, forcing my eyes to open with the words. I glanced up at him as his hips shifted up, driving a little deeper into my throat. With his eyes on mine, there was no denying the heat blooming between my legs or the way I wanted him inside me. “If you want me, then take me,” he said.
I shook my head, focusing my attention back on his cock and getting him off as quickly as possible. Admitting I wanted him wasn’t something I was willing to do. Letting him come inside me was something even less tolerable, and we both knew that was what would happen if I let him fuck me.
“Fine,” he grunted, his frustration evident in his scowl. “Touch yourself.” I drew back off him, releasing him with a wet sound as he popped free of my mouth.
“No.”
“Put your fucking pretty little fingers between your legs and play with my pussy until you come all over them, mi princesa,” he said. He pushed to stand, making me back away on pained knees as he wrapped a hand in my hair and pulled me back to his cock. His other hand guided himself to my mouth, slipping inside and shoving deep as I gagged around him. “You should have just hopped on my cock and gone for a fucking ride.”
I mumbled around him, touching my hands to his thighs and digging my nails in. The fabric of his pants interfered with me hurting him the way I wanted as he hit the back of my throat with hard drives that made my eyes water.
“Don’t make me fuck your ass today, Isa. Touch yourself,” he said. I glared up at him, dragging one of my hands down between my legs and lifting my dress as he used my face. Dipping into the front of my underwear, I touched two fingers to my clit and circled it in the way he always seemed to do. My hips squirmed at the contact, a strangled gasp escaping around him as he groaned his pleasure. “You think you can deny that you want me? I can hear how fucking wet you are just from my cock in your throat. You can try to lie to yourself, but your body tells me no lies.”
I moaned around him, watching as his lips twisted into a pleasurable snarl with his anger.
He pulled out, working his hand up and down his length furiously. “Open your fucking mouth.” With a swallow, I did. Even suspecting what was coming as he angled himself toward my face. He pressed the head inside, jerking himself off until the taste of his release coated my tongue. “Show me.”
He pulled back, leaning forward until his face was in front of me and he stared at his cum on my tongue. I swallowed as he pulled me to my feet roughly, planting me in the chair and dragging my panties down my thighs. His hand covered mine, helping me work myself higher and higher toward an orgasm as he leaned in and devoured my mouth in a rough kiss. Uncaring of the fact that he’d just come there, he swept his tongue inside and used his quick fingers at my clit to send me spiraling into an orgasm.
I moaned against him, both desiring more and hating him for giving me the climax I hadn’t wanted. The one that betrayed everything I should have been.
Good girls didn’t have sex with murderers, and they most certainly didn’t like it.
10
Isa
I woke up to the sound of the shower running the next morning, and Rafael's side of the bed empty. Sitting up, I clutched the sheets to my chest and looked around the room. He’d left shortly after getting me off the day before, only returning to the room to bring me food before leaving me alone once more. If his intent was to bore me to death, I feared he would win that battle sooner than later if he forced me to stay in a bedroom with nothing to do for another day.
He stepped out of the bathroom, a cloud of steam following him as he made for the closet. Dressing in one of his suits, he stared at me as I watched him move around the space. "You understand there is no way off the island, yes?" he asked.
I nodded solemnly. I still didn't know what I'd do to get off the island, but I knew the solution wouldn't come without Rafe's involvement, and if he'd chase me back home, then escaping at all was futile. It would only endanger my family and friends needlessly if he meant his words about dragging me back.
"If you would like, you can spend the day with Regina while I work. My office is in the main part of the house, and you would be welcome to join me there as well. Somehow I suspect you would rather help Regina in the kitchen."
I looked up at him hopefully, biting my bottom lip thoughtfully. "I can leave the bedroom?"
"If you cause problems, I'll bring you back here. But so long as you're kind to Regina then I have no problem with you having freedom around the house, but for now I'd like you to stay with her. Just until you have a better sense of the island and y
our place on it. Is that acceptable for you?" he asked, buttoning up his shirt.
"Yes," I agreed. "I'll take anything over being locked up in here. But who is Regina?" The jealousy in my voice couldn't be missed, and I mentally scolded myself for it.
He smirked at me knowingly. "My step-mother, I suppose," he said. "My housekeeper now that my father has passed."
I nodded with flushed cheeks, scurrying for the bathroom to shower quickly while he finished dressing. It seemed ridiculous to embrace the freedom as if it was a gift when I'd still be trapped on his island.
I hated myself for the gratitude I felt, when true freedom should have been my right.
His palm came down in a firm slap against my ass as I passed him, making me turn a shocked glare at him over my shoulder briefly before I continued on my way.
Given everything that had happened, scolding him for touching me seemed irrelevant. If there was one thing I knew about Rafael Ibarra, it was that he did as he pleased.
And to hell with what anyone else thought.
“I want to talk to Chloe,” I demanded as I stepped out of the bathroom and into the bright bedroom, where Rafael sat on the same chair he’d occupied during our game of chess the day before. He lifted his hand from the sleek cell phone where he’d been reading something intently, quirking a brow up at me as if to remind me that I was in no place to make demands. “She’s supposed to go home today. Will she make it home?” I asked, dropping my eyes as my lip quivered slightly. I wanted nothing more than for my friend to have made it home safely and be out of Rafael’s reach.
Even if it meant she would tell my parents who I’d gotten involved with and about my sudden disappearance when I didn’t come home with her.
He stood slowly, pushing his cell into his slack pockets as he studied me. “Your friend made it to the embassy the night she called you. They put her on her plane two hours ago, and she is safely on her way back to Chicago, despite her best efforts to convince the authorities that you’d been taken by a mad man and needed help. The police informed her they had spoken with you, and you merely made the choice to extend your vacation indefinitely.”
I swallowed back the rapidly building saliva in my mouth as I considered the reach Rafael must have to be able to manipulate the police into such a lie. “But that’s not true!” I argued, feeling like a petulant child as I tried to consider how to communicate my frustration without stomping my foot. He’d seen me as an innocent girl who was too naive to understand what she was getting herself involved with and used that to his advantage.
He’d been right, but I wouldn’t further add to that image by throwing a tantrum. Besides, stomping my foot wouldn’t be nearly as fun unless his face was beneath it.
“In Ibiza, the truth is whatever I say it is, mi princesa,” Rafael murmured, his voice deep but smooth like a soft caress as he stepped closer to me. He reached up a hand, stroking the side of my face delicately. Despite the storm brewing in his eyes with his anger hovering just beneath the surface, the lines of his face were oddly tender in an unusual moment of sincerity. “It would have been the truth, had you only trusted your love for me and not believed the rumors a teenage girl whispered in your ear to turn you against me.”
“I don’t think they can be called rumors if they’re true,” I hissed. I bit my lip in frustration as I tried to deny the feelings I’d developed for him in our short time together before everything had come crashing down, but the words wouldn’t come. I didn’t love Rafael; I couldn’t.
But I had loved Rafe and losing him felt like tearing out yet another piece of me that I would never get back.
“If you had only chosen to stay, I could have shown you the benefits to being with a man like me. You could have known the beauty my lies afforded you through ignorance, but now I have no reason not to expose you to the reality of the man I am.”
“I was never going to choose to stay. No matter how I felt about you or what you made me believe. I would have never chosen you,” I told him, watching as his eyes darkened. “The fact that you thought otherwise shows you don't know me at all.”
“I know you better than you think, Princesa,” he said, clenching his jaw and then relaxing it as he shook off his anger at my words. “But here we are. Regardless of whatever you would have chosen, it is my bed you share every night. It is my cock that slips between your legs and sinks into this wet fucking pussy.” He dropped his hand to touch me through my sundress, his hand cupping what he could of me with my legs pressed tightly together in shame. Heat exploded through me the moment he made contact with me, proving his point that no matter what I said to him, my body told him no lies. His hand raised up to my stomach, resting his palm against the flat surface as he stared down at it. “And soon enough it will be my child that grows in your belly. Do you really think what you want matters to me?”
“I think you’re awfully angry for someone who claims not to care,” I argued, grabbing his wrist and shoving his hand off my stomach. “I think it kills you to know that I don’t want you enough to walk away from everyone who loves me.”
His eyes lit as something passed behind them, a thought I knew instantly he wouldn’t allow me to be privy to until he was ready. His lips curved into a smirk despite my harsh words, the punishment he’d no doubt crafted in his mind taking the sting away from him.
I could try to hurt him with my voice, but Rafael and I both knew that he was the one with all the power. He could crush me with a glance, break my heart with a word.
Destroy my soul with his touch.
“I suppose we will find out how much it matters in the end,” he murmured, taking my hand and guiding me toward the door of the bedroom without another word. While his mood had improved with whatever terrible plan he’d concocted to torment me, I grumbled at his heels as I followed. Knowing that Chloe was at least safe, Hugo was in the front of my mind. My concern for him grew, knowing that he lived close enough to be readily within Rafael’s grasp should I disobey him in a severe enough way to make him follow through on his threat to my friends.
I’d pressed enough for one conversation, but I’d need to ask after Hugo and his brothers soon enough, though part of me wondered if Hugo might be better off if I never mentioned him and hoped Rafael simply forgot he existed.
That didn’t seem likely for the man who saw everything and used it to his advantage.
As we moved through the halls, the house seemed different in the light of day. The shadows of the corners weren't ominous, but brightly lit with the Mediterranean sun. He turned to stare at me as we emerged from the labyrinth of halls, waiting until I stepped into the open space where he'd reminded me of the consequences for failing to escape him.
I'd never stood a chance against Rafael. I'd never had a hope of protecting my heart from him, of keeping him out of my soul. He'd claimed it as his. Even as I stared up into his dangerous eyes, I knew that no matter what he'd done, I would never get it back.
We all lived with formative events in our lives, moments that defined us as people. The day I'd placed my hand in Rafael's and let him take me to bed had been the day that would define me as a woman for the rest of my life. For better or worse, he’d stained my soul with his darkness, tangling it with my own until I couldn't deny what stared back at me from the shadows.
I'd never been meant for the light.
He wrapped his arm around my waist as I jolted in his touch, guiding me toward the kitchen and the woman who faced away from us. Stirring something on the stove, she spun slowly as we approached and Rafael pulled me forward with gentle hands. "Regina, this is my Isa," he said as her warm brown eyes dropped to mine. So like my mother's, the immediate comfort in them made tears burn the back of my throat irrationally, even as my irrational heart swelled at hearing Rafael call me his.
I missed my family in a way I'd never thought to experience, something that only came with the knowledge that I might never see them again. That they may never know what had happened to me. Forcing a smile t
o my face and resisting the tears that threatened at my eyes, I nodded to her in greeting. "It's nice to meet you."
"Oh, mi hija," she said softly, patting her hands on the dish towel she’d grabbed off the island in front of her and stepping around to meet us on the other side. Rafael's eyes were heavy on my face, his stare weighted by the confused furrow to his brow. She reached out a hand to slip a gentle finger beneath my chin and tilt it up to look at her. "She's so beautiful," she said warmly, turning a proud smile to Rafael. He never looked away from me, staring at my face as I turned my gaze away in a hurry to escape the questions in his eyes. "His mother would have loved you."
"You don't even know me," I said, whispering as I sniffled. The last thing I needed was for Rafael's mother to approve of me, but I still couldn't help the irrational grief I felt for a woman I'd never known.
For the closeness I felt to a ghost.
"It's in the eyes, reinita," she said, cupping my face in her hands. "You are everything she would have wanted in a daughter, and you wear that in them like a window to your soul." The words reminded me of my grandmother, of her assertions that you could tell everything you needed to know about a person with one search in their eyes.
The mouth could lie, but the eyes only ever spoke the truth of our souls.
If it was true, I wondered what she would see if she looked at Rafael. I'd seen the darkness in him that first night, but I'd thought it something I could withstand and then walk away. I hadn't seen the truth, but I wondered how much of that was because of my own desire not to see it.
"Go and work, El Diablo," Regina said teasingly as she waved him off. "I will take care of your Isa for now."
"Are you alright?" he asked me, ignoring her attempt to shoo him away. I turned my gaze to his finally, nodding my head even if the movement felt fragile. I wanted nothing more than to break down into tears, and I knew that point would come.
Until Forever Ends: A Dark Mafia Romance Page 7
