Buried (Hiding From Love #3)

by Selena Laurence

  The enormous, solid-wood doors open before we even reach them, and an older couple dressed very conservatively steps out, greeting Miguel first and then smiling as Juan is introduced. Next, Miguel turns to me. For the first time since we left Texas, he looks me in the eyes, and I’m confronted with the fact that I think I hate this man, but I also see so much of Juan in him that I feel guilty for my revulsion. I stand up straighter and fight not to drop my gaze. I know it isn't what Juan told me to do, but I don't want this man to think I’m some piece of fluff that can be disposed of like so much trash. I’ve already admitted to myself and Juan that I love him. I’ve always loved him, and I’m the only piece of his real family here. I’m not going to turn him over to Miguel Ybarra without a fight.

  "My apologies, miss. In all the turmoil, I never did get your name," Miguel says, holding out an arm to usher me into the foyer with the others.

  "It's Beth," I answer, proud of how strong my voice sounds.

  Juan puts an arm around me protectively.

  "Beth, this is Clara and her husband, Romeo. They run the house and property for me, and if you need anything at all during your stay, please feel free to let them know about it."

  I smile at the older couple, thinking that they remind me of my parents. Then Clara begins making noise about everyone needing to get to bed.

  Miguel turns sharply to us and says, "Clara will show you to your room now. It's been a very long day for everyone. Please take your time in the morning. I've had clothes and other items you may need delivered to your suite. Goodnight, Juan. Beth." He gives us a brief smile and walks away toward the far wing of the house with Romeo alongside him.

  Clara fusses over both of us, lamenting our long journey so late at night but also making sure to tell us that Señor Ybarra has been waiting for many years to have Juan home again.

  "This is a great day for Señor. I remember the day you left here when you were a baby. I have never seen a man so tormented with grief."

  Juan stops suddenly, pulling me closer to him as he faces Clara. "This is the house? The house where I lived when I was a baby?"

  "Yes. Well, you lived in the casita down the drive. That was back when the old Señor ran the business and the familia."

  I can see the surprise on Juan's face.

  "My mother worked here," he says softly, looking around the wide corridor we’re standing in.

  Clara smiles gently. "She did. I remember her well. I was a few years older than her and we worked together for many years." She gives herself a small shake and exchanges a look with one of the guards who shadows us. "But it's probably best if you don't speak of her around Señor," she warns. "As I said, he was nearly destroyed when she took you and left. Sometimes the past is better left in the past."

  Juan nods, and Clara starts walking again, pointing out pieces of art and other trivia about the house as we go along. I can't help the sense of foreboding as we move deeper and deeper into the enormous home.

  When we finally reach our destination, Clara shows us into an elegant suite with a sitting room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The bathroom alone is nearly as big as my whole apartment in Austin.

  The suite is on the second floor of the mansion, and it includes a balcony that runs the length of the suite so you can walk onto it through glass doors from either the sitting room, the bedroom, or the bathroom. Clara opens the set of doors in the sitting room as she bustles around, fluffing pillows and pointing out the wet bar with a mini fridge stocked full of snacks.

  "We serve buffet breakfast every morning between seven and nine a.m. Señor and the men usually eat breakfast in the solarium and the back patio. Lunch will be served in the kitchen as needed because most of the men are working at that time and they all end up eating at different times. Señor has formal sit-down dinner each night. Many times, business associates are guests. I know that he will want both of you there each night. The meal is served at eight."

  I wonder briefly if the dinners are like a meal with the Corleones. Someone might pull a gun in the middle of the soup course and shoot everyone. Or maybe it’s more like the Irish mobsters in The Departed and Juan's father will stab someone through the hand with his steak knife if they piss him off.

  "Señorita," Clara continues, "while the men are working, if you ever need food served at the pool or brought to your suite, just let me know. I will give you the number to the kitchen in the morning so you can always reach me with any requests. And of course there will always be one of the men assigned to you both on and off the property."

  "Thank you," Juan tells the older woman.

  I smile as best I can under the circumstances.

  After Clara leaves and the guard nods and steps out into the hall, closing the door behind him, I sit on the bed, unable to stand another moment. I try so hard to keep it together, but I start shaking, and suddenly, it occurs to me that I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to stop. My breathing becomes rapid, my heart racing and my lungs closing up. My head is light and I gasp, trying to regain some sort of control over my body.

  Juan has me in his arms in seconds, holding me tight and whispering platitudes. "It's okay, linda. I promise. I'm so sorry this happened. But it will all be okay, I swear to you. Breathe. Just breathe."

  I try to let my mind go blank, focus on my breathing. Slowly, over the next few minutes, the gasping calms, the shaking subsides, and finally, I’m able to sit back to look at Juan.

  He gently pushes my hair back out of my face. "You did great," he says quietly. "I'm so proud of you." He leans forward and presses his lips to each of my eyelids. "You're amazing. So amazing."

  I hold my hand over my mouth, momentarily unable to speak as an entire day's worth of very strong emotions wash over me. My eyes well up and I struggle to hold the tears back.

  "Sorry about the panic attack," I say in my new, small, wobbly voice.

  "Jesus, don't you dare apologize. Do you know how many people would have lost it hours ago? You're fucking amazing, linda. I don't know many men in the business who could have faced Miguel like that. You're a female civilian and you didn't make a mistake all day. You're alive because of it. And gracias a Dios. I don't know what I would do if something happened to you." His voice wavers as he says the words.

  "I'm okay. I know it doesn't seem like it right now, but I am. I'll be fine."

  "This is my fault. I can't believe I've gotten you mixed up in it. I wanted you to stay away."

  Juan pulls me into his embrace, and I let my body mold to his. My heart beats strong and sure, and I can feel his keeping pace with it. Our breathing syncs and I know in that moment that, if someone had told me this would be the outcome when I set out to visit Juan yesterday, I still would have gone. In fact, I can't bear the idea of him going through this without me. He needs me, and even when it means risking my own life, I won't leave him alone ever again.

  "Let's try to get some sleep, linda. I have no idea what tomorrow's going to be like." He gets up off the bed and walks to the sitting room where he locks both the door to the corridor and the doors to the balcony.

  He walks back to the doorway of the bedroom. "I'll see you in the morning," he tells me.

  I move off the bed and take a step toward him. I hate the neediness in my voice, but I have very little emotional control right now. "What do you mean? Where are you going?"

  "Just to the sofa right here. We can leave the door open if you want."

  I take a deep breath, wondering if he’s just trying to be a gentleman or if he really does prefer the sofa to the bed with me.

  "You don't have to do that," I say shyly. "I mean if you want to, but if it's just, um… If it's just to be polite or whatever, I'd actually rather have you in here. I mean, God, that sounds kind of bad, doesn't it? I didn't mean like that. I just meant that it's a big bed, and we've had plenty of sleepovers before. Remember when we were kids? It's fine. Um, yeah. I'll quit talking now." I feel the heat in my cheeks and wish the floor would open up so I could crawl i
nto it.

  Juan is across the room in two strides. "You sure?" he asks as he faces me, his hands resting gently on my arms. "I'll stay on my side, I promise." He smiles.

  "Yes, it's fine." I kick off my shoes and pull back the covers. "But I'm too tired to change or brush my teeth, so I hope you don't mind a grungy bedmate."

  Juan strips off his T-shirt and I work very hard at not looking at all of that lean, smooth muscle. It’s not easy to resist, and my eyes linger longingly on the space between his neck and his shoulder where one of his tattoos fans out across his deltoid muscles. In my head, an image develops—my mouth on that spot, biting gently down on that muscle, Juan’s arms clamped around my waist as he breathes my name and rocks into me.

  "No worries. I think I could sleep on a bed of nails I'm so tired," he says as he crawls into the other side of the bed, startling me out of my fantasy. I avert my eyes, turning on my side away from him.

  He reaches up and flips the switch on the lamp beside the bed, cloaking the room in darkness.

  After a few seconds, he speaks. "Linda?"

  "Yeah?"

  "What you said back at the halfway house before the RH showed up? Did you mean it?"

  My heart races. It seems like a lifetime ago, but I know exactly what he’s referring to. "Yeah," I whisper into the dark. "I did."

  "Come here," he says in a rough voice, reaching a hand over to grasp my shoulder.

  I scoot back until I can curve my back into his front, and his heavy arm comes across my body, where I hold his hand against my heart.

  "I love you too," he whispers into my ear, his warm breath making everything inside me turn molten. "I always have."

  I kiss his hand as I hold it in mine. We’re both asleep in moments.

  IT'S a strange thing that, when you're in hell, you can find the one or two tiny things that bring you happiness and focus on them entirely. It must be human nature, some sort of self-preservation. When I was in prison, it was the plants. Books about plants, classes about plants, picture of plants. It was the one thing that brought me happiness, so I planned most of my life around it, finding new ways to learn and read and think about plants. I used to draw out elaborate landscape designs for that big house in San Antonio I'd never have. It would keep me busy and strangely happy for hours at a time.

  Now, I lie in bed, my head propped up on one elbow, and I watch Beth as she sleeps. This is my new sliver of happy. I know right now that I could look at her sweet lips, her inky lashes and soft cheeks, and it would make me happy for most of my days.

  My mind travels to the events of the last twenty-four hours. I can't believe that, after everything I went through to escape this, it's finally happened. The man I've spent most of my life running from, the fate I thought I could avoid, has come and grabbed me right out of the shards of life I was clinging to in desperation. In some ways, I don't even mind. Now that I've actually faced the monster, a lot of the fear is gone. He's a murderer, a thief, a defiler of humanity, but so were the RH. The main difference is that my father is polite about it, and I find that to be a refreshing change.

  The only problem is that Beth's been dragged into it. If I'd known she was going to end up in the middle of this, I'd have turned myself over to him years ago. I realized at some point during the plane ride here that whatever stupid logic I was clinging to that made me think the RH was better than my own father wasted years for me. Gangsters are gangsters. I should have just gone to him and gotten it over with. Would have saved a lot of time and trouble for everyone really. And a lot of lost lives too. All those RH dead yesterday, Destiny dead—that’s on me. I cost those people their lives, and it makes me a little sick to think about it too much.

  But Beth is what bothers me the most. She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be anywhere near me or my father. She never should have seen the inside of the RH headquarters. She never should have seen Destiny with a gun pointed at her head. But in the middle of all of that is this flood of awe and joy that she is here. That I can lie here and look at her beautiful face, listen to her soft breaths, smell her spicy hair. I'm a fucking prick, but I'm so happy to have her here that it brings a sweet ache to my chest.

  "Hey," she says as her beautiful, big, brown eyes open and she looks at me sleepily.

  "Good morning." I keep staring at her. I can't help myself.

  "You're staring at me," she observes.

  "You're beautiful," I answer as a dumb grin works its way across my face.

  She blushes and rolls her eyes.

  I lean down to give her a kiss on the cheek, but she turns her head just as I do and our lips brush against each other. Electricity sparks between us and I hear her breath catch.

  "Um, I know I don't smell so great right now," she says. "And I think it's been, like, way over twenty-four hours since I brushed my teeth."

  "Is that your way of telling me I'm rank," I laugh as I sit up.

  "No, honest. I just really don't want to turn you off completely before we ever even get to the good stuff."

  I clear my throat at her description. The good stuff. Yeah, I'm betting her stuff is pretty damn good.

  "Oh yeah?" I can't help but smirk at her. "Is there going to be some good stuff?"

  She rolls her eyes again and sits up next to me, her hair tumbling all around her face. It's the fucking sexiest thing I've ever seen.

  "Did you forget what we said last night before we went to sleep?"

  I scratch my head, feeling my cheeks heat. "Uh, no, I remember it pretty damn well."

  "So, I love you, you love me, right?"

  I turn and face her, my expression now serious. "Yeah, that's right."

  "Then I'd say the good stuff is kind of what happens at this point, isn't it?"

  "Chica. We're hardly in a normal situation here. I mean, you've been kidnapped by a Mexican drug lord. I'm his long-lost son who's a convicted felon in one country and now wanted in at least one too." I pause, realizing that by taking me out of the halfway house and removing my cuff, the RH and my father have now ensured that the police in Texas are after my ass to throw it back in prison. “Jesus, that sounds like a fucking 1telenovela, no?”

  Beth places her index finger against my lips. "Shh," she shushes me. "For just a little bit, can we not think about all of that? We're here in our gilded cage, just the two of us, this big bed, that gorgeous bathroom. And we love each other. Let's pretend. Just for a little while. We've got the rest of the day to worry about being fugitives and kidnap victims."

  I've been trying to be honorable and rational when it comes to Beth, but at the core, I'm a twenty-five-year-old guy who hasn't had sex in four fucking years and is in bed with the girl I've pined for since I was six. Honor and rationality left the room right about the time she uttered "good stuff." So much of the blood in my body has pooled in my dick that I can barely form words, much less think.

  My voice sounds like I've swallowed a mouthful of gravel when I speak. "You, uh, want to hit the shower?" I ask, trying to be casual about it.

  She nods as she stands up out of bed. She watches me with dark eyes and reaches down to slide her T-shirt up over her head, dropping it to the floor. I swallow, my throat suddenly dry as I take in her ample tits clad in nothing but a dark, lace bra. I can see her nipples peeking through the fabric, and my tongue darts out between my lips in anticipation.

  Next, she undoes the button of her shorts and shimmies them off onto the floor as she steps out of them. Her panties match her bra, and there's very little to them. In fact, as she turns her back to me to walk to the bathroom, I see that she has a thong on. Madre de Dios.

  I'm sitting on the bed, jaw gaping, my dick so hard that I'm not sure I'll be able to walk, when she turns and looks over her shoulder at me.

  "Don’t you need to get cleaned up too?" she asks, smiling as she goes into the bathroom, and leaves the door open.

  Don't have to ask this homeboy twice.

  When I get to the bathroom, Beth's in the shower. I can see g
limpses of her naked form through the steamed-up glass door. It's like a peep show, and I can't help but just stand there for a minute and watch the flashes of flesh that dance in and out of the steam.

  I undo my jeans and drop them and my boxers to the floor. Beth must hear the denim hit the tile because she pokes her head out of the shower door, giving me a long look up and down, her wet hair streaming water down her breasts. I can feel one corner of my mouth tip up as her eyes linger on my hard-on.

  Her voice is husky when she speaks. "There're toothbrushes in the cabinet," she tells me before she shuts the shower door again.

  I open up the cabinet that flanks the big, oval mirrors over the twin sinks. Everything is a dark wood like cherry or something, and the fixtures are all brass, polished to a gleam. Inside the cabinet, I find multiple toothbrushes still in their packaging along with various types of toothpaste and other necessities like shaving cream, razors, soap, and—lo and behold—condoms. Guess dear old Dad isn't ready to be a grandfather yet. I shake my head.

  I quickly brush my teeth then take out one of the condoms from the box and palm it as I open the door to the shower. It's a huge space with a bench and multiple showerheads—the kind of thing I've only ever seen in magazines and movies. Beth has her back to me, letting the hot water pound down on her as she stands facing the spray with her head bowed.

  I set the condom on a nearby shelf built into the tile wall and step up behind her. I pull her heavy, wet hair to the side and lay it over her shoulder. Then I gently kiss the back of her bare neck. My hands rest on her hips as she tips her head against my chest and arches her back. I pull her closer to me, pressing the small of her back against my dick, then run my hands up her sides until I reach her breasts. I massage those full, lush tits and groan at how good they feel.

  "Mmmm," she moans back as she places her hands over mine and encourages me to continue. I squeeze her nipples and she gasps.

  "God, you're so fucking beautiful," I growl into her ear as I slide my tongue down her long neck. I don't think I've ever felt skin as smooth as hers. It's like butter when it melts beneath my tongue. I want to lick her from toe to head. She's my own personal ice cream cone, sweeter than any of the thirty-one flavors.