“Come on.” He reached back and took Raven’s hand. He liked the way it fit in his. He really needed to put a stop to observations like that.
Once the door was locked, they strolled hand in hand down the street. It was little more than hard-packed earth littered with trash and debris. The good thing was that they could go in a straight line and never lose sight of the hotel.
The place Victor had tried to get them to stay at had been much nicer, but a cheap motel had a lot to offer that the typical guest wouldn’t want. Anonymity, squeaky doors and thin walls could all be used in their favor.
“Can we talk now?” Raven whispered.
“Probably best if we didn’t.” He kept his hand wrapped around hers, because it was their cover and they had an audience. Not because he’d always wanted to.
“It’s a pretty night.” She tipped her head back and gazed up at the stars.
There was no breeze to speak of, but it had cooled off enough to be pleasant. A few slow-moving clouds hung low in the sky, but for the most part it was nice.
“After I started flying and thought I really knew what I was doing, my dad put me in an old biplane and told me I had to now learn to navigate using nothing but star charts and the position of the sun.” She shook her head.
Matías was jealous of the smile tugging at her lips, that he wasn’t the reason they curled upward. It was an unreasonable jealousy, and probably the product of too many sleepless nights. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had an easy sleep. Not since before the Chicago job at least.
“What happened with your dad?”
She glanced away once more. When she’d mentioned it before, he’d taken her discomfort to be over the family situation. But was there something else going on?
“He had a disagreement with Hokee and Danny. They made it clear his opinions were not wanted and since they held majority vote, he had no say in what they were doing. He left.”
“And didn’t tell you?”
“He told me, and gave me the chance to go with him, but I didn’t understand what they were fighting about, and he wouldn’t explain it to me. I think he wanted to protect me in some weird way. But, I wanted to work things out, keep the family together.”
“That sounds…never mind.” Selfish. But he couldn’t call her dad selfish to her face.
“I know how it sounds, but I get it. If I could go back, I’d have left with him.” She glanced away, but he heard the way her breath shuddered and her fingers trembled slightly against his hand.
What was going on at Benally Cargo he didn’t know about?
Raven was pointedly not telling him what it was that had broken up the family business, and he wouldn’t pry. It wasn’t his right. She wasn’t his submissive, and he held no power over her.
“How many people are watching us?” she asked.
“How many do you think?”
“The two SUVs are still there. I’m guessing two people in each. Four?”
“Good girl.” He squeezed her hand. Hell, he hadn’t even noticed her seeing the cars.
“Thanks, I think.” She chuckled and squeezed back. “He’s done now.”
Raven let go of his hand and knelt, scooping up the dog’s refuse in a baggie and tying it off. He glanced up and down the street, amused by her tidiness.
“You do realize there’s trash and dog crap all over the place, don’t you?” He put his hand on the small of her back as they turned and began strolling toward the hotel once more.
“Just because other people make a mess doesn’t mean I have to.”
“Point taken.”
They fell into silence on their way back to the hotel. She dropped the baggie into a trash barrel out front of the building before they returned to the room. Since they were in for the night, he took the rickety wooden chair from the desk and lodged it under the doorknob as a wedge. It wouldn’t prevent someone from coming through the door, but it might slow them down.
He turned around and found Raven watching him, one arm wrapped around her, the other tapping her lip.
She wanted answers. He’d known the moment they’d stepped into the club-turned-dungeon that he’d have to give her some kind of explanation. He would rather be honest with her, but that path led to fear and rejection.
Matías leaned against the wall and blew out a breath.
“I’m going to take a shower. Join me?” Raven asked, yet there was nothing sexy about the way she said it. The lady wanted answers.
“I’d like that,” he replied and followed her into the bathroom.
She turned on the faucet in the tub while he turned the handle on the sink.
“You’re catching on fast,” he said.
“I’ve got to.” She shrugged and sat on the edge of the bathtub. That cool, calm mask fractured, and now he could see the worry lining her face. “So?”
I’m a kinky-as-fuck Dominant and I’d really like to do things to you that would make you scream.
Years of keeping this secret to himself, and in one operation, a single criminal was going to expose Matías’ darkest desires. Good thing he’d already turned in his resignation.
Matías blew out a breath. Where did he start?
“Like I said earlier, Victor has somehow uncovered an identity I used maybe ten years ago. I’m not sure how. It was a single sting operation, but it was at a BDSM club. I used José, but no last name.”
“Wait, so does Victor know…?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Victor thinks he’s uncovered my deep, dark secret. That’s all he knows.” Matías had baited Victor several times over the night without the man showing any sign of knowing anything else.
“How did he find out about that secret then?”
Matías sighed. “Who knows? Chances are, the guys we—met—that night are still in prison and they hooked up with someone in Victor’s crew.”
“Okay, so he thinks you’re into that stuff?”
He hated this. Fucking hated it.
“Yes, he believes it. We made the cover extremely believable. I spent time preparing for that role so I would come across as authentic.” Lies. All of it lies. Matías was as kinky as a cheap garden hose. He couldn’t live without kink and the control it gave him.
“Oh. Wow. Okay.” She pulled her hair over her shoulder and began braiding it, staring at the dirty tile floor.
Great. Now she couldn’t even look at him, and she didn’t even know the whole of it.
“How much danger are we in? And don’t try to tell me we aren’t.”
“I won’t lie to you.” No, he’d already done that. “This is dangerous, but we’ve got backup. You’ve got your phone still, right?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t appear very happy about it, but he couldn’t blame her, either. “What are we going to do about pretending to be into kink?”
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “We can bluff our way through it. Just keep quiet, follow my lead, and it’ll work out.”
“Is it that simple?”
No. “It can be. We’ll make it work.”
His phone began to vibrate. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen. Amazing. Eddie was still working.
“Give me a second, will you?”
“Sure.” Raven got up and exited the bathroom quietly.
He turned the sink off so it could drain and took a deep breath. There was no way this operation would go down without leaving another black mark on his soul. He’d lied to Raven, for the first time, and that didn’t sit well with him.
He couldn’t do this.
But he had to see them through whatever came next.
Matías spent fifteen minutes or so listening to Eddie’s take on the situation, not that he gave Matías an opening to explain what went down. He was too raw to butt heads, so he just listened. After Eddie was done speaking they, hung up with no new solutions and no plan of action. Matías unbuttoned his shirt and the cuffs, keeping them out of the water, and doused his face.
What a nig
htmare.
What was he going to tell Raven?
How was he going to explain tonight to her?
The truth would lose her, a lie could kill her.
He emerged from the bathroom, still at a loss.
“Feel better?” Raven sat with her back braced on the bed, legs out in front of her.
“Yeah.” He sighed and shrugged out of the shirt, carefully hanging it on the back of the only chair before perching on the foot of the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together.
Níłch’i interpreted the action as a let me pet you gesture and waddled over to Matías’ feet.
“Hey, buddy. Want to listen to the radio?” He scratched the dog’s belly and tweaked his front paw. “Let’s listen to the radio.”
He leaned over and plugged the radio back in, turning it at random to a station playing music. The soft hum filled the need for background noise.
“We’re good,” Matías announced.
“Well?” Raven blew out a breath.
“We follow Victor’s lead.” Where did he begin cluing her into what was going on? He had years of experience with the man and only a few hours to brief her. “It wasn’t until recently we began to suspect who he works for. His organization has always favored secrecy and flying under the radar above doing really big deals.”
“But you know who he’s working for.”
“Yes.”
“You aren’t going to tell me—because it’s safer for me?”
“Correct.” He smiled at her, the one bright thing in this whole shit storm. “You always were the smart one.”
“What happened to make you want to quit?” Her gaze searched his face, seeing deeper than he’d like. She wasn’t some stranger that he could fool with a smile and a laugh. She knew him. At least in part.
For a moment, Matías didn’t speak. He had to weigh all of his words, be ever so careful what he told her, how much she knew, because it could put her life at risk. They’d always been friendly, maybe a little more than that. She’d never asked too many questions, but now, he didn’t know where the line was anymore. Where did he start?
The beginning of the end.
“I was working with some good people. There was this bad guy that they wanted to catch, someone I’d—worked with as part of a bigger plan.” He glanced at her, catching her eye.
Raven nodded. She got what he couldn’t say out loud. He’d been caught on an op gone wrong.
“This guy decided he wasn’t okay with just getting out of the business, he wanted to get even. He started harassing my friends, which I expected him to do. One night, I was waiting for him to show up, and he surprised me. Shot me here.”
He sat up and gestured to his left side.
He could still feel the phantom pain in his abdomen.
“Then he stabbed me a couple times in my stomach and left me as a warning.”
Raven stared, her mouth gaping open. It wasn’t so bad now, but the scars ran deeper than just a few pink lines on his flesh.
“It took a couple of surgeries to put me back together. I’m okay. But, experiences like that—change you. Make you realize the things you haven’t gotten to do, people you want to spend time with, what you’d do differently. So, I figured it was time to retire.”
“I’ll say. Oh my God.” She pushed a hand through her hair, a nervous action he’d caught her doing more often. He wanted to take her hands in his, hold them, hold her. “They caught him, though?”
“Yeah, while I was still out of it in the hospital.”
“Good.”
“What about you?” Matías slid to the ground, settling with his legs outstretched toward hers.
Níłch’i crawled onto Matías’ lap, offering him the same comfort as her. Animals were better than therapists.
“My mom’s pregnant. Again.”
Matías’ head jerked up and he stared at her.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Again?”
“Yeah. She’s back on the reservation, only this time, no one knows who the father is. I think this will be sibling fourteen, unless I’ve missed one. I think she’s in love with being in love, at least until she gets knocked up, at which point, she finds herself out of love and homeless. Pretty sure Gran-gran’s ready to do something drastic. Mom just up and left the last three at Gran-gran’s.”
Raven’s mother was a piece of work, as far as parents went.
“Think she’ll keep this one?”
“She doesn’t have any business keeping a cat, much less a kid.” Raven shrugged. “She won’t give them up, and most of the dads are just as confused as the kids. It’s shitty.”
Matías couldn’t imagine his mom doing something like that. His dad…well, Matías had never known the man, so it was hard to tell.
“I think my mother spoiled me on what a mom should be like, you know? I don’t understand people who leave like that.” He leaned his head back, lost in the memories of better days.
“Your mom sounds amazing.”
“She is. I need to send you some of her peaches.”
“Please do. I’d love to try them.”
“You’d like her. Hell, she’d like you, too.”
Raven smiled, her eyes lighting up. The smallest things made her happy. Being around her didn’t take work, not like other women. He could just…be. But even then, he was lying to her. They had to talk about tonight, and he had to man up.
“What did you think of tonight?” Matías asked softly. Her answer could change things forever.
“Which part?” She blew out a breath, clearly still flustered, but he’d caught her watching. Recognized the fascinated glint in her eye. Not everyone wanted to be kinky though. He didn’t know where she fell.
“The Fetish Ball part.”
“That was…different. We don’t have parties like that anywhere near where I live.”
“You’d be surprised.” He cleared his throat, the lie already sticking. “Working that gig? I did research. There’s a lot more of them than what you’d realize.”
“Really? Huh.” She blinked at him and he could see her rolling the idea around in her head.
Part of him wanted her to accept it, to accept him, but he had no business tarnishing something so good with his touch.
“I guess… I don’t know, I’d have just imagined people like that would be…scary.”
“Not in my experience. The people are nice. There’s a big emphasis on consent, so no one is going to do anything you don’t want them to do. Actually, the people I met could teach the non-kinky people a thing or two about communication.”
Shut up.
Stop talking.
Matías closed his mouth so hard his teeth clicked together.
Raven studied his face, her expression unreadable.
“You’re…into that, aren’t you?”
Fuck.
He used to be good at this stuff. The best. Now, he couldn’t spin a single detail straight.
He scrubbed his hand over his face.
If he said no, she’d know he was lying. If he said yes…
“You’re into that stuff, and I said it was scary.” She dropped her head back against the bed. “It was just different.”
“It’s scary if you’re unprepared for it. I’d have never walked you in there without a lot of conversation beforehand.” He let his hands fall to his side and stared Raven straight in the eye. The truth was a hard thing to manage when he lived so many lies. “I am into BDSM. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to figure out what’s something I like because it’s part of an alias, or what I like because it’s what I like. Kink, it’s just part of me. The real me. It’s one of the only things I know about myself anymore. I’ve done two missions that touched on going into kink clubs, but I’ve never had to admit to anyone that it’s not an act.”
Raven stared at him, eyes wide, lips parted. Shocked.
“It’s not contagious, at least I don’t think it is.” He glanced away, anywhere but at
her. The horror would come next, then the fear.
“Well, I guess it makes sense why you’d work so well in those situations.” Her voice wavered a bit as she spoke. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Look, I think Victor is going to ask me to stay tomorrow. I want you to get out of here. Go home.” Get as far away from him as she could so he wouldn’t have to see the way she refused to meet his eye. How she’d avoid the casual contact she’d embraced before.
“How would you explain that to him?” She glanced up now, but it was fleeting.
“You’re a pilot. You’ve got work to do. He can respect that.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“Raven, tonight was a test. He wanted to parade my deepest secrets in front of me to prove he can uncover anything. If he digs hard enough, what if he uncovers the truth? About me or you?”
“Then you should have a getaway plane ready.”
“We didn’t hire you for that, and I don’t want you to get caught up in this if things go sideways.”
“Consider it part of the Benally package.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face. Raven was remarkable, but…he couldn’t shoulder covering his ass and holding her hand through this. When she really thought things through, when she started to get scared of him—what then? He had to be cruel. He had to push her away now to possibly save her life.
“What if…What if it comes to proving to Victor we are in a relationship? He knows I’m into BDSM. Can you handle that? Would you let me spank your ass in front of a crowd? Gag you? Hm?” He hated the shock value of his words, but damn it, she couldn’t brazen her way through this.
She blinked at him.
“You need to think about that before you make your offer.” Because damn it, he wasn’t a saint.
She sat up a little straighter, a wrinkle between her brows. “Then I need to pretend to be—what did you call it? Kinky?”
Matías chuckled and picked at the threadbare carpet. Christ. “Babe, there’s no pretending when it comes to BDSM. You’re either kinky or you’re not.”
“I could learn to be. Besides, I kind of have to, don’t I? Though Victor might not know the difference.”
Entrusted: A Drug of Desire Novel Page 6
