by Bethany-Kris
Taking in a deep breath, Lucia made a choice, then. She stepped back from the door, and widened it a little. A silent invitation for him to come in, if he wanted to do so. She didn’t say a thing one way or another, and let him decide for himself.
She already knew what he would do.
He came in.
Renzo drifted around her hotel room, never touching anything or lingering too long in one spot. Lucia didn’t mind, as it gave her the chance to breathe, and think. Funny how that worked—after all this time, she still found it difficult to gather her thoughts and control her emotions when this man was around.
It was like time had just stopped.
Now, it was moving again.
“My dad said The League trains assassins,” Lucia said.
Renzo’s back stiffened where he was standing in front of the window. Silently, he began to unload the items in his jacket. He set each item onto the small table beside the window. Two guns, three knives, an extra clip of bullets, and a roll of wire. The final things he set to the table were a pair of leather riding gloves. Then, he shrugged off his jacket, and set it on the table, too.
She thought to ask him what in the hell he was doing—did he think he was staying, or something? Because she hadn’t suggested that was going to happen. And yet, she stayed quiet because just like that, she realized, yes, that’s exactly what she wanted.
For him to be here.
With her.
She needed him to stay.
Just … fucking stay with her.
“You could say that, I guess. He’s not entirely wrong.”
“So, that’s what … you are, right?”
He let out a quiet chuckle. “I am whatever I need to be … or whatever my boss needs me to be, Lucia.”
“Do you just not like to put a title on your job, then?”
Renzo spun around fast, and cocked his head to the side. “No, I don’t call myself anything because despite being something … I don’t know what I am. I know I’m alone, all the fucking time. I know I’m a prisoner who only seems like he’s free. I know I am capable of amazing things, and horrible ones, too. I know I can be feared as much as I am respected. And I know I love a woman who I would die for, but I can’t have her yet, either. These are all things that I know about myself, but because I don’t have the one thing I want—you—I still feel like nothing. A nobody, Lucia.”
He shrugged, adding, “So when you ask me what I am, I don’t have a good answer. I don’t have any answer at all.”
Strange …
That hurt her, too.
Not for her, but for him.
“And what about you, huh?” he asked.
Lucia found him staring at her in that way of his again—like she was the only thing in the world that mattered to him. “What about me?”
“Did you stop loving me?”
It seemed like such an obvious question.
He asked it so easily.
The answer was difficult.
Complex.
And yet, still obvious, too.
“Never,” she admitted. “Not even when I wanted to. I couldn’t.”
Her heart wouldn’t let him go.
Lucia blinked, and felt the tear escape from the corner of her eye. She quickly wiped it away, but not before Renzo saw it. He crossed the room quickly, already reaching for her though she wasn’t sure if she wanted him touching her at all.
And then he was.
Suddenly, that was all she wanted.
Fuck it all.
His hand cupped the side of her face, and she swore it was instinct for her to just turn her head into his touch. To kiss the center of his rough palm because she needed to do it—needed that taste of his soft touch, and wanted the warmth of his skin against her lips. His thumb swiped away the tears that had streaked down her cheeks.
“Don’t cry,” he muttered. “Don’t cry, baby.”
“I just—”
“Loving someone shouldn’t make you want to cry, Lucia.”
“You’re telling me?” She let out a sad, bitter laugh. “Love shouldn’t hurt, either, but that’s what it’s always done to me when it comes to you. That’s not what I want.”
“Me, either. Never, you know?”
She didn’t.
She didn’t know anything.
Not until he kissed her, anyway. His lips found hers—a lot like the kiss in the car, this one was just as hungry and vicious. All teeth and tongue and lips working against hers. There was no questioning what he was feeling when he kissed her like this. Like it was the last thing he was ever going to do. She couldn’t breathe, not properly. She couldn’t drag in enough air to satisfy her lungs.
But it was lovely.
So good.
And like when he had touched her, she found this was all she wanted. The rest of her thoughts and sadness drifted away when she had him like this. It just made sense for her to reach for him—to peel that shirt he was wearing up over his body, and toss it to the side.
She froze, then.
Stunned.
Lucia blinked at the ink that colored up a good portion of one side of his body. She reached out with tentative fingers to trace the lines of the ink as he let out a husky chuckle. She didn’t know what to say about the ink. The nose ring he wore was a new thing, too, but the ink … it told a completely different story than his new piercing.
Memories, she thought.
His tattoos were memories.
She recognized them easily.
A portrait of Diego on his bicep; one of Rose’s favorite artworks down his inner forearm. Fireworks colored the space in between the larger pieces. A dreamcatcher drifted down his outer forearm. She was curious why he seemed to only tattoo the one side of his body, other than the ink she could see slightly on the back of his neck, but she didn’t want to ask him about it. Mostly, her attention kept drifting back to the eyes staring out from the roses that seemed to be covering a face.
She knew those eyes.
She looked at them everyday in the mirror.
“He got them right, then,” Renzo murmured.
She peered up at him. “The eyes?”
“Mmm.”
Her fingers drifted over the tattoo again—over rose pedals and hazel eyes so expressive and lifelike, it was astonishing.
“Did you have a picture?” she asked.
“Memory,” he replied. “I learned Rose isn’t the only one who can draw, I guess.”
Huh.
“They’re just tattoos,” he added when she stayed quiet.
No, she didn’t think they were just tattoos. They were something else entirely to Renzo. Moments in his life that he didn’t want to forget. Pieces of memories that he wanted to memorialize forever in a very permanent way.
It was kind of amazing.
And she was part of it.
“Is that really what you want to call them—just tattoos?” she asked, smiling up at him slyly.
Renzo swallowed thickly, and his tongue peeked out to wet his bottom lip as he grinned in such a way that flashed those white teeth at her. Fuck. He looked good like that—almost ready to eat her whole, she thought.
“I want to do a lot of things right now—mostly to you,” he said, his grin deepening with each word. “But talking about these tattoos is not one of those things, Lucia.”
She sucked in a sharp breath.
Her mind whispered good.
Her mouth, on the other hand, said, “Do those things, then.”
“All of them?”
Lucia lifted a brow. “Anything you want, Ren.”
Because she had a feeling that she was going to like doing what he wanted to do to her a hell of a lot more than feeling the way she had felt for the last few years. Alone, and empty. Entirely. It hurt, and yeah, this might hurt, too … but not right away.
He came for her mouth again.
Hungry, again.
The force of his kiss pushed her back to the bed, but he came with her. Never o
nce did his lips break from hers as he worked her jeans down her legs, and then his pants followed soon after. His weight coming down on hers as he rested down on top of her was perfect. Just enough to make her feel pinned under him and it got her chest oh, so tight.
Her cotton-covered sex grinded against the length of his dick pushing against his boxer-briefs. She had no shame—she wanted the feeling of all the ridges of his cock rubbing against her slit and clit. All the while, his mouth followed a hot path down her chest. His hands pushed up under her shirt, and drove it higher around her throat.
Then, he found her breasts under her bralette. Those rough palms of his felt like sin tightening against her tits, and while his mouth traveled lower on her toned stomach, his thumbs tweaked her nipples into hard buds.
“Fuck,” Lucia breathed, her back arching from the bed. “What are you doing?”
She meant it in a what are you doing to me kind of way, but Renzo took it quite literally when he replied, “I want a taste of this pussy, baby. Do you know how long it has been since I got my tongue on your cunt? Since I had your taste in my mouth? I want you on my tongue, Lucia. I want to fuck that pussy with my mouth, and then watch you lick it from my lips as I slide inside you.”
The sound that escaped her throat was weak.
And primal, too.
Raw like she felt—the way he made her feel with his hands sliding down her stomach as his mouth hovered over her pussy. His fingers curved around the edge of her panties, and his gaze locked on hers as he dragged them down her thighs. There was something wicked in his smile; something damning, too.
She was going to be so fucked after this.
No doubt about it.
She lifted up her backside just enough to let him slip those panties down further. She felt the soft cotton graze her skin in the slowest way—an inch at a time. And then when he finally had them down her legs, and tossed to the floor?
He was back between her thighs in a blink.
That hot mouth of his worked her pussy like it had her mouth—rough and harsh. Like he was starved, her pussy was the meal, and he was never going to get enough. The textured pad of his tongue lashed against her clit over and over again until she could feel her heart pulsing through her sex against his mouth.
His fingers came down to work against her, too. Sliding through slick lips to find damp, hot flesh. His fingers slipped into her pussy to fuck her hard as his mouth drifted away from her clit just long enough for him to murmur, “Are you going to give me what I want, Lucia? Lick yourself from my lips as I fuck this pussy? Have you missed my cock?”
“Oh, my God.”
Her back came off the bed again as sparks danced across her skin. She couldn’t help but squeeze her eyes shut as the orgasm ravaged through her system. The noises that crawled out of her throat echoed through the room.
His name was the loudest thing, though.
She was still shaking when he drifted back up her body. He already had a condom in his hand. She was trying to figure out when in the hell he had grabbed that—probably from his pants—but figured it didn’t matter. Not when she got to watch the way he slid latex down his cock as he came a little closer to her mouth.
Almost there.
Now, she kind of wanted to taste herself on him.
He’d teased her with the promise.
“Fucking missed you,” he whispered.
Lucia swallowed hard. “Me, too.”
She got to watch as he fitted himself between her thighs—the way he gripped the base of his cock as he slid it through the lips of her sex before coming to a stop right at the slit. He gave her just the tip, first. Pressing in, and then pulling back out. He did that over and over until he’d worked a good two inches in with each thrust, and the same lost when he pulled back out again. He kept that up until she was shaking all over, and begging.
“Fuck me … just fuck me, please.”
Renzo chuckled.
Dark.
And oh, so haunted.
She loved that sound.
It was the last thought to drift through her mind before he slammed inside her. It took one good thrust to fill her full, and shatter her mind. But those broken pieces were beautiful, too. Reflections of him and her like this.
He dragged himself away from her body again, and then slammed right back in. Harder than before—deeper, too, if it were possible.
“I wanna watch this, Lucia,” he murmured. “I need to watch this.”
She couldn’t breathe again.
But he was fucking her now, so it didn’t matter. It was the slapping of skin, and the sexy noises that slipped past Renzo’s lips that dragged her back under into a greater state of bliss. There was nothing better than watching a man use your body the way he wanted just to get himself off.
He made it quite clear that he didn’t intend to come until she did—again. His thumb found her clit and worked small circles into it with every beat of his hips against hers. The rhythm was enough to hit every nerve Lucia had.
“I’m going to come again,” she gasped.
“Good.”
She came—faster and harder.
“Fuck, yeah,” Renzo said thickly.
He fucked her harder.
She was all too happy to get on her knees when he was ready, pull that condom off, and swallow every drop he had to give her, too.
• • •
“You should go,” Lucia whispered.
Renzo’s head lifted the second he walked out of the bathroom, and his gaze instantly fell on her. There was no surprise in his eyes, and no disappointment. It was more like an understanding, she thought. Like he expected her to say that.
This whole thing …
Them … it’d been a lot.
Together, it had been too much.
Lucia needed to be alone again; she needed a second to breathe without him standing right there. She couldn’t think when there wasn’t any distance, and she had shit to work through, now.
Renzo nodded. “All right.”
She wasn’t even going to let him spend the night.
Fuck, she wanted to, though. There was a big part of her that was ready to beg for him to get back in the bed with her. To watch him enjoy the sight of her naked beneath the sheets with him, but she couldn’t.
Lucia had realized something.
That shit she thought she was feeling for all this time—the stuff that held her back, and kept her lonely; the poison that filled her up like an old friend … she’d been holding it too tight, and keeping it too close. She blamed her father; put her pain on him, and let that contempt for him burn through her like a constant wild fire that was ready to devastate every time she fed into it.
The thing was, she wasn’t just mad at her father.
Or even her brother.
She was mad at herself.
She was mad at Renzo.
She was pissed at life.
The world.
That was something she had to deal with alone—he couldn’t help. She’d made friends with this way she felt. She’d found comfort in this contempt burning so deep in her heart that she was scared to know what it might feel like to live without it.
That wasn’t on him to fix.
It was on her.
“I’m sorry,” Lucia said softly, staring at her hands as they twisted into the sheet pooled around her naked waist. “I just … need some time to think, and figure some things out.”
Renzo shrugged as he came around the edge of the bed, and silently, dropped a kiss to the top of her head. “Yeah, I get it, babe.”
She sucked in a shaky breath.
“You asked what I meant,” she murmured.
Glancing up, she found him looking back at her over his shoulder. “What?”
“I wrote letters. You didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Renzo’s brow dipped. “I still don’t.”
Funny.
She couldn’t forget.
Couldn’t let go.
/> So much so, that she kept those fucking letters with her all the time. Bunched together with an elastic to keep them neat in her messenger bag that she carried with her everywhere, those letters were a constant reminder of pain and of something she didn’t have. Of, what she had thought, was someone who didn’t want her.
Lucia’s gaze drifted to the bag sitting on a chair on the other side of the room. “There in that bag—all addressed to you, Ren. They were all sent back stamped with Return to Sender.”
“Do you want me to—”
“Take them,” she interjected. “They were meant for you. You should have them.”
He didn’t ask how she had gotten an address for him, or how many letters had come back to her with that fucking stamp on them. No, he just crossed the room, and found the pack of letters in her bag.
Lucia thought maybe those letters had been a way she punished herself. For falling in love with him, and making the choice to run all those years ago … for not being able to help him that night in San Francisco, and for watching him sacrifice his freedom for the safety of hers as the charges piled up, and the courts gave him the sentences.
And then with each unanswered letter, the punishment changed. She kept them because she thought … he didn’t want them.
He didn’t want her.
Lucia thought she needed to be reminded of that, so she kept them.
Renzo turned to her as he packed up his jacket, and the weapons he’d discarded earlier. “About Christian Savino …”
Lucia gave him a look from the side. “What—we’re not going to do a whole jealous thing, are we?”
“No, I was going to tell you to be careful. The man is … dangerous, Lucia. For reasons I know, and some that I am sure I don’t know. He’s involved in drug trafficking, but that’s just scratching the surface. The problem is, he doesn’t seem like the type, right? He seems to have some interest in you, so I just want you to be careful.”
She laughed bleakly. “Are you like them now, too? They used to tell me that about you all the time—my family, I mean. You were bad news. A bad guy … I should stay away. Not that it matters, anyway. I’m not interested in Christian.”
“It’s not the same, baby.”
There wasn’t a hint of jealously in his voice. No heat, or anger. He wasn’t trying to tell her to stay away from another man for his own pride.
