But that’s stupid. Javier Vega has no hold over my heart and soul. My mind and body are the weak links, prey to the claws of Stockholm Syndrome and white-hot ecstasy.
It’s that same weakness that leads me down the halls toward the study, where I know my husband is today. I’m just going to talk to him, I tell myself. I just want to ask him… what he wants for lunch. I can’t even convince myself of that, my legs quavering with need as I march down the hall. I want that infinite moment in the Paris hotel room, before the messy aftermath. I want the soul-shattering pleasure that made me forget everything, if only for a minute. I want the peaceful bliss of being so out of my mind with desire that there’s no room for any other thought, no room for regrets and self-hatred and what-ifs. I want him. Sex with him—dirty, filthy, rough, fantastic sex—is the only thing that takes my mind off my circumstances anymore.
I push the study door open slowly, knowing that once I step through, I’ll be changing everything. Again. This isn’t just admitting I belong to him, that I’m an object in his possession. This will be to embrace that fact. But why shouldn’t I? I’ve already hit rock bottom. If there’s anything that makes me forget that fact, I’m chasing it down, shameful though it may be.
“Selina,” my husband says simply, as I shut the door behind me, letting the lock click quietly into place.
“Don’t say anything,” I tell him, rounding the desk.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” he counters almost instinctively, but he turns the big leather chair so he’s facing me as I approach.
Despite the order, he doesn’t speak, and I don’t either, closing the small space between us with small, purposeful steps.
When I’m within reach, he stretches his arms out, hooking his hands into the waistband of my jeans, but doesn’t push for more. He leaves the decision to me. I almost wish he would just take me, leaving me no choice, like that night he tied me up in bed. That way, I could pretend I wasn’t so weak, so twisted, for wanting what he does to me. But I’m fooling myself to think I didn’t have a choice then, or that I don’t have a choice now. Javier has never, and would never, force me, no matter how badly the most fucked up depths of my brain might wish otherwise. There’s no one but myself to blame as I climb into his lap, wrap one hand around the back of his neck and bury the other into his hair, and kiss him.
His lips part easily for me, his tongue meeting mine more hungrily than his passivity up to this point would have led me to expect. But of course he’s hungry. He’s a man. Is that sexist? But the rapidly hardening bulge pressing between my legs quickly proves my theory.
His mouth moves to the side of my throat next, searching for my tender spots, but I’m not looking for foreplay today. I want to be fucked, fast and dirty enough that I can pretend this is still meaningless, one more ill-advised hookup with a particular poor choice of a partner. I’m here for a distraction, and the gentle way he suckles the spot just under my ear is only too reminiscent of who I’m dealing with and why. I need him to be rough, I need him to be merciless. I need him to take me, to punish me, so I can believe this is just another power play in this endless game between us.
I pull out of his arms and climb off the chair, turning my back to him. I undo the fastenings of my jeans quickly, pushing them and my panties down off my waist with one quick shove before bending over the big mahogany desk.
“Just do it,” I tell him, my voice cracking with need. Need for release, need for distraction, need to just fucking feel something that makes sense for once. “Do it.”
It seems like an eternity until I feel Javier behind me, hear the rustling of his own pants coming off. He presses against me, pushing my bare thighs into the edge of the desk. The feeling of his hard cock against my bare ass makes me swallow hard, even before his hand dips forward and into my folds, finding my tender clit easily. This isn’t what I want. I want him to fuck my brains out. I want him to act like he doesn’t give a shit about me, because I know that’s the truth.
It has to be.
“Just fucking fuck me already,” I moan, my hips bucking greedily into his.
“Not until you tell me,” he murmurs.
“Tell you wha—” I begin, but my words cut into a wordless gasp as his fingers trace along my wet slit.
“Tell me, Selina,” he says, the broad tip of his cock teasing my ready entrance, making me whimper with need. “Tell me who you belong to.”
God, it’s starting to work. My mind feels fuzzy at the edges, growing delirious with overwhelming desire. It’s deranged, but I feel I might die without him inside me. If there’s a female version of blue balls, I’m dangerously close to it. But even so, I can’t give him what he wants. I refuse to admit what he’s asking me to, even though it would be the truth. It’s too much.
He pulls his hips away from mine, and before I can react to the absence, pain blooms across my right ass cheek. I feel it a heartbeat before I hear the loud smack, register the point of impact.
Did he just fucking spank me?
“Tell me, Selina,” he repeats, this time a groan in my ear as he presses his cock against me again, digs his fingertips a little too hard into my hips. “I won’t ask again.”
“You,” I whisper, barely louder than a breath. I feel a new flood of heat to my pulsing pussy, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the spanking, or the admission. I’m not sure which would be worse. “I belong to you.”
I’ve barely finished the sentence before he’s thrusting into me, giving me exactly what I wanted and more. I swear I black out for a blink when his thick head crashes into my cervix, hard. All I breathe, feel, think, is carnal pleasure. There’s no room in my head for anything but sensation, and I can almost make myself pretend to forget who’s providing it.
Almost.
“Harder,” I moan, because almost isn’t enough. My nails are digging into the mahogany and I already know there will be bruises across the front of my thighs from where they’re banging against the desk, but I need it harder.
“I don’t think you can handle harder, princesita,” Javier growls, sounding barely winded as he pistons into me as if he can fuck the attitude right out of me.
“Just fucking do it,” I order, knowing as I say it that any sort of demand is ill advised. But maybe pissing him off is exactly what I needed right now, because he grabs my ponytail violently and jerks my head back, making me cry out in pain even as my knees wobble beneath me with arousal.
“You can’t play those games with men like me,” he growls, his other hand moving gently against my swollen clit. “Not if you want to be able to walk tomorrow.”
I hate the power his dirty mouth has over me, both planted between my thighs and whispering into my ear. My orgasm comes out of me like a sob, fast and choked. Holding my hips locked in place, Javier lets himself finish too, the pulsations of his cock syncopating to the shuddering spasms of my own release.
As soon as it’s over, as soon as he lets me go, I pull away from him and tug my pants back on. I don’t wait to find out if he had anything to say to me, any pillow talk to follow up the threats he made while inside me. I wipe the undersides of my eyes real quick for any smudged mascara, then exit the study.
That was the distraction I was looking for, at least for a few moments, but I still feel defeated. I know in my bones this won’t be the last time, not by a long shot. I crave this man, both his rare moments of tenderness as well as his far more frequent violence. I fall deeper into his vortex every day. Even worse, every night I come a little bit closer to accepting my fate, my feelings, my future.
I belong to Javier Vega now, and it’s possible I always will.
I can’t fight it for much longer.
So I’ve fallen for my original enemy, head, heart, and sinker. So what? Happens to the best of us. That doesn’t mean I have to give up on my new enemy, the one who is ultimately responsible for my brother’s death, and will almost certainly never face justice in a court of law. I don’t know why it took me so
long to realize the benefits of having a very real, very tangible focus for my inner turmoil. I was fucked up long before Javier Vega entered my life, from the day I saw my brother bleed out before my very eyes, leaving me to believe his death was somehow my own doing. But now that I know he was being targeted by the drug kingpin, it changes everything. There’s nothing I could have done then, no amount of money or expensive jewelry that could have dissuaded our attacker. But now? Now, thanks to my ruthless, probably-ex-assassin husband and his gang of thugs, I have everything I need to find the shooter responsible for my greatest trauma and…
And then what? Am I going to kill the man with my own hands? Ordering the death of my old guards was horrible enough. Will I ask Javier to do it for me? Would he even agree to that?
And what about the man pulling the strings of whatever lackey pulled the trigger? El Sombrerón. It’s just a name. Just a name that makes a small chill run up my spine when I think of it. Just a name, just a man. The only man who seems to unsettle my unnervingly stoic husband, the man who marked him and destroyed him and carved him into the dark monster that turned up on my doorstep. The monster I married. The monster whose body I can’t keep my hands off of, whose arms I curl into for comfort every night.
It’s not enough to cut off El Sombrerón’s supply, although that does make me feel better, to know my family’s legacy is no longer entwined with his dirty business. He’ll simply find another avenue to get his drugs into the country, and keep breaking little boys like Javier, doing god-knows-what to girls like Miel, and ordering hits on the next unlucky innocent who tries to get in his way. No, sooner or later El Sombrerón will have to die, both for the sins of his past as well as the potential ones of his future. But I’m still just a spoiled heiress, albeit one who knows how to throw a punch and how to load a gun. If I want any part in taking down the big kahuna himself, I’ll have to keep carving every pampered layer off of myself, until all that’s left is the vicious animal at my core. I know there must be one deep in there, just as there seems to be one in everyone. Most can keep it hidden forever, not even aware of its existence, but some people are born with it closer to the surface, and some are forced to draw it out to survive. Javier poked and prodded at my darkness until I could ignore it no more, and now, now I’m bringing it out to play. This is the world I live in now, and I am done running from it. Now, I adapt.
Javier is out on business on New Year’s Eve, and I’m sure as hell not going out partying, so Miel decides it’s finally time to teach me to shoot. This lesson has been tricky, since we can’t get me to a gun range, and while my property is expansive, the night of Javier’s home invasion proved it’s not quite large enough to go around shooting guns without the neighbors freaking out. So tonight, while the rest of the city is popping bottles and shooting off fireworks, we’re in the back yard, facing down a row of canned vegetables stolen from the pantry.
“Don’t close your eye,” Miel says from behind me, her hands pushing my shoulders down slightly. “That’s some movie shit, and a great way to royally fuck your aim.”
I obey, loosening my shoulders. The Glock is heavier in my hands than I expected, and a little bit cold. Or maybe that’s just the night chill. Miel made me take my gloves off, and my coat. She said I would be uncomfortable and distracted in the field, so I might as well learn that way from the jump. I think maybe she just likes to see me suffer.
“Okay, just like we said,” Miel says, as fireworks begin bursting in the distance. “Go.”
I pull the trigger for the first time, my body instantly forgetting to relax. Bang. I flinch and gasp a little bit at the recoil, but Miel is already telling me to go again. It’s easier this time, and by the third time, my hands almost aren’t shaking.
“I didn’t hit anything,” I say, my voice falling a bit as I examine the damage, or lack thereof.
“Seems like you probably should’ve hit something, at least out of blind luck,” Miel says, not bothering to sugarcoat it. “Just try not to freak out so much this time. Go again.”
Bang, bang.
The colors exploding overhead do nothing to mask the sound of the gunshots, at least not at this distance. I’ve handled the gun before, Miel taught me how to load it and clean it even when we couldn’t do any actual shooting. I didn’t think it would be this hard to actually fire it, thought that it wouldn’t feel as menacing when it was my own hands pulling the trigger, like how people who get carsick don’t feel nauseous when they’re the ones at the wheel. But every time I pull the trigger, every time I see the burst of light, hear the tiny explosion, smell the gunpowder, I’m suddenly on the other side of the barrel all over again.
Bang, bang.
Blood.
“Selina?” Miel is asking, and I realize I’ve just been standing here with my arms extended, gun cocked, not pulling the trigger. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Shit. Her voice is soft, pitying. She thinks I’m too fucked up, too weak to handle it. And she’s not wrong. The edges of my vision tint red every time I hear the shot, and I can’t make my hands stop shaking. But I don’t get to be weak anymore, don’t get to coddle my trauma with therapy and wine and self-pity. That’s not a choice I got to make for myself, but I do get to choose what comes next.
Inhale, exhale.
I draw all my limbs into center, rooting down through the soles of my feet, squaring my shoulders. The memories battering at the doors of my mind are just tumbleweeds in the wind, cars on a busy highway. I only exist in the present. I focus on the light smell of gunpowder still lingering in the air, the sound of the fireworks in the distance, the sight of the row of cans directly ahead.
Inhale, exhale.
I pull the trigger.
Crack.
Pureed sweet potato bursts into the air, the thin mist of orange now extra-pureed. I hear Miel inhale excitedly beside me, but she says nothing, not yet. I pull the trigger again.
This one misses, but I don’t pay that much mind. I’m probably never going to be a crack shot, even if I put in years of training, and that’s fine. I just want to be able to defend myself. I just want a bite to go with my scarlet-lipped bark.
Tomatoes are the next to go, creating a spray of red that makes my heart jump sideways.
Blood.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I am outside my body, pulling all my strings taut, pulling the trigger one more time, two more times, ten more times.
Bang. Bang.
Bang,
bang,
bang.
“That was fucking great,” Miel is saying, carefully taking the gun from my hands, which start shaking again as soon as I look at them. “Let’s take a break now.”
“I can do it,” I insist, but don’t fight her. I rub my hands against my thighs, trying to get rid of the slight buzzing sensation that remains in them, the echo of the violence they just inflicted on innocent canned vegetables.
“I know,” she says, and there’s no pity or softness in her voice, nor any particular level of admiration. It’s just matter of fact. “That’s enough for now, though. You want a beer? I could go for a beer.”
“I want to go again,” I say, reaching for the gun, which she pulls back and holds just above me, like a parent holding a toy out of a toddler’s reach.
“I said that was enough,” Miel says, her voice firmer now. “I told you I’d teach you how to defend yourself. I’m not going to let you learn how to attack.”
“Didn’t Javier tell you?” I say, unable to mask my annoyance. My hands are still shaking. I want them wrapped around the stock again, strong and capable. “I’m done running from y’all. I’m done fighting you. I give in, I give up, y’all win. You don’t have to worry about that, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s not it,” Miel says. I grab for the gun, useless as the gesture may be, and she dodges me easily, then reaches out with her other hand and fists the front of my shirt, pulling me in close, glaring me into submission. �
�You don’t get to be like us, Selina.”
Don’t get to be like what? Dangerous? Violent? Broken in a way that makes me stronger instead of simply shattered? I lost any other option when they stole my life and pulled me into their world kicking and screaming. How dare she now force me to keep playing the role of the victim?
But Miel just lets me go with a shove, marching back into the mansion and leaving me alone with the mess we made.
I wake up with a new soreness between my legs. Well, more specifically, across my ass cheeks. My face burns at the memory of what happened last night. Lately I’ve been seeking “distraction” from my husband more and more often, and he’s only too eager to provide the roughness I crave. Last night was different, though. Last night he didn’t just spank me with his hand, but took a belt to my ass when I got a little too mouthy. And I liked it, no, loved it. That’s fucked up, right? Twisted, even for a girl like me. But I came harder than I ever have. I’ve been prone to addiction my whole life. Is this just my newest drug, my husband and the things he does to me? I don’t care. I’m already craving my next fix.
Javier is already gone, as usual, so I pull on some leggings and a sweater and head downstairs.
Caged: The Complete Trilogy Page 29
