Ruthless Savior

Or was he my host? He approached me and set a plate of eggs on the counter, arranging my homecooked breakfast beside the glass of orange juice he’d provided for me before he’d started cooking.

This was all too bizarre. Ever since I’d known him, I’d been his hostage, forced to live in a drug lord’s fortress and work as Carmen Ronaldo’s maid. I’d betrayed him and put his life at risk.

How long ago had that been? Two days? Three?

And now, I’d tumbled into what was surely some alternate reality where surly Raúl let me sleep in his sinfully comfortable bed, bought me beautiful clothes, and prepared my meals with his own hands. All while asking for nothing in return.

A dozen little needles pricked at the back of my mind, demanding my full attention.

He must want something in return. Raúl didn’t strike me as a charitable man. He expected me to reciprocate in some way he hadn’t decreed yet.

I eyed him warily as he slid into the seat next to me and proceeded to dump hot sauce on his eggs without comment. Once his plate was more sauce than egg, he offered the bottle to me with a low grunt.

This felt more like my familiar captor, despite the unbelievable setting. This was how we’d communicated for weeks: him offering me small kindnesses accompanied by rumbling, caveman sounds.

I took the bottle from his hand with a murmured “thanks.” He responded with another grunt, but it was closer to a purr this time. His face was only visible in profile, but I noticed his lips quirk up at the corners.

He gulped his coffee, closed his eyes, and let out a deep, satisfied hum.

I quickly turned my attention to my own plate, my cheeks flaming. This suddenly felt indecent, like I was a voyeur watching a beast in his natural habitat.

When the first bite of scrambled eggs hit my tongue, I understood Raúl’s liberal application of hot sauce. The consistency was unpleasantly rubbery, and he didn’t seem to have added any seasoning whatsoever. Didn’t the man not even understand the use of salt and pepper?

He glanced over at my plate, and I realized that most of his breakfast had already disappeared in a few shoveling mouthfuls. I quickly lifted another forkful of the chewy mess, eating with as much gusto as I could manage. Really, I’d made do with far worse—and sometimes nothing at all—over the last several months. I mustered up a small, appreciative noise, despite the fact that my tongue was burning from the hot sauce.

Is this stuff nuclear?

I waited until his lips curved into a smile again before gulping down my orange juice.

“More?” he asked, pointing at my empty glass.

I hesitated, not wanting to offend him. But my mouth was on fire, and my eyes would start watering if I didn’t do something to mitigate the pain. “Do you have any milk?”

His heavy brows drew together, and he grabbed my plate, carrying off the last few morsels of sauce-covered egg. Before I could worry that I’d been too obvious in my discomfort, he returned to me with a tall glass of milk.

“Sorry,” he offered when he pressed it into my hand. “I forgot how hot that stuff is.”

I tried and failed to stifle a moan as the cool milk soothed my scorched mouth. In an attempt to gloss over my unspoken distaste for the meal he’d prepared for me, I gestured at the bottle of thick green sauce. “Where did you find this stuff? It’s really, um, intense.” There wasn’t a label, so I’d had no warning that it contained what could only be described as masochist chilies.

His chest expanded, and he seemed to grow a few inches taller. “I make it myself. I have a hard time finding any that’s hot enough for me.”

It took concerted effort to stop myself from rolling my eyes, but I couldn’t entirely contain the small smirk that played around my lips.

I shouldn’t have been remotely surprised that a beast of a man like Raúl would express his machismo even in his culinary preferences. But it was such a silly trait. I wouldn’t have imagined my taciturn captor capable of expressing pride in his ability to endure pain with his food choices. There was something pure and almost childish about it. I could imagine him sitting around a table with his buddies, proving his superior manliness by guzzling gradually hotter and hotter options until he arose victorious; the most manly of all men with the highest pain tolerance for food that he ostensibly enjoyed.

“Is something funny?” he drawled, but he seemed to be suppressing a smile, too.

“I just didn’t picture you as the type to make your own hot sauce.”

He chuckled and shook his head ruefully. “I might be a shitty cook, but I’m not entirely useless.”