Cary (Henchmen MC Next Generation 5)

“I was getting lunch,” I recalled.

I’d only been in the area for six weeks. I had barely managed to learn enough Spanish to actually order my favorite types of food, but not enough to help me understand what the lady behind the counter was trying to tell me about what I’d ordered.

All I could do was apologize and get more and more anxious about being that person, the one who expected everyone to accommodate her, to speak her language even when I was in their country.

“She is telling you they are out of salsa,” a deep, rich, masculine voice had said at my side, making me turn to find a handsome tanned-skinned, black-haired man in a suit, despite the heat, looking at me. “And asking if the Pica de Gallo is okay.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a problem. But I just… I don’t know the difference,” I’d told him.

“How is it a problem to not know what you like?” he’d said, shrugging, making me immediately feel like less of the pain-in-the-ass foreigner. “They’re basically the same ingredients,” he’d gone on. “But salsa is more liquid. The Pico de Gallo is just finally chopped instead of pureed.”

“Oh, okay. Then yes. Sí,” I said, giving the lady at the counter a smile. “Gracias,” I added, first to her, then to the man who’d helped me from embarrassing myself further. Or, in lieu of that, having an empty stomach because I couldn’t figure it out.

What can I say? I was a recently divorced woman coming out of what turned out to be a loveless marriage with a man who only saw my worth as a home keeper and a womb to carry his children, not as a woman, least of all a person.

So when this stranger, this handsome and seemingly kind stranger let his gaze do a slow once-over of a body that had mostly been a source of shame and disappointment, I couldn’t seem to stop the way not only my body—but my mind—warmed.

I’d never really experienced before the way my skin flushed under his inspection, like each inch of my body got a slight sunburn from the intensity of the heat in his eyes.

In quiet, bitter moments in the years that followed, I tried to convince myself that the flush, that the warmth, was simply from the chronic mild sunburn I’d been sporting since I arrived in Mexico.

But I knew the truth.

That, in the beginning, I’d been really taken by the man who would turn my life into a living hell.

I’d been naive.

I’d been wounded in ways I hadn’t fully acknowledged—let alone worked through—yet.

And there was Raúl.

With his calm, confident demeanor, with his deep voice and good-looking face.

And, most of all, his interest.

He’d been interested in me.

Not as a womb or a homemaker.

As a person.

As a woman.

I knew from my raising that I wasn’t supposed to like that, to be happy about it. The body was a vessel for the soul; it was sinful to take too much pride in it, to want attention for it.

In my little world I’d been raised in, the only pride you were supposed to feel about your body was the kind of pride that came with keeping yourself clean, healthy, and modest.

Sexuality was only something to feel within the confines of your marriage. And even then, not too much. We women were taught to be “open” to “receiving” our husbands on demand, no matter how we felt. But we were also told that sexual intimacy, for us, was something to be endured, never enjoyed.

My marriage proved that to be true.

Within a week after our vows had been spoken, anything close to attraction or sexual interest I’d once felt as a healthy young woman disappeared.

Sex, to me, had been uncomfortable and embarrassing at best. At worst—and there were many times that it was at worst—it was painful and degrading.

There had been more than a few times when my husband had rolled off of me mid-deed with a loud grumble as he declared that I “didn’t feel good.” I was embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what he meant until I did some discreet research when he hadn’t been home and realized that when a woman was ready to receive a man, her sex got wet and slick, making things feel better for him.

The problem was, I couldn’t help that I didn’t have those feelings for him, that my body didn’t just automatically do what he wanted it to do.

Those same articles said that artificial lubrication could be used. I knew better than to even suggest that. First, because I wasn’t even sure I could form those words. Second, because a part of me was terrified that he would think I was saying he was doing something wrong, and I didn’t want to know what the consequences would be from that.