I’d known when he’d taken me in his arms at the costume party despite my refusal that my power came from his weakness for me.
I had failed tonight, yet it didn’t feel like it. I’d tested the waters, and they were warm and inviting. Having something he wanted—to fuck me—and something he could never have—my devotion—emboldened me.
Just as much as my building desire for him terrified me.
18
Natalia
I woke in the dead of night to a warm, soothing touch. I didn’t remember falling asleep, only lying on my stomach, replaying Cristiano’s filthy, arousing words over and over again. I’d had to resist from touching myself so he wouldn’t walk in and catch me in the act. So he wouldn’t see firsthand the effect he was having on me.
Cristiano cleaned my tattoo with a damp towel so gently that I closed my eyes and let him finish without protest.
Afterward, he cleared my hair from my neck and smoothed his hand over my back as my mother had done when I was small. “Marked but still flawless,” he murmured.
I drifted. Maybe. I wasn’t sure. He’d stopped touching me but still weighed down my side of the bed. I opened my eyes, blinking over my shoulder until he came into view, sitting with his head in his hands.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
He shook his head. I didn’t actually expect him to confide in me, but he said, “A problem I can’t solve. Every time I get close, I seem to end up further from the answer.”
I sat up, pulling the sheet with me and tucking it under my arms. The raw emotion in his face made my heart do something funny. Something unwelcome. I didn’t need to have spent much time with Cristiano to understand he wouldn’t show this side of himself to many people. For any cartel leader, vulnerability could mean death. But for Cristiano, control was everything, and in this moment, I sensed he didn’t have it.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be useful.”
Of course.
There was only one way he saw me as useful, and that was on my back. I was an idiot for offering my condolences. I started to lie back down to sleep when he spoke again. “Advise me.”
“What?”
“Be useful and advise me on this issue,” he said.
“You have men for that.”
“They tell me to drop it.” He shrugged one shoulder. “That I’ve been pursuing it too long. They don’t see the pay off, only that I’m emotionally attached.”
Having had the most emotional attachment possible severed—that between a mother and daughter—I understood. “There’s no room for emotional attachments when you choose this life.”
He stared at me as if he’d seen a ghost and his voice dropped so low I had to lean in to hear him. “Do you really believe that?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “They’re dangerous. But I wouldn’t want to know anyone who didn’t have them—those attachments remind us that we’re human.”
Elbows on his knees, he bent his head and scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Despite what you may think, I am human. I do feel the loss of things I once had and crave those I never can, no matter how badly I want them.”
“What things?” I asked.
“My needs aren’t different just because I’m . . .” He gestured at himself. “This.”
My heart tugged. Of course I’d known I didn’t have to show Cristiano the monster inside himself. He knew his demons, as we all did.
“Never get attached,” he said. “Never.”
I sensed he was speaking from experience—intimate experience. He’d learned that lesson the hard way. “Who taught you that?”
He hesitated, then looked over at me, both drinking me in and fighting himself. “My father. But I am attached. So, tell me, Natalia. What would you do in my position? I have a gut instinct I can’t ignore. A theory I can’t prove. A need that only this missing piece can meet.”
He’d shown me carnal need earlier, but this one ran deeper. Why come to me for help? He was the one man in my life who shouldn’t care about anything more than my body. And what he was asking here was no small thing—my opinion, my advice. On cartel business.
For that grave reason alone, I attempted to put aside my situation and walk in his shoes. He had more than a cartel in his care. He had an entire town, and most people in it had suffered in some form or another. They depended on him. He’d been described to me as a leader, provider, savior—even a guiding light. I hadn’t believed any of it until I’d seen it with my own eyes. Most men would either buckle under the pressure or let that kind of authority go to their heads. Maybe he had done both, but he was still standing.
Or sitting, rather—at my bedside, so he could talk this through with me.