Unshackle (Deliver 7)

“Did you…?” Her face flamed. She really didn’t want to ask this, but she needed to know. “Did you demonstrate on someone?”

“No.” His voice lacked insistence or any emotion. He didn’t seem to care if she believed him or not.

“Marco doesn’t do things without causing discomfort or pain to someone else. He was probably fucking with you.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“And you associate with him. What does that say about you?” She yanked her legs away from his touch.

“Why are we discussing him when there’s something else weighing heavier on your mind? You’re not one to hold back, Gina. Let’s hear it.”

“All right. Why am I here when you were all over her tonight?”

“If I wanted Vera in my bed, she would be here right now.” He studied her carefully, his arms draped over the back of the tub, his presence overbearing, unnervingly still. After a long, watchful moment, he released a breath. “I need something from her.”

“The location of the compound.” Her pulse increased. “You think you can fuck it out of her.”

“I know I can.”

Irrational pain swelled behind her breastbone and seeped into her voice. “If she gives it to you, what happens next?”

“You’re jealous.” He lunged forward and touched a finger to her mouth, silencing her objection. “I’m giving you the truth, even when it hurts.” His hand trailed along her jaw, flaming her skin. “I’m jealous, too. I feel this constant, unreasonable impulse to piss a circle around you, to throat punch anyone who looks at you, including Tomas…” He laughed and dragged a hand down his face. “That’s definitely a first for me.”

She liked the sound of that. Too much. Sucking in a tight breath, she turned her head away. “Answer my question.”

“I’ve answered enough for now. Trust goes both ways. I give a little. You give a little. Eventually, we meet in the middle.” He glanced at the closed door and leaned in, bracing his elbows on bent knees. “I know that confiding in me means risking not just your life but your mother’s life, as well. I’ll help you the best that I can, but you have to help me.”

He extended a hand to her, and she stared at it with a lump in her throat.

From what she’d surmised, his role as a slave buyer was a cover-up for something far more insidious. She knew crucial things about the organization and the compound that could help him, whether he was gathering intel or planning a hit.

But if he killed Marco and started a war, what would happen to her and the only person she cared about?

What would happen if he left and she never saw him again?

She could die either way. But if she helped him… If she could bring herself to trust him, he might be her only way out.

Reaching out a hand, she clasped his strong fingers. Their gazes held as he pulled her toward his chest. She slid over his hard physique, setting a palm on his flat hipbone, corrugated abs, sculpted pecs, until she found a gripping spot in the warm juncture between his neck and shoulder.

With her lower body floating in the cradle of his thighs, she rested on his chest and pressed her cheek against the whiskered hardness of his.

“Three years ago,” she whispered, “I made the worst decision of my life.”CHAPTER 18She reached back through time, aching so brutally with loss she couldn’t breathe. With her mouth against John’s cheek and his heat beneath her body, she welcomed his stillness, the intensity in which he waited and listened. His attentiveness bolstered her.

“There are things I don’t recall, like how I arrived here or the first few days I spent in the basement.” Her whisper went as taut as the coils knotting in her belly. “But I remember the day Miguel La Rocha walked into the taqueria where I worked and offered me the world.”

He tensed beneath her. “Did you know who he was?”

“No idea. He gave me a fake name and a warm, irresistible smile. He’s the most charming of the brothers. The best looking. He wears expensive suits and has this captivating, alluring demeanor about him, you know? Yeah, of course, you know. You’re very much like him in that way.”

“I’ve never met him, but I assure you, I’m nothing like him.”

“Well, he knows how to charm the pants off a woman.” With a sigh, she set her chin on his shoulder and closed her eyes. “By the time he asked me to dinner, I was ready to run off with him.”

His jaw hardened against her face. When she sensed the judgment forming on his lips, she cut him off.

“Imagine living in a country ridden with cartel wars and poverty. Jobs are hard to come by. There’s never enough food or medicine. Education is a pipe dream. As a woman, my value is insignificant at best. I was beaten by boyfriends. Abused by employers. My father fled before I was even born. I only had to look at my mother and her mother before her to understand that the life I was born into was the only one I would get. No matter how hard I worked. No matter how many beatings I endured. My existence would continue another forty years with no improvement. And that would be it.”