“I hate your asshole games.”
Exactly how Camila would’ve responded, and the lack of warmth in the voice was perfectly her. But he couldn’t trust it. “Tell me.”
She growled in frustration. “You slipped in a stream and punctured your arm on a rock.”
That was the story they told their families, an innocent lie to protect a mangy dog. Only Camila knew the truth.
His hope crashed, burning in his stomach. “Wrong answer.”
“Seriously? We swore to take that secret to our graves.” She cleared her throat. “Rambo wasn’t a bad dog. He just didn’t appreciate you taking his bone. You deserved that bite.”
Camila. All the air evacuated his lungs as his mind spun and wrenched apart his painfully constructed acceptance of her death. Convincing himself she was gone had been a grueling effort in self-destruction, reinforced with irreparable distractions. The business, drugs, women, blood… So much fucking blood.
He couldn’t feel his legs beneath the grip of shock, his mouth dry and acidic. “You’re not dead.”
“Nope,” she said, casually. Too detached, even for her. “Did you look for me?”
Every damn day. “Are you safe?” He snagged a pair of jeans, his hands sweating as he shoved them on. “Where are you?”
“I’m safe, but listen, I just escaped a fucked up situation and need to lie low for a while.”
Escaped? Impossible. No one escaped a highly-organized human trafficking ring. Especially not a seventeen-year-old girl. Eighteen now. She’d been in captivity for a fucking year. Did they beat her? Rape her? Take her virginity?
His insides boiled with murderous wrath and overwhelming guilt. They were supposed to be each other’s firsts. She was only sixteen when the cartel came for him, and though he hadn’t seen her since that night, he’d waited for her, holding on to an impossible dream through their secret phone calls. Until she vanished.
“You haven’t asked what happened to me.” Her tone hardened. “You already know, don’t you? How?”
He couldn’t tell her, not until he was certain she couldn’t run from his answer. “I need to know where you are and how you escaped.”
“Who do you work for?” she asked.
“You know I can’t tell you, mi vida.”
“Don’t call me that.” A muffled rustle of fabric followed, conjuring an image of her pressing the phone to her chest. “Dammit, I want to trust you, but you have to give me something. Anything. What happened to the boy whose thoughts completed mine? What did they do to you?”
That boy was dead. How quickly they’d returned to their exhaustingly endless argument, one he refused to feed. “Tell me where you are.”
“Will you help me?”
“Always.”
As she rattled off directions to an isolated reservoir in Texas, he scrambled for a pen and scribbled down the details. Two hours outside of Austin.
It would take him a day to travel there from the bowels of goddamned Colombia. “I’m on my way. Just…stay put.”
“Oh, I’m not there.” Her breaths quickened, as if she were walking at a swift pace. “That’s where I left a body. I need you to get rid of it since, you know, you’re still in the business.”
His skin chilled with the ramp of his pulse. “What body?”
“The sick fuck who bought me.”
The phone’s power cord snapped from the outlet as he charged toward the shirt on the floor. “You killed him?”
“Doesn’t matter. But I’m using his phone and need to toss it like yesterday.”
Fuck! She’s going to get herself killed. And now his number would show up on phone records for rival gangs, FBI, fucking anyone to track.
He paced the room as a year’s worth of ruthless crimes caught up with him. “Who else have you called?”
A pause, filled by the rush of her breaths. “Just you.”
Relief loosened his gait. “I have to kill this number.” He gave her the number to his main phone and made her repeat it several times. “Only use burner phones, and mi vida? Don’t try to contact your parents.”
“Why the hell not?”
They were dead. Buried beneath the scorched landscape of the citrus grove.
He evened his voice. “You’ll endanger them.”
She made a despairing noise, a small thing, but it was a hint of emotion nonetheless. She was closed-off by nature, reserving her softness for the few who earned her loyalty. He’d been on the receiving end of that once, had forgotten what it felt like.
The reminder was a molten shock to his system, intensified by a combustible storm as he imagined what she’d endured in the clutches of her kidnappers.
Who had touched her? How deep were her wounds?
His hand clenched and loosened on the phone. “How many motherfuckers do I need to kill?”
“I’ll handle it. Just deal with the body. I need to go—”
“Give me a way to contact you.” So he could locate her. And reclaim her.
“I’ll be in touch.”
“Don’t you fucking hang—”
She disconnected the call.
Ten years later.
“LOWER. THAT’S IT. A LITTLE LOWER…” Camila rocked her hips beneath the scratch of whiskers. “Right there, churro.”
Churro, my ass. This underweight stick of a man reeked of sweat, stale smoke, and neglect. Or maybe it was the mattress.
Not that she expected a pleasant experience. The man between her legs worked for someone vile. Someone who didn’t deserve to live. Shame she didn’t know who that someone was. But she was here to find out.
Bony hands curled around her waist, his wet mouth slithering across the waxed mound of her pussy. Here we go.
A purr vibrated her throat, her pleasure as fake as her role tonight. But damn if she didn’t sound convincing. With her legs spread, back pressed against the mattress, and a hundred-and-fifteen pounds of athletic nudity on display, she could rob a man of all common sense.
As soon as she could seduce him into position, she’d take more than just his wits.
He shifted lower, curled his tongue inside her, and Whoa! What the— A charged warmth of bliss shot across her skin and bowed her spine.
“Mierda,
yes!” She turned her neck, hiding the shock on her face.
Holy hell, he knew how to give head. She melted against the suction of his lips, clinging to the tingling rush of sensations. As far as surprises went, she could roll with this one. She might even come.
With wicked flicks of his tongue, he peered up at her, his pupils bloated in the dim light of a floor lamp. “Condom?”
He wouldn’t get that far, but he’d picked her up at the local bar under the assumption she wanted to fuck.
“Got it covered, baby.” She grabbed his brown hair and held his mouth against her pussy. “I’m almost there.”
An orgasm wasn’t in the plan, but fuck it. He did things with his tongue no warm-blooded woman could refuse. Tenacious and sinful, he licked in and out and all around, reviving the ever-present ache inside her.
His unappealing looks didn’t matter. Whenever she climaxed, it was always the same face behind her eyelids. Jet black hair. Dimpled smile. Sun-soaked complexion. Strong jaw. Strong everywhere. With eyes like ripe limes, golden in the center and ringed in deep green.
At least, that was her silly, childhood memory of Matias. The past twelve years—doing whatever unspeakable shit he did—likely marred his beauty. Time had certainly hardened his voice. Wrapped it in ice.
But she could hear his timbre in her head, sharp and incisive. Come for me, mi vida. Come now.
Heat bloomed low in her pelvis, gathering into a rhythmic pulse and tumbling her over the edge. She detonated on the stroking tongue, grinding and panting with abandon. Damn.
He raised his head and snaked a hand over her abdomen, his gaze hungry and full of intent. He could look at her however he wanted as long as his fingers continued their prowl upward.
Inching along her ribs, he teased each bone in his path toward her tit. His position was just…about…
Perfect.
She captured his arm, shifted it diagonally across her chest, and held it tightly against her. Tight enough to widen his eyes.
Strengthening her grip, she lifted her knees above his head and pinned his neck between his own shoulder and her inner thigh.
“The fuck?” He writhed and twisted, trying to jerk free.