“Back to that again?”
“You prefer Fury?”
“I prefer my name. Scarlett. Just Scarlett.”
I smile, wrap my hand around the back of her neck and pull her to me. Leaning closer, I bring my face to hers and inhale her scent. My soap. My shampoo. I like it on her.
“I can still taste you on my tongue, Scarlett,” I say, my voice low and deep in the quiet night.
Her eyes go wide, and I can’t help but laugh. She shoves at my chest, but I don’t let her go.
“You’re my wife. Period.”
She stops pushing. “You said you’d let me go when this is done. You’d let Noah go.”
I did. I remember. “It’s not over yet, is it? To bring it up is premature.”
“Does that mean you still will?”
I study her. Cerberus barks once, coming toward us with a stick he’s found washed up on the shore. Grateful for the interruption, I bend to take it from him and toss it for him to retrieve before turning back to Scarlett.
She looks pretty in the moonlight. I like that she doesn’t wear makeup. She’s just herself.
When she turns to find me watching her, she folds her arms across her chest and opens her mouth. I speak before she can.
“I haven’t asked you my question yet,” I say.
She shakes her head. “I’m all ears.”
“Why didn’t he touch you? He had the opportunity. I saw his face on the boat, not that I’d need proof to know, he hates you as much as he hates me. Maybe more. It makes no sense that he didn’t touch you.”
Her forehead wrinkles and she rubs it, then meets my eyes. “He wasn’t allowed to.”
“Ah.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“I spoke with Felix Pérez today.”
“Felix?”
I nod.
“Do you really think he’s taken over the cartel? I’m telling you, Cristiano, he wasn’t capable.”
She’s wrong on that.
“What did he say?” she asks.
“He claimed not to know about Jacob’s death. Although he didn’t seem all that bothered by it. And he swore he had nothing to do with your kidnapping.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
“No. And I still don’t have one piece of the puzzle.”
“Who gave up the location of the house.”
I nod.
Scarlett’s forehead wrinkles. “From what I remember, Felix was never that clever.”
I give her a one-sided grin, wrap my arm around her waist and turn her. “The ones you don’t think twice about, who fly under the radar, they’re usually the most clever, Little Kitten.”
The wind picks up as if eavesdropping on our conversation. Scarlett shudders.
I shift my arm to wrap it around her shoulders and whistle for Cerberus.
“Let’s go to bed, Scarlett. I want to feel you beneath me again.”
12
Scarlett
I’m trying to wrap my brain around Felix Pérez taking over the cartel. Maybe I don’t remember him correctly. I was pretty young, I guess. I just can’t imagine it. He was more like an annoying bug that keeps buzzing by your ear. I remember neither of my parents liked him. But I’m not sure they liked Jacob either. I know my mom didn’t. She didn’t trust him, and my dad didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t blood. Even though Jacob took on the De La Cruz name, he was and always would be an outsider. And Felix marrying Jacob’s daughter, his niece, meant nothing to my father.
I think about that. About only trusting your own blood. That got my father killed. Blood is overrated.
“Cristiano,” I start once we’re upstairs. “Are you sure about Felix?”
He closes the door behind us. “I’m sure of one thing at the moment,” he says, unbuttoning my coat and slipping it off. He does the same with his and tosses them over the back of a chair. He spins me so my back is to him and unzips my dress. “I don’t want to talk about Felix or the cartel or any of it just for a little while.” He turns me to face him and slips the dress off my shoulders. It’s loose enough that it slides right off. I’m naked underneath. “Right now, all I want to do is look at my beautiful wife.”
His gaze slides over me, fist tightening as he takes in the striped flesh before drawing in a slow, deep inhale of breath. He closes his eyes momentarily, but when he opens them and looks at me, that anger is checked. Not gone, just cataloged for later.
“Right now, all I want to do is show my wife exactly how much she is mine.”
I don’t resist when he kisses me then. I don’t want to. My body remembers earlier. It remembers how he felt on top of me. Inside me.
Arms wrapped around me Cristiano walks me back to the bed. He sits me on the edge and pushes me backward so I’m lying flat, legs dangling off.
“Open them.” He gestures to my legs.
I swallow, take in the darkness of his eyes.