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Fighting him would get me nowhere. He wasn’t rational at the moment. He was in pain. I could see it in the wildness of his black eyes, the deep furrow of his twisted scar. With trembling fingers, I reached up and tentatively touched his cheek. He flinched away. I tried again, pressing my palm against his scar.
“Talk to me,” I begged. “Tell me what happened.”
“What happened is my brother takes everything from me,” he said on a harsh whisper. “Abuela, Valentina. Now he wants to take you.” He pulled me impossibly closer. “He can’t have you. You’re mine.”
“Yes,” I agreed, trying to soothe him. “I’m yours. I’m not going anywhere. You won’t let Cristian take me away. I… I trust you.” Despite his bruising grip on me, I knew the truth deep in my soul. Andrés would do anything to protect me from his sadistic brother.
I traced the line of his scar with my fingertips. I’d never touched it before. I’d never touched his face with tenderness. We came together in carnal need, but I never initiated intimate contact.
He shuddered, but he leaned into my hand. His hold on my arms eased, and he embraced me, cradling my body carefully against his.
“Sirenita,” he said, his voice strained. “Lo siento.” He turned his face into my palm, kissing my hand.
“What happened to them?” I asked softly. “The people your brother took from you. Your grandmother and sister.” I didn’t really want to hear the horror of it, but Andrés needed to purge some of the pain from his soul. It was eating at him, driving him to the edge of sanity. I’d known he’d lost them, but it wasn’t until just now that he’d revealed Cristian’s role in that loss.
He grimaced, but he kissed my palm again, and his arms didn’t tense around me with renewed aggression. He was so big, and I felt tiny in his embrace. But he held me carefully, as though I was somethin
g precious and fragile.
“Valentina…” His voice hitched on her name. “My sister. Half-sister. Cristian and I share the same father as Valentina. Our father kept her mother as his mistress after our mother passed away, but she died giving birth to Valentina. Father let Valentina’s grandmother live on our estate, so she could care for her. Valentina was my best friend. Her grandmother became mí abuela. I spent more time in their home than my own. Cristian was always jealous of our friendship, our little family. As the oldest, father was harder on him. He had more responsibilities, a legacy resting on his shoulders.”
He paused, his eyes sliding out of focus as he fell into memory.
“Your father dealt in cocaine,” I prompted, knowing their family’s criminal history. “He wanted Cristian to take over the business?”
“Yes. But then father died when I was sixteen. Heart attack.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
His jaw firmed. “He was not a nice man. But I had a home with Abuela and Valentina. Until Cristian took over father’s organization. He resented us, our family. Maybe if I hadn’t left him alone with father, things would have been different. But he always had a sadistic streak, even as a child. I wanted nothing to do with him. He scared me, so I stayed away.”
“What did he do?” I asked, softly prodding. This was the most personal information Andrés had ever shared with me, and I was beginning to understand his warped relationship with his brother. Andrés was bigger than Cristian. Scarier. Smarter. It didn’t make sense that he worked for him when he so obviously hated him. Unless the emotional scars went deeper than the ones carved into his flesh.
“He sold Valentina,” he whispered, his gaze dark with pain. “She was fourteen. He traded her for money, for bribes to secure his place as father’s successor. Well, he said it was for money. He did it to punish me. To punish both of us for our happy childhood. One that had been denied him.”
My stomach churned, and my heart ached for the innocent, teenage Andrés who’d lost his sister and best friend in such a horrible way.
“Abuela died nine months later,” he said bitterly. “Breast cancer. She didn’t even try to fight to survive it. Not after losing Valentina. She left me alone. With Cristian.”
I suddenly understood Andrés’ fierce desire to keep me. He didn’t want to lock me in a cage like an animal, to keep me as a pet. He just wanted someone who was his, someone to care for and protect. Like he hadn’t been able to protect his grandmother and sister.
Lauren had been right when she’d said Andrés needed me to be good for him. He needed my submission, my willing surrender to his control. He needed to see me restrained, because it reassured him that I couldn’t leave him. He needed to see me cry, because he couldn’t shed the tears himself. He wanted to care for me, but more than that, he craved my devotion in return.
Cupping his scarred cheek in my hand, I leaned up into him and lightly pressed my lips to his. For a moment, his mouth was tense beneath mine; a hard, anguished slash. Then he groaned, a long sound of pained release, and he opened for me. His fingers threaded in my hair, pulling me closer as his tongue swept into my mouth, devouring me like a starving man.
Hunger rose within me, more than physical need. I craved his closeness, skin-to-skin. He’d just dropped so many barriers between us, letting me see into his tormented soul. I wanted to offer him something in return, something I’d never offered to anyone.
But I didn’t want to beg. I didn’t want to prostrate myself before him and cheapen our connection to nothing more than his victory and my subjugation. I wanted him. All of him, good and bad, ugly and beautiful. And I’d give myself to him, willingly, eagerly.
My hands went to his shirt, tearing at the buttons in my haste to feel his hard chest, the thick ridges of the scars that were physical marks of his inner pain. I wanted to touch them, to explore every lash that had been inflicted on his soul and heal them.
He growled against my mouth, kissing me harder as he shrugged out of his shirt and helped me remove the rest of his clothes. When we were both naked, he gripped my waist and guided me down onto the bed, his weight settling over me. His hard cock pressed against my inner thigh, straining toward my virgin channel.
“I want you, Andrés,” I gasped when he broke our kiss so we could both draw in much-needed air. “Don’t make me beg. I want to give this to you. I want to give myself to you.”
He pressed his forehead to mine, so we exchanged each ragged breath. “You don’t have to beg, sirenita. You just have to say yes. I need to know that you want me. Let me in.”
The tears that spilled from my eyes welled up from a place deep inside as emotion flooded free. “Yes,” I whispered. “Please, Andrés.”
