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No one had ever kissed me like that before, not even Gehovany.
Especially not Gehovany.
We’d lived together for nearly a year, and he’d never doted on me around our home. It’d been expected that I’d cook and clean for him, no matter if I was exhausted from working a long shift at the florist.
Of course, when we’d been in public, he’d lavished attention on me, often to an excessive degree that made me uncomfortable. He’d wanted people to see him treating me like a princess, when he treated me like trash at home. I didn’t understand his true nature until I moved in with him. Even then, I’d been convinced that the loving Gehovany was the real man, and the cruel, drunk monster was the lie.
I’d endured his abuse, hiding my shame from my family and friends. Until he joined the gang. I’d run, and my loving family had taken me back into the shelter of our home without hesitation, welcoming me with open arms.
They’d paid for their love in blood.
My eyes stung, and I hastily wiped away the wetness on my cheeks when I heard Raúl close the door. I busied myself with gathering spices from his cupboard, and by the time he joined me in the kitchen, I’d mostly managed to collect myself.
He breezed by me, pausing to squeeze my hip on his way to the sink. The brief flex of his thick fingers into my flesh awoke an answering throb between my legs, and I barely stifled a gasp.
I peeked over at him out of the corner of my eye, my hands preparing the chicken by muscle memory. He washed the vegetables, letting out one of his deep, satisfied hums as he worked. He seemed utterly at ease, as though we’d done this hundreds of times.
He grabbed a wooden cutting board and waved it in my direction. “You cook, I’ll chop.” When I didn’t answer right away, one corner of his lips quirked up in a lopsided smile. “I am capable of chopping vegetables. I promise I won’t fuck it up. Not too badly. They won’t look pretty, but they’ll taste the same.”
He shrugged and returned to his task, content that the matter was settled.
The surreal sense that I’d stepped into an alternate reality permeated my mind in a pleasant buzz, and I allowed myself to fall into the strange casualness that seemed to come to him so naturally. It felt nice, even if it was nearly incomprehensible that my surly captor was acting as my assistant and freely touching me at every opportunity. Each time my body was within his easy reach, his hand would find my lower back, or his fingers would brush my shoulder. There was nothing sexual or predatory about his attention, and he didn’t seem to even notice that he was doing it.
After a while, his caresses began to feel natural to me, too. I paused to turn my cheek into his hand when he tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear, and I briefly leaned into him when his palm skimmed over the curve of my hip.
When the rich aroma of spiced chicken began to fill the kitchen, his hands bracketed my waist. He held me in place, pressing his chest to my back as he dropped a kiss on my neck. His stubble rasped over my cheek, and his low hum vibrated through my core.
“Smells amazing.”
He pressed one more kiss against my neck and stepped away, leaving me frozen in place while fire danced through my veins.
The light clack of porcelain plates and soft clicks of silverware told me that he was putting out place settings on the kitchen island, simply going through the motions of everyday life.
I sighed and settled into the weirdness with a smile on my face. Why not?
“Ready?” Raúl’s single-word question broadened my smile to a silly grin. I’d become fascinated with our strangely easy conversations and unexpected, light banter, but it seemed that my surly captor naturally tended to express himself in few words. Oftentimes, he didn’t bother with words at all.
During my time as his hostage, I’d thought his nonverbal, caveman communication had been his way of keeping distance between us. Now, I was starting to understand that Raúl was satisfied by more basic means of expressing himself—his casual, tender touches spoke volumes, and I doubted he was the type to offer lengthy professions of his feelings.
With Gehovany, I’d learned that romantic speeches were simply alluring lies; lies that he’d used to trap me. Raúl’s primal demonstrations of affection touched me far more deeply than any poetry could’ve managed.
The sharp differences between the two men were becoming more apparent than ever, and my worries over Raúl’s criminal lifestyle faded into the back of my mind. Surely, he wasn’t a bad man. He couldn’t be evil.
