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I began to shake, trying to connect his words to his actions. With a zip, the moment disappeared into thin air. I glanced over my shoulder to find him doing up his pants. “Why are you stopping?”
“I told you once,” he said, buckling his belt, “I have no need to force myself on a woman.”
My body flushed as I became acutely aware I was still baring my ass to him while he was fully dressed. “But I told you I want this.”
“You lied.”
“I won’t fight you,” I said.
“You should. You should fight anyone who touches you against your will. Diego tricked you into sleeping with him—I won’t do the same, no matter how hard you pretend to beg for it.”
I scrambled into a sitting position, pulling my knees to my chest. “But what about our deal?”
“Indeed,” he said, his eyes wandering over me as he walked backward. “What about it?”
He turned and left the room. The silence following such chaos was deafening, and I covered my mouth as a sob ripped through me. I’d stooped to a level I never thought possible, and Cristiano had still managed to make me feel even lower. He was right. In the dark, my desires were shameful. I’d wanted him to follow through with his threats.
But he was also wrong. My begging for the beast had been real. What kind of animal did that make me?
And in the end, I’d failed. Cristiano claimed he wouldn’t force himself on a woman, but he would. It was only a matter of time before he did, and until then, we were all still in danger. If he thought walking me down an aisle, filling my stomach with world-renowned cooking, and lying with me on the finest sheets made him anything different than a captor, then there was no question he was a master at justifying any sin to himself.
And I might be in the best position to show him who—and what—he truly was.
6
Natalia
Bright light flooded my dreams. I’d been on an airplane soaring through cotton-ball clouds, headed somewhere that wasn’t here.
In Cristiano’s bed.
I cracked my lids as Jaz yanked apart the white curtains and opened the door to the balcony. Sunshine, warmth, and ocean air filled the room as waves crashed through the silence.
Cristiano hadn’t come back to bed until well after I’d cried myself to sleep. I barely remembered the mattress dipping with his large body. With as riled up as he’d been, was there any question what had kept him out so late?
I sensed the bed was empty now, but I still held my breath as I checked over my shoulder. He was gone.
I sat up against the headboard, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Buenos días, Jazmín.”
“Oh, perdón,” she replied without inflection. “I forgot you were here.”
“What time is it?”
“Late. Don Cristiano is waiting for you downstairs.” She disappeared into the closet and called, “He sent me to get you dressed.”
“I thought you forgot I was here,” I said.
She didn’t respond. It didn’t matter. I was going to see my father today, and together, we’d find a way to fix this. We had to. If Cristiano respected my father as he claimed, then this was his chance to prove it.
“What do you want to wear?” Jaz asked. Hangers scraped in the closet. “You don’t have much.”
“I was only planning on staying in México for two weeks,” I grumbled.
“The rain has stopped.” Jaz returned from the closet with my jean shorts. “It’s pretty warm today—” She stopped short and screamed.
I whipped my head around, following her gaze to the patio. Under the grand arched doorway, backlit by sunlight, stood the tall, muscular silhouette of a man with a gun in each hand.
My heart jumped into my throat as I scrambled to Cristiano’s side of the bed and Jaz lunged for the top drawer of his nightstand as the man stepped into the room.
Broad chested with dark, spiky hair, a wide jawline, and impeccable posture, I recognized him instantly. Relief filtered through me. I laid eyes on a friend, not an enemy.
Jaz yanked a semi-automatic from Cristiano’s drawer, racked the slide, and leveled it on him.
“It’s okay, Jaz,” I rushed out.
Footsteps barreled down the hall. Cristiano burst through the bedroom door in a suit and tie, his gun raised. “Barto,” he said, cinching his eyebrows a millisecond before his jaw clenched. “What the fuck—”
“Don’t take another step.” The head of my father’s security team, a man who’d been blindly loyal to my parents since I could remember, aimed both pistols at Cristiano. “I’ve been hearing for years about Calavera’s impenetrable walls and top-notch security.” An uncharacteristic grin crossed Barto’s face. “Yet here I am on my first try.”
Cristiano’s knuckles whitened around the grip. “How?”
“You forget, I grew up with the same training you did,” Barto said, walking forward when Cristiano did. They stopped before their extended guns touched, eyeing each other—Cristiano, in his tailored suit, aimed his pistol at Barto’s chest, and Barto, in head-to-toe black, kept both of his on my new husband’s head.
