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12
NIALL
When I wake, I have an email from Beth with potential coordinates for Javier’s compound.Thanks for the Copper Canyon tip,she wrote at the bottom.It helped. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do. And be careful. The Syndicate is nothing to mess with.
I frown, shoving my phone into my pocket. The Syndicate and their members might be dangerous, but violence is nothing new to me, either. And knowing what I know now, there’s no chance I’m leaving Isabella in Javier Aguilar’s hands. Not if I can help it.
I don’t wait to eat breakfast. I tell Ricardo where I’m headed, that I got a tip on Javier’s location, and head out to collect my bike. Despite his offer to send some men along with me, I feel certain it’s better to go on my own. One is easier to miss than many, and getting in will be difficult. There’s no way of knowing how many men Javier has, if there’s an army there backing him up or just a few guys–or if it’s just him, counting on his hideaway to keep him safe. I don’t want to risk anyone I don’t have to, though. On my own, I can move without worrying about anyone else and at my own pace on the way there.
The coordinates Beth sent me are a two-day ride from the Santiago compound. The ride is hard, far from comfortable with as many bruises and half-healed injuries as I have, but I’m rested enough to manage it. Isabella doesn’t have time to wait for me to heal—I’m already afraid of what might have happened to her or what might still happen, while she’s trapped in Javier’s fortress.
Despite the discomfort of the ride, being out on the open road is healing in a different way. Nothing has ever been as freeing as a long ride on a wide-open highway—but this time, despite how it eases me, it feels like there’s something missing.
I can’t think of very many times I’ve ever had a woman on my bike. My high school sweetheart, once or twice, back when I was first learning to ride. Maybe a date, one I’ve long forgotten, someone who was turned on by it. But no one who stuck in my head like Isabella.
She’d been scared of the bike when she first saw it; I know she had. That tiny red dress she’d been wearing and those heels hadn’t been meant for riding. But she’d gotten on anyway. She’d swallowed down her fear enough to do it, wanted me enough. At her core, Isabella is strong, brave, and tough. Going back to my room with me, following through on what she wanted with a stranger, had been brave. Even what she’d done at the gala, outing us both like that, had taken courage—even if she’d done it out of fear.
I hope that strength helps her hold it together and keeps Javier from breaking her until I can get there.
I miss the feeling of her arms around me as I ride, the way her cheek had pressed into my back, the way I’d felt her breathing me in. It had almost felt like she was a part of me on that ride into the desert, her soft body against me and the roaring metal of the bike beneath me, the three of us melded into one wild thing as we’d gone out into the dunes. I could have kept riding forever with her, and a part of me wishes I had. Maybe then we could have just kept pretending forever, and I’d never have had to know the truth.
Not that a relationship built on lies could ever really last.
I ride until dark, stopping off at a small town that could barely be called that, dusty and quiet with one bar, one half-lit restaurant, and a hotel. My body is aching to lie down, but I go into the restaurant long enough to order some food, scarf it down and then retire to the hotel, which looks questionable at best. As long as it has a mattress, though, it’ll do.
In the dark, it doesn’t take long for thoughts of Isabella to crowd in again. I can feel myself aching for her, my body remembering what my heart wants to forget. Her soft body against mine, the sweet sound of her begging, the scent of her perfume, and her warm skin in my nose. The girl who was everything I wanted—until she wasn’t.
I reach down, wrapping my hand around my stiff cock as it slides out of my boxers, eager to be touched. It’s not my hand I want, but I’m aching for any pleasure by now, any relief. I want to think of anything but Isabella, too, but there’s no stopping it. What we shared was too good, and I can feel myself craving it like a drug, even now.
It’s her that I think of through every hard stroke, her head tipped back on a cry of pleasure and pain as I slid into her the first time, her body arching under mine, the softness of her breasts and the tight hot clench of her as I took her. Her voice begging for more as I licked her, the sweet taste of her on my tongue driving me wild. My name on her lips, again and again, as I gave her all the pleasure I could.
I’m shuddering with need by the time I come, my cock rock-hard and throbbing, and the groan that slips out is almost pained, that of an animal caught in a trap. I’m torn between anger with her for what she’s done, worry for what’s happening to her, and a lust that feels savage with how deep it’s got its hooks into me.
“Fuck, Isabella,fuck,” I hiss into the darkness as the heat of my cum splashes over my hand, my fingers tightening around my pulsating cock as I come for her, even though she’s not there.
I’m not sure she ever will be again—or what I’d do if she was. I shouldn’t ever come near her again beyond what’s needed to get her to safety. I shouldn’t ever touch her again. It can only hurt us both in the end.
I feel like a fool for caring about her, for wanting her, but I can’t fucking seem to help myself.Maybe I’m just fucking doomed to love women who will make fools of me,I think darkly as I lie there, my cock softening against my thigh. First, Saoirse, who could never have given me more than what was left after Connor had his fill, and now Isabella, who never even told me her real name. Mob princesses, both women, were raised and steeped in a world that told them their value was only what a man decided it was, a world where their lives depended on the grace of men. Saoirse had the means to free herself and chose not to. As for Isabella—
The only reason I can’t bring myself to hate her for what she’s done is that I know it was the only chance at freedom she’d ever have had. I can’t fault her for grasping that chance with both hands, for jumping at the opportunity to make just one choice about the rest of her fucking life. I just wish I’d known.
I can’t even say what I’d have done if I had. If she’d told me that night, sitting across from me at the bar, or when I had her under my hands up against that wall, my mouth full of smoke and the taste of her lips. If she’d told me she was a virgin, that she was Isabella Santiago, that she wanted me to be the manshechose to be her first, as she’d arched up against me and hooked that delicate finger in my shirt—
--it would still have been the stupidest fucking decision of my life, but I can’t say I wouldn’t have made it.
I can’t say that I wouldn’t have taken her away with me if she wanted and fuck everyone else. I might have walked out of my whole fucking life for her. That’s what she did to me in three nights. She’d wantedme,chosen me, when my heart was still bleeding from a woman who’d made it clear I was her second choice. She made me want her more than anything else in this fucking world, and I can’t say how much of it was real.
It fucking hurts to think of her, to think of the choices that I wasn’t given and how differently things might have turned out. But even as I lie there in the dark, wanting sleep that won’t fucking come, I can’t say the hurt wasn’t worth it.
It was worth it to have that time with her because, deep down, I don’t think it was all a lie.
Isabella Santiago might have known she’d walk away from me, but I think Gabriela Rodriguez wanted to stay.
