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“Fair enough. Come here.” He extends his hand, and I take it without thinking, expecting gentle gallantry. Pedro warned me his regulars loved to kiss his fingers, making a show of their flattery.
Jaguar grips me hard. I gasp as he wrenches me forward, onto his thigh. I’m left with my back to him, and my head cocked at an awkward angle.
“What’s your name?” he asks, settling one of those massive hands over my knee.
Again, shock robs me of my script. I blurt out, “You can call me Lupe—”
“I didn’t ask what Icouldcall you.” He still holds my hand and squeezes it so hard I bite my lip to silence a groan. “I askedwhat your name is.”
Think, Lupe!Anger on him has a smell. A flavor I can taste on my tongue, mingling with the faint scents of cologne, alcohol, and fresh blood wafting from the ring. It’s fiery and sharp enough to know that I never want to experience it in full.
So, again, I improvise. One thing Pedro said keeps echoing in my head—how do you catch a man who can have anyone? You be the only one. The only one who could ever satisfy him. Crave him. Please him. You want this man above all else, and that’s the difference.
“I meant thatyoucan call me Lupe,” I purr, lowering my voice the way Tiena would when chatting up her next mark. A slight tremor undermines the sensuality, but I ignore it and crane my neck to face him head-on. Jesus Christ, those eyes. Even as they pierce through me, I soldier on. “Not many people can. It has special meaning to me, far better than Lupita.” I extend my hand and widen my grin as quiet calculation flits across those fathomless eyes. “Sanchez. At your service.”
“Lupita.” I shiver at how his tongue seems to catch over the syllables, mangling them into something indecipherable. In the language of jaguars, my name is a series of growled notes and grated inflection. “I’m sure you already know who I am.”
It isn’t a question, and I don’t know how to answer. Pedro’s script is in the wind, and I’m scrambling to recall snatches of his advice. Something about confidence. Calm.
“I knowofyou,” I admit, turning back to the match. Sometime amid this strange conversation, the fighting began, and I instantly tear my gaze away again. In the process, I find myself staring at a couple sitting a few seats over. They pretend to be engaged in the fighting, but the reality is they can’t seem to take their eyes off my direction. In fact, most people in the nearby vicinity seem to be staring this way.
Because of Jaguar and how easily he dominates a room. I can tell he thrives off the attention, and yet in the same breath, he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s a top-tier predator who takes his ability to intimidate for granted. That could come in handy. I try to remember it.
“You’re a powerful man, Julian Domingas,” I add, risking another glance at him. “Only a fool would be unaware of your reputation.”
He smiles in a fleeting, terrifying way. It’s so quick, like a lightning strike, and just as devastating. My belly quivers, and I’m not sure if it’s due to fear or arousal. Chilling reputation and handsomeness aside, his body is built for domination. Muscles carved from stone press against my ass, thighs, and back. It makes me shudder to think what it would feel like to be beneath him. I don’t know if the picture unfolding in my mind is sexy or horrifying.
“Powerful,” he echoes, demanding my sole focus once more. “Go on.”
It isn’t a harmless bit of flirting, and even I have enough sense to stiffen at the carefully concealed warning. Men so high in this shadowy realm are always on guard, well aware anyone stupid enough to approach them does so only to ask for something. Nothing else.
Pedro did warn me, and in this instance, I clearly remember his advice down to the letter.
“I have a proposition for you,” I say, cutting to the chase while making my honesty apparent. “In fact, I believe you are the only man in the world who can help me.”
A brown eyebrow quirks up, and I pray I have his interest.
“Is that so?” His palm rubs up and down from my hip to my thigh, sending a jolt through my system. “And what is that?”
I’m not fooled by his playful tone. His eyes are shrouded in shadow from this angle, and amid the backdrop of flesh striking flesh, I feel the gravity of a pious parishioner asking the devil for a favor.
Is my soul worth the risk?
Standing at the gates of Hell, it’s far too late to turn back.
“I want you to help me,” I say, letting genuine desperation leech into my voice. “I believe you are the only one who can.”
His hand stills, and his eyelids lower a fraction. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Is that so?” His eyes flick over me and return to the fight. I don’t dare follow, so I have no clue who’s winning, or the cause of the pained groans that erupt from the crowd next. I can’t take my eyes off him, sensing that I’m dangerously close to failing some unspoken test. Just like that, I’ve bored him.
How to get his attention back? How?
“There are other men I could have gone to,” I add, hating how a stutter creeps into my words. Pedro warned me against begging, but I can’t help it. I am. “Luis Romanos. Leo Corleon—”
“You have interesting taste in men,” he chides. His eyes don’t budge from their current fixation, but his hand strokes me again as if to encourage me to continue.
So, I do. Those are men cut from the same cloth as Braulio, capable of overtaking him, but they never gave me the time of day. Perhaps another tidbit of the truth is called for here?
