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It’s not fair. My body reacts to his voice, those words, and I don’t stand a chance against the resulting firestorm. I feel my eyes roll into my head. My belly quakes. My body grips him like a vice, and he hisses out his approval.
“With that tongue, chica,” he demands, his voice thick. “Say it. Fucking say it…”
“You.” I clamp my lips against my rebellious tongue, but as my voice echoes off the walls, I don’t hear any fear in it. No cowering. No tears or panic. It sounds so damn sure. So confident. That fact alone confuses me so much I lose all control of my senses. “You own this,” I tell him.
He slams into me, using the full weight of his body to drive himself home. The resulting pressure acts as a catalyst, triggering a torrent of pleasure that knocks me under. I ride him senselessly, a slave to every ferocious, rocking movement. He takes us across the bed. When I regain my senses, I’m clinging to the edge of the mattress for dear life, seconds from sliding off it headfirst.
Deep down, I know I’ll feel the aftermath of this for weeks after. Years, even. When his hand strikes my ass hard enough to sting, he bellows out his own release, and I don’t even have enough space left within me to care. To feel regret.
I just wallow in the vicious nature of Julian Domingas, and for a second, I let him have his way. I let us both pretend that I could ever belong to another. I relish in that beautiful lie, and I resist all attempts of the screaming logical part of my brain that tries to tell me otherwise.
I don’t know how much time passes when he finally rolls off of me, reaching for something on the nightstand closest to me. I’m too exhausted to pay attention. At least until he drops something onto the bed beside me, in a mass of tangled bedsheets. A book, shiny and brand-new. Hamlet.
“Open it,” he commands, sounding as in control as ever.
My heart lurches at the thought of thinking. Reading. I want to lurk in this ignorant, blissed-out mind state forever. It’s better than any drug.
But he is persistent. “Open it, Lupe. One of my final tokens of attrition.”
Somehow, I force one of my hands to move and flip over the book’s lid.
Instead of a fresh, virgin page of text, I find something that makes me lurch upright and scramble back until my shoulder strikes the headboard.
“What is…”
“It is yours,” Jaguar says, undeterred by my fear. “Men supply their puppets with purses and shoes. Theirwomen? They gift them the means by which they can protect themselves from any harm. The trust that comes with power and peace of mind.”
He takes my hand, forcing me to touch the object tucked within a compartment cut into the book itself. The pages have been fused together, creating an ironic, beautiful container for a silver pistol that seems far too small and delicate for him.
I think I knew even before he said it—it’s mine.
“Why… Why would you think I want something like this?”
“It isn’t about what you want.” He makes my fingers curl, lifting the device from its case. “It’s what you need. Survival is a gift granted only to the few, Lupe. You will not fear it. You will take it and learn to use it. I will teach you how when you recover.”
He takes the gun from me and returns it to its case. Then he sets the fake book on the nightstand, within my reach.
“You would trust me with that?” I croak.
Diego wouldn’t have given me a piece of dental floss, convinced I might use it on him. That’s the sad part. I never would have. It wasn’t until that final night that I even dreamed of hurting him.
“You’ve held a gun before,” Jaguar says, manipulating my body so that I’m lying on my side with my head on the pillows. Then he settles down beside me.
In the seconds that pass next, I don’t think I even breathe. Panic roots me to the spot, paralyzing me. “How did you know that?”
“I can see it in you.” He captures my hand, holding it above us both. One of his rugged fingers traces my palm, and I shudder at the dangerous taste of friction. “You tense, whenever I touch this finger, right here…” he caresses the knuckle in question. “There is a memory tied to it. One that haunts you still.”
I fight my instinct to rip my hand away. “That can’t be all.”
He laughs, but it’s a hollow sound. “It isn’t. You cry out in your sleep. Usually, when you’ve been drugged. Pleading mostly. Sometimes you say,‘I’ll do it. I will. Let me go.’You repeat it until your voice breaks. I’ve heard such boasts before. I know what context it’s usually said in.”
I feel so damn violated my body goes limp. Tears prickle my eyes, and there is no holding back. What else did I manage to reveal in such vulnerable moments?
“You killed someone,” Jaguar adds, seemingly oblivious to my distress. “ThatI can see in you. There is no mistaking that look. No other source for it.” He lowers my hand to the bed and tightens his grip. “I saw it in myself years ago. Perhaps it is cliché, but the first time I killed, I didn’t recognize myself due to that look. That faraway gleam in the eye. I quickly learned to suppress it, but you wear it openly, chica. They weren’t some randompendejo. They mattered to you. Who?”
I close my eyes, triggering more tears to fall.
“I’ll let you keep this secret, for now,” Jaguar says, and the rasp in his voice makes my heart lurch. It sounds as if he’s referring to far more than just one unspoken truth. “I will tell you mine, though. I’m sure you’ve already put the pieces together yourself. The first man I ever killed was my father. I did so with my bare hands, Lupe, but I didn’t plan it. Oh, he was an arrogant man. A real son of a bitch—but he was family. Real men, they do not harm their family. Their blood. They nurture. Shelter. Educate. They are firm, but not cruel. They protect their own, and they do not try to erase ties that go deeper than mere blood.”
