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My stomach twisted sickeningly. Manny was a kid. I could see his scared, pale face so clearly; he had looked like a baby while I’d patched the bullet graze on his arm. And now he was going to train to be one of the men on the front lines of whatever territory war the Castillos had going with the Rojas?
“He’s too young,” I said.
Angel’s jaw tightened. “I know that.”
“Then why would you —?”
“How could I prevent it?” he shot back. “I didn’t pull him out of school; his mother did that all on her own.” There was a bitterness to his voice now. “I’m sure Padre had something to do with it, but he would never admit it. Manny is thrilled.”
He was so angry, and I was just so tired. “Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked. “Why are you even here?”
Angel’s breath stuttered in his chest. His eyes blazed into mine, and despite myself, I felt that look all the way down to my toes. It was clear now: he wanted comfort, and for Angel, comfort would always be sexual. So he came to me, even as mad as he was, because I was that comfort source for him. He could look elsewhere and find it easily, but he swallowed his anger enough to come to me. The thought made me dizzy.
Damn him, I had the time to think, and then we were moving at the same time. Our bodies slammed into each other, and Angel hiked me up into his arms. I could do nothing but wrap my legs around his waist as he kissed and bit at my neck. “Why do I still want you, Emma, huh?” he breathed against my collarbone.
I threaded my fingers through his hair, pulling on it enough that he hissed in a mixture of pleasure and pain. “Why do I still wantyou?” I retorted, groaning when he slid a hand up my shirt to cup one of my breasts, pinching at my nipple until it was standing at attention. “I shouldn’t want you.” I buried my face against his neck and bit him, hard, and he groaned against me, grinding against me until I could feel just how hard he was for me. “You locked me up.”
He pulled back enough to look me in the eye. He wasn’t sorry, not in the slightest. “You lied to me,” he spat.
“I didn’t —”
Angel turned us so that he could splay me across the bed. “You’re pregnant,” he said, hovering over me. “Don’t deny it.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I didn’t lie about it before.” Angel wrenched the too-big shorts down my legs and tossed them over his shoulder.
“You didn’t tell me. You were going to leave me and not tell me.” The words were short, cold, and clipped; they didn’t match the fire burning his eyes, or the way his hands seemed to brand me as he spread my legs open so that he could settle between them. Angel tugged my panties to the side, smiling viciously when he saw that I was already wet. “It’s not very convincing that you want to leave when you’re always so ready for me before I even touch you, Emma,” he taunted.
I didn’t like the way he was saying my name. It was like he had to remind himself of who I was; it made him feel dangerous. “Angel —”
His eyes cut to my face. “I want you,” he said simply, without any emotion behind it. “I can’t stop wanting you.” Angel hooked his hands under my knees, situated himself so that he was pressed against me, and then he thrust home. I cried out, and because he had me so pinned, I couldn’t meet the movement of his hips. I had to lay there and let him pour his aggression into me.
There was tension between my shoulder blades that was progressively getting tighter and tighter the harder he fucked into me. “Angel,” I begged. “Touch me. Make me come.”
His gaze sharpened. “Oh, you need me to make you come?” he teased. “What are you going to give me?”
My heart flipped over in my chest; I didn’t like the look on his face. “What do you want?”
He let my legs drop to the bed and leaned over me instead; I moaned as he changed the angle of his thrusts. He didn’t stop until I could feel his breath against my face. “Kiss me,” he said. “Show me that you’re mine, that you aren’t going anywhere.”
We hadn’t talked about the fact that I hadn’t kissed him since our wedding. I knew it bothered him — Angel always seemed upset when I’d turn my face away when he tried — but there was a part of me that couldn’t let him put his mouth on mine again. It was the part that didn’t want to love Angel, and that part still didn’t. I frowned. “Angel, I —”
Angel’s face hardened, and he pulled himself away from me, leaving me empty and wanting. I watched his back as he stalked toward the door, barely flinching when he slammed it behind him. It was the lock clicking back into place that made the tears fall.
* * *
I didn’t know how long I cried, but when the tears had dried up, I didn’t feel much of anything. The hurt I felt from his betrayal, the anger from being locked up, it was all hidden behind a wall of…nothing.
The look that Angel gave me before he turned his back on me was clear as a bell: we couldn’t trust each other. How could anything else be between us if we didn’t trust each other? I touched my belly; I had been doing that a lot over the past few days. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Daddy and I are such a mess; you don’t deserve that.”
I glanced up at the security camera in the corner of the room. The little red light let me know that someone was watching, and while it wasn’t necessarily a comfort, I supposed it was nice to know that I wasn’t entirely alone. Angel hadn’t —
The light went off. My breathing hitched, and a pit formed in my stomach. Had he truly abandoned me then? Would anybody be in at five to bring me dinner, or was I being left here to rot?
“Angel wouldn’t do that,” I said out loud, needing to actually hear the words. “He wouldn’t actually let me die here.”No, he wouldn’t risk the baby; he’d wait until I delivered…then he’d get rid of me, I thought, and it soured my stomach. Bile pooled in my mouth, and I had to rush to the bathroom. My stomach folded itself inside out, and the little bit that I had managed to eat for lunch ended up in the toilet.
I sat, forehead pressed against the white porcelain, and breathed for several long minutes, testing my stomach. When my stomach remained calm, I stood and washed my mouth out in the sink. I looked in the mirror at the woman I had become: I didn’t recognize her. There were bags under her wild eyes and hollows in her cheeks.
Angel did this to me, I thought bitterly and shifted my gaze away from those haunted eyes. Opening the bathroom door, I came face to face with a massive man that I had never seen before. He eyed me for a split-second before grabbing me and throwing me over his shoulder. I grunted at the way his shoulder dug into my belly. Nausea hit me again. “If you try to scream,” the man growled, and I could feel a blade held against my side, razor-sharp, “I’ll gut you before anyone can eventhinkto rescue you. Understand?”
