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When I come, it’s a slow, deep orgasm that lasts and lasts. I become pure sensation, a heart beating too hard, too fast, blood rushing in my ears. And when it’s over, my legs are too weak to carry me.
Santos stands, holding me up, and kisses me hard on the mouth. He presses himself against me, lifting me, carrying me to a side table against the wall. He sets me on the edge of it, kissing me again as he pushes my legs wide. I fumble with the buckle of his belt, his slacks. He pushes my hands away to do it himself and I watch as he tugs me forward and pushes inside me.
“Say it for me. Say the words,” he says against my mouth, cock driving into me as I cling to him. The table rocks, unsteady beneath us. He draws out, turning me. I brace myself against the wall as he pushes into me from behind. “Say the words,” he tells me, his chest pressed to my back, one hand on my hip, the other coming around to hold my jaw, to keep my face turned to him as he drives into me. “Tell me again that you love me, Madelena. Because I love you and I need to hear you say it. Say it now.”
I do. I tell him I love him, and he swallows the sound, his thrusts coming harder, deeper. He moans into my mouth, the fingers of one hand dig into my hip as he nears his release. “I love you,” I tell him again, and he sets his hands over mine on the wall and closes his teeth over the curve of my neck, muttering a curse as he stills, throbbing inside me, the beats of his heart powerful against my back.
When it’s over, when we’ve caught our breath, he draws out.
I turn to watch his beautiful face, the softness in his eyes after he comes, the way he looks at me in those moments. I love that too.
After tucking himself back into his pants, he turns me to face him and slides my panties and leggings back up. He kisses me.
“Do you understand?” he asks seriously. “Do you understand that I love you?”
My heart flutters, missing a beat. “Why?” I hear myself ask. What a stupid question.
He looks momentarily confused. “I forgot you are unaccustomed to being wanted. Being loved. That ends here and now.”
Before I can process, he lifts me in his arms and carries me upstairs to the ensuite in our bedroom. There, he runs a bath, and as it fills, he strips off my clothes and his and we slide in together. I sit with my back to his front, his long legs cradling mine. He wraps his arms around me and holds onto my hands. I take in the differences between us, my pale skin against his olive tone, his muscle against my softness. I twist in his arms and face him because I need more so I sit on his lap to study his face. When I lay my hands on his shoulders and he captures my wrists to stop me, I shake my head.
“Let me see you.”
“Madelena,” he starts, sounding older.
“Camilla told me what they were,” I cut him off. “I need to hear from you.”
“Camilla?” He stiffens. “Why would you talk to her?”
I meet his eyes. “I didn’t have much choice when she ambushed me in my bedroom.”
“She came to your house?”
“Along with everyone else after the service. But it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t scare me.” I shift my gaze to his scars, those precisely drawn lines. I slide the tips of my fingers over them and when I subconsciously start to count, I stop myself. I don’t want to know the number.
“Tell me what they are.” I meet his eyes. “What you did.”
His lips tighten into a line, and I watch his throat work as he swallows. He searches my face, then touches my cheek.
“Tell me, Santos.”
“After Alexia’s murder, after I killed her father, the Commander made a deal with my father. I’d work for him for five years rather than spending the rest of my life in prison. He could arrange for that. He made sure my father and I both knew the extent of his power.” Santos sighs deeply, and I know it’s taking a great effort for him to hold my gaze. “The work I did for him was ugly work—the kind that leaves your hands stained forever no matter how much you scrub at them. Thiago and I, we were his enforcers. We…Ihurt a lot of people, Madelena. Maybe if you knew what I was capable of, you wouldn’t be here like this now. You certainly wouldn’t let me touch you, not with these hands I hate so much.”
He turns his face away, but I turn it back. “I’m here, aren’t I?” I bring those hands he hates to my lips and kiss them. “And I love these hands that make me feel so safe.”
He looks confused. “I don’t deserve you. I know that.”
“Areyouso unaccustomed to being wanted?” He just watches me, eyes so full of tenderness. “Tell me the rest, Santos.”
He takes a deep breath in. “There were criminals we dealt with, of course. But these lines are for the others. The innocent ones. The pawns in the games of evil men. Every night I came back to that wretched house after I hurt one of the innocents, I would carve out a line in my skin. I did it to feel their pain. Their terror. To keep a part of them in my own skin because they deserved that, at least, and I deserved to be made to remember.”
I hold his face in my hands and lean toward him to kiss him softly on the lips. I then shift my position to lay my cheek against his chest as he cradles me.
“It doesn’t change anything,” I tell him. “The Commander was responsible.”
“No, sweetheart. I could have chosen a different path. The one that would have landed me in prison.”
“He’d have found someone else.”
