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Omar couldn’t have been any more surprised if I had actually struck him with something. “I didn’t expect to hear that from you,” he admitted.
“I hadn’t planned on saying it.” I shrugged. “I watched you fly off a boat after you hit the dock going full speed. My priorities changed a bit.”
That awed expression didn’t leave his face. “I’m a priority?”
Of course not. I demanded that my lips move to say the words, but they refused to cooperate. “You said I belonged to you.”
Hurt as he was, a dark look passed through his eyes, and he brought my hand up to his lips. “You do.”
Helena cleared her throat. “Can you sit up?” she asked Omar. “I need a better look at your head, and it’s hard when you’re lying down like that.” Omar struggled to push himself up. He was too big for me to support from the side. I scrambled behind him so he could lean against me and remain upright. “Hold onto him,” Helena commanded.
“I won’t let him go,” I promised.
“Sweet talk later,mi amor,” she chastised, and I fell quiet. It was the first time she’d genuinely admonished me. Helena hummed and tutted as she fussed over the wound, which from my angle, didn’t look nearly as bad as I thought. The bleeding had nearly stopped, and he was talking and acting like himself. “Steri-Strips will hold this together,” she declared, “and he’ll need to be monitored for the next forty-eight hours or so for a concussion.”
“I can handle both,” I said. “Why don’t you go get some sleep, Helena? I’ll take over from here.”
She eyed me. “You’re sure you can do it?”
“I’ve used Steri-Strips a time or two before,” I said and triedvery hardnot to sound condescending. Helena might work for a cartel family, but I was born into one. Our lives were nowhere near the same in terms of experience. “I’ve got it covered.”
Helena frowned but handed me the kit so that I wouldn’t have to get up just yet. “No funny business, the pair of you,” she said. “He has to heal before any kind ofstrenuousactivity.”
She left, and we burst into laughter, though it was cut short by his groan of pain. “I don’t think I’ve ever been lectured about sex before,” I giggled. “My parents were under the impression that if they didn’t talk about it, beyond the threat toneverlook at boys that my parents didn’t approve of, that I wouldn’t ever have it until I was married to Felix.”
Omar tensed up at the mention of Felix, but as I dug out what I’d need to close the gash, along with some antibacterial cleanser that would most definitely sting but would hopefully keep him from getting an infection, I did my best to ignore his awkwardness.
“I’ve been given that exact speech, actually,” he said after a minute, seemingly satisfied at my silence.
“How often do you get hurt?” I opened the cleanser and squirted it onto a gauze pad.
“Puta madre,” Omar swore when I touched it to his head. “That hurts!”
“I need to clean the wound. It’s full of sand and whatever godforsaken bacteria is in that water.”
“It’s fine.” He squirmed against me as I dabbed at the wound again. “Lyse, cut it out.”
I flicked his ear with a satisfyingthwack, and he hissed, cupping the side of his head. It was one of the quickest ways to get Matteo’s attention. It was good to know that it worked on more than just my younger brother. “If you hold still, it’ll be over in a second. Quit being a big baby.”
He grumbled, but he let me clean the wound of sand and grit. Then I applied the Steri-Strips to hold the edges together. To be extra thorough, I wrapped his head in gauze tape so that it was covered. “You’ve done first aid before.”
I wriggled out from behind him and helped him to lie down. “Who hasn’t in our families?” I settled in beside him, and I was surprised when he dragged me down so that I was lying in his arms. We hadn’t really…cuddled after having sex. Instead, we’d passed out side by side in my bed, and I remembered rolling against him at some point. But actively cuddling like this? It was another new experience that I shared with Omar Castillo.
A thick silence settled between us, and I did my best not to fill it with chatter. It was easy not to talk to him when I hated him, but now that we were whatever we were, I wanted to talk and never stop. Maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome, maybe I was falling in love, but I wanted to soak up every bit of his presence.
Especially since he’d gone to Miami to negotiate my release.
I didn’t even want to consider what returning to Felix would be like. There was fear that he would look at me and know what Omar and I had done…but there was also a layer of disgust that had always been there, which was much more prominent now. I couldn’t go back to being that naïve girl that I was, and I couldn’t pretend to like Felix’s touch. Not after I’d gotten to touch and be touched by someone that I wanted so badly it made my body ache. There would never be that kind of fire between Felix and me, and the idea of spending my life pretending made my stomach twist into knots.
“How’s Angel?” I asked when I could no longer stand the quiet.
“Alive,” Omar said, and I thought that would be it. But then: “He doesn’t have any permanent brain damage as far as we could tell. He’ll need time to rest and recover, but I won’t have to step up as the man in charge anytime soon.”
It was an odd way of putting it. “Are you…upset by that?”
Omar let out a big belly laugh and immediately regretted it, hissing at the pain. I rubbed my hands up and down his chest, soothing him. He covered my hand with his own and pressed down, stopping my movements. “Don’t get me excited.”
I glanced up at him, incredulous. “Thatwould have gotten you excited? That wouldn’t have done a thing for me, and I’m brand new at this.”
