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But the addiction had become too dangerous. It was a nasty habit that was going to kill me one day, a day that would come very soon if I didn’t figure my life out and get out of Los Angeles.
I was entirely certain that if I didn’t make a bold move soon – run, or hand myself over to the police, or just plain kill my dark lover while he slept beside me – I’d be the onewho’d end up dead, dumped on the side of the road in a ditch somewhere, or maybe cut into little pieces and fed to the sharks. Because Dornan Ross had changed. He’d grown cruel. He used to use violence in the most delicious of ways – a hand over my face to stifle the noise that accompanied the mind-blowing orgasm he was giving me with his other hand; a subtle choke that made me see stars as my heart sped up in anticipation; a finger forced into my mouth so I could suck on it, tease him, pretend it was his cock I had my lips wrapped around. A violence that would have me smashed up against the nearest wall, fingers that bruised me with their passion as he wrenched my thighs apart and entered me so hard that I ached for days afterward.
That violent love was the thing that made us. When we met I was only nineteen years old and his father’s property, thanks to a deal I’d brokered to repay a debt my own father had racked up, and to keep my family from being slaughtered. One set of parents. One sister. One brother. I had given my servitude for their lives.
Emilio had killed them eventually, anyway. Loose ends and all that.
That violent love reached its peak when I saw the blood on my lover’s hands and the body of the woman he’d killed for daring to flee from him. Her face had been so badly beaten she was unrecognisable.
I still saw her when I closed my eyes at night.Stephanie. He’d killed her for concealing a pregnancy and leaving him seventeen years earlier, and he had punished her by beating her until she was almost dead, and then giving her a hotshot of heroin to finish off the job.
That this was the man I’d fallen fiercely in love with as a young woman was impossible to me. This was a man who’d risked everything for me, a lowly Colombian slave on her way to auction. He’d defied his father, and in doing so, had taken my heart and my loyalty. He’d done it out of some goodness that existed inside of him, something that couldn’t bear to see me come to harm.
‘He’s struggling,’ I said, nodding my head towards Jason. ‘He has nightmares. He barely talks. He barely eats, and teenage boys are supposed to eat everything in sight.I’m worried about him.’
John side-eyed me. ‘And your son? Luis? How’s he doing?’
I immediately baulked at his line of questioning. He was inferring that I cared more about a boy who wasn’t my son than the boy who was waiting for me in Colombia, my beautiful son, Luis. He was thirteen. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since the day he was taken from me by my father – the day he was born.
‘He’s safe,’ I said, my throat itching. ‘He’s with family. And that’s where we should be going. All four of us.’
John pulled a face. ‘You really want to take Dornan’s son after you saw what he did to the woman who kept him secret his entire life?’
I didn’t want to think about that. About how Dornan had become the monster he’d been trying to save me from all those years ago.
About how a lover could become your captor.
I didn’t want to think about how a lover, in a rage over your incessant questions and your disbelief that they could murder somebody in cold blood, could beat you until the baby inside you, the one that was still a secret, died.
Didn’t want to remember how a lover, in a post-murder-fuelled high, could pin you down and rape you, while still covered in the blood of the woman he murdered hours beforehand.
Didn’t want to reconcile all the ways a lover could become the person you hated the most in the world.
Especially because, if you were like me, black-hearted and completely corrupted, you already hadanotherlover.
John Portland. Of course he had to be Dornan’s best friend, just to dial shit right up to eleven on the crazy scale.
It was complicated.
It was wrong.
I didn’t care.
I was in love with a man who was not my lover, and soon we would leave this place.
Together. I’d convince him that Jason needed to come with us. That he needed protecting from Dornan, the man who would surely mould him into a beast if given half a chance.
We were leaving.
And we werenevercoming back.
***
‘Hey,’ John said, snapping a finger in front of my face. God, he was fucking beautiful, with his dirty blond hair, tanned skin and those brilliant blue eyes that looked just like the ocean we were standing before. With his tight black T-shirt and dark denim jeans, he looked casual. Add the steel-toed boots and the biker tattoos that covered his arms and neck, and he looked lethal.Casually lethal. That was my John.
‘Will you miss Dornan?’ John repeated. His question wasn’t born from jealousy, or insecurity. He seemed genuinely . . . curious.
‘I miss him already,’ I said, shrugging. It was so bright, and I could already feel my skin start to prickle under the Californian sun. I’d spent so long indoors over the years as the cartel’s captive that my skin didn’t know what to do when I was allowed out into direct sun. ‘I miss the person he used to be. Don’t you?’
