The Guzzi Legacy: Vol 1

by Bethany-Kris

  “Turn the light on,” Valeria said, air rushing with her words, trying to ignore the rushing desire in her bloodstream. “Please.”

  Chris did just that, the space lighting up although it took a second for her eyes to adjust to the brightness. He backed up a bit, giving her enough room to breathe, but that was all he afforded her in the small bathroom. It wasn’t made for two people, and her body knew it given his proximity.

  “We have, what, ten minutes before the fireworks stop?” he asked.

  Valeria wet her lips. “About that. I have questions.”

  “About what?”

  “Whatever you said to my daughter yesterday.”

  Chris blinked, the hard lines of his handsome face softening as a smile fettered over his lips. “That’s what you want to ask?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not about what I said to you in the stables? I figured that would be on your mind.”

  “It is,” Valeria blurted, “but my daughter comes first for me ... always. No exceptions, and so if something about you might put her in danger, even unknowingly, then I have to handle that. Surely, you can understand.”

  Chris’s throat jumped at her words, like maybe he swallowed something back before he muttered, “Hurting her—accidentally, or not—is the last thing on my mind, trust that.”

  “Still, what did you say to her?”

  “Val—”

  “I want you to tell me.”

  His gaze darted away, but his tone came out low when he said, “I asked her about Haven ... and New York. I needed to give her something she understood. Something that would resonate with her, right, because she needs to believe I’m not like the rest of the people here. I’m different. She misses Haven and her school in New York. She doesn’t like you crying a lot, or that her father hurts you.”

  That was not what Valeria expected. A mixture of things had a lump growing in her throat, the emotions lodging there to take her breath away, and make her want to sob at the same time. Her eyes stung with unshed tears, and she clenched her fists into tight balls at her sides.

  The mention of Haven—her only friend they forced her to leave behind when Jorge found her—made her emotional, but the rest just drove the knife in deeper, and twisted until everything was pain.

  “You’re aware Haven got married,” Chris added, “to Andino Marcello since you were there. That’s who hired me. To come here, and figure out a way to get you the fuck out of here, in case you wondered. That’s why I’m here.”

  God.

  That wasn’t possible.

  She didn’t dare say it though, because a brief flutter of hope danced through her heart, swelling to epic proportions, and threatened to drown her with the emotion. It had been so goddamn long since she felt anything akin to hope. How sad was that?

  “She told me you’re unhappy,” Chris murmured. “Your daughter, I mean.”

  “Don’t put her in danger by asking—”

  “You don’t give her enough credit, Val. She is young, but she is not stupid.”

  Valeria met his gaze, unsure and wary. “You made her a promise. I heard you say that. What was it?”

  His grin deepened. “I shouldn’t tell. I made a pinky promise—”

  “Stop it.”

  “Relax,” he said, one of his hands coming up to stroke the line of her jaw with his thumb and forefinger. The soft touch made her sigh and tilt her head into his hand a little more, not that she had any business doing that at all. “I promised you would be happy soon, and no one would hurt you. All she wants is for her mom to be happy again, okay?”

  Fuck him.

  For doing that, and telling her, even if she asked. For giving her hope.

  A tear fell from the corner of Valeria’s eye, but Chris quickly wiped it away before it got very far. He did the same for the other side of her face when she blinked, and more tears threatened to fall.

  “Why did you do that in the stables ... kiss me, I mean?”

  “Not sure,” Chris murmured, his thumb sweeping her cheekbone as he spoke. “It’s not something I was supposed to do. I asked first, you nodded.”

  “I did,” she agreed softly, “although I’m not sure why.”

  “Then, we’re in the same position.”

  And what a position.

  “Not part of the job, then?”

  His stare snapped down to her mouth. “No. I just ...”

  “What? Because I don’t think you understand how dangerous this is for me.”

  “I do, Val. I promise I do, and if you don’t—or didn’t—want me to do that, all you have to do is say.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath, her back straightening at the directness of his tone. “I don’t, no.”

  Chris frowned. “What?”

  “Get a say. About sex. Or I never have, and I realized you’re right, too.”

  His hands dropped to her thighs overtop the skirt of her dress, and his fingers flexed gently. As supportive as it seemed, his silent acknowledgement of her truth, it also reminded her all he had to do was push up her dress around her thighs, spread her wide, and he would have her.

  She wanted it.

  “Sex ... anything like it,” she whispered, “has always been used against me, and I’ve never wanted someone else before. Not him, not a stranger—no one.”

  “Except me,” he murmured.

  Valeria peeked up at him through her lashes, only then realizing she had been staring at the corded band of muscles lining his broad shoulders, and the way his throat jumped when his gaze dropped to her lips.

  Desire.

  Lust..

  Always the possession; the thing Jorge won. Used because her husband wanted to. Coveted for his pride.

  Men around her husband desired her for their own selfish reasons or gains. Because they saw her as the perfect cartel wife, their belief they too would be a king with a queen they handpicked and demanded. Or to others because they believed her unworthy of her status after running—a traitor to break.

  And yet ...

  “No one has ever looked at me the way you are right now,” she said, her voice almost unrecognizable to herself with the heat she found there. “I’ve never been wanted—not like this.”

  “And you never wanted—until now.”

  That’s why this had seemed so confusing to her. From the walk around the pool with an almost flirting, but very charming man, to the kiss in the stables had all seemed foreign to her in a way. She played a game she had never needed the rules to before now.

  “Val,” he said, tone thick.

  “Yeah?”

  Chris leaned in close enough so if she wanted—because he had made it clear this was on her terms, she had the say—moving forward would let her capture his kiss. His lips quirked up at the edges, sexy as ever, when he told her, “Has a man never loved your body the way it deserves to be, sweetheart?”

  God.

  If it were possible, she felt his voice everywhere. At the apex of her thighs, in between the beats of her heart, and straight to her mind. All the parts of her attention that a single man never caught of hers before.

  Chris didn’t give her the chance to respond before he added quieter, “Not with his cock—not while he’s fucking you. Just him, Val, and his hands or his mouth. Touching you with parts of his body that makes it more intimate than just his cock. Has no one done that the way you want them to—the way they should?”

  She swallowed hard.

  Shook her head.

  “No,” she breathed.

  “Fucking shame,” he muttered, arching a brow. “Can I?”

  Valeria blinked, the word slipping from her mouth before she even understood she had said it because staring at him was intoxicating. “Yes.”

  “Which do you want, then? My fingers, my mouth—both? Because we don’t have a lot of time, and as much as I would like to spend hours showing how you should be fucked and adored, I only have a few minutes before someone realizes we’re not out back where we should
be.”

  He also had a way of reminding her about reality.

  Damn.

  “Just ...”

  He leaned an inch closer. “Which one?”

  Valeria moved in, too, whispering against his lips as she kissed him, “Both.”

  She kissed him hard, and fast, the sharp flavor on his tongue from the rum he’d been nursing earlier blooming across her palate. His fingers drifted between her thighs, his hard lines crowding her to the mirror when he came closer. He stroked her over the line of her lace panties first, making her hips rock into his touch with each soft swipe.

  “There, yeah? You want me there?” he asked, his lips ghosting over her cheek. “That’s what we need to do, Val. Wake up your pussy first, little by little, and then when you’re nice and wet from this, I will treat you like a feast.”

  His words, and the way they sounded coming out of his mouth, lit up a fire inside Valeria like she had never felt before. His fingers flamed it as they worked between her thighs, now slipping under the gusset of her panties to stroke her bare flesh and the short-trimmed hair above the hood of her clit.

  “Jesus,” she breathed.

  Chris chuckled. “Wait, it gets better.”

  She didn’t doubt it.

  Valeria couldn’t imagine how.

  This was already more than she understood—more than she experienced before. Overwhelmed. Sensitive. Her body became a live wire snapping with every encouraging, tantalizing touch.

  “I bet you’re pussy tastes as hot as you are on my fingers,” he told her.

  Valeria’s head tipped back to the mirror as she dragged in a hard breath. “Oh, my God. Keep doing that.”

  He did; his two fingers stroking in and out of her sex before coming up to circle the tight bud of her clit. A rhythmic, perfect beat. Her legs trembled as she lifted them higher out of a deep need to spread herself wider for him.

  She bet she was quite a sight.

  Spread open.

  A man between her thighs whom she had not spoken vows to ... even if her husband had broken his vows to her more times than she was aware, and in more ways than she would ever care to count.

  Begging like she did.

  “Please, please, please,” she heard herself say.

  Although for what she asked for, Valeria didn’t know. For the building need to continue, but for it to become more. For him to give her it because he had to see she needed relief. Or for things she didn’t understand.

  She would beg for it though.

  All of it.

  Chris pressed one quick kiss to her trembling lips, his own tugging into a sinfully wicked smirk that had her gulping, before he lowered between her thighs. The beat of his fingers thrusting into her wet pussy before coming back up to rub at her clit stopped.

  Only for his tongue to take the place of his fingertips on her clit with a faster, harsher beat than before. Those two fingers in her sex became three, filling her deliciously as his tongue moved back and forth from licking at her clit to lapping at his fingers fucking her and covered in her cum.

  She had to watch.

  Chris looked like a man enthralled—eating her while he watched her, and his fingers worked her pussy until she teetered on an edge like never before. Valeria hadn’t been ready to fall, then, hadn’t known what it would be like when it wasn’t forced, and she craved it—willing to let a man have her like this.

  And then she fell.

  Her bliss became a cliff.

  She stifled the noises crawling from her throat as the orgasm tore through her core and rippled across all of her nerves. Shouting into the heel of her palm as she watched Chris replace his fingers inside her still-pulsing sex with his tongue to lick her essence right from the source.

  Valeria never saw anything hotter.

  Never been higher.

  Chris caught her when the trembling started in her legs, his tongue drifting from her sex to lap at her inner thigh before he raised up. She didn’t even think about it, just seeing his mouth wet with her arousal made her want to taste herself on his lips.

  So, she did just that.

  Valeria didn’t know who this woman was—this person here, doing this with him. This man who came into her life without warning, saying things to give her hope, and terrified her to death at the same time.

  She had no clue who she became around Christopher Guzzi, but she liked it.

  That was a dangerous thing.

  10.

  “Where did you go off to?” Jorge asked.

  Do not look that woman’s way, Christopher.

  He could feel Valeria’s stare burning into his back from across the backyard. She exited through the rear of the home, but he decided it would be smarter if he didn’t take the same way back to the party she did.

  Better not to play with fire.

  Hadn’t they already risked a lot?

  Chris thought so.

  Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Chris came closer to Jorge, making sure his posture was light, and easy. “Fireworks always give me a headache, so I took a walk. Thought it might be nice.”

  “Ah, yes. They bother the horses, too. You’ll make friends with those beasts.”

  Had he compared Chris to animals?

  Well, whatever.

  Chris took the clipped cigar Jorge offered him but used his own lighter to get it smoking. Jorge turned his back to Chris for the moment, watching the men who had gathered in a slight circle, and the two in the middle who were sharing punches. A bareknuckle match, it looked like.

  Another time or place, and Chris might have joined in just because. Not here, though, and not with these men. These people weren’t his family or friends, and he could not afford to forget that fact.

  This job was already dangerous before he came here and got stuck in his head about a woman he needed to get the fuck out of this place. Now, he couldn’t get her out of his head, and that made it worse.

  Emotional attachments were bad.

  Even if they felt good.

  Speaking of which ...

  Chris could still feel Valeria’s stare on him, and with Jorge’s back turned, it allowed him to check her way. Sure enough, she watched him from her position on the porch, looking no better or worse than she had before their little encounter in the house. Frankly, looking at her wasn’t any good for his side of things, either.

  The woman was a siren.

  She called to him.

  He didn’t know what to do with that.

  Knowing he should turn his stare away from her before someone noticed his attention, he gave Valeria a quick nod, and looked away. It was all he could do although he wished he didn’t have to do that at all.

  She needed someone to care. That much was painfully obvious with her. The woman was strong as hell, no doubt about it. Look at all she had gone through and was still dealing with regularly. No one could ever say she hadn’t done all she could and still held her head high while she did it.

  Simple as that.

  Valeria was still human though. And very much a woman. Her mind, heart, and soul needed things, whether she craved it or it felt good. Affection, touch ... attention. All of it, those were basic human needs. He knew she wasn’t getting those things from the man they forced her to marry, and he wasn’t sure what to do with the fact he wanted to give it to her instead.

  Yeah.

  This was a mess.

  A dangerous one.

  “What’s next, hmm?” Chris asked Jorge.

  He needed to get his thoughts away from Valeria, what had happened in the house, and how he felt about her. If not, someone would notice his distraction, and he doubted it would take them long to put two and two together to make four.

  No one needed that.

  “For what?” Jorge replied over his shoulder.

  “Me being here—what do I get to see next?”

  Jorge turned, giving Chris a smile as he did so. “The tunnels, I think. There’s a good chance part of your father’s run will go
through the tunnels, especially if ports of entry are too hot, or we can’t take it across an unwatched part of the border for whatever reason. The easiest way for me to show you the tunnels is to take you to one we don’t use a lot but was also one of the first ones my father ever had built.”

  Huh.

  “And when are we doing that?”

  “A few days, likely,” Jorge replied, shrugging.

  “Not sooner?”

  “You forget that you are here on my time.” Jorge turned back to the fighting men, the bonfire glowing bright with flickering flames a few feet away from their position. “Which means, I also have work to do, and so I will deal with you and what your father wants when I have time to do it, Christopher.”

  “I prefer Chris.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Yeah, he was aware.

  Clearly.

  He left the conversation alone if only because he didn’t think it would get him anywhere to keep needling Jorge about it. He lost any chance at civility with the man the first night they met when Jorge felt Chris had overstepped his bounds with his wife, anyway, and he doubted it would get better now.

  Not that he gave a fuck.

  He wasn’t here to make friends with Jorge.

  Chris was getting antsy even though this job could take a while to complete. He hadn’t expected to be in Mexico for any more than two weeks, maybe three, at the most. Already, he had been here for two, and he didn’t see an end in sight. He didn’t have a way to get Valeria the hell out of here, but might those tunnels help his plan along?

  Who knew?

  His bigger problem was what would happen if the ruse ran its course, he had to leave, and he still didn’t have a way out for Valeria? What the fuck was he going to do?

  “I think you’ll like the tunnels,” Jorge said absently.

  Chris looked Valeria’s way again. Now, she wasn’t looking at him. That was okay, he only needed to see her. If she was okay that’s what he wanted to know. The rest, he would deal with as he could, or should.

  What else could he do?

  “I look forward to it,” Chris replied.

  • • •

  The bay window of the small living room in the house Chris was using on the Lòpez ranch during his stay allowed him a good view of the rest of the houses on the property, and all the walkways connecting them. It was a nice, practical design, if someone admired that sort of thing, but mostly, he felt the need to imprint it to memory.