Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  And what would happen then? She would be left behind, the faux-political wife committed to standing at her husband’s side no matter what he’d done. No matter how broken she was inside.

  And if she let him, he could destroy her.

  She gritted her teeth. She didn’t know why it was Lazaro. Why was he the only one who brought this out in her? She only knew that he was.

  She closed her eyes and pictured a day twelve years earlier, the hot summer sun warming her skin, a boy with a smile that seemed to be meant only for her.

  It hadn’t been true then. Yet part of her still clung to the ridiculous fantasy. The part of her that had been waiting for him …

  It was why she’d slept with him. She’d told him she didn’t know why, and that had been a lie. He was the only man she’d ever really wanted.

  And part of her … part of her believed he had to feel the same way. She housed some serious delusion inside herself.

  “I didn’t force you into bed last night. It had nothing to do with our agreement or blackmail or the future of Pickett.”

  She turned around and saw Lazaro striding toward her, his expression cold with black fury.

  “I didn’t get in your bed. That was your couch,” she said tightly.

  “I didn’t force you to have sex with me.” he said. “You wanted it.”

  She couldn’t deny it. She wished she could. Wished she were capable of lying on that level, to his face, without remorse. But she couldn’t. She’d told him last night that she wanted him. She had directed the evening activities once they’d left the club.

  “You want me,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers, coal-black and intense, glittering in the dim light. “Say it.”

  She swallowed hard and turned away from him, her eyes focused on the skyline.

  She felt him approach, her body responding to his, her breasts getting heavy, the pulse between her thighs pounding hard. The empty ache threatening to swallow her. She wanted him, again, during a fight. She didn’t know herself. Didn’t know what it was he did to her.

  Only that he sparked a fire in her that no one else ever had. And it wasn’t just about sex or lust or desire. It was so much more. He showed her how lacking her life was. Being with him, near him, seeing the steps he’d taken to change his life, made her so acutely aware of how little she’d done. Of how hollow all of her so-called achievements were. She’d had it all handed to her and she’d still messed up.

  All her thoughts evaporated when Lazaro put his hand on the curve of her waist, swept her hair to one side, exposing her neck to the warm night breeze. “Tell me you want me,” he said, a raw note in his voice now, showing a crack in his iron control.

  And she realized that he needed to hear it. That her words hadn’t glanced off his thick armor, but that they’d struck a blow. She’d imagined that he was invincible—a man with so much power, the freedom to do what he wanted. A man who lived without restriction.

  But he wasn’t. She flashed back to that moment in the club and saw his anger for what it was. She had hurt him. She had rejected him.

  He slid his hand up, cupped her breast, the thin barrier of her dress providing no protection from the sensual assault. He pinched her nipple lightly between his thumb and forefinger and tugged.

  Her head fell back, and he took advantage, kissing her neck as he continued to tease her body.

  “You want me, Vanessa,” he said, not a question this time. “Me.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “And it’s not about money or what I can do for Pickett right now, is it?”

  She shook her head, biting her lip to hold back the whimper of pleasure that was climbing her throat. She felt her dress give as he slid the zipper down, exposing her back. His hand drifted over the line of her spine, the light touch sending heavy waves of arousal through her.

  She relaxed her shoulders and let her dress fall, the warm, heavy breeze kissing her bare skin, a completely foreign sensation. But no one would be able to see them. Even if someone might be able to, she wasn’t certain she could bring herself to care.

  Lazaro moved his hands over her stomach, his touch firm, warm, so sexy it made her knees weak.

  “No, it’s not about anything but …” She sucked in a sharp breath when he covered her breasts with one of his hands and pressed against her stomach with the other, drawing her more tightly against him, bringing his erection into firm contact with her bottom. “But how much I want you,” she choked out.

  He kissed her neck, her shoulder, and a tremor wracked her body, longing making her weak. But there was a fire smoldering in her stomach, a need for more. For more than simple lust. She’d confessed to wanting him, apart from their marriage arrangement and everything else.

  She needed him to do the same.

  She wiggled out of his grasp and turned to face him, her back against the balcony railing, her breasts pressed tightly against his chest. “Tell me you want me too.”

  He rocked against her, the hard length of him pressing into her stomach. “Doesn’t it feel like I want you?”

  “Tell me you want me, right now. Me. Not my status. Not my connections.” She slid her hand down his chest, past his belt, pressing her palm over his erection. “Tell me,” she said again.

  His eyes were dark, nearly black with passion, his jaw locked tight, tension holding his body taut, every muscle rock-hard. “I want you.”

  “My name,” she said, the words coming out broken. “I need you to say it.”

  “I want you, Vanessa.”

  She let out a gust of air. “Lazaro.”

  He captured her lips with his, his kiss hungry, devouring, and she returned it, sliding her tongue over his, taking his bottom lip lightly between her teeth and tugging. He growled and scooped her up in his arms.

  “We’re making it to bed this time,” he said, striding into the penthouse and heading into his room.

  She’d avoided his room since they’d arrived in Argentina, and not by accident. Just seeing that big bed pushed her desire up to another level. Of course, now her fantasies were strengthened by the memory of what it was like to be with him, to have him inside her, his steady rhythm taking her to the heights of ecstasy.

  He set her down in the center of the bed and she shivered.

  “Cold?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nervous?” he asked.

  “I am, a little bit.” It didn’t seem like the place for self-preservation. In this moment at least, honesty seemed imperative.

  He made quick work of the buttons on his shirt, shrugging it off and casting it to the floor. Vanessa could only stare at all the sculpted, masculine perfection before her. She’d been with him once, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t intimidating. He was perfect, experienced and fantastic in bed. She wasn’t sure she was offering him an even trade.

  “I just …” She got up on her knees and inched to the edge of the bed, putting her hand flat against his stomach, his muscles shifting beneath her palm. “I don’t know if I can compete with the memory of … more women than you can remember.”

  He encircled her wrist with his hand and pulled her gently to him, kissing her on the lips. “There’s a reason I don’t remember. They didn’t matter. They aren’t here in bed with us. When I look at you, you’re all I can see.”

  For now, she would accept his words. She wouldn’t think too far into them. She refused to wonder if he’d felt the same about all of them at the time, only to have his desire for them fade as time went on, and to have memories of them fade completely later.

  She pushed that thought aside because she didn’t want to think of it now. Even if it was stupid and dangerous, she wanted to believe him.

  He discarded the rest of his clothes and joined her on the bed, kissing her, putting his hand on the curve of her hip and dragging her panties down her legs. She kicked her shoes off and shoved them off the bed with her foot, anxious to have all of the barriers removed.

  And when he
took her in his arms, every inch of his body pressed against hers, she closed her eyes and inhaled his scent, tears forming in her eyes because he was everything she’d fantasized and more. He had been perfect the first night, but that had been frantic, and the main event had been so new it had been hard to focus on the finer points of what it meant to be intimate with a man. With Lazaro.

  Her fingertips blazed a trail over his bicep, his skin smooth, hot, his muscles hard beneath. She skimmed her hands over his hair-roughened chest, flat abs, down to his hardened shaft. She kissed his mouth, catching the harsh sound of pleasure that rose in his throat as she explored his body.

  He moved his hand down between her thighs and she stilled her movements then, luxuriating in the response he could call from her body. Orgasm built in her, quick and intense, ripples of sensation making her internal muscles tighten.

  “I love watching your face when you come,” he whispered.

  She laughed, her throat tight with emotion. “I can’t think of anything when you do that.”

  “Then I’m doing something right.”

  Yes, he was. It was something that reached down into her, something that surpassed her body and went straight for her soul.

  He pulled away from her for a moment and opened the drawer to the bedside table, retrieving a condom.

  And then he was in her, filling her, the friction so delicious it surpassed the climax she’d just experienced. She gave herself up to the sensation washing through her body, to the building pleasure that was blocking out everything else.

  Her orgasm broke over her like a wave, spinning her in the tide, making her feel weightless. For a moment there was nothing more than her and Lazaro. Nothing more than what he was making her feel.

  Dimly, she was aware of him coming with a harsh groan, his body braced hard against her as he kissed her fiercely.

  Afterward, she lay with her hand on his chest, his fingers sifting through her hair, their legs tangled together.

  Vanessa drew back and looked at him, running her fingers over his stubble-roughened jaw, tracing his brow, his high cheekbones. “You look different,” she said, languor slurring her speech slightly. “But the same too.”

  “I do?”

  “Mmm-hmm. You’re older, in a good way, and your nose …” She touched the bump on the bridge of his nose. “What happened?”

  “I broke it.”

  “I figured as much.”

  He rolled onto his back, away from her. “You said the other day that your father was very good at running interference when he doesn’t approve of the men you’re associating with. I carry permanent proof of that.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  VANESSA felt as if all the air had been sucked out of her body. Because the meaning in Lazaro’s words was stunningly, sickeningly clear.

  She didn’t know how it could be true, but she knew it was. Without knowing details, she knew. Because it explained everything. The animosity that rolled off Lazaro like a physical force when he spoke about her family, her father. She’d simply thought he was angry. Angry at life, angry in general.

  That wasn’t it. She’d been wrong. He was angry at her family. At her.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  She didn’t want to know. She wanted to cover her ears and hide under the covers. But that wasn’t an option. She had to know.

  “Tell me, Vanessa. Did you ever question why I never came back to your father’s estate? Why you never saw me again? Where my mother went?”

  “I … Of course I did.” And she’d made it all about herself. Because, of course, Lazaro had never come back because she’d refused to sleep with him. But she was a fool. A shallow idiot who had never been able to see past herself.

  “What was your conclusion?” he asked, his voice soft.

  “I thought you didn’t want to see me anymore because I wouldn’t put out,” she said. She wished she could protect herself and lie, but in bed with Lazaro, nothing between them, there couldn’t be any lies. No matter how much she wanted to lie to him. No matter how much she wished he’d lie to her.

  “Amazing that it seems neither of us knew each other at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought you turned me down because I was good enough to play with, but not good enough to sleep with.”

  “That wasn’t it at all. I was … You were my first kiss and I wasn’t ready to go from first kiss to bed in five minutes time.”

  “I said things then that I should not have said,” he said. “I thought you were playing a game with me.”

  “The same game you thought I was playing in the club?” She didn’t need a hint of affirmation and she didn’t get one. “It wasn’t a game. I was worried about … what people would think if they saw me behaving that way.”

  “With me?”

  “With anyone. But … you do make me lose control, Lazaro, and it scares me sometimes.”

  Silence settled between them and she knew it was up to her to ask again. Even though it had been derailed and she’d been given an out. There was no simple out. They had to wade through the mess of the past if they were ever going to go forward. It was that simple.

  She took a shuddering breath. “What did my father do to you?”

  “Not your father personally. He would never have gotten his hands dirty that way. He has people on hand to take care of life’s more unsavory problems.”

  “You were an unsavory problem?”

  “Of the worst sort. I had my sights set on his daughter’s virtue.” Vanessa felt every line in Lazaro’s body tense, could sense the scarcely harnessed aggression that was flowing through him. She wanted to soothe him, and she honestly didn’t know how.

  “What did they do?”

  “After I left the guesthouse that night I was upset. I went into town. I was followed. I don’t know that you need details, but I woke up facedown in the alley and, at the time, a broken nose was the least of my problems.”

  “They beat you?” She scrambled out of the bed, her breath coming hard, fast. “My father had you beaten?”

  “You didn’t know, then,” he said, his voice flat.

  “No.” She put her hand on her stomach, trying to quell the nausea that was rising in her. “You thought I knew? You thought that I …”

  “Your father puts on a convincing front of civility, Vanessa. At the time I thought it was possible you did the same.”

  “I would never …”

  “I know. I had let go of the idea of you being involved a long time ago.”

  She was relieved to hear him say that, even if that was selfish.

  “I told you we were fired from the estate, but there was more,” Lazaro continued. “Your father made sure no one else would hire us either. We were evicted from our apartment. Usually, we had a shelter to sleep in, but sometimes we ended up sleeping outside. My mother’s health did not do well in those conditions.”

  For the third time since Lazaro had come back into her life, she felt the ground shift beneath her feet.

  “I knew …” Her voice cracked. “I knew my father was a hard man, I knew he was controlling, but I didn’t know … I didn’t know he’d gone that far. I had a … There was a man I was interested in at Pickett when I was first hired on and my father was adamant about me not seeing him because he was just an employee. I did what he asked. I didn’t want to be with anyone he didn’t approve of. I just didn’t imagine he would ever do something like … Something so horrible.”

  She felt like her world was falling away, shattering into tiny little pieces, fragile and in danger of being scattered by the wind.

  She had protected her father’s legacy at the expense of everything. Her dreams. She could hardly remember her dreams anymore because she’d shoved them to the side with ruthless efficiency when she was thirteen years old in order to fulfill the demands of the most important man in her life.

  And that man was a coward. A criminal.

  She believed Lazaro’s words. Sh
e felt the truth of them all the way down to her soul. She was sick with the truth of it spreading through her like poison, undeniable and deadly.

  “I survived, Vanessa,” he said, his voice hard. “More than. And I don’t want your wide-eyed pity.”

  “I don’t pity you,” she said.

  She didn’t. It was impossible to pity a man like Lazaro. He was too strong, the pride that radiated from him forbidding anything as debasing as pity.

  But she felt betrayed. Betrayed by the man who shared her blood, the man whose legacy she had fought so hard to preserve. The man who had brought so much destruction into the lives of other people for the sake of his vision for the future.

  It made her feel tainted. Made everything in her, her ambition, her blood, feel dirty. That blood that was supposed to be so important, that was supposed to define her … she hated it now.

  “It is done, Vanessa. The only thing I regret is that my mother lived out her last days in discomfort, rather than in the lifestyle she deserved. But it was the defining moment in my life.” The gleam in his eyes was deadly, cold and devoid of anything tender. “It was the moment when I realized that I would stop at nothing to make it to the top where I could crush men like your father beneath my heel.”

  It was the venom in his voice, not aggressive or blatant, woven into every syllable, touching every word, that shocked her the most. The hatred that was there.

  She had been a fool. She had imagined that Lazaro’s quest was about vanity, but it was about something so much deeper. She had thought herself a trophy to him, but that was so far removed from the truth it was laughable.

  She was his avenue to vengeance. He was using her, a fact she’d known from the beginning, but what she hadn’t realized was exactly what she was being used for.

  He would use her not only to bring him to the top, but to mock her father’s efforts. To show him that he now owned everything that her father had tried to keep from him. That he, Lazaro, had won.

  Even as the realization crashed through her, she could understand it, but she didn’t want to be Lazaro’s pawn. Or his queen, as the case may be.