She frowned at him, her brow wrinkling, but she nodded slowly. “You tell me to do something, I do it… for safety. T-to keep me safe,” she whispered her eyes widening and meeting his as the full impact hit her. She felt herself slip past the usual bullshit as she spoke, as he absorbed her words and slowly nodded as if to praise her. What did he mean by that exactly? Was he trying to keep her safe from him or safe in their terrifying mafia world of false friends and sinister business associates.
He moved his hand from her thigh up to her arm, wrapped it around her and then pulled her toward him. She brought her hand up to brace herself against his chest, but she was practically sitting in his lap now, his face almost touching hers when he spoke. She hardly dared to breath, though a tiny whimper escaped her throat when she felt the impossible steel of muscle threading his body. The promise of a human cage if she was ever unlucky enough to be captured by this man so intent on treating her as his prey. He brought his other hand up between them and took hold of her chin, tilting her face until her eyes met his once more.
“And Casey?” he said huskily against her lips.
“Yes?” she whispered.
“Never call me ‘boy’ again. In any language. I don’t care when or where we are, I will bare that beautiful bottom and beat it until you can’t sit down. Understand?” His deep, accented voice vibrated through her entire body, taking her breath away. The dark promise of erotic violence did something to her it shouldn’t have, something she never would have expected.
“I understand,” she whispered. Then she sighed, her breath rushing across his lips in an unconscious invitation. His hands tightened on her arm and chin until she flinched in his hold and he was forced to set her back along the seat in the booth.
He nodded slightly and kept his arm around the top, near her head, as though ready to reach for her if she tried to bolt. Which wasn’t far from the truth. She was exhausted and ready to go home. The anxiety and intensity of her emotions were becoming overwhelming. She didn’t know how much more she could take. She really didn’t understand why Ignacio was allowing this to happen to her. He’d never allowed other men this close before. She understood the need to keep Bolivia happy, but when had keeping a business contact happy meant allowing them to take his wife out to a club?
“Now tell me about the accident,” he demanded.
She shrugged and reached for her orange juice, desperately wishing it was something stronger. She wondered what he would do if she lunged for his drink and downed it before he could stop her. He probably wouldn’t be too impressed and chances were pretty good, he could stop her before she got very far into that course of action.
“I was eighteen,” she told him, tracing the edge of her glass with one light-pink tinted nail. “I don’t remember anything about it at all actually. I was told it happened on the highway when we were driving back from out of state. My entire family died in the accident; two sisters, a brother, my mom and my dad.”
He lifted his hand and touched the tiny scar on her face again before running his hand over the top of her head in a soothing motion. He dropped his arm back behind her. Oddly, she felt relaxed with his arm behind her. As though nothing could happen with him in the booth next to her. She turned her body so she could face him a little better as she spoke about one of the most painful things in her life.
“I… I had to miss the funerals,” she told him quietly. “I was in a medically induced coma for nearly five weeks while I recovered. Th-there was a lot of swelling in my brain so I had to have time to heal. But… waking up to find out that my entire family was gone and that I’d missed the funerals… it was devastating.”
He nodded, not saying anything. Just watching her as she spoke. She so rarely talked to anyone, let alone discussed her family and the car accident, and yet it felt strangely okay to do it here, with Reyes. Like he was safe somehow. Which was utterly ridiculous. He was as far from safe as she could get. She didn’t know what kind of business he had with her husband and she didn’t want to know, but it wouldn’t be anything good. Nothing she wanted to be involved in.
“They shaved a bunch of my hair off and I had staples in my head from here to here,” she pointed at the side of her head, indicating a line across the left side. “There were also a couple of holes in my skull… I guess to relieve the pressure. It was terrifying and very painful whenever the medication started to wear off.”
He nodded again, his jaw tightening a little as he listened to her. “What other injuries did you have?” he asked.
“Except for the cut on my face, none really,” she murmured. “I was very lucky actually.”
He growled incredulously, “You call having your skull cracked open luck?”
“I just mean that my entire family died in that accident and I got away with a few scratches except for the crack on my head. I guess it could have been so much worse for me.” She was startled to find tears stabbing her eyes and she blinked them rapidly away. “I’m grateful for my life. Ignacio was there for me too. He was one of my father’s close friends and he took care of me as soon as I was released from the hospital. He made sure I didn’t have to worry about anything.”
He leaned back and watched her with a brooding expression. She got the feeling he didn’t really know what to do with her. That there was something about her that bothered him and that he was bothered by his reaction to her. It was almost exhilarating for her to sit here with him and to have a real conversation.
“What about the headaches?” he asked, his voice issuing another demand. “They part of the accident?”
She shivered under the dark scrutiny of his penetrating gaze. The way he pinned her to the seat and forced her to talk to him about some of the most personal things in her life. She played with the edge of her wrap, stretching it and running her nail along the fabric before answering him. He wasn’t going to like the answer anyway.
She lifted her shoulder a little in a careless shrug. “I guess.”
“What does that mean?” he asked, his voice taking on an annoyed edge. He picked up his glass and finally took a drink of the amber liquid.
“Well the headaches started right after the car accident so, of course, they must be linked,” she answered quickly. “But I guess it’s impossible to prove. Doctors don’t know enough about migraines to be able to find out if mine are caused by the accident. And there’s no way to stop them anyway.”
His frown turned even darker until she was truly squirming against the seat. “What do you mean ‘doctors don’t know enough’?” he repeated her words in a tight voice. “You see a bunch of head doctors for this problem? They send you to specialists, right? Get it taken care of.”
She didn’t know what to say to him. How much should she tell him? She couldn’t say anything that would make her sound disloyal toward Ignacio, but the truth was, she’d never been allowed to see more than his personal physician since the accident. She had done a lot of reading on the internet about her condition though. “Uh… it’s fine, really,” she said quickly. “There’s not much anyone can do. I take medication to control the symptoms and that seems to help most of the time. Sometimes I still get really bad ones… and I just deal with those as best I can.”
He made an angry sound and slashed his hand through the air. “Yeah, I saw how you dealt with that yourself.”
She looked away from him and said softly, “I told you I’d try not to do that again.”
“And you never lie?” he asked, skepticism clear in his voice.
She looked him in the eye and said, “Never.”
He held her gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment. She refused to break eye contact. She knew it didn’t really mean anything. Anyone could profess to tell the truth and look a person in the eye. It was a stupid myth that people thought they could get away with a lie if they looked a person in the eye. But somehow, when his dark scrutiny swept over her and finally captured her eyes with his, she knew he could discern truth from lie.
“
Tell me, nena… for I find I am curious. Why would you bother to match words to actions with me? I am nothing to you. You could tell me one thing and then go home and do quite another. I would never know.” She felt his fingers drop from the back of the booth and ever so lightly touch the soft strands of her hair.
She shivered at the slight contact. She closed her eyes for a moment and resisted the urge to press into the touch. She was a little breathless when she spoke, her voice serious, “I don’t have much, Reyes, but I do have integrity. It’s something I had to teach myself over the years. Every time my husband and his men looked at me and lied, I promised myself that I wouldn’t allow a lie to pass my lips.”
His hand suddenly clenched into a fist behind her head making her flinch and he swiftly glanced around. His voice was a sharp growl when he spoke. “That is a stupid and reckless thing for a woman in your position to say. I hope you are smarter than to speak things like that around Ignacio Hernandez. He doesn’t strike me as a patient man.”
Casey shrugged carelessly and continued to play with the hem of her wrap avoiding his eyes, knowing he was getting a better glimpse inside her head now that he was forcing her to speak to him at length. “Ignacio knows how I feel about him. There’s a reason we don’t spend time with each other and haven’t shared a bedroom in years. Well… we’ve never actually shared a bedroom. He doesn’t like my shoes and girl things invading his space. What I mean is, he knows how much I despise him, so he hasn’t summoned me to share his bed in well over a year.”
Oh shit, she was babbling again, way oversharing. The strained look on his face convinced her to slam her lips shut and seal them.
“Fuck,” Reyes snarled.
He dropped his hand to the back of her neck, wrapping his fingers around the slim column of her throat through her hair. She cried out and brought her hands up to protect herself as he jerked her across the booth toward him. She sprawled in his lap, gasping as her hip grazed the hardness of what could only be his erection. She scrambled against him, trying to push herself back from his chest, but his fingers bit into her arms denying her the space she desperately sought.
Finally, when he refused to allow her an inch and the fight ebbed from her, she allowed herself to lay stiffly across his chest and swallowed the sob that threatened to build up in her throat. A painful throbbing was beginning to pull from behind her eye socket. She wanted to shout at him, ask him why he was doing this to her. Was he truly interested in her? Or was he playing some sick game with Ignacio?
He pulled her steadily closer until she was fully in his lap, her long legs dangling awkwardly, half on the booth and half across his muscular thighs. She wasn’t able to brace herself and was forced to trust him to hold her up against his shoulder and chest. He leaned her in, angling her toward him until his scarred cheek brushed the pale smoothness of her own. She shuddered as the slight stubble of his shaven face scraped against her and the heat from his body warmed her. A whimper escaped her lips and it was on the tip of her tongue to break down and beg him to release her. But before she could speak, his deep voice interrupted her.
“When you come to my bed, cariña, I can promise you…” his warm breath touched her cheek and nose as he spoke and the pleasant smell of him combined with whiskey swamped her already overwhelmed senses, “I will never let you leave.”
The way he said it felt like a promise, not a hope. Like he somehow knew that she would end up in his bed. Vivid images of herself entwined with this man, embracing him in the throes of sexual ecstasy flooded through her. She made a distressed sound and tried to push against him again, but his hold was unbreakable. She bowed her shoulders and dropped her head, letting her forehead rest against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Reyes,” she whispered.
His shoulder jerked a little against her as though he were surprised. He brought a hand up and smoothed the hair back so he could see her face. “Why’re you sorry, nena?” he asked with a frown.
“You can’t have me,” she whispered, her eyes boring into his. “Even if you truly want me.”
His dark eyes widened for a moment, trapped in the innocent beauty of her multi-coloured gaze. Before he could reply, argue with her, she brought a hand up between their bodies and pressed it against her chest and said, “I don’t have many things, Reyes. Oh, I have clothes and I have jewels. Things I don’t want and never really cared about. Things I would give away in a heartbeat for five more minutes with my family. But the things that are real in life? I don’t have many of those. But the things that I do have are mine. I taught them to myself over painful years of Ignacio’s lessons. The things I taught myself are honesty, integrity and loyalty. You understand what I’m saying, Reyes?”
He swore savagely, baring his teeth at her. Then he jerked his head in a nod. He took her hair in his fist and crushed the soft strands for a moment. “Yeah, I understand, Casey.”
“Loyalty,” she whispered.
He growled and jerked her head back, baring her throat while pulling her closer against him, into the incredible heat of his body. She moaned, knowing her body was reacting to him in a way she’d never before experienced, flooding her with wet heat. “You feel that, woman?” he growled, leaning in to run his lips whisper soft across her throat, barely caressing her.
“Yes!” she gasped, her voice barely a whimper of sound. “It doesn’t matter, Reyes. I belong to him.”
Rage vibrated in his voice as he spoke against her soft skin. “He doesn’t fucking deserve you.” He stood with her still in his arms, handed her off to Alonzo and said, “Get her home safely.”
Chapter Eight
“Fuck that woman,” Reyes growled, downing a generous drink straight from the bottle before slamming it on the table.
Casey Hernandez was dangerous. She was testing his calm. She was driving him to drink.
He strode to the window and glared into the night. His meeting with her had not gone as he’d planned. Instead of clarifying things, he’d found himself more confused, more entangled. She was an infuriating mixture of world-weary siren and stunted half-child that never grew up. When she’d flat out told him that her husband hadn’t touched her in over a year, he’d damn near torn her clothes off and fucked her right there in the booth, despite the few hundred witnesses swarming around them and her bodyguard a few feet away.
Then she’d given him the one gift he couldn’t refuse, the one thing that was guaranteed to save her life in all this. She’d promised him loyalty. Well, not him. But as good as. She’d given her loyalty to Ignacio Hernandez, a disgusting pig of a man. One of the poorest excuses for a business partner that Reyes had ever had to work with – a situation that had only been allowed to go on this long because of the female. If she’d given her loyalty to such a man, because of a vow, most likely forcibly given when she was barely more than a child, then what would she give to Reyes when he finally had her wholly within his power? The thought took his breath away.
He would settle for nothing less than Casey Hernandez’s utter and complete surrender; her loyalty. He would heal the damaged beauty and she would stand tall at his side as his scarred queen.
He reached for the bottle again, swearing viciously when he knocked it sideways, spilling the contents across the table. He snatched it up, took another long drink and then threw it away from him in an uncharacteristic moment of rage. The satisfying shatter of glass barely calmed him.
He wanted nothing more than to drag the woman out of that fucking mansion and away from the husband that should never have had her. Every time he saw her she managed to claw her way under his skin a little more and he feared for her safety in that damn gilded cage she lived in. If her husband didn’t do something to her, she might manage to fucking hurt herself. Either with the pills or her own reckless disregard for her safety. She’d say something stupid to Ignacio or one of his men. Roll her pretty eyes at the wrong guy at the wrong time. She seemed incapable of perfect obedience, no matter how hard she tried.
He’d just have to go with his original plan. The one that would make her safe and ensure her freedom all in one stroke; Mrs. Hernandez would become a widow.
Casey woke to the beautiful aroma of subtle, flowery perfume. A smile curved her lips and she sighed, stretching under her blankets, enjoying the smoothness of her sheets against bare legs and arms. She usually wore light cotton sleep shorts and a tank top to bed. Not very sexy, but it didn’t matter since she slept alone. She enjoyed the comfort and she liked the feel of her fluffy quilt wrapped around her body.
Today was one of those mornings where she preferred to wake up slowly and allow the day to creep in with soothing sluggishness. She wiggled her face against the blanket, enjoying the softness against her cheek. The lovely sweet smell wafted around her, tantalizing her and drifting softly next to her face. Her lashes fluttered open and she forced herself to focus on the thing that had touched her.
It was a petal. Like from a flower. She untangled her arms from the blanket and pushed herself up on an elbow, reaching for it. She picked up the silky rose petal and rubbed it between her fingers. It was an honest to goodness rose petal. Looking around she realized she was surrounded by them. Hundreds of rose petals drifted over her prone, blanket covered body and all across the tall Queen Anne bed. She frowned, trying to register where they had come from.
It wasn’t unusual for the maid to come in while she was sleeping to drop off breakfast or laundry. Casey was a terrible sleeper, so when she did finally get to sleep she tended to sleep hard, oblivious to the world around her. But the quiet woman, who rarely said two words to Casey was unlikely to randomly shower her mistress in rose petals unless ordered to. Sitting up with a frown, Casey felt several petals fall from her hair and float to the warm bed. She plucked one that had tangled in the ends of her long, disheveled hair. She wondered what colour they were. Red?
Scarred Queen Page 5