“Don’t you want to ask me if you’re next?” I say, looking at her standing there with her body glistening with sweat, her hair all tousled, and her stomach exposed in a way that makes me want to get her back up against that wall again. “Or should I kick the shit out of someone else so I can see what kind of bra you’re wearing?”
She laughs.
Eliza laughs. What kind of woman can do that after what she just saw, or after me laughing at her after what I just did?
Maybe this is why I recognized something in her.
And she says something to me that no one has ever said to me.
“Thank you,” Eliza says. “And generally a man who chokes me on the first date has already seen my bra,” she manages to laugh.
She’s fucking amazing. And that little comment of hers has me noticeably hard. At this point, she should be running for the fucking hills.
“You held back,” Eliza says, and it’s not a question.
“I’ve killed women before, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I quickly retort. What, it’s somehow important for me to let her know that I specifically didn’t want to kill her?
“Okay,” I see her say. That’s when I really look, and not just at her body, and I see how hard she was fighting.
I may have held back. Fuck, I know I was.
But she was fighting for her life.
Eliza at my mercy does fucked up things to my brain. I want to protect her, but I like her being a little soft creature at my mercy, too.
This is a romance novel, baby, but I’m nobody’s hero.
“You’re not going to run away?” I ask quietly.
She looks at me for a long moment.
“Do I need to?” she asks. She feels something. It’s the same thing I’m feeling.
“You’re not afraid?” I ask again.
“Do I need to be?” she asks again.
“A smart man would be,” I say to her.
“You’ve dealt with a woman like me though,” she says back, inching closer to me.
I get close enough to Eliza that I’m pressing my nose into hers. “I don’t think I ever will, either,” I say.
Inhaling her scent, my rock-hard cock presses into her. Despite all logic and reason, I fucking want her.
When I realize she’s getting a little faint, I hold her up. Looking into Eliza’s eyes, I know something is going on inside her.
What, I don’t know.
Eight
Eliza
Grayson’s holding me, and I shouldn’t let it affect me. Shouldn’t focus on how much I want him to grab me. How I want to grab him. I didn’t realize just how dizzy I started to get. The whole lightning fast events in front of me are starting to catch up with me.
All of a sudden the situation I’m in starts becoming clear. As if a fog has lifted.
I see the bloodied remains of Juan.
I take a deep breath and wipe some of the sweat and blood off my mouth with the back of my hand. “Didn’t Juan realize Grayson and I were trying to kill each other over here?” I say, crouching down and bending my knees, grasping them.
I never take my eyes off him.
I never take my eyes off any danger.
When Grayson’s sharp eyes look into mine but I see his body isn’t tensing up to swing at me, I’m disarmed and my brain goes in a thousand dangerous directions.
The past filters in and takes over the present. It’s been so long since I had this kind of, well, panic attack, and my brain checked out of reality.
The sharp, tangy smell of gasoline permeates my nostrils and my dreams when I sleep. My brain feels coated in it. It haunts my memories, tearing me back in time to another place, when my destiny was not my own.
Before I took charge in my role as distributor, designating smuggling routes that made other narcotraffickers fucking cum in their pants imagining how well I moved product.
I work for Cabeza Dios, and I work very fucking hard for them now. But I only work for them because they took my father and mother from me.
How our capo, Lorenzo Quentin himself, killed my family. His mercy is why I live, and parts of me whisper it is why he’ll die. I can’t share that with anyone, though. Because no one smart betrays a cartel.
In Columbia, our neighbors weren’t far from us, and they had coca plants just like us. Before the powder comes the leaves and after the leaves comes soaking them in gasoline to alkalize them.
My father had made Peruvian Paste and my mother rolled it into cigarettes.
Bogota had very poor people who would scrape together their last pesos for a taste, and it made enough money to put food on our table and for my parents to save for my education.
When my father started, so did a few other men in town. They did not have a small operation like my father, and therefore he was the first weakness and competition to snuff out.
I came home from school one day and saw my mother lying naked on the floor, sobbing so softly and her glassy eyes vacant of the person she used to be.
My father was tied to his chair, body soaked in gasoline. A rag stuffed in his mouth. A bowl from the kitchen held his feet, drenched in it. That’s when they burned him, right in front of me.
I smell my father’s flesh, hear my mother’s screams, and feel the heat of what happened, my house being torched with my father. This is the story that nobody knows, save Rafe who knows parts of it.
Rafe is the one who usually brings me assignments. He’s ranked higher than me in Cabeza Dios. He is a mentor and, in many ways, a father figure to me. He has always been there to watch over me since I started in this business. He taught me almost everything I know about smuggling cocaine and also about distributing microwaves.
What an odd skillset to have.
But I never share anything deep, dark, twisty, or just so intimately me with anyone.
I look at Grayson Teague, into his soulful eyes, and the panic attack subsides.
Instead, I feel myself starting to open up to him.
“They killed my family, now I move their drugs,” I say, deadpan.
But this is huge for me to share.
“They think I’ve forgiven them, but they will probably never fully trust me” I say, my mouth forming an “o” at the words before I sigh deeply and then look into Grayson’s gorgeous, absolutely piercing gray-green eyes.
Those eyes peer into my mine like they can see into my soul. A shiver works down my spine and to my core, wicked, wanton, and unwanted…but undeniable. In this moment I’d fucking tell him anything, the way I feel when I’m talking to him makes me feel so light. Like a time before everything was so serious. Before I lived for vengeance and breathed raw and inhuman needs. He makes me human again when I’m with him and I know it’s too addictive.
I’ve made a point to never use our product, but I know what it does. It put the surreal nature of life into this magically real perspective. It makes the impossible seem possible. It feels really fucking good. And I think if I’m not careful, Grayson will do that and so much more to me.
But I look into those eyes. He leans closer to me.
“Forgiveness isn’t the right word,” Grayson says softly, bringing his palm to cup my cheek.
“It isn’t. But they don’t know what lies in my heart. They think they’ve crushed me, but they’ve built a monster,” I say, admitting these things for the first time aloud, or truly ever to myself.
Why can I tell Grayson?
Why do I want to?
I’m cautious. I’m smart. That’s why I’m still alive.
But this fucking idea is about as crazy as they come.
“We aren’t going to get this done fighting each other,” I say to Grayson. He looks at me as if he knows what I’m about to say and agrees. So I continue. “We’ll only, well, fight each other. The pile of bodies may or may not have coke squared at the end.”
This breaks his hold on me as I pull back.
I’ve never felt so vulnerable before and I realize that it make
s me want him to come back and touch me again…but I can’t let him have this effect on me.
I can’t want to trust him.
I trust no one.
As I shouldn’t, ever. People only care about themselves.
But I find myself asking, who cares about Grayson?
It can’t be me and I shouldn’t be thinking it could be me, considering telling him my tragic backstory and shit. I mean, really, what’s wrong with me that I can’t stop thinking about trusting him, about wanting to tell him my story?
I actually shake my head, trying to get him out of my head. But how do I get that ringing sensation from my brain, bated breath silences between us where I cling to everything he says like it is more precious than oxygen?
Who knew one person could be so desperately goddamn lonely?
“Fuck,” Grayson says, putting his hand on the back of his head. He looks to me, pursing his lips, opening them, then closing them.
He stands.
He sits.
He stands back up.
Grayson paces and turns back to me.
“They won’t like this,” Grayson says slowly.
“They trust us to get things done. If they wanted more say in how, they would have to be on the ground like we are.” I gulp. In all honesty, I’m shocked by my words. “I don’t trust you,” I quickly seethe at him. “How could either of us? But this is just smart use of resources and you and I both know we can work something out. Because they are never going to stop fighting but we’re all going to have this formula one day or another. So let’s get it in our territories.”
Now, I stand, extending my palms to the sky.
“Or we both go our separate ways tonight, and tomorrow we continue fighting each other to the bitter end.”
Not exactly a great fucking plan, and you know why? Because it doesn’t get results. And that’s what I do. In this repeatable, boring, reliable way.
Why don’t I smartly use the resource in front of me?
Why not?
There are a thousand reasons not to, many of them written on the tattooed side of him that has a carved and scarred skull. He’s the Grayson Teague that kills those who betray Bonita Muerte Cartel.
He’s not like some dumb shit at a bar who might be working for the other side.
He is someone working for the other side. And he’s not dumb. He’s ruthless, he’s smart, and he’s capable of anything.
Everything I’ve ever been cautious about was to prevent myself from accidentally getting close to someone who works for someone like him.
And now I’m choosing to get close to him?
Getting in bed with the enemy sends a shiver down my spine, but I don’t think it is made as much of fear as it should be.
This shiver is something else...
I’m not a normal girl. I’m like a puzzle piece. There’s one fucking place where I fit, and I have this feeling that the place I fit is with Grayson.
It’s a crazy goddamn thought.
All I want to do is kiss him. Why the fuck is that vision repeating in my mind?
I shouldn’t kiss him. I should kill him.
Nine
Grayson
“They get to do whatever they want to you, take your family, force you to do their dirty work, and what do you to retaliate? Not a fucking thing!” Eliza laughs. “Like, what, you’re going to fight the cartel?” Eliza’s eyes widen and as her laughs die down, she looks off into the distance.
She tells me about the gasoline that killed her parents. About the smell being burned into her memories and coming back, overtaking her thoughts, distorting her perception of reality. I think I want to keep her from ever getting even near the shit. My sole instinct is to protect her, have her, claim her as mine.
I know more than enough about your mind taking over. When I killed Juan, reality meant nothing. Protecting Eliza was everything.
This is the greatest danger I have ever faced. I know Eliza Lang is about as dangerous as they come because she’s smart.
I also know that this is the only woman that has ever made me feel this way. I’m fucking gone for her. I am in goddamn love with her.
I can tell by how I want to do anything to protect her. By how hard it is not wrap my arms around her. Because I killed that fucker who betrayed her and in doing so betrayed what I thought was most valuable.
But there’s a crack in my perfect little code. I thought I knew what I stood for, who I fought for.
In a way, I do stand for the same thing. Loyalty.
But now I want something I’ve never wanted before. And I don’t just mean a very dangerous woman who’s perfect ass I want to squeeze while I bury my cock inside of her.
No, I want justice.
Don’t make a face. Goddamn, I never thought I’d see the day where I was looking to right any moral wrongs.
I’m still a darkness, a fist curled up and pointed in the direction of any evil that needs doing.
But Zario Dantes isn’t my master anymore.
When I call Taylor, while Eliza was powdering her nose (not with cocaine, we don’t do that shit), even Taylor knew something was up, but he was smart enough to not pry.
Taylor is my only friend in the fucking world.
A killer doesn’t have the time to make friends. But Taylor has been there for me. Forever. He’s not a sicario, but he’s been around enough of them that he knows how to conduct himself.
I would do anything for him. Till today I believed he was the one person I would betray the cartel for, if it ever came to that. We used to work ops together, earlier jobs where we would have several targets to take out. You get close to someone in the field and you understand what the term “battle buddy” means.
But this army of one is now flying another flag. I’m not cartel-loyal…I’m Eliza loyal.
The way I feel about Taylor, that’s friendship.
The way I feel about Eliza is a soul-deep need that is so goddamn intense it actually scares me. I see the truth in how dangerous it is how much her presences alters who I am. It’s like she uncovers me, the real me.
Bonita Muerte isn’t where my heart lies. I’m just their weapon.
This momentary truce may end tomorrow. Eliza doesn’t realize it yet, but I’m not going to be able to let her go. At this point I want to drag her out of this shitty jungle and lock her in a little shack with me forever.
You see, two things are happening.
One, she’s trusting me. Even if she can’t admit it. Even just a little bit, she’s trusting me.
And two, fuck, not that it makes any more sense than her doing that with me, but I’m fucking trusting her.
Eliza fucking Lang is telling me her deep, dark secrets. She’s baring her soul to me and she’s offering a truce for us to work together on the most important goddamn project we’re likely to have all fucking year.
I’m in love with this woman.
My cock is rock fucking hard listening to her, the details of her pain building an ache inside me. My strongest, purest instinct is to comfort her. I can’t sit still because I want to grab her and kiss her and tell her I’ll get the goddamn coke pieces with her, or maybe I’ll run off in the sunset with her.
Now? Hearing her story, I want to kill every motherfucker who’s ever hurt her and then ride off into the sunset with her.
I’d take Eliza to San Francisco. She’s been, but she’s a LA girl and she’s never been to SF with me. Sure, she’s Californian, but she needs to be in the city our hearts would be at home in. I can see us there, smell the Bay air around us and it feels so fucking far from this reality, and in this moment, that’s where I want to take us away to.
Maybe one day.
Do you hear me? What kind of a fucking pussy am I? I should waste her, not sit here and plan our goddamn future.
She doesn’t trust me.
The words reverberate off my brain as she declares them.
How could she?
I can’t trust her…right?
<
br /> I don’t know if I can love her.
Okay, that’s not true. I already know that I can. That’s why I’m in so much trouble right now.
Because I want to say yes way too damn eagerly.
Eliza bared her soul to me, so why don’t I do the same?
My voice finds the way to say things I have never said to anyone else. I’m not just telling her my story, I’m telling her things I’ve never even thought about telling anyone else...things I didn’t know that I had to tell. Eliza makes me tell her things I didn’t know about myself.
“I never knew my parents. Zario adopted me, and he first was teaching me to be a sicario and made me his enforcer but he saw use for me beyond just the hitman work…but this life is all I’ve ever known. I’ve never begrudged him for it, but some small part of me wonders what my life would have been without darkness enclosing it,” I say, the words spilling out of me like I’ve sliced open a vein, and in a way, I have.
I stop myself. I’ve said too much.
What the fuck was I thinking?
I wasn’t thinking. This must be the truth, but I had no idea I felt this way.
I am a sicario. I wash so much blood down the nicest hotels drains in the world. And during that time all I think about is the steak I’ll eat for dinner.
Nothing fucking scares me. Nothing intimidates me.
But this woman scares the shit out of me the way she could make me bare my own soul in ways I didn’t know I could.
Eliza cocks her head to the side. She’s not really acknowledging me freaking out even if she can see it. If I’m honest, I’m hopeful it is because I think she’s doing some freaking out of her own. I watch her small lips move to form words, to will sound to come out. “We’ll do this?” She asks lightly.
Her perfect mouth is begging for me to kiss it, but now is so not the time. I can tell I am going to lose my goddamn mind if I don’t taste Eliza soon. I’ll probably jerk my dick clear off thinking about her. This is insane.
I have never wanted any woman so much.
“Yeah,” I nod. I really feel like a fucking pussy because there’s so much more than I want to say, but this was all I could muster.
Don't Trust Him: An Enemies to Lovers Romantic Suspense (King Vs. Queen Book 1) Page 4