Black Hearts (Sins Duet #1)

by Karina Halle

“I don’t know, the news never identified them.”

  “It doesn’t matter. And the guy who was following me wasn’t Hispanic at all. He was white. Very white. Like, albino white. Not that it matters, I guess.”

  Albino? If anyone should be here and on my case, it’s Parada or maybe Barrera. Definitely not an albino.

  This isn’t good.

  If she’s honestly being followed, it makes my job that much harder.

  “How do you know you were followed?”

  “Because where I went, he went. Up the street, down the street, across the street, back and forth. I ducked into a store and hid, and he came inside too. I had to wait for the right moment and then I ran out. He stopped following me at that point but he was definitely following me up until then.”

  This guy isn’t from any cartel, not my father’s anyway. He sounds too sloppy. And I haven’t been followed at all. I would know. It’s what I’ve been trained for.

  So why would someone follow her?

  This is getting messy. I need to simplify things.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” I tell her. “I’ll worry for the both of us.”

  “Yeah, right. Okay. Sure.”

  “You told me yourself that you’re sensitive and overly observant, and I know those things are true. I’m not saying that this didn’t happen to you, but for now, you have to keep in mind that it could be a by-product of your imagination. That this man wasn’t following you. That it was a coincidence.”

  “That’s one hell of a coincidence.”

  “I’ve seen bigger coincidences, and in the end that’s all they are.” I put my hand back on her thigh and move it inward. She stiffens. “You’re safe with me. You understand that, right? Whether someone is following you or isn’t, I’ve got you.” I slide my hand up between her legs, under her skirt. “I’ve got you.”

  She looks around tensely. Not because she thinks she’s being followed, but because my fingers are further up, teasing the edge of her underwear.

  “I don’t think you should wear underwear anymore,” I tell her, leaning in so my mouth is at her ear.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You know what I’m doing.”

  “We’re in public.”

  “If someone is following you, let’s give them a show.”

  The truth is, there’s a potted palm tree right behind us, partially obscuring us from the other tables at our backs, we’re seated at the edge of the deck right above the water, and the next couple seated down the long bar from us are too busy staring at the bay views to pay attention to what I’m doing. There isn’t much of a show, unless you look for it.

  I wouldn’t mind either way if people watched.

  I’m just watching her.

  I slide my finger under the edge of her panties and find her hot, wet cunt. Her legs automatically part slightly, her lips doing the same.

  Fuck. This is everything.

  I love how trusting she is with me. I know that I push her boundaries. I know she hasn’t had this kind of experience with men. I know she overthinks and her heart is wildly soft.

  But she’s willing. She’s learning what she wants.

  And what she wants is me.

  My finger slides up over the swell of her clit, gently rubbing in circles.

  I watch her closely as my finger goes around and around. Her pulse ticks along in her throat—her heart must be racing. Underneath her sunglasses, I bet her eyes are closed, rolling back in her head.

  “You like this?” I whisper, leaning over. I lick the edge of her ear before taking her lobe between my teeth and tugging.

  She gasps, breathless. She can’t answer. But yes, she likes it.

  I lean in closer, moving my fingers down slowly, teasing her inch by inch, until I tease her cunt. “You’ve soaked through your underwear,” I murmur. “I told you you shouldn’t wear them anymore.”

  “Vicente,” she says. My name has never sounded better. She offers it to me like a prayer.

  I thrust my fingers inside, feeling her clench around me. Her whole body tightens. God, she feels so fucking snug. It’s unbelievable. I’m harder than rebar, my dick straining against the fly of my jeans.

  Now would be a terrible time for the waitress to stop by.

  But she doesn’t. It’s just me and Violet and the gulls that wheel above the bay, their cries for food masking her breathless little ones as I slyly pump my fingers in and out of her, building in a quiet rhythm.

  When I know I’ve worked her up to a certain point, I take my fingers out and drag her wetness back to her clit, sliding it over, slick and fast.

  “Oh god,” she says, nearly choking on her words.

  She comes in my hand, pulsing, her fingers grasping onto the table, trying to keep her body from rocking out of control.

  We’re in public, after all.

  When she finally calms down, I take my hand away and make a point to lick each finger in front of her. She has no idea how good she tastes to me. Better than dessert.

  “I can’t believe you just did that,” she whispers to me, clearing her throat a few times.

  “Lick my fingers or make you come on my hand, surrounded by people?”

  She gives me a wry, sated smile. “Both.”

  “Well, you should start believing it,” I tell her. “Or I’ll have to prove to you over and over again just how wild and crazy you make me.”

  “That doesn’t sound like such a bad deal.”

  “Oh, it’s not.”

  I pick up my drink and raise it to hers. “Now hurry up and finish your drink so I can fuck your brains out properly.”

  The couple down the table both look over at us in shock when I say that.

  Guess it was a little bit loud.

  I just give them a wink.

  Fucking prudes.

  Chapter Eleven

  Violet

  “Put your ass in the air.”

  Vicente’s words slide over me like silk and I don’t even have to tell my body how to act, it’s already acting.

  I arrange myself so my ass is raised, my head down, cheek pressed against the cool sheets.

  I know I probably should have gone home after we had our date at the bar. I mean, he got me off in public. Not just in public, in broad daylight. Surrounded by people! If that’s not a sign that I should probably go home before things get crazier, I don’t know what is.

  Plus, I have homework I need to do and it feels like I haven’t seen my parents for days. But the truth is, I’m nervous about seeing them. I’m nervous that I’m possibly being followed—I don’t care what Vicente says, I know what I saw and my intuition is always right.

  I’m afraid for a million reasons.

  And I know that he’s the man who will take my fear away.

  By replacing it with another fear.

  A good fear.

  Anticipation.

  Because when the man you’re sleeping with and totally infatuated with tells you he wants to fuck your brains out, it’s nearly impossible to say no to that. We couldn’t get back here fast enough and I was barely in the door before he was stripping me naked.

  “You must learn to shut it all off, Violet,” Vicente says, taking me out of my thoughts and back to the fact that I’m on his bed with my ass in the air.

  God, his voice does something to me, like taking a bath in milk and honey.

  “Let it all go. All of it. Every single thought and worry that’s going through your head right now. You need to be in the moment, with me. The world won’t disappear the moment you stop holding on to it.”

  How is it that he can read me so well?

  I hear him walk closer to the foot of the bed, feel the warmth of his proximity, the intensity of his eyes. I know they’re raking up and down my body, and my skin prickles from the sensation.

  “I want you to close your eyes.”

  My eyes are already closed.

  “I want you to listen to the room.”

 
I try and listen. I hear the fridge from the kitchen humming and a door shutting somewhere down the hall of the hotel. I hear my heart-pounding loudly in my chest, a drumbeat without end. I hear his breath getting heavier, raspier.

  I hear the sound of his shirt coming off then landing on the floor.

  I hear the slide of a belt being pulled out of the loops.

  Then the creak of leather.

  Something touches my ass and I jump, startled, my heart flying all over the place.

  “Easy, tranquilo,” he murmurs. “The belt is your friend. It will keep you here and now. If I see your brain and thoughts being sucked somewhere else, somewhere other than me, I will whip you.”

  Oh my god.

  I pop one eye open, the other pressed into the bed.

  Are you kidding me?

  He’s going to whip me? First the ropes, and now this?

  “I will go gentle on you,” he assures me, and the belt moves slowly over one cheek, dipping into the crack, then up and out. “The only pain you’ll feel is the pain you want. The pain that will bring you back into the here and now.” He pauses. “Lo entiendes?”

  Fuck, I love it when he speaks Spanish.

  “Si,” I tell him. “Speak to me in your language.”

  I can hear him smiling. “You won’t understand what I’m saying.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I can feel it.”

  He leans over me, casting a shadow, and the belt trails up my spine and back. Shiver after shiver rocks through me.

  “El amore es invisible y entra y sale por donde quiere,” he whispers, “sin que nadie le pida cuenta de sus hechos.”

  It turns out I don’t know what it means. Sounds romantic though.

  Snap.

  The belt cracks against my thigh.

  Fuck! I snap to attention. Was I already drifting off?

  “Come back to me,” he says. “Clear your head.”

  The funny thing is, that didn’t even hurt. It was just the tip of the belt. It was a shock.

  “I was trying to figure out what you said.”

  He says something else in Spanish, then says, “There’s no need to figure it out. You said you can feel it. So feel it. Close your eyes.”

  I take a deep breath and close my eyes again.

  He slides a finger between my legs, up to my ass and down again, dipping inside me where I’m still wet from earlier. I squirm, wanting more, wanting less.

  I still can’t believe this is happening, how I can go from the Violet I was a few days ago to this one, the one who lets this man do anything he likes and—

  Crack.

  The belt gets my shoulder. Harder this time but the pain is sweet.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “Bring your mind back around. Forget the voices. Forget that inner world. Just live in this one with me.”

  He makes it sound so easy.

  Snap.

  A whip to the other shoulder.

  My thoughts go dark.

  I submit to him.

  “That’s it,” he says, reaching underneath me to my breasts, cupping them with wet and greedy fingers. He gently tugs at my nipples. It’s just the slightest bit painful, but more than that, it causes a shower of electricity to hum out from my limbs.

  “Fuck,” I say breathlessly into the mattress.

  He moves away at that, getting off the bed. I hear the crinkle of a condom foil and the slide of it as he slips it on. My ass can’t help but wiggle in anticipation.

  “Get up on all fours,” he commands, voice throaty with lust.

  I push myself up.

  He grabs my waist and yanks me back toward the edge of the bed.

  Teeth sink into my ass.

  “Ow,” I cry out, laughing at the same time.

  “I had to,” he says. “Your ass begs for it.”

  Crack.

  The belt comes down on one cheek, making me jump from the sting.

  “Sorry, that was all me,” he says. “It was begging for that, too.”

  “Tell me what else my ass wants,” I joke.

  I can feel the smile on his lips and I look over my shoulder at him with a warning glance.

  Sure enough, he’s grinning. “I think you know. But we’ll save that for later,” he adds. “Some things are worth working up to.”

  “Need I remind you that the second time we slept together, you tied me to the bed?”

  “Yes. And that was the second time, not the first. Now look forward,” he orders.

  I do what he says, just as he moves over me.

  The belt slips around my neck in a loop, like a damn collar.

  “Vicente,” I say quietly.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispers, moving the hair off my back and kissing down my spine. “Trust me.”

  I’m putting an awful lot of trust in you these days, I want to say, but I don’t want to talk with the belt pressed against my windpipe.

  I have to admit, it’s scary. I know lots of people like being choked during sex but since I never had that done before, I’m not sure.

  “Easy now,” he says, holding the end of the belt loosely. “If you’re uncomfortable, I’ll stop. If you don’t want to do this, I’ll stop. Just say the word. If you want to continue and stop later, we can do that to. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. I just want to bring you to another place.”

  Another lesson in letting go, courtesy of Vicente Cortez.

  I nod. I’ll go with it. For now. He hasn’t let me down yet.

  With one hand holding the end of the belt, causing my neck to arch back, he grips my hip with the other and slowly eases his cock inside me.

  Fuck. This feeling is everything and unlike anything. The way I spread around him, how tantalizingly slow he inches inside, drives me wild.

  He’s opening me to a whole new world.

  In other words, he’s fucking Aladdin and I’m on one hell of a magic carpet ride.

  “Easy,” he whispers through ragged breaths, continuing the torturous push.

  But I don’t want easy now, not even with the belt around my neck. The slow pace only riles me up. I want him deep, deep inside until I can’t see straight.

  I tell him so and it brings out a thick grunt from his throat as he grips my waist with his hand, yanking back on the belt.

  My breath catches in my throat, choked out of my lungs, as he slams into me all the way. I’m so tight and he’s so big and I’m so wet that he slides in like silk.

  It feels.

  Too.

  Fucking.

  Good.

  The angle is everything, the way he’s standing off the bed. He pushes himself in to the hilt and I feel myself expand around his thickness, his cock dragging over every wild nerve inside me.

  A long, aching groan pours out of my mouth. I grip the sheets, bunching them in my hands, starting to feel dizzy even though I’m still able to breathe.

  But my breath is short and rapid, and growing quicker.

  He slams into me again, over and over, his hips circling quickly, hitting the right spot every time. The feeling in my core grows and builds and tightens until I feel like I might pass out. Our skin slaps loudly against each other, a frenzied soundtrack to our animalistic fucking. The belt yanks back on my neck like I’m a wild creature he’s trying to tame.

  With one smooth movement, he pulls my hips up higher, angling himself down in a long, powerful thrust, and he’s hitting my G-spot with the perfect hot grind.

  All the tension snaps like a wire pulled too taut.

  I try to cry out but the noise dies in my throat.

  Every feeling, every sensation is heightened tenfold while the world starts to go grey and staticky, like my vision is turning into an old television.

  I think I’m passing out.

  And I’m definitely coming hard.

  Then with a throaty moan he lets go of the belt and it loosens around my neck and I’m gasping for breath as I pulse around him, washed away in the waves of my orgasm where I c
an’t make sense of anything.

  His pace quickens, both hands holding on to my waist as he drives himself inside me, so hard and thorough and brutal, as if he’s punishing me again and again, like he did with the belt.

  He’s savage.

  A fucking savage.

  And I’m still riding my orgasm, still trying to breathe again, each brutal thrust keeping me going on the wave, like I’ll keep coming for as long as he’s in deep. I’m up so high, high, high and I can’t come down even if I tried.

  It’s pure, primal bliss.

  “You’re going to be the death of me, Violet McQueen,” he growls, so rough and frantic in his rhythm, and then he slows with one, heavy push. His fingers dig into my skin, hard enough to leave bruises, and his loud, wild groan fills the room, twisting with my own.

  He stills against me, drops of sweat falling onto my back, our heavy breathing in unison, and it feels like he has to pry his fingers away from my hips.

  Eventually he pulls out.

  I collapse straight down onto the bed, my arms shaking. I reach up for my neck to feel for the welt, hoping it won’t leave something like the ropes left on my ankles. My parents won’t understand this one.

  “Let me see. Did I hurt you?” Vicente asks tenderly, moving up beside me on the bed. I roll over to face him and he runs his finger gently over my neck. “There’s no mark,” he says.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I tell him.

  “And you were okay with it?”

  I give a slight nod. “I came pretty fucking hard.”

  He gives me a soft grin. “You did.” He leans over and kisses along my neck, then up to my chin, my nose, my lips. “Do you find you’re able to be more in the moment with me?”

  I exhale loudly. “Yeah. Everything is just so…it’s different now. Everything is different.” I feel awed just saying it. He’s opened up a whole new world, a whole new side of me that I never knew existed. It’s like finding a door to a place that you’d only heard about and never believed was real.

  Vicente is my Narnia.

  “Good different, I hope?”

  I break into a crazy smile. “Of course it’s good different. You’re blowing my fucking world apart every moment I’m with you. You’re like…magic.”

  “I’m not magic,” he says solemnly. “Just my cock is.”