by Pam Godwin
He thought her stoic composure would snap by the end, but she persevered without crying. Anyone else would’ve screamed bloody murder beneath his inexperienced hands.
When he finished, he put the antiseptic away and pulled off the blindfold.
Her watery eyes went straight to her chest and widened. “Gemstones? Are they garnets?”
“They’re called painites.”
The double-prong barbells held a one-carat precious stone on each end. Four stones in total. He had the pieces custom-made so that her nipples would fit snugly between each pair of deep red gems.
“Fucking beautiful.” He circled a finger around her breast, eliciting a shiver.
She twisted her neck away and stared across the room at nothing.
“If you don’t like the piercings, too damn bad.” He roughly cupped her tender breast, making her gasp. “You will not remove them. Understand?”
“Yes.” Her jaw set.
He turned his attention to the knots and spent the next few minutes untying her. When the rope fell away, so did some of her indignation. She really didn’t like to be restrained.
Scooting to the headboard, she sat with her back against it. Her nipples would be sore for a few days, and though the jewelry wasn’t heavy, it would feel like a constant bite, an ever-present reminder of him.
“Will there be more?” She pulled the sheet over her lap but didn’t try to cover her chest. Instead, she stared down at the piercings with bitter curiosity. “Will you cover my body with jewelry until I look like a pincushion?”
“No more piercings, but there will be needle play in your future.”
She closed her eyes and choked. “Sorry I asked.”
“The second gift is some news I want to share.” He shrugged out of his shirt, grimacing at the tightness in his shoulder.
His shoes and jeans hit the floor next. Then he joined her on the bed.
“I finalized some negotiations today with three of the largest gangs in Caracas.” He leaned his head back against the headboard, watching her sidelong. “I traded some of my smuggling routes for their kidnapping operations.”
She whirled on him, her blue eyes burning. “You promised you wouldn’t kidnap anymore.”
“I keep my promises, Kate.”
“So you gave them your smuggling routes in exchange for…?” Her gaze flicked over his face, her expression etched in confusion. “For their kidnapping operations? What does that even mean?”
“Their territories are now mine. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but the gist is I control the bulk of Kidnap Ally and the surrounding areas. With the exception of a few rogue gangs, I’m the only one who can kidnap in Caracas.”
“Except you don’t do that…” Realization penetrated her voice, soaking the words with stunned tears. “You found a way to stop everyone from kidnapping.”
“Not everyone. But I’m working on it.”
There was the smile he’d hoped to see. It stretched her honeyed mouth, lifted her cheeks, and glistened in her eyes.
“That’s a great fucking surprise, Tiago.” She slid onto his lap, enticingly nude as she straddled his thighs. Her fingers braided through his hair. She touched their foreheads together, and her mouth closed over his gently, briefly. “You did good.”
“Sometimes I do the right thing, but it’s usually by accident.”
“How does it feel?” She ghosted her lips along his jaw and softly sucked behind his ear.
“Keep doing that, and I’ll skip the third gift and show you exactly how it feels.”
“I’m not afraid of you.” She leaned back and coasted a hand along the scar on his head. “The cutting and piercing and all the other pain you put me through really pisses me off. But then you do things that surprise me, like abolishing kidnapping in Caracas. Tell me that good deed doesn’t feel amazing.”
“It feels good to make you happy, Kate.” He stroked a thumb along her bottom lip. “That’s all that matters.”
She made a humming noise and ran her fingers through the messy strands on his head. “You have great hair. Who’s your stylist?”
“She’s a foxy little thing. Likes to put her tits in my face when she’s giving me a trim.”
“She also now knows how to stitch up your next knife wound.”
“Boones taught you that today?”
“He showed me. I haven’t actually held a needle.”
While Tiago spent the past three weeks running his business from the penthouse office, she passed the time with Boones, learning the basics of emergency medicine. She initiated the instruction, and Boones was more than willing to share his knowledge.
“If you ever decide to become a doctor,” Tiago said, “Boones would be an excellent mentor.”
“I know.” She gave him a small smile.
He clasped her tiny waist and lifted her to fasten his mouth to hers. After a few dizzying sips, he adjusted her legs around his and reached for his phone.
“One more gift tonight.” He unlocked the screen.
“I don’t think the last one can be topped.”
A swarm of energy buzzed in his gut as he handed her the phone. “The video is a couple of hours old.”
She glanced at him, directed her eyes on the screen, and stopped breathing.
Tiago’s back rippled with tension as he absorbed Kate’s reaction.
She held the phone tightly, her gaze glued to the screen. Face contorted. Lips pinched. Tears breaching the waterline.
The recorded video showed Lucia entering the shack with Cole Hartman. Tate looked at her, and it took a moment for him to come to terms with her presence. But once he did, he pulled her into his arms and held onto her like he would never let her go.
“I’ve waited three months to see this.” A keening sob tore from Kate’s chest.
“I know.” He hadn’t expected to feel so relieved by the reunion. It put a strange warmth in his chest and shifted the shape of his mouth.
“You’re smiling.” Her own smile trembled beneath streams of drippy tears as she watched the video until the end. “I guess you’re happy about your experiment.”
“No.” He took the phone from her and set it aside, tasting the thick onus of his words. “I regret it deeply.”
She traced gentle fingers along his hairline, her eyes bright and wet as she watched his face, waiting for him to elaborate.
“I shouldn’t have separated them.” He reclined against the headboard, his stomach a hard knot. “If someone did that to me, if I lost you for three months…” He dragged a hand down his face. “I can’t even let my mind go there.”
Crushed by guilt and unbalanced with relief, he wanted to end the bleed of vulnerability and kiss her until neither of them could think straight.
“He’s free.” She touched her brow to his and breathed a blissful sound against his lips. “In the end, you did the right thing. You let him go.”
But she wasn’t free. She wanted autonomy more than anything else, and he couldn’t give that to her. He would never let her go.
“Thank you for the video.” She touched her lips to his cheek. “For putting a stop to kidnapping.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “For never breaking your promises.”
She trailed a sensual path of sucking nips down the line of his neck, across his shirtless chest, and lower, arrowing straight toward his hardening cock.
“Kate.” Lust ran riot through his body, tensing muscles and tightening his balls.
She inched down the length of his reclined frame, nipple piercings glinting in the lamplight and blue eyes peering up through long lashes, drawing him in, pulling him deeper.
She’d never gone down on him, and he never forced it. Her ferocious temper and sharp teeth wasn’t a combination he’d wanted near his dick.
Her hands slipped beneath the waistband of his briefs, as if to relieve him of that last bit of clothing. But she hesitated, head down, hiding her face.
Images of his cock sinking between
her pillowy lips heated his insides to a smoldering boil. He snared her by the hair and wrenched her head back. “Don’t fucking tease—”
“I’m not.” Her eyes snapped to his, her expression a composition of longing and moxie, at odds with the tears flitting down her cheeks.
“What are you doing, Kate?” He released her hair.
“I don’t know.” She sniffed and tugged his briefs down his legs, freeing his erection. “I guess I’m trying to properly thank you, but also…” She clutched the base of his erection and gave him a hard, confident stroke. “I want to do this for myself.”
His head rocked back, and he gasped for air as his entire body stiffened and throbbed, strumming beneath her wicked touch.
He tolerated it through a few more strokes before he closed a fist around hers and took over. Kicking his hips, he drove hard and fast into the clasp of their hands.
Her eyes found his. She yanked her grip away, and in the next heartbeat, she replaced it with the hot, wet heaven of her mouth.
“Holy fuck.” He clutched her head and worked himself deeper into the back of her throat, shaking and thrusting with urgency. “Jesus, Kate. That feels fucking incredible.”
It had been twelve years since he’d let anyone suck him. It was long enough ago that even a half-ass blow job would feel extraordinary right now.
But nothing about this was half-ass. The swirling, sucking motion of her lips and tongue delivered the perfect pressure and rhythm, just the right amount of teasing and manipulation to drive him out of his fucking mind.
He couldn’t stop his hands from holding her in place as he fucked hard and deep into her throat. She swallowed through it without gagging, but after a few breathless seconds, she smacked her palms on his abs and pushed away.
Leaning up, she got in his face and growled. “I was trained how to do this by a scary, cold as fuck sadist.” She wrapped a hand around his length, torturing him with diabolical strokes. “I want to do it my way, for me, and I don’t need your damn guidance.”
“Christ, you’re fucking fierce.” He was so goddamn hard his dick felt like cement beneath the pressure, like any moment he might crack in the vigorous vise of her hand.
“I’ve never done this without…” Her brows furrowed. “Without giving my consent.” She edged back and lowered her head, her gaze locked on his. “Let me do it.”
“Okay.” He relaxed into the mattress, his head tipped back against the headboard and his hands at his sides. “Do it. Suck me.”
She did. She sucked him until every nerve in his body sparked and sizzled with need. The rolling sweep of her tongue brought him back from the dead. The suction of her lips banished the nightmares, and her tear-stained cheeks filled him with an overpowering sense of responsibility.
His love for her resembled a blade, a source of pain, but vital. He would always protect her, however she needed him, even when he was the cause of her suffering.
Their relationship was unconventional, dark in nature, almost unworldly. Although she resented it, he knew she cherished it just as deeply.
He felt it in the veneration of licks along his cock, heard it in the emotion-soaked panting of her breaths, and saw it in the sodden depths of her watchful eyes.
She wasn’t just giving him a blow job. She was surrendering pieces of herself. Tiny, rare, invaluable pieces of her soul.
Possessiveness growled in his throat, and his muscles clenched with desire. He wanted to erase her past and be her forever. He wanted to disintegrate everything from her life until he was the only thing she needed to breathe.
He wanted her to love him.
As her mouth moved along his shaft and her gaze clung to his, he could almost pretend she was with him willingly, that she wasn’t locked in his penthouse with twenty guards preventing her escape.
Sucking in air, he swallowed the urge to flip her over, sink into her heat, and pound home the message that she belonged to him.
Instead, he simply let go. He let her set the torturous pace, let her add a teasing nip here and there, and let her decide when to send him over.
The moment she took him to the back of her throat and kneaded his balls in the cup of her hand, she knew she had him.
He surrendered, gasping for breath, groaning incoherently, and coming for the woman he wanted to fuck for the rest of his undeserving life.
She swallowed him down, every single drop, and by the time her sexy lips slid free, he only vaguely remembered how he got there.
“Hostia puta.” His lungs stuck together, gasping for oxygen. “It’s never been that perfect.”
“Well, you have no recent comparisons. It’s been a while since someone gave you head, right?”
“Twelve years.” He stared at her mouth, obsessed with every little twitch within those lush arches.
“I like that.” She crawled up his chest and rested her head on his shoulder. “I like that there hasn’t been anyone since your wife. But it also feels intimidating, like her shadow is constantly hanging over me. No matter what I do, I’ll never be her in your eyes and—”
“Stop.” He crushed her close, forging them together as her fragile truths winged through his soul. “I haven’t thought about her nor will I ever think about her when I’m with you. My past is where it belongs. I don’t want it or her, not even a little. I want you.”
The fact that she was dwelling on this at all was progress. Huge fucking strides in the right direction. If she didn’t care about him, she wouldn’t have brought up his sexual history, marriage, or any insecurities about it.
She was jealous, and she hated him. He was possessive, and he loved her. Together, they were a combustion of extreme emotion that burned without boundaries or expiration.
Didn’t matter how far he took her or how hard she fought, she was with him, kicking and kissing, punching and fucking, with her heart engaged and her mind challenging him as nothing less than his equal.
He ran his fingers down her side, veered around her hip, and dipped into the valley between the firm globes of her ass.
“Lie on your back and spread your legs.” He clenched her buttocks hard enough to make her squeak.
She lifted her head, and it wasn’t resistance that glowed in her gaze. It was heat. Desire. Acceptance.
“I want to come.” Her lashes lowered, transforming her petite features into pure seduction. “I like that you always give me that.”
As she slid off his lap and stretched out on her back, a second heartbeat took up residence between his legs.
The fluidity of her lithe figure made his mouth water. The tight buds of her nipples pinched erotically between the precious stones, and if that weren’t enough to make him hard again, she had the brazenness to meet his eyes and open her thighs.
In a blink, he shifted from man to beast. His hands landed on her knees, spreading her wide as he went after her pussy with tongue and teeth.
She moaned beneath the attack, and her body trembled against him, filling his mouth with feminine hunger.
No matter how many times he went down on her, it was always explosive. Her responses, his need—the air crackled and sang with the sounds of fighting, snarling, mating animals.
As she climaxed, she did it with her entire being. She let go of everything—her hatred, her fear, her painful past—and for those few fleeting seconds, he glimpsed a woman who was capable of seeing what he was and loving him despite it.
In that moment, something awoke between them. Something deep and untouchable. On the surface, they were captor and captive, but at the heart of their connection, they were one.
“Tiago.” She opened her arms, panting through the remnants of her release.
He prowled up her body, lowered onto her, and buried himself in her hot, tight pussy.
Pleasure zinged through his veins, and he snapped his hips into a frantic, urgent rhythm. She answered with a cry, and her hands gripped the muscles of his ass.
But it was her eyes that held him. Those vibrant o
ceans of blue called him into the rippling vastness, pulling him in so close and deep he didn’t know where he ended and she began.
With his hands tangled in her hair, he thrust again, and again, harder, faster, with a desperation that echoed in his heart.
All his life, he’d been alone. In marriage, he’d been alone in love. In his career, he’d fought his own battles. In hell, he reigned from a solitary throne.
What would it be like to have Kate’s love instead of her hate? To have her fighting beside him instead of against him?
The notion was unattainable but not unimaginable. He imagined it every day, in every possible way.
With a low, deep moan, she came undone. Her orgasm swelled and crashed around him, contracting her inner muscles and tossing him into a delirium of ecstasy.
“Kate.” He groaned, holding her tight as she milked him, draining him into exhaustion.
Spent and sated, he rolled to his back and gathered her in his arms.
It was easy to give up everything for her, but there were some things that required time and planning. He was willing to surrender whatever was needed to earn her love, as long as it didn’t compromise her safety.
Letting Tate go had been the right thing to do, but it came with a cost.
Cole Hartman was no longer occupied with the search for Tate.
Now he had a new job, a new target, and by this time tomorrow, he would know where to find Kate.
Tiago had to leave the penthouse tomorrow, and she would be at his side. It was a risk to take her to his compound, but it was even a bigger risk to leave her in the care of someone else.
No one would protect her like he would.
If Hartman meant to take her, he would have to pry her out of Tiago’s cold, dead arms.
The grungy, menacing atmosphere set Kate’s instincts on high alert as she followed Tiago through his Caracas compound.
The bones of what was once a regal hotel hid behind fumes of cigarette smoke, spray paint, and decay. Sheet metal covered the windows. Bullet holes pocked the ceilings. Brown stains blotted the worn carpet, and sweaty, heavily-armed men stood at attention in the dark hallways.
Hard to imagine Lucia had lived within these claustrophobic walls for eleven years.