“So I can trust you. If he wants me, it's in your best interests to keep me safe.”
Juan's nod was slow.
As ridiculous as it was, that made her feel better. Eva didn’t fear death, but she wanted a say in how she went. Clutching at her throat, choking on blood as more of it spurted from a ragged gash, was not the way she intended to leave this Earth.
Security momentarily assured, she carried on walking down the hall, a long corridor lined with a cream carpet and a scarlet runner. Along one side, there was art. On the other, a huge mirror ran the length of the wall.
The art was his sister, Chela's. She was up and coming in the New York art scene, and she deserved it. Her skills with a brush were epic.
Not that Eva was in the mood to be an art critic. She hurried down the hall to the very end where Martinez's quarters were. This entire floor was his.
Half of it for business, the other for pleasure.
She'd guarded this door on some nights. Her guts twisting with jealousy at the squeals and moans of ecstasy escaping from it.
A part of her wondered now if he'd done it on purpose.
If he'd chosen her to guard his door to make her jealous.
If he had, she wasn't sure why. A woman like herself did not appeal to gang lords.
The only spandex to touch her body was in her workout shorts. She was not the sort to wear slinky dresses or strappy heels. All tits and legs, bubble butts made for twerking—that had been his type before, so why the hell he'd switched all of a sudden made her wonder.
Not one of his women had been like her. She was lean, athletic. Her tits were almost non-existent. Tiny handfuls that didn't even need a bra. She was muscular from her sparring sessions at the gym and her workouts.
She was not a curvy, sexy chick.
She was what the gang had painted her as: a tomboy, one of the guys. She'd fit so well into the male-dominated environment that most of the troops had forgotten she was female, period. It wasn't that she was a chameleon, it was that she preferred guys to girls.
Ask her to talk about baseball, and she was fine. But to discuss the topics on The View? Hell, no. But then, that was Pops’ influence...old school wasn’t the word.
When she finally neared the door that led to Martinez's quarters, she admitted it was weird opening it and even weirder contemplating stepping inside without having knocked at the door. Sure, she had permission to go in there, but…
The moment still felt epic.
The start of something she wasn't sure would end.
It was the beginning of her future. And not necessarily a brighter one.
Chapter Six
“Are you coming in?”
Juan shook his head. “I'm on guard duty tonight.”
She shrugged a shoulder and slammed the door in his face. Turning around to look at the penthouse flat, she sucked in a breath at the sight of her new home for the duration.
It sure as hell wouldn't be a hardship.
The lounge was a man's haven. Low leather couches, recliners, all surrounding a huge projector wall. There was more of his sister's artwork, and photo frames filled with his family.
Of the four walls, only the projector screen’s was bare. The rest was overtaken with his mother, brother, sisters, and nieces.
Uncomfortable in a room that she'd never been invited into before, she headed for one of the four doors that shot off the main room and found the bedroom. Was that pay dirt or not? She wasn't sure. But she'd have preferred the kitchen. She could really do with some milk and cookies right about now.
The bed was huge and low. It sank into the floor, a behemoth mattress covered in soft and sleek sheets. Around the bed, there was nothing but the city. Everything they did was potentially visible to the outside world via the walls of windows.
The notion made her sweat.
With arousal or horror, she didn't know, and that alone made her nervous.
Why wasn't she horrified?
The world would be a witness to her humiliation. To the first sexual touch she’d experienced since her rape.
The thought had her dashing off to the door she assumed led to the bathroom. A cubicle the length of the room, with more nozzles than faucets, confirmed her suspicion. She rushed to the sink, switched on the water, and draped her wrists under the cold flow.
She was not a weakling. She was not a wimp.
Eva did not do things like faint.
She did not.
The mantra helped, but the water did more to calm her down.
Eying her reflection, her wan face, the faint shadows under her eyes, she wondered what the hell it was he saw in her. Or was it simply punishment? He'd said he'd been watching her as much as she'd watched him, but why?
Maybe beauty was in the eye of the beholder.
More perplexed than curious, she splashed water on her face, shut off the faucet then reached for a towel. She looked at herself again in the mirror and pondered her next move. He'd been serious about her stripping...should she do it now? What happened if he finished reading his papers and her clothes weren't by the door?
Her nerves buzzed at the idea.
She wasn't obedient. Hadn't even been as a child. But she was intelligent enough to realize when to rock the boat and when to stay quiet and keep her head down.
This was a transaction.
As she unfastened the buttons on her shirt, she looked at the floor—it was hard looking at herself in the mirror. She'd never been overly body conscious, but the idea of prancing around the bedroom in nothing but her skin set her nerves to twitching once more.
She'd been hitting the gym more of late. Boredom did that to her. She'd been off active duty, helping the DA's office build their case, and the lack of activity had driven her nuts.
Her ass was tighter than it had been for a long time, but her breasts were embarrassingly hard as a consequence. Unfastening the buttons revealed just how hard they were.
What a fucking time to start feeling insecure about this shit.
She eyed her nipples in the mirror. They were like maraschino cherries on a pancake. Except, the maraschino cherries were pretty big.
Gritting her teeth, she shrugged off the shirt and went to work on her pants. When they slipped to the ground, she stood there in her panties. The idea of sitting on his sofa with her pussy touching the leather made her pull a face. But it was too early to go to bed at six in the evening. She could leave them on and face his wrath if she didn't hear him coming in time to pull them off before he walked through the door…
With a sigh, she tugged at the side strings of her panties and let them fall to the ground too. The limp fabric sank to the floor, just as Rico's limbs had flailed when his body had toppled over, life evacuating an organism that had been healthy moments before a bullet had changed its purpose.
Death was a part of her world. Cops tended to die in the line of duty, and ever since she'd made detective, hell, before that, murder had been a part and parcel of her day.
Seeing Martinez's right-hand man being murdered was hitting her harder than she'd first thought. Not the death, but Martinez's reasoning. His state of mind. The idea of pissing him off on the first night of this deal coming into play didn't sit well with her. She didn't want to incite his anger any more than she already had by questioning him and his dictates.
Was she frightened for her life?
It was hard to say.
She didn't think he'd have her killed, but then, she'd never imagined he'd have Rico murdered either. And it was that that made her nervous.
In a way, he'd confirmed her right to be scared. If he'd intended to make her compliant, it worked.
Martinez wasn't a man to be underestimated. She was seeing that more and more today.
In an hour, two, or even twenty minutes, his cock might be near her. He might put it in her body, or he might touch her.
It disturbed her that she wasn't freaking out like she would with any other guy.
How could s
he feel like she was attracted to a man who was capable of the shit Martinez pulled?
She'd lived with PTSD for so long that this fucked up arousal didn't seem too abnormal. In a way, she told herself she should be grateful for it. But she knew that was wrong.
The shrinks told her people dealt with murder in different ways. They dealt with excessive and extreme violence in anyway their minds could cope.
She was about to be forced into sex with a guy, and yet, it didn't feel like there would be much forcing. That is, until it came to it.
If he did anything strange, moved a certain way, she knew she'd freak out. Any arousal would burn away, and she'd be transported to another time and place. She'd superimpose the features of the man who had turned her into the creature standing here today onto those of Martinez, and she'd attack. As she'd done years ago.
How was she supposed to let this deal go down? How was she going to survive the encounter, if she couldn't let Martinez get too close?
Confused, she stepped back and without really wanting to, eyed herself in the mirror over the sink. She looked good, apart from her tits, and then, she told herself it didn't matter if she looked good or not.
At least, it shouldn't.
More perplexed, she bent down and gathered her clothes. The smell of detergent wafted up her nose as she strode, very aware of the view she was potentially gifting some peeping Toms with binoculars, bare-assed through the bedroom . Eva dumped the pile next to the front door as he'd requested and, then, retreated to the bed once more.
The idea of sitting on the sofa with no clothes on made her feel more exposed than she could cope with, and at least the bedsheets would hide her nudity. Exposure would only amp up her nerves, and that was the last thing she needed.
Trying to remain calm, she slipped between the crisp cotton sheets and lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling as she did so.
“Is this a parallel universe?” she asked herself and the room at large. “Am I really waiting here for him to come back so he can fuck me?”
Shaking her head at her words, Eva turned on her side and curled up. She figured she might as well get comfortable as she waited. It was only as she settled in that she realized she could relax here. Then, she pondered how strange a notion that was.
She'd napped, for the first time in a while, in his office. And here, she finally felt as though she could take a deep breath and not constantly have to look over her shoulder. The irony being she'd never been more exposed to the city's view behind her.
Paranoia had been with her for so long, it had been her constant companion. Now that was over, and Martinez knew the truth, in a weird way, she was free.
Maybe he was right. Maybe she did need to be punished.
And if she enjoyed the punishment, there was no need to make a big deal out of it. Maybe she could relax into it. Let him approach her and not break his nose for daring to look at her with sex on his mind.
Any calm she'd earned faded away at the thought.
She wouldn't be able to do it.
She knew it. But Martinez didn't.
How the hell was she going to live up to her end of a deal she didn't want, so she could survive the night and her encounter with Los Lobos Rojos?
Lucia had to admit it to herself: she was screwed.
Chapter Seven
He procrastinated as long as he could.
It had been incredibly difficult not to follow her out of the office, not to watch that tight ass sway in front of him as they walked to his quarters.
He'd forced himself to stay on the sofa, had made himself concentrate on his papers. In the end, he'd settled on a compromise. The instant he'd read through a good quarter, he could let himself off the leash and go to her.
In Eva, Martinez's self-imposed controls could be relaxed.
She was there to be fucked. She was there to pay her dues with her body.
It was a simple transaction.
He didn't kill her, and she let him use her however he wanted.
And he wanted.
Badly.
For the first time in his life, he felt like he could do what he wanted. Like he had carte blanche. He was, had been, a respectful lover. He wasn't selfish, made the woman come, did what he could to make sure a good time was had by all.
Most of the women to grace his bed were always surprised by the way he treated them. He figured they thought he'd use them as receptacles for his own needs then leave them hanging.
Not only was it a point of pride to make them come, his mother had taught him better than to disrespect women. Be it in business or the bedroom. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't.
And it wasn't that he wanted to disrespect Eva. If anything, he wanted to do the opposite, which mightily pissed him off. She'd betrayed him. She'd silently admitted to him that she'd put away the men in his gang who she didn't believe were worthy of freedom. For that, for her deception, he wanted her to pay. But, he wanted her to want it.
He realized what a sick fuck that really made him.
What woman forced into a situation like this would want the man in charge of her?
But he kept seeing those confusing flashes in her eyes. Flashes of arousal, need, whenever they stared at each other overlong.
That attraction had been burning away between them for so long that it would be a relief for them to work it off between the sheets. But at the same time, he needed to punish her, and it relieved him that she wanted to be punished for it too.
He'd seen that in her eyes as well.
She was confused about her role in the world.
Half cop, half loba—she-wolf.
Her time here hadn't completely been a role to play. She'd become a part of the team. He'd seen that, even when he'd come to suspect her. It had held him back, made him question his take on the situation.
She'd fit in so well as purser. The girls had trusted her. The troops had known she wasn't to be fucked around with, and she didn't fear getting her hands dirty.
His loba was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
And that hard place was his fucking cock.
Arousal slugged through his veins at the prospect of her down the hall, naked.
He eyed the papers in his lap, tented by his throbbing shaft, and sighed. There was no way he was going to be able to get through them. Not with thoughts of her flashing through his head.
It stung at his control to leave before the goals he'd set were complete, but a lapse wasn't dangerous, not when it was once in a blue moon. He refused to believe this would be the first of many lapses, that Eva was the woman to make him change. He couldn't believe it. Such a belief was too dangerous to his future.
He gathered the documents together in his fist and locked them in his desk drawer. It wasn't vital that they be dealt with tonight, but he'd have to wake up first thing to handle them.
A new shipment of guns was cruising down a highway in Montana next week. He fully intended for the Lobos to be there to help liberate them from the truck. It required some fraternization with a mob boss up there, but from the intel he'd gathered, it was more than worthy of both their interests. It was a huge deal. One that would make up for the revenue lost with Eva's snitching. But, at that moment in time, it didn't interest him at all.
He wanted Eva.
Now.
Snitch or not.
From his desk, he set the alarm on his office, and as he walked out, the door clicked locked behind him. The alarm covered his safe and guarded the desk.
He trusted his men, but he'd learned to trust only himself if he wanted a job done right. For too many years, he'd relied on Matteo, and whether it pissed him off or not, Eva was right. His brother, for all he was a great dad, wasn't a good man.
Ever since his arrest, Martinez had started to notice that more and more. Things were slipping back to him, things Matteo had done or hadn't done to be more precise.
His brother knew how Martinez felt about their girls being treated right. Yet Ri
co's behavior had been hidden from him. Matteo had protected Rico, had ignored Eva's warnings about the putas coming to visit her for cash to have a doctor tend to their wounds. He'd kept these things a secret, when they were sacrosanct to Martinez's beliefs.
The idea that it was better for his people if Matteo was in jail plagued him, as he traversed the corridor to his quarters. Such a belief made him feel traitorous, and he wished the notion hadn't popped into his head.
He'd been psyched about what was going to go down across the hallway, and now, there was a downer hounding him. He hated feeling disloyal to Matteo, hated admitting that maybe, just maybe, it was a good thing Eva had locked him away from them all.
What kind of hermano did that make him?
He just knew the belief would crucify him the next time he saw Maria, saw that wounded look in her eyes, that silent accusation.
She was too young to really understand, but when she was old enough, she would. And she'd come to him, and she'd ask him why her dad hadn't loved her enough to stay on the straight and narrow, to be there for her, to be her papa—
What could Martinez say to that?
That it was the truth? That she was right?
It was a truth Maria would know for herself without any interference from him, and that pissed him off more than anything.
For his family, he'd killed. He'd dealt drugs and arms. Worked with the lowest of the low to put food on the table. He'd turned himself into a monster, created a gang of his own wolves to keep the lobos from his family's door. And in this, he couldn't protect Maria from the truth, and that hurt.
Heart heavy, he met Juan at the door. “All quiet?” he asked the other man.
A nod was his reply, and Martinez wouldn’t lie, that came as a surprise. He'd expected some turbulence along the way as he paved this path for him and Eva. He hadn't expected her to be so docile. It pleased him, but it felt like the calm before the storm. Eva wasn't calm; she was volatile. Something was brewing.
He'd always loved watching tornadoes.
Blood well and truly stirred, he clapped Juan on the back and said, “Go. Send someone else up. You've done enough today.”
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