In a flash his brain rewound everything, back to the night he’d made his final decision. The decision to keep Casey. Deep in his gut he knew if he’d possessed this knowledge, if he’d known his queen was capable of ending her own life he would have gone the other way. He’d have taken her out with her husband.
Now it was too late, he was in too deep. He was stuck with a defective queen.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Casey watched in silence as Reyes raged in front of her like a lion in a cage. She felt every one of his thoughts as though he shouted them at her. She knew them because they were things she’d said to herself in moments of terrible self-pity. She couldn’t blame him. He’d wanted more from her, but found out the worst. So, she waited patiently for him to sort through his feelings. If there was one thing she’d learned about her abductor over the past few weeks, it was that he wasn’t used to the types of emotions she was engendering in him and he needed time to process.
Also, he preferred to have her close by while he dealt with those feelings.
“Fucking hell, Casey!” he snarled.
She flinched when he slammed his fist into the wall, making the entire wooden structure shudder under the impact. Okay, time to bring the beast back under control. That was another thing she’d learned about him. While she seemed to be the cause of a wide variety of emotions in him, she also had the ability to leash his rampaging temper.
“Please Reyes,” she begged. “Will you let me explain?”
He turned back to her, his wide shoulders heaving and his eyes smoldering with helpless rage at a situation he saw as something he couldn’t control; the spiraling darkness of his chosen queen. She wanted to go to him, but this wasn’t the right moment. Not until she’d told him her story. He nodded sharply, crossing his arms and holding himself tight until his muscles bulged against the fabric of his rolled-up shirtsleeves.
She swallowed the nervousness that threatened to erupt in her throat and sorted through her foggy thoughts and memories. “Well…” she started. “It happened three years ago…”
“Don’t make it sounds like something that happened to you, woman,” he snapped, interrupting her. “You tried to kill yourself, at least own that much.”
She flinched at the derision in his voice. She’d grown used to hearing him speak to her with nothing but respect. She lifted her chin and emptied the emotion from her eyes. “If you want to hear this story, then you will listen and not interrupt again, Reyes,” she said with chilling imperiousness.
He stared back at her, his own eyes challenging and then nodded sharply for her to continue.
“You may have noticed in all the time that we were married, that Ignacio and I never had children.” She ignored the tightening of his body when she spoke her late husband’s name again. “As a cartel guy, I’m sure you can sympathize… these mafia men, they like to spread their seed, you know? Like to produce as many sons as they can as quick as they can so they can carry on the family business and keep it in the family.”
He ignored her lip. Partly because he wanted her to keep speaking and part because she wasn’t wrong. In the mob, family was everything. “No kids,” he grunted in an even voice. “Keep talking.”
“Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying…” Then she giggled. “Okay it was, he had some serious issues in that department, but let’s not get into that now. Or ever… because yuck.” When he growled she pressed her lips together and moved past her momentary amusement. “Anyway, despite Ignacio’s growing impotency, I did manage to get pregnant about… ummm… three and a half years ago. With a baby boy.”
“Fuck, nena,” Reyes said, his eyes softening. Obviously, he could see where this was going since she had no children.
She nodded sadly.
“I went into labour a few weeks early, but nothing too far out of the ordinary. The pregnancy shouldn’t have been at risk.” Her eyes fogged over and she started to drift away from him, she could feel her skin growing colder despite the warmth of the room as memories washed over her. Her voice became distant as she spoke of one of the worst times in her life, when she’d thought that she might have a family once more only to have that tiny, selfish hope flicker out and die. “Ignacio wanted me to have a natural birth at home with only his personal doctor in attendance. I was nervous, but they assured me everything was on track and I would be fine. As soon as we realized there were complications it was too late… my son… he didn’t make it. There was a lot of bleeding, I was... eventually taken to a hospital to stop the bleeding.”
Reyes swore viciously, his fists tightening against his arms. She thought he might ask her any one of a hundred questions about the horrific situation, but instead he asked her the one thing that no one ever bothered to care about. The one thing that mattered most to her. “What was his name, Casey?”
Tears spilled over her lashes and trailed down her cheeks. And for the first time she was able to admit that she was no longer his captive. Even if he opened the bars to her cage, she wouldn’t run. First of all, there was no way off this damn mountain without a helicopter license and second of all she was falling deeply in love with the only human being that seemed capable of understanding her cracked heart.
“I called him Jack,” she whispered, then a slow, sad grin spread across her face. “After Jack Skellington from the Nightmare Before Christmas. My favourite movie of all time.”
He looked lost for a moment and then he asked, more gentleness in his voice than there had been, “And the suicide attempt.”
“Ignacio blamed me for the death of what he knew was likely to be his only chance at a son. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him and I was in delicate condition, both physically and emotionally. I was experiencing classic symptoms of post-partum depression, yet the moment I was released from the hospital, he locked me up in my room and refused to allow me any help, either in the form of doctors or anti-depressants.” Casey paused for a moment, pain clouding her face once more as she remembered the loneliness and pain she’d had to endure. “Day after day I was forced to stare at my own walls, listening to his grief in the form of raging and ranting while attempting to bury my own grief. And you want to know the worst part?”
“What, nena?” he asked, though she could tell the words hurt him.
“He wouldn’t allow me to have a funeral for our son. Said because Jack wasn’t born alive, he wasn’t even a real person,” her voice broke on the last word. She lifted her hand to cover her mouth for a second before gaining the courage once more to continue. “Can you imagine? I missed the funeral for yet another of the most important people in my life.”
“Ah fuck, nena,” he whispered. “You’re breaking my heart.”
“Broke my heart too, Reyes. So I decided it was time to take my broken heart, my broken head and finish off my broken body,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering with tears. “I swallowed a package of sleeping pills with a bottle of rum… well a bottle of Malibu rum because I didn’t have the real thing. I couldn’t even manage to get suicide right,” she said with a short, bitter laugh.
He stayed silent and she could feel the tension thrumming within him from the few feet that separated them. Knew he wanted to reach out and touch her. She also knew from the incredible, undeniable connection that had held them in thrall since the very beginning that if he touched her they would both break apart and he wouldn’t hear the end of her story. So, he stood over her, watching her, protecting her as she spoke.
“Only I didn’t wake up on the other side surrounded by my family, holding baby Jack in my arms,” she said, a tiny sob escaping her lips. “I woke up in another hospital bed, this time strapped down and with a raw pain in my throat because they had to pump my stomach. I was surrounded by Ignacio, Alonzo and Diego. Two days later Ignacio was allowed to take me home. We barely walked into the mansion when he ordered the branding as punishment for daring to take the coward’s way out of our marriage.” Her eyes flared bright with remembered pain and rage. She squeezed
her hand into a fist and finished. “He was pissed enough to enact this punishment himself, despite his weak stomach. He burned my flesh while Alonzo held me down and Diego watched.”
Reyes nodded, a look of utter anguish sweeping over his dark, scarred features.
“I can fix it, nena,” he said, his voice raw. He went to his knees in front of her and took her hand in his, pressing his lips against the back, touching the mark. “Fuck, Casey, for the first time in my life I feel shame. Shame because when I first saw this mark, all I could think was that I wanted to twist it, to take it for my own. To burn this beautiful flesh with my own mark.” She saw that shame deep in his soul as fury burned in his dark eyes. He looked at her from the floor, a position of significance for a man like him to take in front of a woman. “That I could ever harm my woman so brutally, strike her low, the way your late husband did, makes me sick to my soul. I swear to you, nena, I will take the mark away. You will never have to see it again.”
“Don’t do that,” she whispered, taking his hand in hers and squeezing. “I earned this mark, Reyes. It belongs to me through the pain of giving birth, of having a stillborn child, of a botched suicide attempt, of having a mean bastard for a husband. I should thank you for putting him in the ground for me. No, I think I’ll keep my scar.”
“But it will always remind you of that time in your life. What if you look at it one day and regret keeping it?” he asked, pressing the back of her hand against his cheek.
“It won’t happen. I don’t believe in regrets,” she smiled.
“What do you mean, nena?” he asked, burying his face in her lap. “Everyone has regrets.”
“Well... if you were going to do something you shouldn’t or something you might regret, then just don’t do it in the first place. Then you’ll have nothing to regret.” She shrugged. “Or if you have impulse control issues like me, then just learn from the stupid thing you did and don’t do it again, rather than looking back and spending your life wishing there were a bunch of things you’d done better. I have no regrets, Reyes, not now or ever.”
He looked back up at her, his dark eyes shining. “You are so damn beautiful, Casey. Fucking amazing.” He tugged on her hands and pulled her up until she was standing with him. “Now I need you to promise me something.”
She knew what was coming, what he would ask of her. What he was going to demand. She shook her head and tried to step away from him. She couldn’t give it.
He took her jaw in his hand, his hold gentle and bent his face to hers. She was wearing flats so he was a few inches taller than her. “No, nena, you need to listen and you need to make this promise. Because I know you and I know when you make a vow you don’t fucking break it for anything. Just like you don’t believe in regrets, you don’t break your promises.”
She pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut to block him out, her only defense now that he refused to let her drift away from him.
“You promise me you’ll never try to take your own life again. Not for any reason,” he demanded his eyes glowing with a fervor that promised he would do anything to extract this vow from her and then spend a lifetime ensuring she never broke it.
“Reyes,” she whispered brokenly, tears falling again. “I can’t give you that vow.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You will,” he snarled in her face. He took her by the shoulders and gave her a quick shake until her eyes snapped open. “Tell me why the fuck not? You plan on taking your own life to escape me, is that it?” His voice escalated as this thought occurred to him. “Because that will never happen, Casey, nunca. I will make you my prisoner, wrap you in chains for the rest of your life if that’s what it takes to keep you safe.” His voice became a vicious snarl and his fingers bit into her shoulders by the time he finished.
Casey placed her hands on his chest, splaying her fingers and ran her hands up and down from his pectoral muscles to his stomach soothingly until she saw his eyes droop in response. “No, Reyes, no baby,” she breathed, stepping in close to him. “It’s not like that at all. I love it here and I love being with you. This is the best time I’ve ever had in my life. Please, you have to believe me.”
“Then why?” he demanded from between gritted teeth, “won’t you make this vow to me?”
“Because I don’t know what life will bring for me, what kind of dark twists it might have in store,” she whispered, pleading with her eyes, trying to make him understand. “And since I don’t believe in regrets, I refuse to give a vow that I might have to break if my motivation becomes powerful enough.”
He stared down at her, his expression one that she was becoming vastly familiar with; admiration mixed with fury. “Not good enough,” he growled. “Give me your word anyway, Casey. Promise you will never consider taking your own life.”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “No.”
He took the messy ponytail at the back of her head in a fist, jerked her head back and slammed his mouth over hers, taking her lips in a brutal kiss meant to punish her for her defiance. Passion rose quickly up within Casey, she threw her arms around his neck and was soon meeting him kiss for kiss enthusiastically, despite the rage simmering just below the surface of each stormy, bruising sweep of his mouth over hers. She moaned against him and opened her lips to the demanding thrust of his tongue, allowing him entry when he ruthlessly insisted.
Her workout T-shirt tore as easily as tissue paper under the angry insistence of his fist. Her bra followed and then her yoga pants and panties until she was naked under the intense assault of his stormy emotions. She stood before him, her hair tumbled down to cover her shoulders and breasts.
“Reyes, wait!” she gasped, backing up. “Not so angry, please! I don’t want it to hurt!”
He growled and made a grab for her wrist, jerking her hard against his body. She shivered when he drew her in for another fierce, punishing kiss. She moaned into his hot mouth, opening for him. She was soaking wet between her thighs, ready for whatever he threw at her. But she wasn’t used to such rage. His love-making to this point had been a simmering controlled passion that took her to heights she’d never known before Reyes. This was new. Exciting, but also terrifying.
“Make. Your. Vow.” he snarled.
“Please, Reyes…” she cried out, twisting in his arms.
He lifted her in his arms, his hands on her ass and strode backwards until he thrust her against a towel rack. She let out a small scream and gripped him hard. He stared at her, his eyes furious and filled with dark, heated lust as he sank his fingers into her body from underneath, the thick digits eased by her body’s own natural lubrication. She moaned and clung to him as she sank down onto his fingers and then arched, riding him.
“Oh fuck!” she panted, her eyes rolling back.
He leaned in and licked between her breasts before biting a path to her small, taut nipple. She gripped his head in both hands and arched shamelessly into the amazing, incredible heat of his mouth. She felt his fingers moving in and out of her slick pussy, playing with her while holding her high up off the floor. She had no idea how he managed such a maneuver and, as she built toward an explosion of epic proportions, she didn’t really care.
She closed her eyes tight, thrust her head back, slid her long, silky legs along his hips and rode his skilled fingers. Whimpers of ecstasy erupted from her throat as he slid his fingers first deep inside her, massaging her, then back out to slide and flick along her dripping slit until she went wild in his arms. He barely managed to hold her up against the wall with one straining, bulging arm considering how much she was writhing against him uncaring of the weight she was throwing at him. He slid his fingers back and forth until she thought she would burst into flames, until he was wet enough from her fluids to slide the tip of his finger into her tight ass.
“Oh god, Reyes,” she moaned, digging her fingernails into the flesh of his arms over his shirt. “Oh, oh, my fucking god!”
“Yeah, nena,” he growled. “Feels go
od, don’t it? You want to come baby?”
She nodded frantically. “Yes, yes please… please let me come,” she begged tossing her head back and forth against the towel rack. She reached over her head with one hand to grab it so she wouldn’t slide down the wall.
Despite the constant misfiring going on in her brain from sensual overload, she had enough awareness to wonder if this was part of a cruel plan to withhold the explosive orgasm she so badly wanted. If that was his plan then he dearly underestimated her desperation. She would do just about anything to claw her way up to that blessed orgasmic peak. She would debase herself in any way he asked. She would enthusiastically go onto her knees before him, take his cock down her throat and happily choke on him if he would give her want she needed. She would crawl, she would fuck, she would suck, she would do just about anything in that moment.
He drew the torture out even more by releasing her body further from his grip and allowing her body weight to sink her even more onto the finger he’d lodged in her ass. She moaned at the dark, slightly painful pleasure as it bit into her. She widened her knees against his hips and surged against him, crying out. Sweat beaded against her throat and he leaned in to lick and suck the exposed skin, whispering dark, sexy words of praise that drove her closer and closer to the edge.
Finally, he gave her what she wanted, he growled against her throat, “Can’t hold out against you, cariña. Too fucking gorgeous. Come for me, Casey.”
He slid his finger back and forth over her painfully engorged clit until she was shamelessly thrusting her hips against him, sliding her pussy against the buckle of his belt for even more friction, heightening the orgasm that crashed over her a few seconds later. A keening cry erupted from her throat, where her head was thrown back. His own head was bent just below her jaw. His fingers gripped her hard, tightening against her flesh as he tried to draw out the tidal wave of her orgasm while his own painful erection begged him to fuck his woman as hard as he could up against the wall.
Scarred Queen (The Queens Book 1) Page 15