by Bethany-Kris
Andino had no idea the things he was capable of where Haven was concerned. He didn’t know—couldn’t possibly understand—the power he had over her. He didn’t have a single fucking clue how much she loved him.
God, she loved him.
And she hated him, too.
“I came to give you something,” he said, standing from the couch. For the first time, she noticed the folder that had been resting on his thigh when he flashed it with a wave of his hand. “And then be on my way.”
Haven swallowed the words in an attempt to keep them in, but the bastards still managed to slip out anyway. “Whatever that is—is it the only reason you came?”
“Of course not,” Andino murmured, coming closer. “I miss you. I always miss you, baby.”
She blinked.
Fuck my whole life.
Once he was close enough to hold the folder out to her, he did just that. Haven took it, but she didn’t look inside right away. Instead, she looked at him.
“The place still hasn’t sold, huh?” he asked. “Strange—this club should have flew off the market.”
“The buyer is a prick.”
Andino smirked. “I see.”
“What’s this?”
She waved the folder.
Andino shrugged one broad shoulder. “You mentioned your friend … Valeria … and I figured it must have been weighing on you that she up and went without a word. You’re that type of person, aren’t you? You give entirely too much of a shit about everybody else, and not nearly enough about yourself.”
He knew her too well.
“You looked into Valeria?”
“As much as I could,” he replied. “This might help to get you started if you want to look elsewhere, or try to find her. I didn’t want to give this to you.”
Haven’s gaze narrowed, but Andino was quick to shake his head.
“Not for the reasons you probably think,” he was fast to add, “but because there are things that came up about Valeria Gomez that quickly turned dangerous, and murky. And if you go looking in those places … not even I could keep you safe, I don’t think.”
She stiffened, and looked down at the folder in her shaking hand. “Oh.”
“But here it is,” Andino said, “whether I want you to look or not isn’t my choice. I didn’t even have any business looking into her history to begin with but the idea that something was bothering you killed me. So, I made a few calls, and pulled what I could. That’s what I came here for—I hope it helps.”
Haven blinked, unsure of what to say.
Andino didn’t really give her the time to figure it out before he moved to pass by her, but not before he stopped, and gave her a soft kiss on her temple. That gentle press of his lips was enough to send a blaze lighting up over her skin. He really hadn’t come to upset her life again, or to get in the way. He hadn’t shown up to cause problems, or drag her to bed for yet another round.
He came because he cared.
He still cared.
And that just fucked her up more than ever.
“Could I replace your flowers again?” he asked, his lips still grazing her skin.
She wanted to ask if he would bring them himself this time, but she held back. He’d been the one who said he was trying to be discreet, after all. She was sure there were things happening that she wasn’t privy to, and maybe that was for the best.
Right now, Haven had a lot of things to figure out.
“You should,” she said quietly, “the others are wilting.”
Andino nodded. “Will do. And, if you want to chat about what you find in that folder … you know where to find me.”
“Thank you.”
He kissed her temple once more, and brushed his knuckles against her cheekbone before he left the private room altogether. Haven felt like her feet had suddenly turned into cement right there on the spot.
It took entirely too long for her to break from the daze and open the folder. Maybe she should have waited until she was back home again.
She couldn’t.
She had to know what Valeria had never told her.
The second she opened the folder, she wished she would have waited until she was home alone so that she could absorb the information staring back at her on just the first page. It looked to be a newspaper clipping of some sort. She scanned the words, and the ones that seemed important jumped out at her.
Gomez Cartel.
Fifteen-year-old Valeria Lòpez marries the oldest son of Martín Gomez in a ceremony at Saint Basile Chapel only two weeks after her father’s arrest for embezzlement.
Blackmail. Bribery.
Haven kept reading, and the information only became worse with each page. Who knew Mexico was so goddamn corrupt?
• • •
“I’m surprised it took you this long. Or rather, that it took you a whole week to decide to come and talk to me about the folder.”
Haven sighed, and continued staring at the green shrubbery someone had placed in a terracotta potter beside Andino’s front door. It was easier to stare at the small plant than at the man who managed to tell her that statement, and yet, still not sound smug about the fact that he said it without a hint of surprise.
Like he just knew.
She was going to come back here again.
“I had a busy week,” Haven said. “Took a two-day trip to Florida to visit my mom, and work … well, work is work.”
“How is your mom?”
Haven frowned, and finally glanced at Andino. There was genuine concern written on his expression, and not a hint of the arrogant man she expected to find when she knocked on his door earlier. She didn’t quite know what to make of that. God knew it was far easier to deal with Andino—at times—when he was laying all of his cards out on the table rather than keeping them close to his chest.
She didn’t know how to deal with him like this at all.
“Still sick,” she said.
Andino nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Haven shrugged. “It just upset her to see me there, anyway. She thought I was coming to stay right then, and hadn’t told her. They would rather I keep living my life, and help from afar. They don’t want me to uproot everything.”
“And you just want to help.”
“Yeah, well …”
That was the best thing she could think to say, as lame as it was. The visit to see her mom had helped a bit. Despite the chemo treatments being far more aggressive this time around, her mother was doing wonderfully. That counted for something.
Andino stepped back a bit from the doorway, and widened the door. “Do you want to come in?”
Haven clutched the folder in her hands a little tighter as she stared at the dark hallway behind Andino. The sight was as familiar as it was uncomfortable. His entire life was hidden in his home. Haven had learned that over time. She also learned that he guarded his private life more carefully than most.
Yet, he had no issue with inviting her in, and letting her make herself at home. She craved the comfort of this place—filled with furniture, things, and life—as much as she did Andino, in a way. Compared to her own house currently, it was far warmer.
Even if the man in front of her was the source of heartache for her.
“I don’t know if I should,” Haven said.
Andino chuckled, and gave her a look from the side. “It’s just a house, donna. One you’ve been inside time and time again. Stop looking at it as though it might come alive and bite you.”
Funny.
That’s exactly how it felt.
“Don’t be patronizing,” Haven said, moving past Andino in the doorway to enter the house. “It’s not a good look on you.”
“First of all,” he said behind her as he slammed the door close, “any look on me is fucking great. And secondly, I wasn’t being patronizing. I was being funny. If you’re looking for the right word to describe that, it’s wonderful.”
Haven shot him a condescending smile over her shoulder. “Is that what yo
ur mother tells you? You did say you were spoiled being an only child and all.”
Andino’s mouth curved at the edges with one of those sexy smirks of his before he tossed his head back, and laughed hard. There was something beautiful about this man when he let loose, and separated from the hard shell that he seemed to always keep front and center.
It was distracting and disconcerting to Haven. Just the sight of him laughing was enough to make her breaths quicken, and her heart ache. How different things could have been between them if only shit had worked out.
She needed to get away from those thoughts, and fast. That was not why she had come here, and she wasn’t about to indulge that nonsense.
“Let’s sit in the living room,” Andino said, seemingly noticing Haven’s change in mood. “I was doing some paperwork.”
As she headed that way, she asked, “Don’t you have an office for that?”
“I thought a change in scenery might be nice.” Andino was close enough behind her that Haven could feel the heat of his body. And yet, he didn’t reach out to touch her or anything of the sort. She wasn’t sure which pissed her off more—that she wanted him to do exactly that, or that he didn’t do it at all. She really was a sad state of a mess. “And also because my cousin mentioned he’d missed the last few episodes of his favorite show, and wanted me to fill him in.”
“John, you mean?”
That was the only cousin Andino ever really talked about.
“John,” he agreed as he dropped down on the couch. Haven stayed standing even when Andino glanced up, and quirked a brow. “Do you just want to stand, or …?”
“I don’t plan on staying.”
“Shame.”
The word came out of his mouth like a soft murmur. Whispering to her in all the wrong and far too right ways.
Haven knew it then … she was going to be fucked—probably in more ways than one—before this night was over.
ELEVEN
Andino wasn’t sure what Haven reminded him more of in those moments as she stood just a couple of feet away from where he sat on the couch. Like maybe a skittish deer that was ready to bolt away from the thing that terrified her … or a woman ready to jump his bones.
It was amusing … and sad, too.
“Sit,” he said again. “You have questions, right?”
“Maybe,” she countered, “but how many of them do you plan on answering?”
Andino smiled.
Smart woman.
“As many as I know the answers to, Haven. I promise.” She still hesitated to move, and kept an even tighter grip on that file. Guessing by the way the spine of the folder had been cracked again and again, Andino figured she had looked through the contents more than a few times. And because she was a smart woman, he knew she would have done her own research, too. Or, as much as she could by way of an internet search, probably. “I’m not going to bite you—you can sit, baby.”
Haven gave him a slightly bitter smile. “Not unless I ask, right?”
Well …
“You said it, not me.”
The slight shake of her head was all he got in response before Haven moved to sit on the couch beside him. She still kept an inch or two of space between them even as she opened the folder on her lap, and stared down at the contents. Andino leaned forward, and rested his clasped hands over his knees.
“There’s rumors that her father was arrested because he wouldn’t allow the cartel to buy his loyalty. I don’t understand.”
“He’s … or was, because he’s dead—”
“Like her mom, too,” Haven said softly.
Andino nodded. “Her mom was killed in what looked to be a car accident less than thirty days before she married the son. Her sister was killed after she took off, it seems.”
“I noticed that. And her dad was killed within a month after being married.”
“Being a politician in Mexico is a dangerous endeavor but especially when there’s major cartels who control everything. And I mean everything, Haven. That’s how cartels work. They integrate into every aspect of their country or territory that they can to control their business, and the business of those around them. Police. Government. The coffee shop down the street.”
“So, they wanted to control her father, and he wouldn’t take their … bribes?”
Andino made a noise under his breath. “I don’t think bribe would be the right word when it comes to cartels. More like … look at her mom who was killed and then shortly after, she married. Coercion and violence. Threats. That’s how they work.”
He could see that statement clearly made Haven uncomfortable, but she simply stared down at the file again and kept talking.
“Do you think she married the son of the cartel leader to help her father?”
“I would almost count on it, yeah.”
Haven flinched. “She was only fifteen, though.”
“I’m not sure if that matters to the man she married.”
“Obviously,” Haven whispered. “She had Maria when she was seventeen—she took off when she was pregnant. She told me that much.”
“I think the only way for Valeria to stay safe is to keep moving,” Andino said. “That’s just based on what I know about this particular cartel, and people who escape from them. They can’t stay in one place for very long.”
“She’d been with me for a while, though.”
“Maybe that’s why she left, then.”
Andino didn’t know if that was the case, however. He didn’t like the alternative to that option, though, considering that meant the cartel caught up with Valeria and forced her back to Mexico, and her husband.
A man who Andino suspected wasn’t a good man.
Why would a woman—a pregnant woman—run from him otherwise?
Nonetheless, Andino wasn’t done looking for Valeria Gomez yet. He simply had to be careful given the things he knew about her now. It could be dangerous for him—and her—if the cartel found someone who was actively searching for the wife of the man currently running the operation.
Given the way Haven looked right then next to him, sad and so unsure, he figured it was worth the damn risk, anyway.
“What else are you wondering?” he asked.
Haven shrugged one shoulder. “That was it, really. About Val, anyway.”
“What, you just wanted—”
“Confirmation of my suspicions, I guess. Yeah.”
Andino leaned back on the couch. “I see.”
“What did you get this information for—to leverage it against me?”
Wow.
That was a whole one-eighty there.
Andino respected Haven for having the guts to ask him, though. And considering everything that had happened between the two of them, he understood why she asked, too. Still, she was so far from the truth, it wasn’t even funny.
He stood from the couch, and readjusted the rolled up sleeves of his dress shirt. “I did it because I knew it was bothering you, and maybe I could help. That’s all. Do you want to stay for dinner, or do you have somewhere to be?”
Haven blinked up at him. “I shouldn’t stay, Andino.”
Yeah, he figured she would say that. He also didn’t plan on taking no for an answer.
“Why the hell not?”
She let out a laugh. “Because it always ends the same way.”
Andino arched a brow. “I don’t follow.”
“We fuck, Andino. We fuck, and then I leave. We fuck, and it means nothing. We fuck—that’s what we do.”
Perhaps so, but she never said no.
Hell, she initiated.
“I don’t see the problem.”
Haven gave him another one of those smiles. “Of course, you don’t.”
• • •
Haven wasn’t wrong.
It took very little time, the two of them simply working in the kitchen to make dinner, some flour tossed around, and then they found themselves trying to clean up in the bathroom, but ended up like this.<
br />
Andino backed against the cold tile of the bathroom wall, and Haven on her knees. She was quite a fucking sight down below him with his cock between her lips as she swallowed him right down to the base. There was something about her lipstick stains around his cock that made his fucking balls tight, and his spine hot.
Something about her mussed makeup, and his hands fisted in her hair. Something about the way she hummed around his shaft like the taste of his precum on her tongue was candy she couldn’t get enough of. Something about the way this woman knew how to use her lips and teeth to tease the life out of him until he was ready to blow his load, and watch her swallow every damn drop he gave her.
She was good for that.
Loved it, really.
“Fuck, yeah,” Andino grunted, his hips flexing forward in reaction to the way Haven let her teeth graze along his shaft. “Suck that dick, baby. Show me how much you love it, Haven.”
She did. In the way her eyes darkened as she watched him from her knees, and how her lips curved into an attempt of a grin.
Little tease.
She was killing him like this.
All it took was Andino’s hands tightening in Haven’s hair for her to loosen her lips around his dick. She knew what that meant, and followed along beautifully. Like this, he could fuck her mouth as fast, deep, or hard as he wanted. He could feel the way her tongue flattened against the base of his shaft, and her muscles relaxed in her throat.
Every jerk of his cock sent him closer to the edge.
Almost … almost …
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed when that edge finally came. It was swift, and unforgiving. An orgasm strong enough to make his fucking knees weaken from the intensity. Somehow, he managed to keep his eyes on Haven although he hadn’t been able to give her a warning. Not that she needed one. The woman swallowed every drop, and then licked his dick clean with one of her sly smiles. “Holy fuck.”
She was still on her knees. Still naked but for the panties and bra he hadn’t quite managed to rip off of her before she got down to suck his dick. Still red-lipped from having her mouth fucked, and still dotted with the flour he’d all but thrown at her when she left a floury handprint right on his cheek. Still a mess.