“I’m not letting you out. I don’t know what you think you’re playing at.”
“Maybe I kissed you for a different reason.”
Her eyes snapped to his face before she could stop herself. Big mistake. Javier pinned her with a gaze that threatened all the pleasure she’d been missing.
“Yeah? Like what?” Emily made her voice cold and brave.
“I wanted to.”
The most dangerous answer of all. It invited Emily to think of them as a man and woman, nothing more. Body to body, she knew all complications would disappear. Even one kiss had made clear that she would know exactly what to do if she lost herself in him. She steeled her resolve. Capturing Fernando Bonavita would bring her unprecedented financial security. She needed to keep her focus there. She didn’t know why being able to pay her rent seemed so much less attractive than spending a night in Javier’s arms, but she had to fight through the arousal or suffer terrible regret.
She summoned sarcasm to her defense. “I’ll bet it has nothing to do with convenience. I just happen to be the prettiest girl you’ve seen in a while, not the woman who’s currently holding the keys to your freedom.” Emily almost panted as she spoke. The irrational part of her mind wanted him to tell her she was pretty. How could she so easily forget every goal she’d ever had?
Javier tipped his head as if he could read her thoughts. “Give me a chance to convince you.”
Even with his hands behind his back, the man was agile. He maneuvered up onto his knees and Emily didn’t stop him—she just watched him do it. Javier turned toward her and pressed his body against hers. Emily could have taken him down with her martial arts skills. She’d overmatched him easily at first. The problem was, right now she didn’t have the will.
She turned her head to rub her cheek against the smooth, hard muscles of his chest. She wanted to dip her mouth lower and explore his tight, lean abs and the dimensions of that erection. She wanted to tilt her head back and kiss him until she lost her mind.
Javier decided for her, sitting back on his heels and taking her mouth again. Emily struggled with the urge to release him so she could feel his hands all over her. Hadn’t she just declared she wouldn’t let him go, no matter how much he came on to her? Still, her body craved his touch. His tongue slipped into her mouth, his skill with it holding her in place far more effectively than the restraints she’d placed on him. Emily closed her eyes and moaned.
What could he do if he had full use of his hands? Her aching nipples wanted to know and the fire of her curiosity spread down her belly to the rapidly moistening cleft between her legs. Since he could not touch her body, she felt him. She sent her fingers traveling across his chest, down the hard planes of his stomach to the waistband of his pants. She toyed with his button, then shied away from it, instead wrapping her arms around him and pressing even closer. She gripped his shoulder blades, but as the kiss continued temptation overcame her again and she groped down his back until she reached his firm ass. She held it tightly as her tongue responded to his and she ground her body against him. Tilting her hips forward, she rubbed against his erection. The motion gave Emily no relief—it only increased the ache between her legs.
She needed something like this so badly. The scent and sensation of a man’s body so close to hers went straight to her head. An orgasm shimmered in her mind, just over the horizon. She might be able to come to her senses if she could just come first. And all she needed was a little more.
Emily gave a frustrated moan and lifted her body higher against his to rub herself against the full length of his erection. In her enthusiasm, she toppled him onto his back, drawing another high-pitched complaint from the ancient sofa and a grunt from Javier. He writhed beneath her, tugging his restrained hands away from where they’d landed. She ignored all this, wrapped her legs around Javier and continued to pursue her satisfaction. Emily lifted away from their kiss, braced her hands on his pecs and searched for the perfect angle.
Javier grinned up at her. “A woman who likes to take charge…”
Emily’s cheeks heated. She froze. “Actually, I’m usually not like this.”
“Hey, don’t get embarrassed. I like it. I’ve never had a woman handcuff me and climb on top. It’s pretty hot.”
His face seemed open and sincere. Everything about his body declared that he did in fact like it. But the insecurity she’d felt with Matthew could not be banished so easily, and this time she blessed it for bringing her back to the reality of the situation. Emily eased out of her straddle, rearranging herself to sit on the couch beside his chest. “I’ve always been the one in the handcuffs,” she confessed. Her blush spread down her neck. That wasn’t the firm denial she’d intended to deliver.
Javier lifted himself into a crunch and looked Emily in the eye. His restraints prevented him from propping himself up with an arm, but the position seemed effortless. He came in for another kiss. Emily pulled back to prevent herself from getting lost in it. Her lips clung to his for a moment before separating. “If you’d like to free my hands, I’d be more than happy to put the handcuffs on you instead,” Javier said.
There it was. He still thought he could seduce her into letting him escape. “That would be the worst idea I’ve had in a while.”
“I could make it the best.”
Emily’s body agreed with the suggestion. She smiled, but she just could not give in to that idea. Not under the circumstances, no matter how much she wanted to. Emily brushed her lips against his forehead and pushed his chest with both hands until he lay flat again. When she’d gotten him in place, she backed away resolutely and turned. She couldn’t afford to let this continue. This had gone past worries about being a bad bounty hunter. She was going to get herself hurt.
“I know what you must think considering the way I brought you here,” Emily said. “But you don’t have to keep trying to seduce me. It’s not right for me to keep you here, and I swear I have ethics. Can we make an agreement? I let you go right now, and you promise not to go to your brother.”
She heard nothing behind her. Emily’s spine itched. She couldn’t stop being aware of his body. She could still taste him on her lips. Finally Javier laughed. Emily whirled and found him sitting up on the couch shaking his head. “What kind of person do you think I am?”
She bit her lip. Maybe Matthew had been right. She’d been in over her head the moment this job started and things were only getting worse. “What do you mean? What did I say?”
“You think I could walk away from here and not go to my brother?” Javier shook his head. “Why would I want to leave here badly enough to take that deal? Are you planning to torture me?”
Emily glanced back at him, confronted by his teasing half-smile. “Of course not.”
Something flickered over Javier’s face. He sat up fully, maneuvering awkwardly to tuck his legs up on the couch Indian-style. “Then keep me with you.”
“What? Why?”
All of the flirtation had gone out of him. Javier now fixed Emily with an intense, smoldering expression that affected her even more deeply. He closed his eyes. The words he spoke seemed to cause him pain. “When you told me what Fernando is supposed to have done…”
Emily moved closer. She wanted to reach out and comfort him but fisted her hands at her sides instead. “Yes?”
His eyes snapped open and the raw anguish in them took Emily’s breath away. “Fernando is the only person who’s ever cared about me. He gave me everything I’ve ever had. If you let me go, I have to go to him and tell him everything I can about who you are and how to stay away from you.”
He trailed off. Emily returned to the couch and nodded for him to go on.
“I don’t know if I want to,” Javier whispered. “If he really did shoot a little girl.” He shrugged his shoulders, the gesture emphasizing the restraints that still held his arms behind his back. “I’d kind of like for you to keep me here, at least until I figure out what to do. I’m not trying to seduce you so that
you’ll let me go. I’m trying to seduce you so that you’ll let me stay.”
Chapter Six
Fernando Bonavita sat on the stoop in front of Carolina’s modest rented house in Pawtucket. The neighborhood had gone to seed years ago, but Carolina had transformed her little piece of it into a jewel that redeemed all the rest. With fall coming on, her garden’s colors had turned to brilliant oranges, reds and golds. Pumpkins and winter squash and tomatoes burst forth from patches in the front and back of the house. Birds still came to the feeders that swung from the two tall trees that screened the house from the main road.
Fernando smiled up at them, remembering how hard it had been to convince her to let him help her get them up the ladder. He had repainted the exterior of the house for her too, stripping to his undershirt in the brisk spring air, exchanging passionate looks with her through her kitchen windows.
He closed his eyes and leaned back against her front door. He’d tried to keep Carolina completely separate from his criminal life. He had no business being here at all—he could be putting her in danger. Not only that, if anyone did know about his connection to her, this would be one of the first places they’d look for him.
None of that mattered beside the simple fact that he had to see her. He could not leave without trying to take her with him, and he could not bear to consider what he would do if she would not come.
Tires scraped against the driveway. Fernando stayed where he was. A moment later, a car door slammed and rubber soles slapped against concrete toward where he sat. They stopped abruptly and he finally sat up and looked at her.
She still wore her scrubs from work, but even their washed-out blue could not dull the glow of her dark skin or hide her generous curves. Every time Fernando saw her thick black hair bound up in the severe bun she wore to work, he wanted to undo it, run his fingers through it and rub his face in it. He knew she hated him to see her without makeup, but he liked the bare beauty of her unadorned face as much as he liked the polished, pulled-together gleam she put on for his benefit. Fernando smiled at the sight of her and only noticed her tears a moment later.
He leaped up and ran to her, gathering her into his arms before he could think of anything else. She shifted restlessly in his grasp and he knew she felt the bulges he’d planned to conceal from her—the wads of cash in his left pants pocket, the gold watches in his right and maybe even the hard and unmistakable shape of the gun in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Fernando?” Her voice was a shaky whisper. “What are you doing here without your car?”
“We can talk about that soon, Carolina. First, tell me what’s wrong.”
She bit her lip, and he knew. Fernando’s stomach twisted. How many times had he thought about telling her the truth? It had never seemed like the right time, and now she’d heard from someone else. “Let’s go inside,” she said, and when she took his hand to lead him in, Fernando felt the change in the way she touched him.
Carolina looked over her shoulder before she unlocked the door. She kept her body angled away from him, never quite trusting him with her back. His heart sank further, even though she took him into the cozy, familiar kitchen where they had eaten so many happy meals. Her cheerful flowered curtains and bright-yellow walls already seemed like they belonged in someone else’s life.
Fernando took a seat in his usual chair. Carolina made two cups of strong coffee in silence before joining him at the table. He cleared his throat to speak, but she cut him off before he could begin with a sharp, uncharacteristic gesture. “You told me you worked in finance.”
He wanted to throw himself to the tiled floor, to beg her from his knees. However she would have reacted to that display, too many years of pride made it impossible. Fernando only lifted an eyebrow.
His deflection clearly threw her off. Perhaps she had braced herself for denials or threats. Her eyes raced up and down his body, seeming unable to settle anywhere. Fernando caught her gaze with his and nodded to prompt her.
“You don’t, do you?” Carolina’s words trembled.
“Why are you asking me this?’
Anger now. It flushed her cheeks, made her sit up straight, caused her elegant hands to slap down flat on the table. “I listened to the radio on the way home from work, Fernando. I heard all about who you really are.”
And that was it. Fernando had feared and imagined this moment since the night he’d met Carolina. On the way to her place from the club where he’d found her, he had mused on what it would be like to see this betrayed expression on her face. That had been his first sign that he would see her for more than one night.
“I’ll answer any question you want to ask.” He felt strangely flat, as if this had already happened, as if everything were already over.
She drummed her fingers on the table, the nails painted deep plum. Fernando remembered lying beside her while she’d done that, admiring her easy flexibility when she tucked her legs up to paint her toes. “When were you going to tell me?”
“Carolina. I was always planning to tell you the truth.”
“When?” Her voice rose from defeated whisper to full outrage.
“Before things got too serious.” Fernando regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth.
“Too serious? Too serious?” Carolina sat back in her chair as suddenly as if he had slapped her. “How serious were you waiting for it to get?” She glanced around her kitchen, and Fernando knew what she saw. The plates he had bought her. The cabinets he had polished. The tablecloth she had picked out while at the store with him. From the beginning, he had felt an incredible urge to mark Carolina’s home as his, to make sure she saw him wherever she looked. He had indulged it without restraint.
As he followed her gaze to the little items he’d thought could claim her, Fernando’s emotions flooded back into his chest with a vengeance. They swept him away. “Carolina—”
That sharp hand gesture again. She didn’t speak, instead just shaking her head.
“Whatever I can do to explain…”
“Not yet. Please. Not yet.” Tears threatened to pour from her eyes. Fernando wanted to kiss them away, but for the first time wasn’t sure if he was allowed. Carolina sighed, pushed her chair back from the table and stood. “I need a shower.”
She turned and left him. She kicked off her shoes on the way down the hallway. Their light rubber thwacked softly against the bare wooden floor as she discarded them. Fernando stared after her, not sure what he was supposed to do.
Carolina flicked on the bathroom light, paused in the doorway and looked over her shoulder at him. “Are you coming?”
Fernando scrambled to his feet and went to her. He wasn’t about to make her ask him twice. She closed the bathroom door and threw herself at him. She kissed without regard for balance or sanity. Her teeth found his neck as much as her soft lips. She bit where in the past she had always caressed.
He fell back beneath the assault and let her knock him to the floor in her fervor. They overturned a large jar of lavender bath salts she kept beside the tub. The beads spilled, crunching beneath their bodies, crushing into Fernando’s carefully pressed suit and releasing their scent.
On any other day, he would have cared, but this time he just closed his eyes and let Carolina rip away his jacket. It fell beside them with a metallic thunk. She dispensed with the rest of his clothes the same way, then pressed against his body, the fabric of her scrubs scratching his naked skin.
She snaked her arms around him, working them under his back. Fernando returned her embrace. The moment his arms closed around her she went still. “I think I hate you right now, Fernando.”
He didn’t know what to say. He lifted his head and found her mouth open and waiting for his kiss. He held her ever tighter as he kissed her, clasping her delicious curves against him. His left hand traveled up the side of her neck until he cupped her head. Cradling her, he rolled them over, settling her back against her fluffy blue bath mat. Fernando pulled away from
the kiss to help her out of her scrubs. “I don’t want you to hate me.”
She squirmed beneath him, lifting an elbow so he could free her of a sleeve. She tucked her ankles around his. “Don’t let me go,” she said. “For just a little while, I don’t want you to give me a choice.”
Fernando understood what she was asking. He kissed her forehead and stood, leaving her on the floor for a moment while he rummaged in the back of a drawer. Carolina shivered when he pulled out the restraints.
He knelt beside her and she wrapped her arms around his neck like a child. Fernando lifted her up, then into the tub. Finally, Carolina gave him the lover’s smile he craved. She held his gaze as she put her hands up to the discreet metal bar he had installed just above the lip of the tub.
“You know what to say if you want out,” he reminded her.
“Basta.”
“Right.” He clipped on the restraints, trapping her hands above her head and leaving her body at his mercy. Then Fernando turned on the water in the tub, careful to move her legs away from the stream until it warmed to a pleasant temperature. He covered the drain, then scooped a few handfuls of the lavender beads off the floor and into the water.
Water filled the tub and the scent of lavender wafted more strongly through the air. At first all Fernando did was play with her hair. He undid the bun, then finger-combed her hair out in long, black tresses to either side of her face. He took her brush off the sink and used it until the water level rose high enough to make her breasts float.
Sometimes when he did this she would talk about her day, or even giggle. This time she just watched him, tears welling up in her eyes. The silence unsettled him and sharpened his fervent desire to touch her everywhere.
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