by Alyse Zaftig
“We’re being taken in for questioning about the cocaine that they found in the jet.”
“Cocaine? Are you joking? I’ve never even seen any! My dad would murder me with his bare hands if I ever used drugs.”
He pulled her off of the plane. She didn’t shut up.
I quietly went into the car after her. She never stopped protesting even as this man drove us into Quito, making the long journey from UIO into the heart of the city.
I didn’t say much, just waited for my moment.
Officer Ortiz
Naelle
My wrists hurt from the handcuffs. I’d never been handcuffed before, and I really didn’t like it.
They were too tight for one thing, and the man ignored me.
I wished that I was home. Dad would’ve taken care of this.
I waited as we went to a building that was obviously a jail.
I started shaking.
“Don’t worry,” Emilio’s deep voice said. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you.”
If I could have crossed my arms, I would have.
“I cannot believe you got me into this situation.” I knew he hadn’t meant to, but I was also about to go to jail.
“Don’t worry,” he repeated. “All of this is a horrible misunderstanding. Once we are booked, we’ll get out.”
I turned to him, my eyebrows drawn together.
“What?” How did that make any sense?
“Just trust me.”
I turned to look out the window. The guy who had found the baggie of cocaine in our jet was opening the door and roughly pulling me out of the car.
His hand on my arm hurt, but I got the feeling that if I tried to call Internal Audit on him, I’d only worsen my situation.
My hands were shaking a lot now, and my eyes were filling with tears. I considered myself a pretty brave person, but I wasn’t equipped to handle going to jail in a foreign country. If I’d thought that there was even a possibility of getting arrested in Ecuador, I would’ve gone somewhere else. Hawaii sounded like a much better destination at the moment. At least I would’ve been on US soil.
Emilio got out of the car under his own power, and the official walked us both into the police station.
The second that we walked inside, there was a man waiting by the door.
“I’ll take it from here, Aguilera,” he said, taking my arm and pulling me away from the first governmental official, whose hand tightened painfully on my arm.
“I made the discovery. I get to book them!” Aguilera’s face was red.
“That’s enough,” the other guy said in a tone that meant that it was the end of the conversation.
Aguilera finally let go of my arm and stomped off, muttering to himself.
“I’m so sorry, sir. He’s new.”
To my surprise, the new policeman unlocked our handcuffs.
I rubbed my wrists, which were red where the cuffs had chafed them.
“Not a problem,” Emilio said smoothly. “Thank you for taking control of the situation.”
“I apologize sincerely for the…oversight.”
They shared a glance.
“I wonder how a baggie of Omega cocaine made its way onto my jet?”
The new policeman’s eyebrows shot upwards.
“Omega cocaine?”
“Yes.”
The policeman rubbed his chin. “Do you have it?”
“Aguilera does.”
I looked at Emilio. There was something going on that I didn’t understand.
“Why is that significant?”
Both of them looked at me like I was really slow. I just shook my head. Stuff was going on that I didn’t understand at all.
“We should go. Is there any paperwork that you have to handle?”
The policeman shook his head. “Aguilera should know better than to stop you, Señor. I’m so sorry that he wasted your time. You’re free to go.”
My jaw dropped.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” The policeman motioned towards the door. “Please go.”
Before I could say anything else, Emilio’s hand was on my arm and he was dragging me out the door.
Finally, we were outside of the police station.
“What the hell just happened?” I hissed, looking over my shoulder to see if there was anybody there.
“We’re free,” he said calmly, as if we hadn’t just been arrested and handcuffed on his plane for cocaine possession.
“I don’t understand anything that’s happening.”
“Look, we’ll go to my home. All of your stuff is still in the plane. I don’t think that it’s a good idea to leave the country at the moment. Why don’t you stay with me for a while?”
“I’d rather stay at the hostel. I paid for the rest of the week.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Listen…you’d be a lot safer in my house than you would be in a hostel now that you’ve been arrested with me.”
“Safer? I don’t feel safer after I was just ARRESTED!” I couldn’t stop myself from shouting the last word.
“Shh,” he said, putting a finger to his lips. There was a woman and a little boy who had turned around to stare at us.
I thanked my lucky stars that they looked like Ecuadorians, and I hoped that they weren’t fluent in English. The woman said something in Spanish to the little boy, taking his hand and towing him away. Maybe it looked like a domestic dispute.
Emilio’s hand tightened on my arm.
“Come to my house, please,” he said again, but I got the feeling that it wasn’t really a request.
He had all of my stuff, including my passport. Even if I tried to break away now, what would happen?
So I decided to stick with him and figure out how it would play out.
“I’ll go home with you.”
Not a Spy
Emilio
I let out a breath that I didn’t know I was holding. I knew that she was headstrong, and she might be too stubborn to let me protect her.
If anything convinced me of her innocence, it was her bewilderment when we were arrested. If I’d set it up myself, I couldn’t have hoped for a better result.
If she had been part of the CIA, she would’ve told them who she was when we were arrested, unless she was ordered to go in deep.
I considered the idea that she’d been sent as a spy…or she had planted the cocaine herself.
I snorted and shook my head at such a preposterous thought. If she’d been sent to Ecuador as a spy, she’d done a shoddy job of it. In the time that we’d been together, I hadn’t seen her send so much as a text message. And a secret agent would have immediately gotten out of cuffs and run for it. An incarcerated CIA agent in Ecuador wouldn’t be in a very good position. There had been enough trouble when WikiLeaks had publicized the US ambassador’s candid critique of the president — I couldn’t imagine the media blowout if Ecuador was lucky enough to catch a CIA agent spying here.
I’d put her in the government’s hands myself. Nothing I’d do to her would equal what they’d do to her.
But now I was going to take her home, and I was going to get to the bottom of whomever had sent Aguilera to search my jet.
I was lucky that Ortiz was there, but I certainly paid him enough to look after my affairs. If he hadn’t prevented it before it happened, it meant that it had been enacted at the last minute. I’d only filed the flight plan a little bit before we took off.
Heads were going to roll.
I looked at Naelle’s beautiful profile.
There was something in her beautiful dark eyes — was it fear? anxiety — which awoke my protective instincts.
I was mostly sure that she wasn’t sent to take me down, and I would protect her while I could get to the bottom of this. It could be a ploy to gain my trust, but I highly doubted it.
I hailed the closest taxi. I didn’t normally use them, but we had unusual circumstances. I needed to g
et away from the police station before that asshole Aguilera even noticed that I was gone.
“North of La Carolina,” I told him.
He easily slid into traffic like a seasoned Quito driver. I told him where to turn, and soon we were at my house.
Very Sleepy
Naelle
The impact of his home diminished as I got used to it. He paid the cab driver and stepped out, putting a possessive arm around my shoulders. I didn’t know if I liked it. One, he was warm and solid. Two, he was awfully presumptuous for a guy I’d slept with just one night and who had proceeded to nearly kidnap me and force me to go back to the United States.
Too much had happened in the last day. I was dead on my feet.
“Hungry?” he asked me.
“No,” I said, covering my mouth as I yawned.
“Let me take you upstairs to a bedroom, okay? You’re sleepy.”
I was too tired to think about anything, like getting my luggage. I’d figure it out when I woke up.
When I moved to go upstairs, I tripped on the first step of the staircase.
I found myself whisked off of my feet.
“Put me down?” I didn’t sound very sure of myself.
“You’re so tired that you can barely stand. Just let me take you upstairs and tuck you in.”
I stared into his face. I could see clear affection and caring. It was totally at odds with the scary man who’d been borderline threatening when I’d gone into his secret cabin high in the mountains next to Quito.
But then I rested my head on his shoulder. I’d unravel the mystery of Emilio later. For now, I was mostly asleep.
I felt him push open a door and lean down to put me down on a soft bed.
“Stay with me.” I tightened my arms around his body.
Where had that come from?
He lay next to me on the soft bed, our arms around each other.
“I was really scared today,” I told him softly.
“You’re safe now,” he reassured me. “I’ll stay here until you fall asleep, okay?”
My eyes were closed as I accepted the embrace of this gentle monster.
Gentle
Emilio
I must have fallen asleep when I’d held Naelle in my arms, because the first thing that I felt when I woke up was her warm body still in my arms.
My hands trailed slowly down her back. I loved feeling her curvy figure.
As I opened my eyes, she was staring right at me, her mouth a hairsbreadth from mine.
I captured her mouth with mine, slowly sliding my tongue into her mouth, stroking her softly, and then withdrawing before doing it all over again.
She was whimpering softly as I pushed her onto her back and kissed her delicate neck.
I bit it.
She let out a small scream. I soothed the bite with my tongue, and her head turned to the side.
“I’m going to take off your clothes,” I promised her. “If you want me to stop, say so now.”
In response, she sat up and took off her own shirt. When she moved to take off her bra, I put my hand over hers.
“Stop,” I said before kissing the top of her soft breasts.
“I’m going to do it.”
I gently pulled her hand away from the front-clasp of her bra.
I unlatched it before freeing her breasts, then slid the straps down her arms, letting her bra fall off.
“You’re so beautiful,” I told her before sucking one dark nipple into my mouth.
I quickly unbuttoned her pants and slid them down her thick legs. I kissed my way down the center of her body and pushed her thighs apart.
And then I gently kissed her between her thighs. She gasped loudly and I pushed my tongue inside of her.
Her hips went wild. I held her in place with two hands on her hips as I drank her up.
She was yelling now, and I loved it, her body shuddering through a climax.
Then I turned her onto her stomach, her legs apart, and swiftly entered her.
“Oh!”
I pulled back and pushed right back in.
She pushed herself up on her hands and rocked back onto me, meeting me every time that I thrust into her body.
I prolonged the motion for as long as I could, but eventually I lost the battle and shoved as far inside of her as I could get before exploding.
I pulled out of her, turning her on her side, so that I could hold her in my arms as both of us recovered.
“That was incredible,” she whispered softly.
“You’re incredible,” I told her before biting her earlobe, making her cry out…maybe in shock, maybe with pleasure.
I trailed a hand down the curves of her body. She was everything that I wanted and hadn’t known I needed until I had her.
She yawned, and it was contagious. We’d just woken up, but I was pleasantly tired again.
“Go to sleep,” I told her, stroking the soft skin of her back. “And then we’ll go again.”
Alejandro’s Call
Emilio
But it never happened. Instead, we were awoken by the ringing phone.
I grunted and tried to turn away from it. I didn’t want to be pulled out of bed by business concerns. I’d rather focus on the beautiful woman in my arms.
But the phone stopped ringing for only a moment before it started ringing again.
I cursed before I picked up.
“What?” I snarled.
“Cabrón,” my little brother shouted, “how dare you cut off my supply?”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. I didn’t want to deal with Alejandro right now.
Noticing Naelle awake and looking at me, I got out of bed, totally naked, and walked out of the bedroom.
“Ale,” I said, “you know that you can’t erase all of your problems with cocaine.”
“I can try.”
My younger brother was a mess.
I tried to soften my tone.
“Hey. I know that Mom and Dad’s deaths were hard on you but…”
“Thanks for reminding me, asshole,” he said. “I’ve tried to forget every day.”
I was the oldest and far more independent than my little brother. He was their little baby. Even when we’d been forced to go into the cocaine business, Ale had been sheltered from the more gory aspects of it.
And now I wondered if my father’s decision was really the right one. If Ale saw what cocaine did to our buyers, the end consumers who bought it from our dealers, then maybe he wouldn’t be so fond of the white powder that had recreated our family fortune.
“I cut you off because you need to face reality. Get a job, Ale. I already offered you one in our organization, but…”
“I don’t need a job,” he sneered. “Stop trying to be Dad.”
Ugh. “Listen, Ale,” I started.
“No, you listen,” he snapped back. “If you won’t let your dealers give me any cocaine, I can buy it anywhere I want. I still have my trust fund.”
“You do what you want, Ale, but you know that whatever decisions you make will impact your daughter,” I said. I couldn’t stop him from going out on the street and destroying himself with the impure cocaine that made it to street level. At least when he took some of our inventory, I knew that he was getting pure cocaine. If he bought it, I couldn’t guarantee that he’d be okay.
But I was done babying my younger brother. He was a father now. He’d made the same threat every time, promising to slow down and clean up a little, but he always did it for a day or two before going right back into his normal routine.
He was as thin as a rail, and if I didn’t do something, he’d waste away. I knew that my dead parents must be turning over in their graves. My father could handle Ale, but he was gone now.
“Ale,” I said softly. “I love you. I want to see you get better. Cocaine is fine as a recreational habit, like alcohol. But you have become a real cocadero. If you were an alcoholic, I’d be checking you into rehab.”
“I don’
t have a problem,” he shouted. “All my problems would go away if you’d just let me into your supply.”
“I already set up a spot in a rehab program, Ale,” I murmured. “I’d like for you to go there. I’ll talk to our lawyers about cutting down your access to your trust fund. I don’t think that you’re competent right now.”
“Fuck you,” he said, hanging up on me.
Closet
Naelle
“Who was that?”
Emilio just shook his head.
“My little brother. He has no idea how to take care of himself. I’m figuring it out, though.”
“You said something about rehab?”
Emilio shook his head again.
“He has some problems.”
He abruptly changed the subject. “Would you like me to take you to the G Spot?”
I choked when I started giggling.
“Is that a weird Ecuadorian way to ask if I want to go again? Because I do.”
“No,” he said, kissing my neck and pinning me to the bed with his big body.
“Although I’m not going to say no to another round, I’m pretty hungry. While I’d like to keep you in my bedroom for a little longer, you should explore Quito while we’re stuck here.”
I was still.
“We’re stuck?”
“There’s something going on, Naelle. We’re going to stay in Ecuador while we figure out what’s happening with the Omegas. They’re out to get me.”
“The Omegas? Who are they?”
“Rival business empire,” he growled. “And they don’t want me in their territory, even though it was mine first.”
His face lost all of his anger and I saw the passionate lover who had rocked my world. He crawled towards me and pulled me into his lap before kissing me deeply.
I couldn’t resist kissing him back. He tasted sweet like candy.
“If I don’t stop now, we’re going to end up in this bed all day.”