I close my eyes and run my hands up his muscular arms, loving the strength I feel in them. Then I exhale the breath I’ve been holding and roll my hips.
Ryan growls in pleasure, so I do it again. And again. And again.
He’s hot and heavy and hard against me. His whole body is hard and masculine, and I love it so much, I can’t help but paw him like a greedy little animal. I turn my head to his arm and sink my teeth into the muscle as I listen to him pant and softly groan. I’m so wet, I hear the sounds it makes as I grind against him, but I don’t care. I’m past rational thought. I’m nearly delirious.
He takes over and starts to pump into me, deep and slow, his mouth on my neck. My nipples drag against his chest with every move, sending shock waves of pleasure throughout my body as a coil of pressure winds tight deep inside me, tighter and tighter with every stroke of his cock.
“I’m close,” I breathe, shaking with the need for release.
“Hold on, baby. Draw it out. It’ll be so much more intense if you can hold on.”
He keeps pumping, flexing his hips in that agonizingly slow, steady rhythm, his breath hot at my ear. When I cry out, almost tipping over the edge, he falls still and peppers sweet, gentle kisses all over my neck and shoulder.
I pull his hair, wanting to scream, wanting to come but also wanting to hold on, gulping big breaths and shaking uncontrollably beneath him.
“Oh, fuck you’re right there,” he whispers when I clench around him. He raises his head and stares into my eyes. There’s a moment, a long, bottomless moment, where we simply gaze at each other, our hearts in our eyes, everything laid bare between us.
Then he exhales and thrusts into me, and I’m over the edge.
My body bows as my orgasm slams into me, stiffening my muscles and stealing the breath from my lips. I cry out, mindless, thrashing, going crazy underneath him as he drives into me again and again, grunting through his pleasure, watching me come through slitted eyes.
Ryan Ryan Ryan.
I’m screaming his name, or sobbing it, I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m past caring about anything but him, but this, this whirlwind of thunder and lightning, of howling gales and scalding rain. This could be heaven or it could be hell, and when I realize it doesn’t matter as long as he’s with me, it finally shatters what’s left of the wall around my heart.
It all crumbles away. All my doubt. All my fear. All my stupid excuses.
I do belong to this man, no matter how much I might try to deny it, no matter how much my rational mind might scoff. No matter how crazy it is. How impossible.
I’m his.
Then he’s laughing. Loudly, with his head thrown back, a wild, crazy laugh like he just broke out of prison.
“Yes, you are,” he says, still laughing, which is when I realize I’ve said it aloud.
He rolls flat onto his back, taking me with him in a smooth motion, made simple by the strength of his arms. My hair cascades around my shoulders and breasts as I stare down at him with heavy lids in a fog of sheer pleasure, feeling him so deep and hard inside me. I’m still throbbing around him, and my body is still pulsing inside, so I follow the beat of the pulse and rock against his cock, throwing my head back and closing my eyes.
His hands grip my hips. He thrusts up into me, his breath harsh and guttural.
He whispers, “Look at you, oh fuck, you’re so fucking beautiful, Jesus, Jesus—” He cuts off with a groan, his body bowing up into mine. “Fuck! I’m gonna come! Fuck, Angel, your mouth, gimme your mouth—”
He breaks off with another groan, this one desperate.
I manage to clamber down and get him into my mouth just as he starts to come, spilling hotly onto my tongue. He’s shouting, his head pitched back onto the pillow, all the muscles in his abdomen and arms standing out.
I swallow. He gives me more. He’s twisting in the blankets, pulling my hair, out of control, grunting like an animal as he pumps against my mouth. I love every second of it, his taste, his total abandon, everything.
He comes like he does everything else, 1,000 percent committed. Crying out until he’s hoarse, praising me, making me feel beautiful, like fairy tales could be true and happily ever afters might be an actual possibility. When it’s over and he’s spent, lying motionless and panting, his chest slick with sweat, I sit back on my heels and just look at him. I drink him in with my eyes, memorizing every golden line of his body.
Because in some dark part of my heart, no matter how much I want to believe in them, I know that fairy tales aren’t true.
He cracks an eye open and peers at me. “Oh no. I see smoke. You’re thinking.”
“No, I’m admiring the picture I’ve made.”
“What picture is that?”
“The picture of a big, strong man wrung out and helpless against me.”
“Well,” he says, his voice husky, “not totally helpless.” His cock, still erect, twitches against his belly. When I laugh, he holds out his arms. “Get up here.”
I crawl up and fit myself against him, snuggling under his arm and throwing my leg over his. He kisses my forehead, one arm tightening around me in a possessive embrace. The other hand trails up my arm, raising gooseflesh in its wake. I rest my head against his chest, listen to the steady thump of his heart, and close my eyes.
“Tell me a story, Mariana,” he whispers, lips moving against my forehead.
“A story? What kind of story?”
“A story about a little girl who lived in the hills and ate dirt to survive,” he says with infinite gentleness. “The story of you.”
I turn my face to his neck. He squeezes me tighter when he feels the tremor run through me. Then, when I’ve gathered the courage and decided where to start, I take a deep breath and begin.
25
Mariana
“Once upon a time, there was a shy little girl named Mariana. She was born in Colombia, in a small village called Chengue, in the Sucre province, a northern coastal mountain range near the Caribbean Sea. Most people there were cattle farmers, but Mariana’s parents farmed avocadoes. No matter what they farmed, however, the people of that region were poor. Peasants. The little girl didn’t understand that until many years later. She thought the wild hills she roamed with her scruffy yellow dog were paradise.”
I pause to draw a breath, wondering if Ryan knew it would be easier to tell this as if it happened to someone else—just a girl in a story, not me.
I decide he probably did.
“Colombia was—and is—a country of great beauty, but also great violence. It’s been embroiled in civil war for more than fifty years. People think coffee and drugs are the main fuel of its economy, and they are, but there are also kidnappings for profit, assassins for hire, and death squads that roam the countryside, paid by the government to quell any rebellion.
“Misery is big business there. Death is an accepted part of life. But all was well in tiny Chengue. Mariana and her older sister, Nina, helped her parents on the farm, and they went to school in the village and led a normal, happy life.”
Beneath my cheek, Ryan’s heart beats faster. He instinctively knows what’s coming before it even leaves my lips.
“Until one night, the paramilitary came before dawn and started pulling people from their homes.”
I close my eyes and listen to the beat of Ryan’s heart, the ache of devastation burning through me even after all these years.
“The soldiers took everyone to the center of the village. There was so much screaming, so much confusion, so many shiny black pools of blood. A few, including Mariana and her sister, escaped to the hills. They couldn’t escape the screams, though. They lasted all through the night, horrible screams and gunfire and shouting that echoed up into the hills like the voices of angry ghosts.
“When it was over, the paramilitary set fire to everything. Mariana and her sister huddled together high up in the branches of a tree they’d climbed, and watched the only home they’d ever known burn to the groun
d.”
“I know this story,” Ryan says in a low, raw voice. “I’ve heard of Chengue. It was alleged that the Colombian government assisted the FARC guerillas with the killings.”
“Alleged, but never proven. Not that it matters either way. When dawn rose over the village, both Mariana’s parents and nearly everyone else she’d ever known were dead. The avocado fields were smoking and black. The cattle had been slaughtered. Her beloved yellow dog lay still in the dirt, missing half his head.
“Mariana was six at this time. Her sister, Nina, was ten. For the next four years, they hid in the hills with a few other children, living like scavengers, little nocturnal animals stealing what they could from nearby villages to survive. They hid from the guerillas who swept through every so often, starving and filthy and forgotten by the rest of the world.”
“Jesus,” says Ryan, his voice choked.
I smile sadly. “No. He never showed his face in Chengue. He forgot about them, too.”
Ryan rolls us to our sides, pulls me up against him so my back is nestled against his chest, and draws his knees up behind mine. He pulls me tight to his body, his arm an iron band around my waist, and buries his face in my hair.
“One day,” I continue, my voice sounding very faraway to my own ears, “the guerillas finally caught the children. They were so weak by then. Just skin and bones, their eyes huge and sunken in their lice-ridden heads. The few boys in the group were quickly killed. Their necks were so brittle, so easily snapped. But the girls…well. Unfortunately, the girls were pretty. That’s what they said, anyway, the men who dragged them kicking and screaming from their hiding places. They said words like pretty and money and pure, and although the girls didn’t know what they meant, they knew enough to be terrified.
“And so they were sold to a trafficker named Beatriz, a woman with gold teeth and no soul, who took off their clothes and inspected them to see if they’d ever been had by a man.”
Behind me, Ryan’s breathing is uneven. His body is shaking in reaction to my words, when strangely I feel more and more calm as I continue to speak, as if I’m releasing poison from my veins.
“The girls were taken to the port. They were loaded with other girls from other villages into a shipping container. There were no lights. There was no food. Each girl was chained to the wall, a collar around her throat, steel cuffs around her ankles and wrists, one gallon of drinking water in a plastic bottle by her side. They sat in the darkness for days that were like decades, listening to each other’s pitiful cries and retching from seasickness, until one by one they fell silent and there were only a few more whimpering voices left.
“By the time the rocking stopped and the doors creaked open, none of them were making any sounds at all. Mute and wretched, they lifted their eyes to the light.”
I have to stop. My throat has closed in on itself as it did when that container door creaked open and I caught my first glimpse of Reynard’s horrified face.
I was nothing by then. I wasn’t even human. I was an animal. The only instinct I had left was primal rage.
As if it’s a movie projected directly onto my mind’s eye, I see Reynard press a handkerchief to his nose. He staggers back several feet, overcome by the stench of human waste and rotting corpses.
“I was the last one taken out of the container. I couldn’t walk, so they dragged me out by one arm. They dropped me at Reynard’s feet. I lay in the dirt while they corralled the other girls into a bus that was waiting to take us to Capo’s. I thought I would die. I didn’t care. Even the sound of my sister crying my name didn’t move me. Then Reynard knelt down and brushed the hair off my face. When I looked up at him, I saw tears on his cheeks.”
I realize I’ve reverted to first person when I feel tears on my cheeks, too. I don’t bother to wipe them away. It’s almost the end of the story.
“The last time I saw my sister was through a dirty window of a yellow bus. She had blood running from her nose. Her hands were pressed to the glass, and I could tell she was screaming, but for some reason, I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t hear anything. Then the bus drove away, and Reynard picked me up in his arms.
“As he carried me to his car, a dragonfly landed on his shoulder. It had iridescent blue wings. I’ll never forget the color of those wings. The dragonfly looked at me and said, ‘Survive.’ I know I must’ve been hallucinating, but that’s what it said. ‘Survive.’ And somehow in my mind, the dragonfly was my sister, and she was telling me to live, to live for all of us, all the girls in that dark cage who would never grow up to be wives and mothers and lovers. All the girls who’d had their childhoods stolen, who were abused so brutally, who were sold off by adults with no more care than you’d sell a used car.
“So I did what the dragonfly told me to. I survived. Reynard nursed me back to health. He was kind to me. He raised me and gave me an education and continued to skim money from Capo’s operation so that every once in a while he could save a little girl from a nightmare.
“And every time I steal something at Capo’s request, I honor the memory of my sister and those dead girls by leaving the totem of the dragonfly, a beautiful creature that has a very short life. A creature that visited me when I was close to death and gave me a reason to live. Without that dragonfly on Reynard’s shoulder, I know I wouldn’t have made it past that night.”
After I stop speaking, there’s total silence. Ryan’s heartbeat thuds against my shoulder blades. His breathing is shallow, and there’s a small tremor in the arm he’s bound around me. Finally, he presses the softest of kisses to the nape of my neck.
I turn over and throw my arms around his shoulders, burying my face in his chest.
He cradles me close, his feet tangling with mine, a low sigh slipping from his lips. “Angel,” he whispers gruffly, “you’re a miracle. I’m so grateful you lived. And for as long as you do, I want to be beside you.”
I burst into tears.
He lets me cry without shushing me, just holding me tight against his body, letting me take strength from him, giving me a soft place to fall. When it’s over and I’m sniffling and snot-faced, he goes to the bathroom and comes back with a wet washcloth and gently wipes my cheeks and nose. Then he strips off his jeans and underwear, crawls under the covers, and spoons me again, one arm under my head and the other tight around my waist, his breath warm and soft on my shoulders.
I fall in love with him the way the dying give up their last breath: irrevocably, with both hope and terror for what lies on the other side.
We sleep.
I don’t know for how long, but we both come awake at the same time, our hands and mouths finding each other, our bodies and hearts perfectly in tune. Ryan makes love to me with a tenderness that’s painful because it’s so raw. I’ve been stripped of the hard, protective skin I’ve worn for so long. I’m nothing but exposed nerves and a beating heart and a ravenous, insatiable hunger. Hunger for him, for this beautiful man who saw me from the beginning, who so easily saw what I really was and accepted me without judgment or fear, only good humor and open arms.
He gives me hope for mankind.
“What time is it?” I ask hours later, when we’re both sated and sweaty, a tangle of arms and legs under the rumpled sheets.
“Dunno,” he replies sleepily. He turns his head on the pillow and gazes at me, smiling. “Why, you ready to go again?”
My laugh is low and happy. “Sure, if you have a wheelchair handy. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk right for a week.”
Ryan looks like this is the best compliment he’s ever received. Beaming, he lifts himself up to an elbow and kisses my shoulder. “You don’t need to walk, remember? You’ve got your own personal wheelchair right here.” He flexes his arm, making his biceps muscles bulge, and me laugh.
“You’re crazy.”
“Crazy for you.” He smiles into my eyes, and I’m so floating and light, I must be hooked up to a helium tank.
“I need a shower,” he says, throwing
back the covers. “You in?”
“Get the water warm for me. Be right there.”
“Don’t take too long, Angel. I’m a hot-water hog.”
He winks, rises from the bed, and treats me to the sight of his gorgeous backside as he swaggers naked into the bathroom. I stretch under the covers, feeling the soreness in all my muscles, trying not to let darker thoughts of what’s going to happen tomorrow intrude on my happy little oasis.
But as soon as I try to push my worries away, they come back in full force and the moment is ruined.
As the water goes on in the bathroom, I sit up in bed and scrub my hands over my face. The need to check in with Reynard has been scratching at my brain for hours, and now it’s finally turned into an all-out assault I can no longer avoid if I want to stay sane.
I don’t know exactly what I can tell him, but at the very least I need to let him know I have the diamond, and I’ll be back soon.
Ryan is whistling in the shower when I rise from bed. I dig the phone he gave me out of the pocket of my jeans, discarded on the floor hours ago, and dial Reynard’s number.
It rings. And rings.
And rings.
He’s never not answered my call before.
My fear is an invisible fist that reaches out and grabs my heart. It’s impossible to breathe. My pulse beats fast and fluttery. I wait, holding the phone tight to my ear, fighting a sense of doom so strong it makes my hands tremble.
Finally, the ringing stops as the call clicks through.
“Reynard?” I say into the silence, my voice high with panic.
There’s a strange sound I can’t identify. A wet sound, almost like a rheumy cough, but weaker. Then, as horror blooms over me like a pestilent flower, Reynard’s voice finally comes over the line.
“Dragonfly,” he says, his voice raspy and low, a death rattle. “My darling. Don’t come ba—”
He cuts off abruptly. I’m about to frantically shout his name, but the words die on my lips when I hear what comes over the line next.
Wicked Games: The Complete Wicked Games Series Box Set Page 85