When I was finally just several more feet in the air, I was a panting, sweaty mess, and my nerves were entirely shot. I leaned against the trunk, shaking my head. “Never mind. I’ll just stay here and hang out. You can go.”
Luis grinned. “Aww, giving up, Mamacita?”
“Don’t goad me, Salvador.”
He chuckled but held his arms up. “Come on, you’re almost there. Just jump. I’ll catch you.”
I scoffed. “I am not jumping. You won’t catch me.”
He leveled me with a look. “You think I’d let you fall?” I opened my mouth to argue, but he just cursed in Spanish and cut me off. “You’re a fucking force, remember? Where’s Wild Royal, the girl that can do anything and doesn’t give a shit? Did your mama already trim and fertilize you so she could keep your flowery ass in her garden?”
“No!” I snapped, feeling ridiculously offended.
“Sure didn’t take them long to clip your wings. Six weeks, was it?” Luis taunted. “Hope pastel blue is your new favorite color. You’ll be wearing it for the rest of your life.”
I suddenly didn’t even care if I landed on him and made him break his damn ankles. He deserved it.
With a squeal, I slammed my eyes closed and jumped.
I didn’t even have time to take a breath as I waited for a painful landing. One second I was falling, and the next, I was caught. Just like that.
I opened my eyes, my hands already clutching his shirt as he held me bridal style.
“There she is,” he said with a grin, showing off his pearly whites and warm eyes. “I knew you were still in there somewhere.”
I smiled as I shook my head at him. “You’re a real bastard, you know that?”
“You’re learning,” he said as he started walking me to his car. “Now let’s go feed some of that wild, yeah?”
I looked back at my house, knowing Aaron was still inside and wanting to get as far away from him as possible, both physically and mentally. “That sounds perfect.”
Chapter Six
Royal
“I am not riding that thing bareback,” I laughed while staring straight ahead, a bead of sweat dripping down my neck as my chest heaved in the air. “It’s too big. It’ll break me!”
This was the ninth time I’d snuck out with Luis. Every single week for over two months, I’d snuck out of my bedroom window and climbed down the damn tree. I’d gotten better and braver at it, but I still let him catch me when I was near the bottom. Call me a glutton for tempting punishment, but I liked the feel of his arms around me for those few precious seconds. I also made sure to punish him with temptation right back by always wearing the brightest, shiniest, sexiest panties I had. I knew that he looked. It was a secret thrill for both of us.
“Come on, Mamacita,” Luis cooed while leaning in closer, his lips hovering just above my ear as he spoke. I tried to pretend that it didn’t make my heart flutter. “I’ll go easy on you. It’s all in the way you move your caderas,” he added before moving to stand behind me and grabbing my waist. My breath hitched as he yanked me closer to him, guiding me in a slow, teasing motion that felt far too inappropriate for the loud Western bar we were in. “I’m not getting on the mechanical bull, Luis,” I laughed as another poor girl wearing a miniskirt went soaring onto the cushioned mat, showing off her black thong in the process.
I felt out of place in this bar, my stupid pastel dress making me stand out like a sore thumb. Flying off that ridiculous bull while flashing everyone my own panties was not something I wanted to do.
“Suit yourself,” he replied, but I noticed how he didn’t move away from me. He’d kept pushing the boundaries tonight while juggling my temperamental mood.
I was having one of my impulsive spells, feeling the urge to dance and cry and max out my credit card all in one go. My grandparents were traditional assholes. I needed to move out, escape their rigid rules. But I didn’t have any money of my own. Everything was controlled by my granddaddy now. And now that he was involved with Aaron…
Part of me wanted to tell everyone the truth, scream it from the fucking rooftops. But I knew better. My family wouldn’t believe me, aside from Godfrey. I had no doubt that they’d take Aaron’s side over mine. Godfrey spent his entire life taking beatings intended for my back and diverting attention away from me. He’d already saved me too many times to count, and I didn’t want to add this to the list of things he had to fix for me. There was only so much a person could take, and I didn’t want him to resent me like the rest of my family.
Luckily, I’d heard my grandfather talking on the phone a week after Aaron’s impromptu visit to my house. Apparently, he’d been called away to deal with something in New York, so I hadn’t had to deal with him yet. I was hoping against hope that he’d stay the fuck away and wouldn’t come back.
“You want to go get another drink?” Luis asked while spinning me around to face him.
I shook my head no. I wasn’t in the mood to drink too much tonight. I felt too unsettled with Aaron sniffing around.
“You wanna go home?” he asked.
No. That was definitely what I didn’t want to do. I shook my head.
“You wanna go to a different bar?” he offered patiently.
I had a feeling if I didn’t agree to something, he’d keep asking all night, if that’s what it took. Luis was thoughtful like that. “Do you…” he paused. “Want to go to my place?” I rolled my eyes, but he quickly held his hands up in surrender. “No, no es así,” he said in that sensual accent of his, the sounds just rolling off his tongue.
I cocked an eyebrow at him, and he chuckled. “Not like that. What I meant was, this isn’t your scene tonight. I thought you needed a distraction, but maybe what you really need is some quiet.”
I heard every word he said despite the boisterous cheering for the drunk chick on the mechanical bull. The whole place reeked of beer and wet floorboards, and cigarette haze clung to the ceiling from the open doorway where smokers were milling around.
“Some quiet does sound nice,” I relented, surprised that he’d read me so well when I hadn’t even realized what it was that I needed.
He nodded. “Come on, Mamacita. I got a guest room. You can crash there tonight. Get a break from your family for a change.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, and his grin widened as he lifted his hand to the small of my back. “Don’t be so suspicious, Your Majesty.”
“If I go to crash at your place, it’s going to be in my own bed. Alone.”
“Believe me, I’ll be locking my bedroom door to keep you out of it,” he replied.
I smacked him playfully on the arm as he started leading me out of the bar. “As if I’d sneak into your room.”
“You know it’s gonna happen, Majesty,” he said, pulling open the door and leading me out into the parking lot.
I rolled my eyes, but once again, Luis had wholly managed to turn my mood around, making me feel happy and relaxed even though I now had to deal with Aaron.
We rode to his house in comfortable quiet, another thoughtful way he’d come to recognize what I needed. He didn’t pester me to talk about what had happened with my family that had made me so skittish and unhappy. He didn’t try to overcompensate for the silence with loud jokes or music. He just let me be.
Before long, we were at the loft that he and his mom owned above the Salvador Bar. He parked out front, and I got out as he tossed the keys to a valet. He grabbed my hand and led me to where a side entrance was hidden from the crowd, ignoring everyone that waved in his direction or tried to get his attention. Luis was insanely likable and was probably the most popular of the Heirs. You couldn’t help but want to be around him, and that was evident in the way everyone seemed to flock to him no matter where he went.
We walked up the stairs, and he messed with the lock for a moment before we went inside. Then he flipped on the light, illuminating the space in a warm glow.
It was a nice place, tidy and modern. The open concept fl
oor plan made it seem huge, with a gourmet kitchen and marble floors that looked like they’d never seen a speck of dirt. The living room had a large black leather couch that faced a flat screen TV that seemed to take up most of the wall. Various gaming consoles littered the entertainment center, and that, coupled with the poster of some half-dressed woman on the wall, made it look more like a bachelor pad than a place he shared with his mom.
“Mi casa es su casa, Your Majesty,” he said with a playful bow, the corner of his lips quirking up as I walked inside.
I quickly removed my heels, leaving them at the door before walking over to his kitchen. “Mind if I have some water?” I asked.
“Sparkling is in the fridge,” he offered, arms crossed over his chest as he observed me. I shivered at the fact that he remembered my preference in drinks.
“It’s a nice place,” I replied while looking around, noticing that not a single photo of him and his mother were to be found. Instead, there was a snapshot of all four Heirs and Scarlett Livingston hanging above the kitchen table.
Luis shrugged and walked over to sit before plopping down and kicking off his shoes. He looked entirely too good with his arm slung across the back of the couch, and I had to force my eyes away from him to head into the kitchen. The inside of the fridge looked like no one actually ate here. All that was inside were glass bottles of beer all lined up with the labels facing the same way, water bottles doing the same thing, and a single loaf of bread. That was it.
I spotted the last sparkling water and grabbed it, shutting the fridge before perching my hip against the marble countertops. The whole place felt so cold and unlike Luis. I couldn’t picture that the guy who always seemed so open and full of life lived in such a dull, empty house.
“Is this where you always stay?” I asked, wandering back out to the living room to join him.
I sat in the matching leather chair beside the couch since he still had his arm thrown over the cushions, and I didn’t want to test my own sanity by sitting too close to him. He smirked at my seating choice before loosening his tie. “I don’t bite, Mamacita. At least, not unless you ask real nice.”
I shook my head at his flirtatious comment and took a sip from my bottle, pretending like his words didn’t affect me at all. I waited for him to answer my question, but it was evident by the challenging arch of his dark eyebrow and how he patted the seat beside him that he wasn’t going to until I moved.
I got up with an annoyed huff and then sat down beside him, as far away as possible so that I wouldn’t be resting my head against his arm. He laughed but didn’t move closer and instead took advantage of our positions by letting his fingers play with the strands of my hair. It was really hard not to shiver.
“Well?” I asked, clearing my throat with slight nervousness at the way my body responded to his touch. “Are you going to answer the question?”
He shrugged. “I stay here when I want to. But my ma isn’t here very often, and I crash at Rogue’s a lot,” he answered.
I made a noise of understanding in my throat. “Godfrey stays there a lot too. I mean, that’s what he told me, anyway. I haven’t been home since I was eighteen when my father signed me up for nursing school and shipped me off.”
Luis continued to play with my hair. “You sound a little bitter.”
I laughed humorlessly, setting my drink down on the coffee table. “All the good it did me. Now my granddaddy is making me go to law school. He’s hoping my wild oats stop sowing this time around.”
“How old are you?”
I bristled, even though the question shouldn’t set me on edge. It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with being twenty-four, but I guess I didn’t want to be reminded of that fact with Luis, for reasons that I shouldn’t even be thinking.
Luis saw the change in my demeanor and lifted his hand up in surrender. “Lower the hackles, Mamacita. I just meant you’re an adult, same as me. Which means they can’t make you do anything. If you don’t wanna go to law school, don’t go.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
Irritation skittered over me. “Because. Why do you care, anyway?”
He shrugged. “Expectations fuck people up. And for the record, I like your wild oats. You can sow them with me anytime you want,” he added with a salacious wink.
I shook my head, my eyes buried in my lap. “You have to stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me that way. Flirting. Touching me.”
He laughed and shifted even closer, bringing his thigh flush with mine. When he traced his finger up my arm, my head snapped up to look at him. “So you don’t want me to do this?” he purred, his voice low and sexy.
Fuck. That voice...it did something to me. So did Luis’s close proximity. He was so effortlessly sexy, so charming, so goddamn forbidden. I just wanted to take a bite out of him.
“Luis, you’re eighteen years old,” I said, trying to sound stern, but somehow, my tone ended up breathy.
He leaned in, his mouth barely a whisper of touch traveling up my neck. “You seem to be a little obsessed with age, Majesty.”
“I’m not obsessed, I’m...” I began, but then his hot, wet tongue darted out, and he licked a line up the curve of my neck to the underside of my ear, and I froze, forgetting what I was arguing about. Heat immediately shot from the spot beneath his tongue, right down between my thighs. My nipples rose to peaks, straining against my dress.
“It doesn’t matter,” he crooned in my ear. “You feel this too. I don’t know why you’re fighting it.”
Too far. I was letting this go too far. “I do not feel—”
His hand grabbed my jaw, and he turned my face so that we were nose-to-nose, breath-to-breath. I inhaled the wrongness of how good he felt, of how I didn’t want to stop. I let myself bask in that inhale like it was my own personal sun. But I shouldn’t. I needed to back away, get up, leave. I needed to exhale him out of my system and stay the hell away from Luis Salvador.
“You do,” he argued, interrupting my thoughts as his brown irises bounced between my eyes. “You’re fighting it right now when we both know what you really wanna do is sit on my lap and grind your sweet pussy on my cock.”
His dirty words shocked me to my already pulsing core, and a gasp escaped my parted lips. My cheeks flamed with heat, but not from embarrassment. The rays of his sun had started a burn low in my belly.
“I’d make you feel so good, Majesty,” he whispered into my ear as his hands toyed with my hair once more. His touches were soft but intense, and I was baking all over.
“We can’t,” I murmured, regret and longing clinging to my throat.
“Por qué?”
I leaned away slightly, giving reprieve to my sensitive ear and neck. I had to shake my head to clear it enough to come up with a reason. “Because. You’re my brother’s best friend. And because you’re only eighteen.”
He huffed out a breath and angled his body to face me. He wasn’t crowding my space anymore, but he made sure I was still caught in his orbit. “There’s that age obsession again. Since you’re so worried about numbers, let me bring in the alphabet to this talk too, by spelling it out for you.”
In one swooping motion, he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled, setting me right on his lap, so my legs straddled him on either side. My breath caught at the hard erection now digging into me, and our eyes locked as he thrust up slightly, right into my center. I was overtaken with a fiery want in a single breath.
“I like you. You like me. It’s as simple as that,” Luis went on, his strong hands moving from my waist to cup my ass. He squeezed hard, and I flinched over his cock, before grinding myself back over him slowly. “We’re both consenting adults. So who the fuck cares if you’re a little older?”
My hands grasped his muscular, toned shoulders to steady myself. “I’m more than a little. And people—”
“Fuck people,” he interrupted. “When are y
ou gonna stop letting everyone else control your life?”
And just like that, our hot and heavy moment burst apart like an exploding star. I was off his lap and behind the coffee table in the blink of an eye.
“Don’t judge me,” I snapped, my anger rolling like waves inside of me as I yanked down the hem of my dress where it had ridden up. “You don’t know shit about me or my circumstances. You think you do because you’re Godfrey’s friend, but you have no idea,” I said, chest heaving. “Godfrey may have taken the hits, but I took the disappointment. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To constantly try to make your parents like you? No matter what I did, it was never good enough. And now my granddaddy is taking away my inheritance because they aren’t done being disappointed in me. So spare me the judgment. I get plenty of that at home.”
Luis got to his feet like he was slowly unrolling himself. One step, two steps, three steps, and then he was right there. Right where I wanted him, even though I shouldn’t. His hands came up to cup my face, and the touch was way too intimate for my liking. That was the way that someone held you when they adored you, when they wanted to demand all of your attention and give it right back. That was the way someone touched you when there was more than just lust or sexual attraction. His touch was like gravity, pulling me further down into him, and it scared the shit out of me.
“Listen to me now, mi amor. You and I? This is fucking inevitable.”
I swallowed hard and shook my head against his words. “This can’t happen.”
The corner of his lips quirked up. “Look. It’s already happening.”
I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the way his thumbs kept stroking over my jaw and cheeks. “Why me?” I asked shakily, opening my eyes again to stare into his chocolate brown ones. They had a hint of red in them, like rich mahogany. “You’re a Savannah Heir. I know your reputation at school was the same as my brother’s—even better since you’re not the asshole that he is.” Luis chuckled at that, but I kept going. “You have barely-legal schoolgirls complete with their plaid skirts and knee-highs just ready to jump you. So why are you trying to do this with me?”
Wild: Savannah Heirs Page 7