Deep Under (Tall, Dark and Deadly #4)(30)

“And then what?”

“And then, everything changes,” he promises, and suddenly his lips brush mine, a barely there touch that I feel, oh how I feel it in every part of me, before he pulls back and then he’s gone, leaving me swaying and grabbing hold of the cushion.

“Fuck,” he curses, standing up and giving me his back, just long enough to run a rough hand through his hair and to face me while I try to calm my racing mind and heart. “That can’t happen,” he says.

I blink. “What? I didn’t try... we didn’t…” Confused, heat and embarrassment assail me and I stand up, rushing toward the bedroom, running this time, but I simply don’t care. But I also don’t escape. He’s there before I make it into the bedroom, stepping in front of me, his hands settling at my waist, branding me, scorching me.

“If we happen now, you’ll question why. You will fear that I’m setting you up, and fear is not what I want from you.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I could tell you trust again, which is true, but right now, in this moment, what I want is you. Every part of you naked, every way I can get you. Beneath me, on top of me, under my tongue, and many other ways.”

“You can’t say that to me.”

“And if I’d given you some generic bullshit answer you wouldn’t have believed it, I would have scared you just as much as actually doing what I want.”

“I wouldn’t have let you.”

“We’re fire, sweetheart. We both know it. It’s inconvenient, but it’s undeniable, which means we’re going to have to find a way to deal with it because I meant what I said. I’m here. I’m not leaving.”

My hands go to his wrist. “Let me go.”

“I’ll stop touching you, sweetheart, but I’m not letting you go.”

He releases me and steps around me, leaving me cold in every place I was hot only moments before. I dart forward into the room and shut the door, but I don’t stop there. I rush into the bathroom, and I shut that door too, as if it protects me from him or anything. Then I’m standing at the mirror, though I don’t remember moving toward it, and I relive the past in random flashbacks. Me at fifteen, yelling at my father on the eve of his murder. Me and Kara hiding in a closet, huddled together, crying while we prayed the men in our house would go away. Then me and Kara under an umbrella at our parent’s graves. Then me just over a year ago, in the restaurant the first night I’d met Michael Alvarez. To the moment when he’d sent Ricardo to find me in the bathroom at Shivers, right after I’d been waiting on his table.

Pushing off the door, I open it and gasp to find a man with a long scar down his cheek standing in front of me.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Mr. Alvarez requests your company, which means I’ll need your phone, and I’ll need to search you.”

“What? No. No. I don’t agree.”

His lips twist evilly. “I don’t remember asking.”

My heart thunders in my chest, and I consider refusing, but Alvarez is not only a drug lord. He owns this restaurant and he’s demanded that I join him for dinner, rather than service his dinner, as is my normal job as a waitress assigned to his private basement dining area. Somehow, I step forward, the brutal stories of drug cartels my father had thought perfect dinnertime conversation, often focusing on female sex slave trafficking, playing in my mind, and a kind of tunnel forms around me. I just have to get through meeting him and get out of here alive and well. I’ll call Kara. I won’t come back to work.

The man behind me is close, at my heels, and not about to let me escape, and it’s pretty clear to me this isn’t a good thing. Alvarez had seemed a little too intrigued by me when I’d taken his order, a bit too eager to chat, which makes the moment I reach the steps leading down to the private dining area where he’s seated, all the more daunting. Inhaling, I start walking, my heart racing with every step, torture. Too soon, I am at the bottom level, and I find Alvarez alone, sitting at the table…waiting on me.

I blink back to the present and shove aside the memory, and Alvarez with it, my fingers touching my lips the way Kyle’s lips had, and in that moment, I am the woman I was that night in the restaurant. The one thrilled with possibilities, romance, and the future. The one who wanted to get kissed like she’d never been kissed. I pull my fingers back and curl them into my palm. That me can’t, and doesn’t, exist anymore. But it doesn’t seem to matter. I can still smell Kyle. I can still feel his mouth brush mine. And I’m feeling things I shouldn’t feel. Wanting things I can’t have and do not dare even let my mind name. I back up and lean against the wall, balling my fist at my chest, and then it happens. I do what I haven’t done in nine months. What I swore I wouldn’t do ever again because it’s a weakness I can’t afford if I want to survive.

I cry.





Chapter Eight





Kyle





Clean shaven and standing at the bathroom mirror, I finish knotting the silver tie, which I’ve paired with a light gray suit, after all of three hours of sleep, but morning has come with no regrets from the night before. Undercover, you make split second decisions you believe will keep you and others alive. I did exactly that when I told Myla I want her and I have zero regrets about that decision. The fire between us is clear and present, and she’s right. It could easily get us killed if we let anyone else have the slightest idea it exists, which is something we’ll have to talk about today. It’s also a magnet pulling her to me, it’s clear to me that I’m going to need to use it to get her the f*ck out of here, the Walker clan will just have to deal with it. And she does want out. I am certain of that now. She just doesn’t know how she can do it and protect Kara, and I have to show her that path, before I tell her who I am, even if that path is me killing Alvarez.