The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2)(114)

“There are no happy endings,” Alaine finished for him.

“No.” Chuito shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“You don’t want to run?” Alaine asked, though she knew the answer as she sat down next to him on the bed.

“Running never ends well. Look at what happened to Romeo and Jules,” Chuito pointed out with a sad look at her. “It took them less than a week to get caught by the mafia. They were lucky. They lived. Barely. Besides, Nova is really f*cking smart. He has a photographic memory. I don’t think it’s possible to run from him, and running makes it look like we’re scared, like we got something to hide. If we stay in, if I make myself valuable enough.” He shrugged. “He’ll let it go. Like Tino said, he’s not heartless. It’s just, in this life everything is so extreme. There’s so much to lose. Life. Freedom. Your humanity. Your conscience. I used to think crime with the Italians was too pretty, too clean, but it burns them too. They go down just like the rest of us. Any pendejo can go down.”

Alaine felt tears sting her eyes and then roll down her cheeks. “I did this. I should’ve let you go. Now—”

“I did this.” Chuito lifted his head and looked at her in the moonlight. “I did this a long time ago. I’m just really sorry.” He looked around the room again. “I didn’t want you to ever see this place.” He reached out to her and wrapped a hand around the base of her neck. “Come here.”

He kissed her, softer than the other times, more reverently. Then he smoothed her hair away from her face with both hands and breathed into her mouth. “I’m sorry, mami.”

“It’s okay.” She clutched at his shoulders, feeling the tension in them. “We’ll be okay.”

“Yeah.” He buried his face in the curve of her neck, kissing and licking at the sensitive skin there. “But I will f*cking end him if he talks about that mierda again.”

“You don’t have to end anyone.” She ran her hand through his hair, trying to tame the beast that seemed to be growling under the surface. Only then did she sense just how badly it had scared him, how violent the confrontation had made him. He’d managed to stay rational, to see all sides until now. “Shhh,” she whispered, because she didn’t know if Nova might be listening. “It’s okay.”

She got the impression she was blatantly lying to him.

Nothing about this situation was okay.

Alaine cupped his face and brought his lips to hers, swallowing his fury before things got worse. All the fear chose right then to rise up, and she needed to hide from it, at least for a little while. She didn’t want to think about what it meant to give Nova insurance, or what was going to happen with the Russians or the stolen Ferrari and the money that seemed to float around everywhere.

So much money.

Like it was nothing to them.

Instead she kissed Chuito as if it was their last night, like at any moment it could be snatched away from them, because in this old, forgotten house that was exactly what it felt like. She savored him in a way she hadn’t before, this strong, powerful, dangerous fighter who had been willing to give up so much for her. It made her appreciate him as more than just someone who had stolen her heart so long ago.

She appreciated him as a man.

As a warrior.

In a way, she supposed she appreciated him as a criminal too.

For the first time, she realized he was in his element, and seeing him in it made her understand how truly out of his element he had been in Garnet.

He wore the danger like it was made to be his.

When he pushed her against the mattress, she let him, opening wide to the thrust of his tongue into her mouth. She reached between them and tugged down the zipper to his hoodie. Then Chuito pulled away to toss his hat aside and rip the hoodie off. He threw the gun on the mattress like a deadly afterthought and grabbed at the back of his shirt, exposing the cut, muscular ridges of his abdominal muscles. She ran her hands up his sides, feeling the bare skin he exposed until the T-shirt ended up on the floor too.

She loved the way he looked with his shirt off. It’d been a constant tease, seeing his intimidating, cut, and decorated body. She pressed her lips to the cross above his heart, and he let her. He threaded his fingers into her hair and allowed her to touch him the way she had fantasized about for years.

It was strangely freeing, to just let go and love him unconditionally.

Maybe it was freeing for him too, because he pulled her over him after a while, his cock hard against her hip as he reached behind her and lowered the zipper to her dress.

“Let me see you, mami,” he whispered as he pushed at one strap and then leaned down to nip at her bare shoulder. “Let me see all of you.” He shoved the other strap aside, making the dress drop low enough to expose the fact that she wore no bra beneath it. “Co?o, you have no idea what your body does to me. What seeing you does to me.”

“So show me,” she challenged as she placed a kiss against the curve of his neck where a mark from sex the night before still lingered. “Fuck me,” she whispered against his warm skin, feeling the foreign word on her tongue and finding it was exactly the right description for what she needed from him. “Please, Chu.”

She thought she heard material rip with the force Chuito used to pull her dress off. She didn’t care when he flipped their positions and the bed hit the wall hard enough to echo. Then he sat up, looming over her as he pulled her panties off, forcing them down her legs until she had to fight to kick them off.