The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2)(70)

Chuito wasn’t loud, but there was something in his low, grunting sounds of pleasure that made all the fine hairs on her arms stand on end as if she’d been shocked from just how intensely he could turn her on.

When it was over, Chuito pulled out of her too soon.

She wanted to stay like that forever.

But then he rolled her over so that she was tucked into the curve of his arm, her head resting on his biceps. He pulled the sheets up over both of them, and it was intimate, hiding there under the covers with him, the stickiness of sex still between her thighs.

She really needed a shower.

She let Chuito hold her instead.

It felt too good not to.

She closed her eyes, once again just feeling the moment for as long as she could until sleep claimed her.





Chapter Twenty-Five


Chuito sat on the edge of his bed, still naked, looking at the shades of gray staining the sky through the window. The clock on the nightstand said it was past four in the morning. For a moment he remembered being young and wild, looking at the sky when it was like this, just on the verge of being dangerous.

The night hid sins.

The morning exposed regret.

Like he had when he was younger, he tried to will the sun to stay down, to give him more time, but it always rose. Then he would crawl into bed and try to hide from it in sleep.

Until sleep became his enemy too.

He couldn’t hide from his crimes. They always found him, no matter how tightly he closed his blinds against the sunshine.

“Chu?”

He flinched, having thought she was still asleep.

“Yeah?” he asked without turning to her.

“Are you okay?”

“You never ate dinner,” he mumbled almost to himself. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Alaine rolled up to him and wrapped an arm around his waist. “Are you going to sleep?”

He shook his head. “That’d probably be a bad idea. You go back to sleep. I just want to sit here for a while.”

“Is this about Miami?” she asked softly. “You can talk to me about it.”

He shook his head again rather than respond.

“Please talk to me,” she urged, her fingers on his stomach gentle as she caressed him, running them over his Slayer tattoo as if she knew it on touch alone. “Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t think you can help, mami.”

“But do you think you owe me an explanation, or were you planning on leaving without telling me anything?”

He arched an eyebrow at that. “Is that what Tino told you?”

“Yeah.”

Chuito sighed. “He thinks he’s helping. I should beat him anyway.”

She moved her hand down to his hip and traced her fingers over the O in his Omertá tattoo. “I didn’t know you had this one.”

“It’s new,” he admitted.

“It’s like Tino’s.”

“Yup,” he agreed.

“What does it mean?” she asked slowly, as if she had an idea already.

“I have a lot of ink, mami,” he said with a shake of his head. “You’ve never asked what any of it means. That’s the one you chose?”

“Does the rest of it have meaning?”

“You think I’d get ink without meaning?” He turned his head and gave her a look. “You think I just got it ’cause I was bored?”

She gave him a smile, making it obvious she knew more than she let on. She reached up, touching the Puerto Rican flag on the back of his neck the way she was apt to do. She swept her thumb over the word Boricua beneath it. For the first time he really bothered to notice how she did it, lovingly, with a sense of appreciation he had probably taken for granted.

“Pride,” she said knowingly, still caressing the word Boricua like it meant something to her too. “Lots of pride.”

“Mmm,” he hummed.

Then she reached around, running her fingers down his chest, finding the cross over his heart. He looked down, seeing her palm spread out over it as she whispered, “Love.”

“Regret,” he corrected her. “Lots of regret.”

She rubbed her thumb over his brother’s name. “And love.”

“Okay,” he agreed, because he couldn’t argue with that.

She reached for his left shoulder next, finding the star that decorated it. She got up on her knees and touched the one that matched on the other side. “And these?”

“They were my first,” he admitted as he turned and gave her a smile. “I was fourteen.”

“That’s very young.” She frowned at him. “What tattoo parlor gave you those at fourteen?”

“I got ’em in the back of a warehouse. Any good gang has a tattoo artist. They mean I’m a thief, mami. They mean I’m bad news.”

“Fourteen was a long time ago.”

He laughed and turned back to her once more. “Yeah, I’ve gotten a lot worse since then.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he said with a wince. “So much worse.” He looked out the window and then glanced around the bedroom he had been imprisoned in for the past five years. “This is all a lie to you. It was a lie to me too.”