“I’m here to free Vera Gomez by any means possible.” He lowered his lips, settling his mouth upon hers, soft, barely touching, yet certain. “The task felt impossible because I didn’t want to help the woman who pretended to be you. I wanted to kill her. Still do. Especially now, knowing the part she played in making your life a living hell.”
His voice was a deep caress with an edge of vindictive fury as he kissed her face, her neck, nuzzling and touching her everywhere. The yearning he stirred in her was frightening, scrambling her concentration.
“I want the real Vera Gomez. Madly.” He started to remove her clothes.
“Luke.” Torn between lust and needing answers, she twined her fingers through his hair and dragged his mouth against hers, the flavor of mint clinging to her lips. “I have so many questions, and you make it damn hard to think.”
“Multitask.” He rubbed his thumb over her nipple through the shirt and slipped his tongue in her mouth. “I’m listening.”
“I didn’t know Tula’s father was Hector until Marco told me.” She groaned, letting him kiss her for a long moment, soaring in a decadent fusion of lips and tongues. “My mother took the identities of both our fathers to the grave. I’m still trying to get used to the idea that my sister is La Rocha by blood.”
“I can tell you what I know.” He lifted her into his arms only to lay her on a soft patch of grass. Then he stretched out on his side against her and toyed with the curly strands of her hair. “When Petula Gomez walked into Hector’s prison, her name keyed him off. So he had a paternity test done without her knowledge. He was as surprised by her incarceration as she was. We don’t know if her arrest was coincidence or—”
“When I heard about it, I suspected that the Mexican military mistook her for me. There are a lot of dangerous people looking for me in Ciudad Hueca. The more money I owed, the deeper I entangled myself with wanted felons. My sweet sister—”
“She murdered Hector in his prison cell.”
“What?”
At her stunned gasp, a smile overtook his face. “She’s fierce. Just like you.”
As she spluttered a million questions, he gave her a full retelling of how her sister, a Spanish high school teacher, outsmarted and cut down the capo of La Rocha Cartel in prison. His hands roamed her body as he narrated each heroic detail and reassured her about Tula’s safety and wellbeing.
His mouth shared the story while his lips vibrated the words along her ribs and the undersides of her breasts, dampening the shirt. By the end, he had her shoes and jeans off, her top and bra pushed to her neck, and her breasts glistening with the moisture from his panting mouth.
With impatient hands, his thumbs caressed the pink peaks. They rose to his touch, hardened for his mouth, and throbbed for his tongue. She arched to bring him closer.
He was so heartbreakingly gorgeous. Everywhere. Sunlight dappled his skin to gilded ivory, his half-lidded eyes rich and gleaming with sensuous hunger. He slipped a hand between her thighs and stroked. She moaned, hot and clenching, even as she tried to focus on the conversation.
“Before now, I didn’t know why the cartel was using me to bait Hector’s killer.” She smoothed a hand across his cheek.
The day’s growth of whiskers tickled her fingertips, igniting sparks of delirious anticipation as she recalled the scratchy feel of that roughness along her inner thighs.
“Hector’s sons knew all along that Tula was the killer.” He slipped his tongue around her nipple and down her flat belly. “If they followed her like you said, they’re aware she sided with the Restrepo Cartel.”
“You know what that means, right?” Panic rose, and she sat up.
He pushed her back down. “They’re expecting us to come for you.”
“That’s why Silvia stole my identity, Luke! She’s waiting for you to seek her out under the belief that she’s me. And you did. You went straight to her. What if she knows who you are?” She clutched a handful of red hair and yanked, dislodging his mouth from her hipbone. “What happened in her room today?”
“She doesn’t know.” He gripped her waist and covered her stomach with kisses.
His scent invaded her nose, clean and woodsy. If testosterone had a fragrance, he was it. Ineffable, potent, distracting man.
“Luke, if you don’t start talking—”
“I teased her with words.” With a sigh, he rested his cheek on her abdomen and met her eyes. “I made her believe I would fuck her if she gave me something. A vulnerable piece of herself. A secret. Anything that would prove she would choose me over the cartel.”
“Miguel said you were groping and going at it on your way into her room.”
“Miguel said he would pay off your debt and make you a legal citizen in the States.”
“Fine. Point made. So what happened? Did she refuse your offer?”
“We went back and forth for over an hour. Lots of talking. Negotiating. Mind games. I really thought I had her.”
“Because she wants you.”
“Like a bitch in heat.”
Her molars crashed together. “Had she told you the location, you would be fucking her right now.”
“No.” The sharp planes of his face turned to limestone, like a fairy-tale villain carved by a demented artist. But his skin, the blood beneath, and his entire aura were alive and real with a vengeance. “Had she given me what I wanted, I would’ve wrapped my hands around her throat and snuffed the life from her body.”
“Brutal.” She blew out a breath.
“Brutally honest. I’m going to end her, Vera. Her and her brothers. But first…” He nudged her naked thighs apart, bent, and ran his tongue along her slit. “I’m going to end this agony between us.”
Vera swelled so hard and fast between her legs she went mad with her need for him. Luke. The only man who had ever held this much power over her.
He wasn’t so cruel to make her beg. Dipping a wicked finger inside her, he sent rivulets of pleasure everywhere. A second digit compelled her hips off the ground, her entire body reaching for more, harder, deeper… Oh God, right there.
Fingers thrusting and lips trailing a line of fire to her clit, he buried his face and smothered her senses with his devilish mastery.
She clamped her legs around his shoulders, the delicious ache intensifying as she drank in the vision of him with new eyes.
This proud, virile, intimidating alpha had been forced to perform sexual acts with another man. But he also knew his way around a woman’s body. A skill that could only come from experience.
Jealousy sank in its teeth, but more than that, she felt a kindred connection. He knew what it was like to be a slave. He’d experienced the terrifying loss of freedom. He understood her in a way no one else could.
And she understood him.
He’d raped her, not out of self-serving cruelty, but out of necessity to maintain his ruse. A ruse that followed justice.
“I forgive you.” She quivered and heated beneath his attentive touch.
“I don’t deserve that.” He lifted his face, his expression blanking as he removed his fingers.
“I’m about to change my mind.” She bucked her hips. “Don’t stop.”