“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty. Just turned.” Tanner nodded. I wondered if he thought me too young. I didn’t feel it. “This life . . .” I said. “It makes you older than your years.” It bothered me that I was trying to explain myself to Tanner. But then he understood. Only people who walked the dangerous road this underbelly life awarded would ever understand.
Repeating the same process with the exit wound, I nodded at the screens. “You seem to be familiar with all of this.”
Tanner’s face was stone, but after a few tense seconds he said, “I was in the army. Communications.” I lifted my head to find him already watching me. Things started to make sense. It was how he was so stealthy in the forest. And how he knew to apprehend that man and kill him so efficiently. “When did you get out?”
“A while ago.”
I nodded my head and bandaged Tanner’s arm as best I could. “That should help. My father will get his physicians to treat you tomorrow when we are collected.”
I went to the closet where my father kept emergency clothes and took out a shirt and sweatpants for Tanner, and smaller versions for myself. In the bathroom, I put on the clothes and looked at myself in the mirror. I blew out a breath and checked myself over. I had stopped bleeding, at least. But I was sore.
I couldn’t seem to regret what I’d done. That it had been Tanner Ayers who had been my first. I was too tired and confused to even contemplate why that should be the case, why I wasn’t chastising myself for my stupidity.
Busying myself to take me from my confusion, I combed my hair, feeling bare and young without my makeup. Then I left the bathroom.
Tanner was lying on the pull-out bed opposite the monitors, his eyes glued to the screens. The gun he had taken from our attacker lay beside him. The emergency clothes were too small for his big frame, but they’d have to do.
I walked toward him. Tanner noticed me only when I was right in front him. I slipped into the small bed beside him and felt him tense. I lay down, staring up at the concrete ceiling.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
I didn’t need him to explain what he meant. It seemed my virginity—now lack thereof—was the elephant in the room. Running my hands over my face, I said, “Because I knew you’d stop if I did.” Tanner rolled over and met my eyes, searching for something in their depths. I took a deep breath and whispered, “And I wanted you.” I challenged him with a hard stare. I wouldn’t be made to feel like a child. I made my decision. It was my body, and my choice to make. It was one of the only choices I’d ever been given the chance to make.
Tanner’s nostrils flared, then, seemingly unable to stop himself, he leaned forward and wrapped his hand in my wet hair. He shifted his body over mine and kissed me. But this kiss was unhurried . . . and it scared me more than anything had in a very long time. I was the daughter of the biggest cartel boss in Mexico, maybe the world, had threats against my life every single day. Fear was a constant in my life, so much so that fear to me felt like a low hum rather than an electric shock. But Tanner Ayers, the Ku Klux Klan heir, kissing me with this much feeling and affection . . . it was the most terrifying thing I’d ever felt.
Because I felt it. I felt it all. All the right in this wrongful act. Felt his soft lips on mine, his mint taste on my tongue, and his heavy, scarred body holding me down.
The kiss grew and grew until Tanner had taken my shirt over my head and pulled my pants off my legs. When he was naked again too, I placed my hand on his cheek and, needing some sense of self-preservation, said, “You leave tomorrow.” Tanner looked away across the room at nothing, then nodded. “I am Mexican. You are KKK. You know we cannot mix.” Tanner gritted his teeth, but he nodded again. “Our fathers would kill us if they knew.” His expression was furious—I wasn’t sure if it was at that truth, my words, or the fact that he was here, willingly touching and sleeping with a woman from what he deemed an inferior race.
Tanner’s hand skirted along my cheek, and my heart beat faster like the turncoat it was around this forbidden man. His hand journeyed to my neck, then toward my breast. Before his fingers could reach their destination, I caught his wrist in my hand. Tanner’s tortured gaze collided with mine. The hunger I saw there, more heightened and intense than before, was my undoing. “Tonight,” I whispered, my voice shaking at the fact that I was stupidly going to allow this again. “All we have is tonight, in this room. Tomorrow you’ll be gone, and when our paths cross again they will be for business only. That should give you enough time to forget you ever betrayed your race for one night with me.” The truth of the words stung.
Tanner must have seen a crack in my armor, as his eyes narrowed. I wondered what he would say in defense. Instead, like the fortress he was, he nodded his head and said, “Done.”
Tanner’s wrist in my hand hung suspended in the air. I should have stopped it. I told myself it was degrading to give myself to such a man. But then I told myself that it was good that I had—Tanner would never forgive himself for this perceived act of weakness. I would be a chink in the Klan knight’s armor. One he could never repair. It gave me a sick kind of pleasure to know that I, a Mexican woman, had weakened him enough to abandon his beliefs and take me. That once hadn’t been enough.
But the truth was . . . I wanted him. Titles and families aside. Right now, I wanted this man. I couldn’t explain the madness of that truth, but it was the truth nonetheless. Exhaling, decision made, I lowered his hand to my breast. Tanner released a quick breath as he covered my flesh, the simple feel of it almost breaking me apart. Tanner glanced up at me for a second, then brought his lips to mine. Like before, they were desperate, as if he was more than aware, just as I was, that our time was finite. And he took me. He took me over and over again through the night, until we were retrieved the next day and the Ayerses left for America.
Tanner Ayers fucked me knowing exactly what that night was—the only night a white prince and cartel princess could have each other. No race, no culture, no hate, no business. Just two bodies, joining as one. But then it was over. And he was gone . . . until two months later, when he returned . . .
*****
Present day . . .
“Lita?”
I blinked, my attention snapping away from the mirror. My hands were joined at my stomach just to stop them from shaking. Hearing Charley’s voice, I took in a deep breath and blinked away the tears that were threatening to fall. Not a day went by that I didn’t think of that first night with Tanner. The night that changed it all. “Lita?” Charley said again. This time it was softer. The concern was clear in her voice.
Turning, I tried to smile at my best friend, but I could see she saw through the cracks. She took my hands and guided me off the pedestal that Carmen had set up before the mirror. The train of the dress followed behind me. Charley sat on my couch. I sat down too and wiped my tears. “I’m being pathetic,” I said and laughed. “I have no idea what is wrong with me.”
“It’s me, Lita. You don’t have to be Adela Quintana right now. I know you. You can cry because you’re apprehensive. You don’t have to be the hardened princesa around me.”