Isla grabs my collar and jerks my face so close to hers that her bottom lip does the slightest brush against mine. “Your mouth is far filthier than mine,” she growls, her voice now low and husky, “and my sister would not have seen anything if you hadn’t slapped me.”
The bruising on her face has faded to a sickly blueish-greenish-yellow, and it curdles my stomach just like right after I lost control. And apparently, I’m equally out of control right now, because I can’t shut myself up before I bark, “I did not intend to slap you, Duchess. I’m sorry.”
She deserves no apologies from me, and yet, there it is: hanging in the nearly-non-existent space between our faces.
Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, and despite her being completely undeserving of an apology, I do regret what I did. Even if she has no remorse for what she did years ago.
The tight, hard sneer of her expression persists for a moment before her features soften into explicable sadness. “You’re actually apologizing to me?”
Truthfully, I am the better person in this fucked up marriage, so I respond, “Yes.”
Isla is still holding my collar in her tight fist. “What did Papá say to you?”
“That if I did anything like that again, he would come after me with a shotgun,” I remark in an automatic jab at our shared past. But then, I recall that our inside jokes died amidst her betrayal, and she doesn’t remember the shotgun incident from years ago anyway, and she only knows about it through hearsay from me and her siblings.
And that’s when it occurs to me that—just maybe—Isla doesn’t even remember what she did to me. That her treachery and callous confession of what she did faded into the same mental blackness that kidnapped all the other things that have slipped from her patchy memory over the years.
It by no means makes any of it okay. After all, I only found out what she did because she told me. She was unapologetic, and just because she might not remember it now, it doesn’t make her any less unapologetic and guilty as mother fucking sin. Nevertheless, it suddenly strikes me as pointless to continue to stoop to her level by harping on it. I have a responsibility to uphold, and fighting with her over shit she probably forgot isn’t exactly helping me right now.
A deep V carves between her dark brows. “He did?”
“No,” I clip, “but he was upset, and neither of us need the unnecessary scrutiny of you acting out the way you did. So, I suggest you call him and tell him that everything is fine, and that you had an equal hand in that confrontation.”
“I had no hand in that confrontation,” she growls again, teeth clenched as she jerks at my collar. She abruptly lets go, clasps her hand around my jaw, her nails digging into my cheeks, and shoves my face away. “You created this problem, so you can deal with it.”
Isla stands up from the couch and shoulders past me. “However, since you apologized, I will permit you to have some of the cookies Mrs. Maisely and I are baking.”
Incredulous, I squint at her as she strides out of the room, her wavy black ponytail swishing from side to side against her shapely back.
She does have quite an incredible backside, and now the subtle scent of her skin is lingering on my face. It seems the scotch hit my bloodstream in record time, and now I’ve got another hard-on that I won’t be able to deal with.
Fuu-uuck.
After refilling my glass with scotch, I grab the entire ice bucket and sit on the couch with it in my lap to quell my throbbing erection.
And I. Fucking. Hate. My. Life.
MALACHI
Nineteen Years Old
FEW THINGS IN LIFE are more painful than being on the cusp of climaxing during sex, only to have all of it screech to a halt.
And few things in life are more terrifying than your girlfriend’s father barging in with a shotgun while you’re fucking her in a boathouse. Or anywhere for that matter.
It was the only moment in my nineteen years on earth when I legitimately thought I was about to die.
Ernesto had the barrel of the gun smashed against my bare chest, holding me against the wall while I was naked as the day I was born.
“¡Papá, no!” Isla hollered from the other side of the boathouse while she clutched a beach towel in front of her naked body. “¡No puedes dispararle por esto!”
“Incorrecto,” Ernesto growled. “Tengo derecho a dispararle por esto.” He raised the barrel to press it against the center of my forehead, causing my heart to essentially stop and my aching dick and balls to try to crawl up inside my body.
“Señor Reyes, I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I’m so sorry. I know this is the height of disrespect and—”
“¡Cállate, niño!” he snarled. He pressed the gun harder against my forehead, and I squeezed my eyes shut, gulping to rid my mouth of dryness. “Get your fucking clothes on, and see me in my study, immediately.” He snapped his head around toward Isla. “Y tú, vas a tu dormitorio.”
With that, he shoved away from me and shouldered out of the boathouse, slamming the door shut behind him. Isla and I stood in trembling silence for a span of time before she sucked in a sharp, teary breath.
“I’m so sorry, cariño,” she murmured on a hitched breath. “He is crazy.”
“He’s not.” I crossed the room toward her to hold her against me in a tight hug and kissed her temple. “He’s just being a protective father.”
She nestled her nose in my clavicle and pressed a kiss to my skin. “You do have to go talk to him.” Lifting her face away from my neck, she captured my lips with hers. “If you want him to give you his blessing one day, you have to go talk to him. It’s pointless for me to try to talk to him. You’ll have to deal with this with him. He’ll respect you for it, amor.”
I cradled the back of her head to hold her in place for a long, deep kiss. “I will. I’ll go speak to him right now. It’ll all be okay, baby.”
She smiled against my lips. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Brushing her hair to one side, I stroked the smooth skin of her back. “World without end and beyond my last breath, I will love you, my sweet Isla.”
We both dressed with haste, and Isla sprinted off toward the main house of the Reyes estate ahead of me. I walked far slower because, despite what I’d told Isla and despite how necessary this was, it felt like marching to my own execution.
The looming oak door to Ernesto’s office was closed, and I knocked assertively.
“I’m waiting, Malachi,” his voice boomed from the other side.
I turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Ernesto was seated on a large, brown, throne-like leather chair that had massive, eagle-claw shaped feet and was positioned on one side of an antique coffee table. He was hunched over his lap with a white cloth in one hand and a chrome Desert Eagle with a mirror-like finish in the other. The grip was inlaid with gold and ivory, and spelled out in encrusted diamonds was the word, Familia. He turned the pistol over in his hand, smoothing the cloth across the barrel, his index finger laid right across the trigger guard, and my blood ran cold.
“Señor—”
“Sit, Malachi,” he hissed.