Eden stood her ground, glaring at me a few moments before pulling her hand away and balling it against her chest. “That’s not fair.”
“Why? Because you don’t like to be tested, or because you know you’ll fail?”
My smile widened. Not because of the fury spreading across her face like a sparked wildfire, but because I knew I’d lit the match. This was my Eden. The woman never backed down from a challenge—sanity and safety be damned.
Her eyes burned holes into me as she fisted the hem of her loose black dress and jerked it up to her waist. My dick wept at the sight of her, but it wasn’t enough.
“I can’t see through panties, mi amor.”
“You’re an asshole.” The insult was barely past her lips before she tucked her dress into one hand and shoved the lacy black thong down her legs with the other. “Are you happy now?”
Fuck me.
It’d been nine months since I’d seen her like this—bare and offered to me on a silver platter. Primal instinct almost drove me to shove her against the wall and fuck her until neither of us could walk, but I held back.
“No.” Stepping out of the shower, I knelt in front of her, my mouth watering.
“Val, what are you…” Eden’s breath caught in her throat as I grabbed her hips and pulled her toward me. Burying my nose between her legs, I drew in a slow, deep breath, smiling as she shivered.
I’d know that sweet scent anywhere.
“Liar.” I didn’t care about permission. I slipped my tongue in between her folds, and the second her taste hit my mouth, I became a man unleashed. I was starving, and Eden’s pussy was my feast. I devoured her as she gasped, her knees almost buckling.
“Val! Don’t!” she begged, grabbing handfuls of my hair. “Don’t… Stop! Don’t… Stop… Don’t stop. God, don’t stop.”
Her groans only fed the beast, prompting me to thrust two fingers inside her and pump hard as my tongue tortured her clit. Instead of pushing me away, she dug her fingers in my wet hair even more and ground herself against my face. And when I made my wife come, it wasn’t sweet or euphoric. It was rough and brutal and beautifully violent.
But I still wasn’t done.
Rising to my feet, I dragged her limp body back into the shower with me and pushed her against the tile. Eden’s eyes were still glazed over when I grabbed the back of her thighs and lifted her up, seconds away from reclaiming what was mine.
But that would be El Muerte’s conquest, not mine.
So, at the last moment, I pressed my forehead against hers, water streaming between us. “Tell me to fuck you.”
She hesitated, and my arms shook with the strain of holding back. Finally, she lifted her eyes and locked her arms around my neck. “Fuck me.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before I drove into her so hard, she lost her grip around my neck and clawed my shoulders in an effort to keep up with my manic thrusts. Maybe I was trying to fuck through the wall in her head. Maybe I was trying to fuck away nine months of sadism and solitude. Or maybe I was trying to fuck some goddamn sense back into both of us.
“Fuck!” I swore with every brutal thrust. “Remember me, Cereza. Remember us!”
Her only response was to dig her nails deeper into my back. “Shit! I’m coming again!”
I claimed her mouth, taking the kiss she’d denied me for so long. She reciprocated, our tongues frantic and out of control. It was like coming home.
We kissed and fucked until I flung us both of us over the edge, coming harder than I’d ever come in my life.
When we both caught our breath, she slowly dropped her legs to the shower floor, and I saw it coming. It rolled in like a storm cloud, bringing with it a torrential downpour of misery and a tornado of shit.
The shield.
Twisting out of my arms, Eden backed up, her dress and hair dripping wet. “I, uh…”
She barely cleared the shower door before I hooked her arm. “The first time I touched you, you were handcuffed to a bed.”
“Stop.”
“I taught you to shoot in Monterrey. We spent the entire morning filling tin cans full of bullets. You damn near took out a flock of birds.”
“Please don’t…” She pleaded while twisting, but I held firm.
“When I woke up in the hospital after being shot, you were there. What did you say to me, Eden?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do!” I roared. “You said, ‘I’m not running from you anymore. I’m running toward you. Wake up and catch me.’” My chest heaved with the weight of those words. “Well, now it’s your turn, Cereza. Wake the fuck up and catch me!”
“I’m sorry, Val. This...all this…” Finally pulling away, she hugged her arms across her chest and lowered her eyes. “It was a mistake.”
She couldn’t even look at me. I’d just been inside her, and she couldn’t even fucking look me in the eye. It was the final straw. Nine months of mental torture finally came to a head and boiled over.
Letting out a roar, I slammed my palm against the tile then stormed out of the shower and into the bedroom. Ignoring her incessant calls of my name, I jerked the nightstand open and pulled out a switchblade. Popping the button, I held up the nine-inch blade and shoved it in front of her face. “Here, take it.”
She staggered back. “What?”
“I’ll never give you a divorce, Eden. So, if you want out of this marriage, you’ll have to kill me. So, go ahead. Do it, Cereza.” I shoved the blade at her again. “But you only get one shot, so don’t fuck up. Go right for the heart and get it over with.”
The shock that coated her eyes faded, and something much more familiar filled them. Her nostrils flared seconds before she batted the knife out of her face with surprising force. “Don’t tempt me, Danger,” she hissed. “I already stabbed you with a fork. Don’t think I won’t trade up.”
My mind blanked as her words sank in. “What the fuck did you just say?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Valentin
All the breath whooshed from Eden’s chest as she stumbled backward into the chest of drawers.
She remembered.
“You called me Danger.”
“I don’t—”
“Only you call me that, Eden. From the first day we met, you’ve called me that. You can’t talk your way out of this. You remember.” Realizing I was still standing there stark naked, I dropped the knife and pointed to the three small white vertical scars on my bicep. “Not only that, you remember this. This is the scar you gave me when you stabbed me with that fork you just mentioned.” My mind reeled as I took a step toward her. “Why are you fighting this?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes. “Flashes have been coming back to me. Some are like snapshots, and some are like thirty-second commercials. Some I understand, and some I don’t. I know I loved you, Val. I know I married you and gave you children. What I don’t know is why.”
“What the fuck do you mean why?”
“I’ve read all about El Muerte. I’ve listened to everyone in your family tell me the events of my life over and over until I’m sick of them. You kidnapped me. Your sister had my brother murdered. I… I killed a man.” With tears now streaming down her face, my strong, independent wife, paused and angrily swiped the back of her hand across her cheek. “So yes, Valentin… Why? Why did I choose this life with you? Why would I bring children into a world with guns and violence? One where their father comes home coated in the blood of dead men? I need you to explain it to me.”