I knew he wasn’t good, but I was drawn to him. He swept in like a dark knight on a black cloud, his danger calling to me on a level I didn’t understand. I craved it—needed it more than my next breath. I didn’t know who he was, but something inside me knew what he was.
That made him all the more tempting.
I lifted my chin. “You never told me anything about yourself.”
“You never asked. So I guess that makes us even.” A hint of anger flashed across his bronzed features.
“Even?” I laughed. “Go to jail twenty more times. Maybe then you’ll be halfway there.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. You think being behind bars makes us even? Don’t patronize me, Mateo. I’ve listened to your excuse, and I’ve apologized for yelling at you, but if you think I’m going to put up with your sanctimonious bullshit, you can go fuck yourself.”
“Stop it.” His words were sharp.
“Stop what, telling the truth?”
He shook his head. “Acting out. You forget how well I know you.”
“Is that a fact?” Once again, I pushed past him, and once again, he blocked me.
“Yes, that’s a fact. You’re trying to provoke me because you’re scared. You want to fight me because you’re in too deep and don’t know which way to turn. You’re mad because you thought you had us all wrapped up in a bow to hand over to the DEA, but I showed up and fucked up your plan. Does that sound about right?”
I snorted, rolling my eyes so hard they hurt. “Not even close.”
“You say you hate me, but you won’t turn me in any more than you will Brody,” he pushed. “Do you want to know why?”
“Not particularly.”
“Because regardless of what this says”—he pressed the tip of his finger against the corner of my mouth and drew a line all the way across my bottom lip—“this says something completely different.” Lowering the same finger, he traced an invisible line down my throat and hovered it over my left breast before opening his palm and pressing it over my heart.
His touch felt magnetic, as if the tips of his fingers were the positive charge to the dead negative I’d carried around for so long. Skin to skin, he ignited a spark, breathing life into the hole left inside me when I walked away from Houston.
“Matty...” I hated how needy and weak I sounded. I wasn’t either of those things. I’d survived so much in the last four years on my own, and I didn’t need anyone—least of all a member of the cartel I planned to destroy. However, today had been one crushing blow after another, and his comfort was a confusing solace.
His eyes met mine. “I won’t be your out this time, Star. Deal with having me around and get over it until this is finished.”
Finished.
Curling my lip into a sneer, I knocked his hand off my chest. “What are you going to do, turn me over to your boss?”
He answered my sneer with one of his own. “I could. One phone call from me is all it would take to snap this pretty little neck. No DEA agent, police officer, or even a brother on the inside could save you.”
There it was—the proclamation I knew had danced on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be set free. Running my fingers through my hair, I pulled at the roots and squeezed my eyes shut. “God, you’re no better than them. The DEA, Luis...you’re all alike. All of you can go to hell for all I—”
The rest of my tirade became lost in a flurry of motion. Mateo growled low in his throat, and before I could open my eyes, he had me pinned against the island again. This time, he gripped my hip with one calloused hand while digging the other into my hair and winding his fingers around the strands. He pressed our mouths together, the closeness wreaking havoc on my equilibrium. Our lips barely touched, but I felt naked as if he’d already possessed me.
Stillness hummed between us, yet he made no move to speak. I wanted to fight, but the need to give into my craving was too strong. His threats of brutality should’ve scared me, but instead, I was seduced.
“Mateo—” I tried one last time to reach him. Or maybe I was reaching for myself—the one I’d left in a bloodstained apartment in San Marcos.
My breath, voice, and thoughts were cut off the instant his tongue invaded my mouth, probing with insistent strokes until I could do nothing but respond. Mateo’s nails dug into my hip and scalp, and his groin pressed against me, forcing my fingers to curl around the edge of the island to keep from grabbing him. Our mouths could tell a thousand lies, but our bodies betrayed them all. Heat surged between my legs with every frantic kiss, and each accidental moan I made hardened his cock even more against my stomach.
I thought I heard him groan my name, but with lust rushing through my veins and roaring in my ears, I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that one minute I was standing, and the next, I was lying flat against the cold marble with Mateo on top of me. When his hand slid from my hip and cupped my breast, I cried out his name, the sound garbled by his scorching kisses.
Breaking for air, he trailed his full lips across my chin and kissed a path down my neck before settling them into the hollow of my throat. Sucking my skin into the heat of his mouth, he reached for the rim of my tank top. I knew what he wanted and why he paused. I could’ve stopped him, but I didn’t.
My silence gave him all the encouragement he needed. With a hard jerk of his wrist, he yanked the stretchy fabric of my tank top and bra under my breast, leaving it exposed like a prize. Sliding his hand farther into my hair, he twisted it with a hard pull, causing me to arch my back and gasp. It wasn’t accidental. The move situated me perfectly, my nipple less than an inch from his lips. With my head thrown back, I couldn’t see anything, but I felt the moment he wrapped his lips around the hardened peak and sucked.
I saw stars. Not the kind we’d search for in the night sky, but the kind that blinded me, leaving me gasping for air and numb with desire. Rolling his deadly tongue over the peak, he captured it between his teeth, and heat bloomed in every crevice of my body.
I couldn’t take it anymore. Wrapping my legs around his waist, I reached for him and dug my fingers into his hair. Whimpering, I moved against him, needing more.
“More?” he rasped, letting my nipple slide slowly between his teeth.
Shit, did I say that out loud?
“I... I...”
His hand danced a heated path down my stomach, and I groaned as he trailed a finger across the denim between my legs.
“You have to tell me what you want, Star,” he commanded, his voice raspy. “If you want me to touch you, you have to ask nicely.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
Mateo drew his hand back up my shorts and popped the button. Holding my stare, he pulled down the zipper and dipped his hand inside. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, please?”
His tongue invaded my belly button, sending my hips arching off the marble. “Not good enough. I want to hear you say my name—my real name.”
I ground out every syllable. “Yes, please, Mateo.”
Immediately, a switch turned off, and the man who’d been devouring me like his last meal became a block of ice, removing his mouth from my skin as if it were poison.
“That’s right,” he said, his words harsh and cold. “Mateo. Me. Mateo. Not Luis. We’re not all alike, and I am better than that motherfucker. See, here’s the difference between him and me, Leighton. He had no morals...no self-control. This is self-control.” Slowly, he made a show of pulling his hand out of my shorts and then braced both of them on either side of my face.