6
I leap into Charlie’s open arms and burst out crying. The need comes over me so fast and so consuming I can’t hold back a single hiccupping sob.
He curses fuck in relief, crushing me in his powerful arms to the point where I can’t breathe. I don’t care. I hug him back like my life depends on it, wrapping my legs around his waist. I strain to tie my ankles at the crest of his spine while burying my face in his muscled neck, hiding from the world.
“Hush, baby, don’t cry,” he rasps in my ear in Latin-infused English, kissing me there. “S’okay now. Everything’s okay.”
I nod, screwing my eyes shut to hold back the tears. He is wrong—nothing will ever be okay while Robert is pulling my strings—but we’re together now. We have today. If all else dies tomorrow and the sky comes tumbling down, we’ll always have had today.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” he asks, still kissing the side of my face. “My men said you were on the roadside. Tojo said you were struggling to walk?”
“I-I’m fine,” I snivel. “I’m just weak and tired.”
There’s a beat of silence until his voice cracks with sympathy, and he hides his face in my hair. “I’m so fucking sorry, Blaire. I’m so fucking... I’ll get you better,” he promises. “Whatever it takes, okay?”
I nod, and my chin is wobbling, chest aching for him. I can sense his mood on another level, guilt bleeding into our atmosphere. I hate it. None of this is his fault. Charlie was there when I needed him. He came for me, and he never stopped looking for me. He doesn’t deserve to feel guilt.
His mood takes a turn for the worst when he steps forward on the stony driveway, shouting in Spanish, “Why aren’t you on duty at the gates?! Where are those motherfuckers?!”
A rush of Mexicans jump to answer, but no one has any information of value. They apologize profusely, unsure of what else to tell their leader.
“I don’t want to hear you’re sorry!” Charlie accidently yells in my ear, making my headache pound. “Go and find out what the fuck is going on! Don’t come back unless you have intelligence, comprender?”
His people spread out to fill their orders in a gale of feet storming the stones.
Charlie paces in quiet anxiety. I slide down his body with every step, too exhausted to climb back up. He cups the curve of my head, hooks his other hand under my butt, and lifts me up so we’re chest to chest. “I’ve got you,” he says softly, resting his head on mine. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.” Reaching around my shoulders, he smooths my hair down my back. He puts us cheek to cheek and rubs his face against mine, trying to get closer. I notice he’s all rough and stubbly, a sensation I don’t associate with Charlie. But it doesn’t matter. He smells the same. I breathe him in with a deep, meaningful inhale, relishing in his clean, naturally musky scent.
Home.
He’s my fucking home, and people are trying to keep me from him?
Don’t think about that right now. You’re here. You’re together.
A Los Zetas guy jogs up to us with news, puffing in Spanish that he found this near me. “Y estos.” And these. A rattling sound follows his statement, piquing my ears, and a violent shiver rips through Charlie’s formidable body.
The first thing I think is, the bag; the pills.
My eyes widen.
I completely forgot about the bag. I need the mobile to contact Robert.
“Doble los guardias,” Charlie says, double the guards, and tells everyone that only Nic is allowed in the house. “I need to talk with Blaire in private.” He turns for the porch, steady and unhesitant as he moves. He carries me inside, across the entrance hall, and into the huge living room, putting me down near one of the brown, leather couches.
My legs are like jelly from the excitement of seeing Charlie. I subconsciously grip his long fingers while casting a glance around the place, noting nothing has changed. Brass side lamps on end tables glow orange in the corner shadows, warming the empty facade. The paneled walls are a rich shade of rosewood, streaked pink from the scorching sunrise pouring in through the bay window. On the focal wall, the open, redbrick fireplace dances with spitting flames, smoking up the chimney. That’s new. I never saw the fire lit before.
On the coffee table between the leather couches, my bracelet box is open: a small, black case with BVLGARI scripted in gold on the lid. The bracelet isn’t there. My heart twists because I lost it.
I plaster myself on Charlie to hug his waist, wanting to tell him that I lost it but I can’t.
“Hey, s’all right.” He wraps around me like a flag so I’m sheltered in his warmth, bending to kiss the top of my head. “You’re safe now.”
He said I was safe before when he saved me from Maksim, but I woke up cracked out of my mind, owned by that filthy Albanian.
“I just want to hold you for a moment longer, Charlie.”
“All right, baby.” He strokes his hands down my back over my hair, making a point of gently squeezing me in places, my ribs and my hips. I wince where it hurts. “You’re so thin...why have you lost so much weight?”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything at all, just stand here holding him. I might feel smaller to him, but he feels bigger. The tense muscles under his thick sweater are like steel in my embrace.
“Listen to me,” he gives me another gentle squeeze, and I hold back moaning in discomfort, “I know you just got back, but I need to ask you some questions, Blaire. The sooner the better. We have such a small timeframe to figure things out.”
Arching my neck all the way back, I frown up at him, to stare in the piercing blueness of his eyes. They’re just as intense as I remember, feathered in lengthy, black lashes under straight, black eyebrows. The pretty lashes are deceiving. His stare is intimidating, reeking of darkness, blood and murder. His full lips are set in a line, dusted in the dark stubble that dresses his strong, square jawline.
I’ve never seen Charlie this rugged and unshaven before. Even his sleek hair is longer, tied back with disorderly black strands tucked behind his ears. With that Latino blade of a nose and the stubble, it makes him look more ominous, more handsome, if that’s even possible.
“Figure out what?” I ask.
He traces a finger down my freckly face, from my left eye to my mouth. “Everything.”
He isn’t playing light when he says, everything. He interrogates me with his Spanish Inquisition, firstly reiterating his earlier question: am I hurt anywhere? I tell him I’m fine, then he asks after James. I half lie, looking away to whisper, “I’m not sure where he is.”
By the time Charlie demands to know where I’ve been, my head is throbbing. I can’t tell him, of course, and I hate that I can’t.
“Why can’t you tell me, hmm?”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter under my breath. I let my head drop forward, focusing on the stupid pink trainers on my feet.
He brushes my hair out of my face to turn up my chin, cupping my cheeks in his large, calloused hands. “I need to know where you’ve been, baby. I need to know—” His voice evaporates, losing his channel of thought in my eyes. I stare back at him, spellbound as our bubble of power charges around us. I look at him like there is nothing else in the world. His expression softens, glowing in so many emotions. “You have no idea how much I missed you, Blaire. Even now with you here, I miss you so much.” He hunches at the neck and kisses my mouth, besting my will to stay strong.
I grip his wrists and kiss him back, sobbing that I missed him too. It hurts, this crushing ache in my chest. It hurts to have missed him so badly. Everything fucking hurts right now.
We envelope our arms around each other, both at home now, and I swear to myself to never let go ever again. I will never walk away again. I will not allow another to tear us apart again.
“Los atrapamos,” a man says, we caught them, and I step back out of Charlie’s embrace, half tucking up behind him.
The man standing tall in the doorway, primal in his pose, is an intense machine. Ice blue eyes in a dark, severe face, under thick black eyebrows. He looks like Charlie, though tattooed up to the neck with his deadly black hair cut into a messy crop, short around the sides and long on top. He’s also wearing black combat gear like Charlie, the red Zs printed on his chest, and there’s a gun and a big knife tucked in the sheath on his holster belt.
Were they on a job, or getting ready for work or something? I hope not. Robert and the Arab said Charlie was looking for me, not working.
“Blaire, this is my brother, Nic.” Charlie gestures between us with a steady hand, peering back at me to smile softly. “I wish you could have met under better circumstances, but say hello, baby.”
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Señorita. Charlie has told me so much about you.” Nic touches his chest and head-bows to me. His hands are big and tattooed with LOVE inked across his left knuckles.
I give him a strained, minute smile to say hello, gripping Charlie’s muscular forearm. It’s strange to feel so nervous around other people. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been locked away on my own for so long?
“What shall I...do, to them?” Nic asks, choosing his words carefully.
Charlie has no such trouble. He tells his brother to skin the traitors for information. “Start at their feet and work your way up,” he says, spitting a wave of Spanish curses.
I frown, blinking between them, wondering who they’re talking about.
“If that doesn’t give them incentive to speak,” Charlie says, and orders, “needles in their eyes. After that, truth serum. I want to know how they had the balls to come near my house to drop off my girl.”
The SUVs that whizzed past...they must have been Charlie’s men chasing the Albanians, and they caught them.
Fuck.
“Understood. I’ll be back when I know something,” Nic says, turning to leave the house.
Charlie pivots to me and nods at the couch, rolling the sleeves of his sweater up hairy, veiny forearms.
As white as a ghost, I sit on the creaking leather cushion, hugging my middle, speculating if Robert’s men will waver under torture. Skinning...needles in the eyes... No one could withstand that level of torment. Maybe I should just spill my guts? Charlie is probably going to find out who took me anyway.
Charlie crouches at my feet and takes my hands to hold in my lap. He kneads spots on my inner wrists, adding just enough pressure with the pads of his thumbs to soothe my unease. “Now, no more hesitating, okay?” he says, maintaining a low, lenient voice. “Tis’ just you and me. So, tell me what’s going on, baby. I received an email this morning notifying me you were coming home, that you have demands?”
With my mouth hanging open, I gawk at him, hardly believing Robert informed Charlie that he was sending me back. How audacious is that man?
Charlie raises his eyebrows, demanding an answer. “I won’t accept your silence this time. You need to answer my questions. I know you were sold at a human trafficking auction—someone tipped me off—and I know you’ve been fighting. Were you both strapped for cash?”
Both?
“C’mon, Blaire,” his eyes chase between mine, coaxing me on, “talk to me, baby. What are the demands?”
“I...I’m ordered to get Maksim’s body,” I say, glancing away for a split second, “and I’m ordered to ask you to lift the drug and human trafficking sanctions.”
Charlie’s face ruffles with perplexity as a heavy frown drops across his eyes. “Why would he need the human trafficking sanctions lifted?”
I shrug, confused with how he says he.
“Is that all of your orders?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“All right.” He nods a couple of times and tips his head, studying me in a moment of silence.
“What?”
“What are the pills, hmm?”
My eyes dart sideways in shame. He was looking at something when we were out there on the driveway; the bag. And the rattling sound was definitely the pills. This means he definitely has the mobile Robert gave me.
“You can tell me.” Charlie adds a little more pressure from his thumbs, circling my inner wrists, sending tendrils of unwelcome pleasure through my body. “I don’t care what they are. I don’t care if you’ve been taking drugs, Blaire, I promise. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
“I am all right,” I whisper, struggling to swallow past the dryness of my throat. “Other than this awful headache that comes and goes, I-I’m fine.”
“My doctor will sort your headaches,” he says, shifting on his feet to come closer, so his legs are open on either side of mine. His proximity enhances how gut-wrenchingly guilty I feel about keeping things from him. But I must, for James. If what Robert’s man said is true, if Charlie finds out who bought me and cannot get to James in time, my brother will disappear.
“I want to know what the pills are, Blaire. Do you need them? Are you addicted to them?”
I shake my head.
“Who gave them to you?”
I glance down at our hands to fiddle with his long fingers and the big silver watch on his left wrist, distracting myself.
“It’s only a matter of time before I find out what they are.”
I shrug.
“All right then.” Charlie bows to kiss my fingers, amplifying my guilt. “What about those men who brought you here today, hmm, do you know them personally? Did they work for Maksim?”
Maksim? Why would he think those Albanian lackeys would have anything to do with Maksim? He’s dead.
“Dios mío, Blaire, will you talk to me? Where have you been? Tell me that at the least. Where has James been keeping you?”
“James?” I lift my eyes to his, scowling in misunderstanding. “What do you mean, where has James been keeping me? What does he have to do with any of this?”
“He kidnapped you from the hospital,” Charlie says, the muscles in his neck ticking. “That’s what the fuck he’s got to do with this.”