I’D NEVER RIDDEN SO FAST on a bike.
André pulled out of the gas station the second a delivery truck blocked the LCs in. The bike swung in a tight arc, then André opened it up. Gunning the engine as he ripped through the gears, he wove through traffic and blew through a residential neighborhood at almost seventy miles per hour.
My heart in my throat, adrenaline pumping through my veins, I wanted to tell him to go faster.
As if reading my mind, he hit a northbound entrance ramp for 95 and shot to the fast lane. “Next exit, chica. You good?”
“Fine, but you’re going the wrong way to Key Largo.”
He glanced to his right, then cut across two lanes. “I’m losing those LCs first.” At the last minute, he took the exit and used the shoulder to fly past the line of cars.
I had a new respect for rice rockets as André accelerated around a turn. Or maybe it was just his driving skills. Either way, I bit back a smile as I hugged his back and held on while André drove like we were dodging obstacles in a video game.
“Did we lose them?” I didn’t even care anymore. After the initial fear of seeing the LCs at the gas station, I’d stopped panicking. While André had made his phone calls, I’d tried to figure out if I was resigned, in denial, or dangerously trusting his promise to keep me safe.
“Almost. They’re too far back to catch us once I make this next turn. I’ll lose them on the side streets.”
He cut across to the left-turn lane, but at the last minute gunned it through the intersection and swung a hard right. Horns honked, the bike went almost parallel to the pavement on the turn, but no one hit us. “We’re good,” he reassured.
I stupidly hadn’t been worried. “Okay.”
We fell into silence and ten minutes later he’d driven a zigzag pattern and gotten us back on US 1 South. When he slowed to the speed of traffic, the adrenaline wore off and my mood tanked as the midday Florida sun beat down mercilessly. Without the manufactured breeze from speed, I was sweating three days worth of Jack and Cokes and getting high on my own fumes. It was a toss-up what I wanted more, a shower, my head thrown at my father’s feet, or a single hour with the man in front of me without my past between us.
My hands wrapped around his hard stomach muscles, my thighs cradling every inch of his body heat, it didn’t escape my notice that I was finally spreading my legs for him, but I was fucking clothed.
Fuck my life.
Except now I didn’t want to.
I’d been clinging to the notion that I was at peace with death. But holding on to a sexy bodyguard who effortlessly glided the bike around another car made me want more. He made me want more. Firm, gentle, but utterly in control, André handled the machine like a man handles a lover, and I knew he’d be a goddamn rock star in bed.
It wasn’t in the way he carried himself. It wasn’t the half smile he wore like he knew the secret to life. It wasn’t even that he was an ex-military badass alpha. It was his eyes. Deep, dark, soulful, they showed a man who’d seen every sick, deprived, and fucked-up condition life could throw at you, but instead of it breaking him, he still valued life.
I didn’t value shit.
Not even myself.
For the past eight years, I’d thought life was shit and people were worse. I didn’t believe in love. I didn’t believe in fucking soul mates and happily ever afters. But one look at André and you knew he did. He bought the whole damn fairy tale. And I still, irrationally, wanted a taste of him.
“What are you thinking, chica?”
My heart skipped at the sound of his voice. It was the only thing about him that wasn’t smooth. Rough, like the sound of your fingernail scratching across raw wood, it didn’t have the same easy glide as his smile. It erupted from his chest and scraped across my skin. Deep, abrasive, his voice filled a void in my life with nothing more than precious breath meeting vocal cords.
“Chica?” His hand landed on my leg.
Heat, hotter than any sun, crawled up my thigh and settled between my legs. I shoved words out. “I want a fucking Jack and Coke and a gallon of chocolate ice cream to stick my head in.” The thought of Jack made me nauseous, but alcohol was the only thing that’d quell this ache in my core that increased with every fucking mile.
His stomach muscles jumped under my hands as his husky chuckle filled my ears.
I fought from moaning. “How much longer?”
“Few minutes.”
Minutes? There was nothing on either side of us but mangroves and water as far as the eye could see. “Awesome.” Sarcasm wasn’t my best friend, it was my lover.
He ignored my quip. “What kinda car you want, chica?”
“You’re not buying me one.” The thought of taking his money, for anything, made my stomach turn. “Just make sure the Jetta is a total loss when the insurance finds it so I get a payout.” I had money, thanks to the US government and a reward for information about River Ranch three years ago. But I hadn’t touched that money. Not a cent.
André downshifted. “Considered it handled.”
I’d searched for the right word to describe André since I’d first met him. None had ever fit, because too many fit. There was never any particular one I could pinpoint and make stick. Not like Candle. Candle was earth. Dark and dirty between your hands, he rubbed across your skin and left marks as his scent soaked into you like a memory. You smelled him after every rain and you felt him every time you fell. He’d cradle you if you needed to lie down in the woods, but he’d never lift you up to touch the stars.
André wasn’t earth, but I hadn’t known what he was, not until this very second.
André Luna was scrupulous.
His goodness wrapped around you like the comfort of rightness. He was vigilant and thorough, and he made every decision seem like the right one. He held your dignity when you lost it, and he gave you direction out of the dark rain of life. He wasn’t the ground under your feet. He was the right decision at your side.
And he scared me more than the day I was ripped from the compound.
“We’re here.” He squeezed my thigh, then pulled into a thicket of seagrapes barely parted wide enough for a vehicle to pass.
Thirty yards down a sandy lane, the road curved south and ran along the water. Slowing the bike to no more than a crawl, he avoided the potholes and divots as glimpses of candy-blue water peeked through the bright green leaves of the seagrapes.
Growing up in the Everglades, I never saw beauty like this. My life was swamp brown and moss green. The only thing punctuating the monotony of the color palette were mosquitoes the size of my hand and the incessant buzz of cicadas.
One second we were on a road to nowhere, and the next we were in front of a house on thick concrete stilts. Past the poured foundation and winding walkway to a dock, there was carefully corralled gravel. It chased the landscape away from the house like its sole job was to be a buffer between man and chaos.
It was picture-perfect beautiful, but I couldn’t drag my eyes off the unmolested stones that made up the gravel yard. I knew how hard it was to keep the Floridian flora and fauna at bay. One of my jobs on the compound was weeding the walkways between the buildings. It was a joke of an exercise meant to strip my fingers of layers of skin and my spirit of self-worth. The men would march past in their boots, sometimes missing your fingers, sometimes not, but you never complained. Their purpose was always greater than yours.
Except now I had a two-million-dollar purpose. A purpose I’d been clinging to for three fucking years in the hopes that it would bankrupt River Ranch, take down my asshole father, and make my life worth more than pulling weeds. This had been my sole motivation for three years. But then I’d pulled my dress off, and shown a dark-eyed stranger who I was, and now the thought of a cult compound getting the best of me ate at my stomach.
André parked the motorcycle.
I pulled my helmet off and stood on rubbery legs. Looking up at the house—austere, white, modern, hard edges—it was exactly something André’s giant friend, the Viking, would own.
“Hold up.” André punched a code into a keypad by the garage door. “Let me put the bike away, and we’ll head to the boat.”
A decent-sized boat sat at the end of the dock, but I had no idea if decent-sized boats had decent-sized bathrooms, and I was desperate to wash off the past three days. “I need a shower.”
The garage door slid up, and he pushed the bike inside a half-empty space. The only thing in the garage besides raw concrete walls and André’s bike was a tarp covered pile of what looked like building supplies.
André threw the kickstand down, grabbed his gun from the bike’s holster, then hung our helmets on the handlebars. He tipped his head toward a set of stairs at the back of the garage. “Come on, you can grab a shower in the main house.”
He shut the garage door, and I followed him up the stairs to a door with another keypad.
“You and Viking have a thing for keypad locks?” His condo in Miami had the same thing. None of the doors in the compound even had keyed locks, except for River’s office in the main building, and the weapons hold.
André punched in a code and looked over his shoulder at me. The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Technology, chica.” He winked.
My version of technology was Google on my smartphone. Never knowing a damn thing growing up, except what few books River allowed some of the women to use to teach us math, it made me appreciate the simple things like a search engine. Being able to look anything up, anytime, was a luxury most people had no clue they were lucky to have.
“Excessive technology,” I countered.
He pushed the door open and quickly scanned the open-plan space. “I don’t call electronic entry excessive when I can use an app to see who’s come and gone and if any perimeter security was breached.”
“Perimeter security?” Like what? “The snakes and lizards in the palmetto shrubs are going to break into Viking’s place and have a party on his perfect couch?” It was like a museum in the damn place. Granite counters and floors, shiny white kitchen cabinets, pristine windows that looked liked they’d been cleaned an hour ago. Perfectly plumped pillows on a perfectly white leather couch. I dropped the backpack on the coffee table as I stared out at the perfect turquoise water view. I both hated and loved the place.
André checked the slider door locks. “Very funny. Driveway, yard, dock, second-and third-floor decks, all perimeter security, all monitored.” He walked down a hall and looked in each room, then came back. “You can shower upstairs.” He went to the kitchen.
I stood there a minute, indecision clouding my head.
“We’re on a schedule, chica.”
I turned. Bottles of water were already on the kitchen counter as André pulled sandwiches in deli paper and those plastic takeout containers of food from the fridge and set them next to the drinks. I was suddenly starving. “His house even comes with food?”
“Neil has his caretaker stock the fridge whenever anyone uses the place.” He pulled a cooler from under the sink and started throwing everything inside.
“Uh-huh.” Because who didn’t have a caretaker to bring them takeout food?
“Master bathroom’s upstairs.”
I didn’t move.
André shut the cooler and looked at me.
I’d seen two sides of him, the marine and the man. The marine always had a locked-down expression. His eyes gave nothing away except calculated intelligence. And when he wasn’t in marine mode, he was usually in flirt mode. At least half his mouth would tip up, mischief would light up his eyes, and a solid dose of unadulterated joy that I’d never understood would shine through. But this right now? This wasn’t either of those looks. His gaze moving, his eyes scanning, a crease cut between his eyebrows, and he studied me like I was a goddamn specimen.
Indecision bled into defiance, and I threw down a dare. I pulled my shirt over my head.
His chest rose with an inhale, and he held my gaze, but otherwise he didn’t move.
My nipples hardened, in anticipation, in lust, in sheer desire for this game we were playing. Determined to get a reaction out of him, one way or another, I undid my jeans and pushed them down my legs, nice and slow. Stepping out of my boots, I stood in matching underwear and stared right back at him.
His hands on the counter balled into fists and he broke the silence first. “There a point to this little striptease?”
Rough and deep, his voice scraped across my skin like sandpaper, and for a second, I lost the upper hand as I let my eyes close just so I could listen to his voice.
“Chica.”
My eyes opened as if he’d issued a command, and I locked in on his dark stare. His nostrils flared, his muscles bunched and a predatory look descended over the cut angles of his face.
I shivered.
A growl crawled up his throat. “Walk away,” he warned. “Right now.”
I always aimed for the upper hand. I manipulated with my words to maintain control, but I never let my guard down. And I never gave a piece of myself away. Ever. But the second he’d growled out a demand, the last of my indecision disintegrated.
I wanted this man at whatever cost.
Deep and irrevocable, the desire was so absolute that I knew there was no coming back. My head spinning, my palms sweating, my core aching, I did the only thing I knew to do to show him what’d just happened.
I dropped to my knees.