Rook

"Time to go home, right?" Scar asks. Him and Fuse have been exchanging looks for about half an hour, probably deciding who's gonna be the first to bring it up, since I wasn't doing it. But I wanted our getaway to be as safe as it could be.

It's the dead of night, the street outside is as quiet as city streets ever get, and I can hear snoring from the apartment next door. We can leave now, and we'll be long gone by the time the stench of blood and rotting flesh alerts anyone that the men who lived here are dead. Gone and safe back home, in Sanctuary.

Ines would be safe there too. But I'd be putting everyone else in danger if I bring her there, not the least of whom is Cross' daughter, Lily, and his unborn son. He told me Roxie was pregnant just a few days ago.

The brothers would stand by me if I told them about Ines, I know they would, but I can't put Cross' children at risk. And I can't let Ines go either. So I'll just have to deal with this on my own.

"You'll go ahead home," I tell them. "But I'm staying."

"What? In this apartment? Why?" Fuse asks, a very confused expression on his face. Scar probably knows that's not what I meant, but he also has a very questioning look in his eyes. Ice just turns to me sharply from where he's standing by the window.

"No, not in this apartment," I explain. "In Mexico City. I have a personal matter to deal with."

Ice nods like he understands perfectly, but I don't want him to share that knowledge with anyone else. I'll call Cross, explain the situation to him, say I need a break or some shit like that. Hopefully he won't want me to come back just yet. If he does, I'm staying here anyway. But I don't think he will. That's not how he runs the MC. He'll probably not even ask why I'm staying in Mexico and I won't tell him. What I'm planning to do will put the MC in danger anyway, so it's better he doesn't even know about it until it's done. I won't be dissuaded and he'll try to do it. That's another reason I better not tell him.

"Scar, Fuse, go down to the car," I tell them. "Me and Ice will join you soon."

Neither of them needs telling twice, since they've all been itching to leave. Well, maybe not Ice. He seems quite happy sitting around the corpses of the men who held him prisoner for years. But at least he washed the blood off himself, and even found some clean clothes to change into.

"You're staying for that woman," Ice says once we're alone. "But what'll you do? You don't even have your bike or a car."

Cars are easy enough to steal, so I'm not worried about that. But I will have to bring Ines to the States eventually, and the how of that does worry me.

"Yes, I'm staying because of her," I tell him, since there's no point pretending otherwise. "But don't tell anyone else about it. I'll let Cross and the others know when it's time."

"You're the Sarge though," Ice says, right after nodding like he gets it. "You sure Cross won't miss you too much."

I give him a look that should say it all. Me and Cross go way back, and I'll handle telling him when the time comes. But that time isn't now.

"Cross will get along just fine without me, don't worry," I tell him anyway, just so we're clear.

Ice nods again. "If you need anything, just give me a call."

He's not a full brother, since he hasn't accepted Cross' repeated invitations to join the MC yet. I might take him up on his offer precisely for that reason. Because if all goes to shit, he won't lead it back to the MC. Not the way asking the brothers for help would.

Not that I plan on endangering anyone with this. It's my problem to deal with, my life to risk. And for Ines, I'll risk it a hundred times over.

"Thanks, Ice," I say, offering him my hand.

He shakes it, nodding again. "Anytime. I got nothing to lose anymore."

You have a sister and a nephew on the way, I almost tell him. But none of that is any of my business. He's got his own demons to fight. Just as we all do.

Getting Ines away from the Gentleman would be easier if I could ask the MC for help. But I'll do it without them. And I'll kill the man who hurt my Ines. Nothing will stop me.

* * *

Ines

I slept like a baby last night. Even after Silvio's call at one in the morning. He's very worried I'll try to run away now that my father is dying for real. And I'd be worried that he's worried, but I know how his mind works. He's a paranoid mess under all that cold cruelty of his and he would torment me with it, but I won't be around much longer for him to do that. In the meantime, I've learned how to walk on eggshells around him. I've learned it very well.

I'm nervous enough over other things, and I won't worry about Silvio's paranoia too. Happy nervous because I'll be seeing Rook again, anxious because I'm afraid he might not be there, petrified that someone will see us together, and terrified that my father will die today. It's still hours before three o'clock when I can go to the hospital to visit my father. I'd be there all day, but Silvio likes to dictate my schedule and he's instructed my bodyguards to not take me there before three PM unless he tells them differently. Trying to go against his instructions would only deepen his paranoia and he’d forbid me going altogether. I know him well enough to know that, and I've long since given up on going against his orders and demands.

I never leave the house without makeup or not dressed in the latest designer outfit. Not even when I go running alone at night. My disguise yesterday was good. Today's will be even better. I'm wearing a wide, long linen skirt, a matching shirt, and a huge sun hat like the peasants wear in the fields. To anyone's eyes, I'll just be one more nameless poor woman lost on the streets of Mexico City. Only I'm not lost, I'm found.

And even despite all my fears and my nervousness, that thought brings me peace like I haven't known it for the past ten years.

* * *

No one spared me a second glance as I made my way through the hospital wearing my peasant woman disguise. I changed into it in one of the visitors' bathrooms, and not in my father's room, to be extra sure no one would connect the Dama de las Flores with this peasant wretch. That's how it is in this country, in this city. If you look poor and destitute, no one sees you. I know that well from my childhood. The only difference is that while I was still a little girl, people would occasionally give me some money in the street. Maybe it's like that everywhere in the world, I wouldn't know. The only two times I was out of this city, was with Rook in Cabo del Sol and with Silvio in the Andes. But I try not to remember the latter.

I grew up very poor. Me and my father would sometimes go around the city looking for food in the trashcans so we'd have something to eat. On the face of it, Dama de las Flores’ story is a beautiful rags to riches tale, one to rival Cinderella's. Silvio made sure everyone knows how he fell in love with a beautiful poor girl and lifted her out of the gutter to enjoy a life any woman would want. Sometimes I think even he believes that lie. But beneath the surface, my story is anyone's worst nightmare. Not for much longer though. And that happy thought makes me walk down the street faster.

I'm invisible to everyone. As the Lady of Flowers, and as this poor woman I'm pretending to be. Invisible to everyone except Rook. He knows me. Picks me right out of the crowd of people surrounding me as I walk down the sidewalk towards him. He's standing by the entrance of the hotel where we met yesterday, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes fixed on me like two bright searchlights.

"You're late," he says as I stop in front of him. His voice is quiet, controlled, yet I still feel it booming loud deep inside me.

"I know, I'm sorry," I tell him. "I had to speak with my father's doctor."

It wasn't good news. The doctor thinks my father doesn't have long and suggested I unhook him from the breathing machine, which is the only thing keeping him alive now. I know he's going to a better place when he leaves this world, but I can't make that decision. Not yet.

Rook smiles at me softly, and brushes a strand of hair off my face. "Everything's gonna be alright now, Ines. Don't worry."

I take his hand and kiss it, then pull him into the dark lobby of the hotel. Like yesterday, he already booked the room, and like yesterday we're the only ones in the reception area as we walk to the stairs leading upstairs. He got us the same room as yesterday, probably asked for it specially, because he likes routine and things staying exactly as they are. I remember that well about him. I liked doing new things all the time, having a new adventure every day, and he liked doing the same old favorite things day after day. But we made it work then, and we'll make it work again.

I thought a lot about our past in the last twenty something hours we've been apart, remembered things I'd forgotten. Sweet things, everyday things, things I didn't think I'd have to remember when they happened, since I was sure I'd get to enjoy them every day for the rest of my life. I also thought a lot about the two of us naked together. About Rook inside me.

But right now, as we're facing each other at the foot of the bed in the small room, I feel like a virgin bride on her wedding night. Nervous to the core and very fearful. But I’ll have to fight through my fears, my brokenness, because I do want him. I want him to make love to me like he used to, and I can feel how much he wants the same thing. The air between us is charged, moving, almost solid with his need for me. He never was very good at hiding that, never even tried much. I always loved that calm intensity of his, so different from my own fiery wildness. The wildness that's just a memory now.

He reaches over and yanks my hat off, tossing it on the floor.

"That's better," he says with a satisfied smile, but I can already feel his eyes unbuttoning my shirt.

My fingers start doing it on their own, and I'm fighting away the pictures in my head reminding me of all the times Silvio ordered me to undress for him, and all the pain that followed those times. This isn't the same. This man would never hurt me physically, never enjoyed seeing me in pain. The opposite, he hated seeing me in pain. But the bad memories stay very vivid despite knowing that. I'll fight through them, I was always a fighter, a strong one, and I forgot that too, but I'm remembering now.

I get my shirt off quickly and discard my skirt too. All I'm wearing now is another gorgeous handmade bra and panties set. White again, but worked with pink and gold ribbons and thread. His gaze washes over me like the calmest, warmest waters of the sea that his eyes remind me of.

I reach over and run my hand down his chest, feeling his muscles right here and now, but also in the memory of those days past when I had no cares in the world. Not while I was with him.

He has scars too, just like me, hidden by the tattoo and hair on his chest, but they’re there, I see them, feel their angry, jagged outlines on my fingertips. There’s one above his heart, the skin around it melted into an irregular circle. This is how close he came to dying at one point while we were apart. We were less than the width of my palm away from being parted forever and I have small hands. But I won’t think of that, I can’t.

He grabs my hand as my fingers reach his belt buckle, and gives me a steady look as I glance at him questioningly.

"We can wait if you're not ready," he says, but the hoarse, raspy need in his voice betrays how hard that will be for him.

"I'm ready," I whisper, and it sounds a little frightened, but fear's not all I'm feeling. Desire is a pool of warm water in my belly, right on the verge of spilling over.

He pulls me to him and kisses me wildly, that dam holding back his need for me, which he was holding shut by sheer power of will, breaking open, his passion nearly suffocating me with its urgency, its ferocity.

He has my bra off in no time. His hands are caressing and groping my flesh, his tongue in my mouth seeking out spots it didn't yet find yesterday. Brilliant, blinding sparks of pleasure are firing off in my body. They're just sparks now, but once they were flames, and they will be again. My mind is awash with a warm, fuzzy, colorful nothingness, fear just a black, hazy cloud right at the very edge of my awareness.

He picks me up, lays me down on the bed then hovers over me, supporting himself with his strong arms. Our bodies are hardly touching, but I already feel all his heaviness pressing me down, sheltering me, keeping me safe. He gives me a questioning look and I nod, because, yes, I am ready. Ready to forget the pain forever and know only pleasure again.

He grins, then his lips start kissing and nipping, grazing and biting my hot flesh from my neck down to my bellybutton. The scars I was very aware of when I removed my shirt are gone now, they're not a part of me anymore. And the ones on the inside, the ones only I see, are not so painful either now, as his kisses and caresses make me moan, then whimper when his lips find first my nipples and then my clit.

Years of being trained to hold my orgasms, to not make a sound, to not enjoy myself unless commanded to, are warring in my mind with the simple, natural, warm waves of pleasure Rook's lips are causing to rise from deep within me. I'm torn, unsure which impulse to obey, certain I'll never again be able to hold back and appease Silvio's wishes, if I surrender to the pleasure Rook wants me to feel, needs me to feel as much as I need to feel it.

But that doesn't matter.

Silvio won't get to touch me ever again. I'm leaving!

It's easier to do what my body wants to do once I decide that. Even the darkness on the edge of my awareness isn't as menacing anymore. It turns from black to grey, starts dissipating. So I don't fight my natural instincts anymore like Silvio trained me to do. Don't fight my body's reactions, my mind's yearning to feel pleasure and only that. It’s not hard to do as Rook’s roaming lips find my clit again. I arch my back, wrap my fingers around his shaved head, and pull him closer, accept all the pleasure his tongue and lips are offering me. He still knows exactly how to touch me and kiss me to set everything inside me alight. He hasn't forgotten.

My surrender to the pleasure he's giving me emboldens him, his licks and nips growing faster, fiercer until my chest is heaving, my throat hoarse from my shrieking moans, sweat beading on my forehead, matting my hair as the orgasm I'm free to feel draws closer. But he stops before it comes, the sensation akin to getting doused in icy cold water, but still unlike anything Silvio forced me to feel.

He gets up and smirks at me before pulling off his shirt. He discards his pants and boxers right after, the process taking less than a minute, yet somehow stretching to years due to my anticipation of the pleasure I know comes next. For all his speedy need, his hands are firm yet gentle as he spreads my legs apart and climbs on the bed with me.

His fat cock is rock hard and pulsing, his eyes glistening as he looks at me.

"Ready?" he asks, and I know the question has nothing to do with my reluctance to let him take me yesterday, and everything to do with the trouble I had taking his cock when we first met, when I was still a virgin.

I give him a defiant little smile and nod like I did back then. The pain was only there, because I feared it and the pleasure he gave me when I surrendered was out of this world. Now, I'm used to enduring all sorts of pain. But that's not what I'm getting now.

I moan as he slides into me, feeling him both right now and in memory of the time when his cock was just another part of me, one I missed when he wasn't inside me.

A few strokes and the orgasm he cut short before washes over me like a rainbow shattered into a million glittery pieces, as piercing as needles, as pleasurable as feeling the summer sun of my cheeks. He keeps thrusting into me, his cock filling me to the hilt now, leaving no space between us, our bodies two parts of a whole, finally complete again after all these years.

I don't scream out as the second, more powerful, more consuming orgasm takes my vision away, filling it with a bright, welcoming light I've never yet seen in real life, but I've seen it with him over and over. I just breathe out, exhale the breath I've been holding for all these years.

He comes too, at almost the same moment as me, with a groan and an exhale I feel deep in my core, then collapses on top of me, spent. I wrap my arms around him so tightly they cramp up and shake, and I don't know if I'll be able to ever let go again.

His cock grows soft inside me, another feeling I remember well, and I'm sorry to let it go once it slips out, just like I always was.

He finally regains his strength and rises, forcing my arms to let him go. But not completely, no force is strong enough to make me do that.

"You know what?" he asks, smirking down at me, looking as young as he did when we met, even though there are sharp, deep lines around his eyes now that weren't there before. Right now they remind me of all that could've been, but wasn't and maybe never will be.

"What?" I ask, since he's clearly waiting for me to ask it.

"I haven't come this hard since the last time I was with you." Hearing him speak so plainly about something so intimate would make me blush once, and I do feel my cheeks heating up now, but I missed his rough, uncouth ways as much as I missed the rest of him.

"Good, I'm glad," I say and wink at him, which is enough for him to kiss me and not stop for a very long time.

Not until his cock is hard again, pulsing against my clit and my belly for awhile before he slips it back into my pussy.

This time, he works it in and out in slow, long strokes that make me shiver as he pulls out, moan loudly as he enters me. Before long I know nothing but these slow, warm waves of pleasure, which are so like the ocean we'd spend hours and days beside back when we met, yet so out of this world in the bliss they're bringing. The orgasm that washes over me is slow in coming, yet lingers longer than the first, stays with me until I can smell the ocean, hear the seagulls, feel the summer breeze on my cheeks, and everything is once again right in this world.

* * *

"So, we're leaving now, right?" he asks later, when I'm lying in his arms, watching the purple tinted twilight sky outside and letting nothing but thoughts of his closeness, his warmth, and the rightness of it all stay in my thoughts.

"I have to go back to the hospital soon, yes," I say quietly, feel his whole body tense so suddenly I look away from the window, right into his clear eyes in which a storm is brewing. The clouds are still far on the horizon, but they will hit land hard.

"I want you to leave this city with me today," he says.

"I can't," I mutter, shiver as he releases me and sits up.

"You're not safe here, Ines, and staying for your father’s funeral would be a mistake," he says. "I can protect you, but we have to leave today."

I'm not ready, my father is sick, he's dying, I can't let him die alone, people, my bodyguards, my father's nurse, maybe even his doctors, will all die if I just disappear. Rook will die if I go with him. I will die too, but not quickly, and certainly not painlessly. I can't just leave. Rook's face grows darker and sterner as those thoughts rush through my brain. None of those reasons are right. None of them make much sense to me. But I know I have to try and lessen the fallout of running away from Silvio. Which I very much plan on doing.

"I'll come with you soon," I tell him, try to stroke his cheek, but he stands up abruptly and walks over to the window, his glare even darker than before.

"You want to stay, is that it? With this man that kept you prisoner for ten years," he says. "You want to stay with him?"

I shake my head, my whole body rigid in fear from the memory of my past with Silvio. But I fight the fear as I stand too and join him by the window. This time he lets me touch his cheek, lets me grip his hands in mine.

"I've never been happier in all my life than I am right now, because I have you back. Unless it was when we first fell in love," I tell him, forcing him to meet my eyes with the sheer intensity of the look I'm giving him. But I can sense him trying to look away. "My father is dying and I can't let him die alone. Silvio won't be back until Sunday. I swear that I’ll leave with you before he returns."

"Even if your father is still alive?" he asks wryly. And this insensitive man, this cold, harsh brute, is someone I don't know. This is who he became after we parted. But I know his heart and I know its just anger at the situation making him ask this. But I can't make him this promise.

"I can't let my father die alone," I say in a shaky voice.

He nods, his eyes turning a fraction softer. "Yeah, OK, I get it."

I don't know if he truly does. Not even after we're both dressed, and I'm trying to say goodbye, but the words just aren't coming.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asks and I nod.

I kiss his cheek and open the door. But the look on his face as I cast him one last glance and smile over my shoulder before stepping out into the hall scares me. Because it looks like he's not planning on following through, that he might not be here waiting for me tomorrow.

And I pray that's just my panicked fear talking and not something I could read off his face. I pray for that all the way back to my father's hospital room.

* * *

Rook

It didn't take me long to spot the white Range Rover and the two bodyguards waiting for Ines outside the hospital. It took even less time to steal a car, so I could be ready to follow them as they drove her home.

When she came out of the hospital at just past eleven, she was a different woman. All dolled up and posh like on that day when I found her, not a trace of the earthy, natural girl I fell in love with years ago anywhere on her. Except in my mind. I still see that girl clearly when I look at her, talk to her, touch her and fuck her.

But it could all just be in my mind. She could just be toying with me, just spinning me a story about being held prisoner, all the while counting down the hours to her man's return. Some women enjoy getting beaten and tortured during sex, that's no secret. Maybe she also enjoys stringing me along. Maybe she enjoys having this power over me—the guy she left behind ten years ago, the guy she left pining for her for ten years, the one she has panting for her now. Maybe she just enjoys playing games.

But I see no lie in her eyes when I'm with her. There was nothing but fear and shame in them when she showed me her scars, and nothing but endless tears and sadness in her voice when she told me her story.

In my heart, I don't doubt her.

But my mind…that's been made bitter by all the pining, all the brutality of the path I've chosen, the path I've walked well, holding onto the anger her disappearance caused, because it was better than feeling sad. Better than settling and living with the regrets. Easier.

Ines' car pulls into the underground garage of a fancy high rise apartment building in the good part of town. After awhile her driver comes out and lights a cigarette on the sidewalk.

I settle down to wait until morning. She can make her plans, but mine is to not let her out of my sight until she agrees to leave with me.

In my heart I know she's not lying to me. And I'll listen to that. The rest is just bitter poison I can't wait to finally be rid of. And she's the only antidote to it.