Rook

Damn, but that woman could always spin my head 360 degrees and somehow still have me looking at her at the end of it. What the fuck was all that about being abducted? She doesn't look abducted to me.

Not that her lying excuse changes a goddamn thing. One kiss and all I want to do is sink my dick into her as deep as it'll go. Ten years of no contact doesn't matter, the fact that she's probably lying to me doesn't matter. It's the only truth I know and the only one I need to know.

If she's a prisoner, I'll free her. If she's lying, I'll make her tell me the truth. Either way, she's mine again. And this time, I'm keeping her.

I decided all that before she even left the square last night.

That's not something she'll be doing later today. I decided that too.

I walked the streets for a long time after she left, but the decision came easy. Sleep didn't, once I finally met up with the guys in the seedy motel on the edge of the city where they decided to stay.

Ice was up too, so we returned to the alley before dawn, to watch the apartment and try to figure out if the guys we're after are actually in it. Dawn is near now and the party is finally breathing its last, only a couple of people still singing to the sounds of a lazy guitar.

"You went to meet that woman last night. That's why you aborted the job, am I right?" Ice's question makes my breath stick in my throat like a splinter.

"What the fuck do you know about any of that?" I ask.

"You told me all about a certain love of your love from Mexico when we first met," he says with a grin on his face that's the closest thing I've seen to a smile from him in a while. "Don't you remember?"

"You mean way back?" I ask.

Ice and me met before he was taken prisoner by the Spawns, when his father's MC hired mine for a job that stretched out into months.

"Yeah, way back," he says, the grin fading from his lips.

We're the same age, Ice and me, and think the same way, so we became friends. I'd just joined Devil's Nightmare MC at the time, so I didn't have a lot of close friends among them yet, and I guess I needed one. This wasn't long after I gave up searching for Ines. But I didn't see much of him after that until we freed him from the Spawn's last fall.

"When did I tell you all this?" I ask, since I honestly can't remember. "And how much did I tell you?"

"You were very drunk at the time, I remember that. And you wouldn't stop talking about a certain short Mexican girl who didn't wear shoes very often. Not even on the day she left you."

Barefoot in the sand. That's how she was when we met. And that's how she left my life. Her story better be true. I don't know if I have it in me to forgive a second betrayal by her.

"Yeah, that was her this afternoon," I say. "I finally found her after all these years."

I consider telling him the story she told me, but it sounds too stupid to believe even just playing inside my head, so I don't.

"You say that like you actually missed her all this time," Ice says in a way that suggests he thinks I'm crazy.

“How the hell do you even remember all this?” I ask, maybe too sharply.

He shrugs. “It’s amazing how deep your memory goes when you’re locked up in a windowless room all the time, and you’re trying to make yourself feel better.”

His answer makes my own bad story pale in comparison. That our brief friendship was something he thought of to feel better is also very humbling.

"Yeah, I did think about her a lot these last ten years,” I say and chuckle to lighten the mood. “What, you never been in love?"

"No, and I never will be now," Ice says, but he bolts forward and glares through the windshield before I can say anything in response.

"What?" I ask.

He points at a potbellied old man walking down the sidewalk across from us. "That's him. That's fucking Scrooge, the Spawns' treasurer. I told you I saw him last night. And that's that son-of-a-bitch whatshisname right behind him."

The old guy is trailed by a younger man, which is the one Ice means, I assume. They walk out of sight, and I grasp Ice's arm before he can get out of the car like he was planning to do.

"We'll get the others and carry this shit out now, while everyone's asleep. You can even use your knife as much as you want, since we'll be doing it in daytime."

Ice glares at me like he doesn't appreciate the jibe, but I just start the car and pay it no mind. Once this is done, I'll have all the time in the world to devote to figuring out Ines' lies. And I'm ready to get started. Four PM is closer than it seems.

"Relax, Ice," I tell him since he's still glaring at me, as I reverse down the alleyway to leave it out the other side. "I understand your need for revenge."

"I doubt it," he says, but stops glaring at me and leans back in his seat.

He's probably right, for what it's worth. No one's ever hurt me enough to warrant the kind of revenge Ice is taking on the Spawns who took him prisoner and made him fight in the cage for six years. No one, except Ines. But I've always loved her more than I hated her. And now I know that for the truth it is. It hasn't quite sunk in until this very moment, but it's all I can think about as I drive to get Fuse and Scar, so we can finish the job we came here to do. Then I'll be free to finish what me an Ines started all those years ago.

* * *

Ines

My phone rings just as I'm about to leave for the hospital to visit my father. The fear that it's the nurse calling to tell me the worst has happened, quickly turns to something a lot more terrifying when I hear Silvio's voice. I hate that fear, but it's more familiar to me than any other emotion.

"Hello, my love," I say in response to his greeting, automatically, and there's no true sentiment behind the words, but it's what he wants to hear.

Knowing what he needs to hear and saying it is a big part of the reason why I'm still alive. I give him what he wants, even though pretending to love him, to be his obedient mistress has nearly killed me inside already. Silvio took me on a trip to the Andes once, years ago, to a beautiful wooden cabin deep in the mountains. It was the first time I've seen snow and ice, and ever since I know what to compare this fear he wakes in me every time I see him, hear his voice, feel his touch. It's like being naked in wintertime, alone on a glacier. And even the heat of knowing I'll see Rook again in only a few hours, see the man I've longed for, burned for even through all the years when I knew there was no hope of seeing him again, can't dispel the icy dread I feel right now.

"Oh, my flower girl," Silvio croons back. "Are you well?"

He calls like this sometimes, when he's away. He likes to play at being my lover. But we both know what his love feels like, and no one would call it that, save him.

"I am," I tell him, and for the first time in over ten years, that's not a lie. Because I've found the man I truly love, and I'm about to meet him. About to kiss him again. About to feel his hand in mine, his arms around me.

"Good," Silvio says. "I have to stay here for a few more days, nothing to be done about it, but I'll be back on Sunday. I will see you then."

I don't even know where he is, but it's far away from here and as far as I'm concerned he can stay there forever.

"Pity," I say anyway. "I grow so bored alone here, especially now, in Spring."

"Go shopping," he says. "Buy something nice to wear for me."

It sounds like a threat and an order at the same time.

"I already bought a nice dress like you told me to yesterday," I coo. "But I'll buy more."

But I won't wear the flamenco red dress I got yesterday for him. I'll only wear it for Rook.

He tells me I should, and then finally says goodbye, so I can leave and start pretending he never called in the first place.

But the icy dread hearing his voice filled me with doesn't subside completely by the time I reach the hospital.

My father's nurse is in the room with him, the bags under his eyes black like he hasn't slept in weeks.

"I'll stay with him now, Rodrigo," I tell him. "Go home and try not to worry so much. My father is an old man and he's been very sick for a long time. He'll be in a much better place with the angels soon."

It's what I've been telling myself too, ever since I realized he won’t recover from this bout of pneumonia. He already looks angelic, his face like a young boy's despite the oxygen tube in his nose connected to the loud machine that's helping him breathe. Or, more precisely, breathing instead of him. But he won't suffer long.

And he won't mind me sharing these visiting hours with Rook, I know he won't. Papa always wanted me to be happy. And I've pretended to be, for all these years, for him as much as for Silvio.

Rodrigo looks at me with such a thankful expression on his face something melts inside me. But the warmth it brings congeals into an icy mass deep in my chest as soon as he leaves the room. Rodrigo's another person who'll feel Silvio's wrath if I just vanish. If I just take Rook's hand and let him lead me to our bright and happy future together, the one we were supposed to be living for the past ten years.

But am I getting ahead of myself? Does Rook even want me after what I've done to him? And will he want me even after he learns the danger he'll be in—that we'll both be in—if we run away together.

My driver and bodyguard are waiting downstairs. I told them I'll be staying late, praying for my father, and spending what could be my last day with him.

"Papa," I whisper, fixing the sheet he's covered with. "I'll miss you so much, but I've already missed you so much for the last ten years. Will you forgive me for not spending these last few days you have left with you? For spending them with the man I once loved, that I love still, and not with you?"

He gives no indication that he heared, that he understood, but the love I feel in this room can be no other thing but his agreement, his blessing for me to be happy.

It's almost four now. The plan to use visits to my father's bedside to be with Rook came to me last night, as I gazed into his clear eyes. I've perfected it during the long hours while I tried to sleep later, but couldn't because my entire body was burning for his touch.

I'm counting down the seconds until I see him again now, my heart beating faster and faster with each that ticks by. Rook will take me back. There can be no other way. But even though I feel this with every last cell in my body, I know there are no guarantees. And that our days together will be numbered before they even start.

* * *

Rook

Santa Ana hospital is a big ass place, and I got a lot of weird looks navigating my way up to room 512, but didn't actually get challenged. It's a mixture of me being a huge, imposing guy and the fact that I walked through the halls with purpose. It works every time and any place. The fact that we failed to carry out the Spawns' job yet again is providing me with the annoyance I need to keep my face hard, because inside I'm a nervous mess.

I want to believe Ines isn't lying to me. I want her to run away with me today as swiftly as she ran from me ten years ago. But we wouldn't be meeting in a hospital if that was her plan. No, she means to show me some sad thing and give me more bullshit excuses about why she can’t leave with me.

She's standing in front of a pale grey door at the end of a long hallway, wearing a loose summer dress, impossibly high heels, her long, and otherwise very wild, hair tied into a neat bun on top of her head. She looks like any rich ass woman I normally wouldn't glance at twice. The only thing that betrays the carefree girl I fell in love is the unguarded, soft expression on her face. She looks as young as she was back then, as she checks her watch. The only thing betraying her nervousness is how hard her hands are shaking. And I can see them shaking from all the way on the opposite end of the hallway.

She sees me, vibrates all over, her face slack yet radiant as I walk up to her.

"Why did we have to meet here, Ines?" I ask her, watch her flinch, because she was never very good at handling direct challenges. I used to think it was cute, the way she lived with her head in the clouds, the real world a nuisance to her most of the time, as free as those birds of summer she reminded me of. But in the years since she left me, I'd begun to think all that was because she was lying to me all along. And I'm thinking it now, even though I don't want to. But I'm also happy just looking at her, anywhere and anytime, always was. I'm angry too, but mostly I'm happy.

"Because I wanted you to see," she says and grips the handle of the door behind her. "I wanted you to see why I had to leave you."

Her voice is as shaky as her hands, but she visibly pulls herself together as she opens the door, squaring her shoulders as she takes a proud step inside.

Her ass is still perky and round, must be from all the running. And I wouldn't mind running my tongue down those smooth legs of hers. Or better yet, up. She may have fucked me over by running away without so much as a goodbye, but that never changed how much I want her naked under me.

That happy thought fades into the background as I notice the old, skinny man in the single bed inside the room. A machine is breathing for him noisily. His eyes are closed, and he's skin and bone. If the machine lung wasn't hissing and rattling up and down, I'd swear he was already dead.

"This is my father, Rook," Ines says softly. "And he's dying."

Her voice cracks as she says it, that innocent girl I fell in love with peeking through the carefully painted facade her face is now.

"I left you to keep him alive," she adds. "There was no other way."

I don't know what to say to that. I came here thinking I'd call her out on her lies, make her tell me the truth about why she really left me. Between all that, I didn't think very hard about what she actually meant to show me here. I figured a sick man who is supposed to be her rich husband or something, but that's as far as I got in figuring it out.

But this is the truth and she's shaking again. All I want to do is make her feel better, make her feel safe and wanted and happy. It's all I ever wanted to do. I forgot that until right now. But the need to do it is back like it never left.

So I don't say anything, since I was never very good with words anyway. I just pull her to me roughly and wrap my arms around her as gently as I can, but I was never gentle either.

She feels as good as she ever did in my arms. Better, because I've missed her for so long. And she tastes sweeter too, as I kiss her, let my tongue do the talking, only not with words.

The darkness caused by the ten years I spent pining for her, hating her, missing her, thinking about her even when I didn't want to, lifts, floats away beyond the clouds she spent her days in once. But it comes crashing back down as I remember where we are. And that she belongs to someone else now, and he's not the one dying in this hospital bed.

"Can we go somewhere to talk?" I ask, stopping the kiss, but still holding onto her.

"Yes," she whispers softly, but that's fear in her eyes, downright fucking trepidation, something I've never seen there before, and hoped never to see. It makes me angry, so I can't be anything other than harsh and demanding right now. She's letting me feel all the sweetness, all her honey that she snatched away from me ten years ago. I've grown very bitter without that sweetness in my life. And she's not in a position to give it back to me. Not if she was telling the truth last night.

"But we'll have to be careful. We can't be seen together," she adds, confirming my suspicions and leaving a very, very sour taste in my mouth.

* * *

Ines

I take his hand and lead him to the two chairs I set by the window before I stepped out into the hall to wait for him. He follows, but gives me a bemused smile after I ask him to sit.

"I said talk, but what I meant was something more intimate," he says, grinning at me. "Hearing your story is important to me, but it's not the most important thing right now, if you get what I mean?"

He smirks as he says it, reminding me of happier times, of the times we had back when we had all the time in the world to just lay in bed together all day and all night. But his eyes are as hard and sharp as jagged stones. They were never like that back then.

"I know what you mean," I tell him and try to smile too, but it's just not coming. Which is fitting, I guess, since his smile isn't as unguarded as it once was either. I want to paint that smile onto his face and into his eyes again, want him to paint it on mine too. But is that just a dream? A dream that can never come true? This time, he has to know what he's getting himself into, if he decides to make me his again. I want that more than anything in the world. But it could mean his life.

I sit and tap the chair next to me, when he doesn't make a move to join me. He sits, spreading his powerful thighs wide so they're brushing my neatly crossed legs.

"I waited a long time to see you again, Ines," he says casting a glance over his shoulder at my dying father. "This isn't how I pictured our reunion unfolding. Let's find a hotel room, get reacquainted the right way. We can figure out what to do next afterwards. I don't care if you're married. I'll take what I can get."

He chuckles after he finishes speaking, but there's no joy in his words. And there's none in my chest either. I wanted to be his everything, I wanted him to be my everything, but I'm afraid we let that chance slip away a long time ago and there might not be a second one.

"I'm not married," I tell him, looking down at my hands which I'm clutching together hard in my lap to keep them from shaking.

"Like I said. I don't mind, if you don't," he says into the silence when I don't continue speaking.

I look at him sharply, since I don't understand what he's saying. Does he mean that he just wants to fuck me one last time, and then we can go back to never seeing each other again? For someone who always spoke his mind very plainly, he's hard to read right now.

"There's the fire," he says and chuckles. "I was growing afraid you'd become the uptight rich woman you dress like for real."

His eyes are clear like the calm sea in a tiny bay far from anywhere. They could always douse my flames. And despite the years separating us from what we once meant to each other, he still feels like home, like the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.

"I wish to talk seriously, Rook," I tell him. "I'm a danger to you, a danger you shouldn't be messing with, and you need to know that."

"You're not a danger. You're just hot," he says, interrupting me, and laughs. "The danger is how much I still want you."

"I left you because a very dangerous man abducted me that morning, locked me up and kept me locked up for the past ten years. That man is Silvio Gonzales, better known by his nickname, the Gentleman." Rook's face turns very serious as I mention Silvio's name. Not fearful, just sharp, and that gives me hope. But he has to hear the rest of my story too. "He beat my father nearly to death to find out where I was when I ran away from him, and my father never recovered. I asked you to meet me here, because it's the only place where I'm not watched constantly, so we can talk. I've thought about you every day, about how I must have hurt you by just disappearing, about all we lost, and I'd already lost all hope that it could ever be any different ever again, until you stormed into that dressing room yesterday. But now you're talking to me like all you want is one reunion fuck and then we just both go back to our lives and…and…that's…it's not what I expected, not what I dreamed of…but it might be for the best. Because Silvio will never let me go, and he'll never let you have me."

His face is a mask of stone when I finish speaking, the expression on it just as lifeless.

"OK, let's back up, Ines. What are you telling me?" he says. "The Gentleman, as in that guy who runs the Mexico City cartel and controls half of the country besides? He's the one you're with?"

I nod.

"And you were with him before we met?" he asks. "He was basically just collecting you when he took you away from Cabo del Sol?"

I shake my head so hard my bun bounces, a strand of hair falling lose.

"He noticed me selling flowers in the market and became obsessed with me from afar. I ran away when he tried to do something about it, but he found me. No one runs from him and lives. If you heard about him, then you must've heard that too."

He's looking at me in a very different way than before. That light of passion, shining right beneath the surface of his clear blue eyes whenever he looks at me is bright, but it's joined by something colder, fiercer, deadlier, that's just as bright.

"Do you still want me after knowing all that?" I ask. "After knowing I might never be free to be yours?"

My voice cracks as I ask the second question. So very much depends on his answer. More than I imagined it would. And I imagined the two of us together a lot, dreamt about it at night and even during the day when I was fully awake.

"I never stopped wanting you, Ines," he says after a pause that seemed to last years. "I figured I was crazy because of it, since you clearly didn't want anything to do with me, else you would've at least said goodbye before you left. I don't plan on letting you go easily the second time. And the Gentleman doesn't scare me. So you can take what I said before as a proud man's bravado, or a desperate man's attempt to pretend he isn't. I want more from you than one last fuck. I want all of what we should've had for the last ten years. But I won't be lied to and I won't be made a fool of. So you better be telling me the truth."

"I am telling you the truth," I say and smile at him, glide a shaking hand down his cheek, trying not to let the tears choking me flow. He always spoke his mind, always said exactly what he meant. He means what he just said. He loves me still, never stopped, I know it's the truth, and it's more than I dared hope for.

The stony, stern expression on his face finally softens as he lays his hand over mine and grips it reassuringly hard, then brings it to his lips and kisses my palm.

"But if we're gonna do this, we gotta leave now, today," he says. "Before the guy gets back."

I don't know how to respond or which question to ask first, and it must show on my face, because his grows darker again.

"You don't want to run away from him?" he asks.

"He'll find us…kill us…aren't you afraid?" my voice quivers when I ask it, because the idea petrifies me. "And people will die if I just disappear—"

He snorts. "I don't mean to be an insensitive bastard, but your father is as good as dead. I know a dying man when I see him, but that loud breathing machine is also a big giveaway."

His words feel like he drove a stake through my heart. But it's also the first time that my father's illness has made me feel anything more than a wispy distant sadness completely shrouded by numb nothingness.

"It's not just my father. My bodyguards will pay with their lives too if I disappear," I say.

"Guys that helped keep you locked up?" he asks harshly. "Fuck them."

"And my father's nurse," I add.

"We'll take her with us," he snaps. "What are you telling me, Ines? That you want to stay?"

I don't have an answer. The bright light in his eyes, the fire in his words, makes me want to run out of this hospital with him and never look back. But the cautious voice in my head, the one that's kept me alive all these years, and the other one, the one that doesn't want anyone to suffer because of me and my curse, are very loud too.

"I…" but I don't know what to say next.

"This guy, this Gentleman, he chops people's heads off and mounts them on walls," Rook says. "You can't protect anyone from him. They were dumb to get involved with him in the first place and that's on them. But you can escape him and I can keep you safe from him. Unless you don't really want to, and you're just lying to me?"

The Rook I remember wasn't this skeptical, didn't doubt others, especially not me, this way. But we're both much older now than we were when we met, and not just in years, in hardships, pain and loneliness too. We've both seen the darkness of this world that light never reaches. I know I have, and I think he has too. And I won't consign anyone to that darkness. Not if I can prevent it.

"You know what he is and you're not afraid?" I ask. "How can you not be afraid? We need a plan, a strategy."

"All we need is to get the fuck out of this hospital and then out of the country. I can protect you from him. What I can't do is let you go back to him."

I shake my head and squeeze his hand. "You don't know him. We have to be careful. I'll make a plan, and I'll run away with you as soon as I can. But for now, will you meet me here every day? We can sneak out, go for dinner, go dancing, go to a hotel, maybe," I say, and smile at him faintly, because I've imagined us doing all those things all night, and for years before then. "After I bury my father and we work out a plan, we'll leave. I promise you we will. But it's not time yet. We have to do this right. I won't make the same mistake again. I won't risk losing you again."

He looks at me for a long time, and I have no idea what he's thinking as he considers what I just said. Maybe I already lost him again by saying it. But then he finally smiles and squeezes my hand.

"Alright, Ines," he says. "We'll stay so you can bury your father. But we'll make all the plans together. Don't do anything on your own."

It sounds like an order, the way he says it, and he sounds like he's used to giving orders all the time.

"Now, how about we go for that dinner," he says and chuckles. "Or let's just get room service at the nearest hotel. And I need you to let your hair down. You look like some strict teacher with that bun."

I smile at him as I start pulling out the pins holding my bun in place. His chest heaves, and he even groans softly as I shake my head to let my hair fall loose.

He grabs a fistful of it before it's even settled around my shoulders and pulls me to him, kissing my half smile right off, fiercely and hungrily, sending my heart racing with more than just desire.

I know Rook's roughness is only a child of the passion he has for me, but Silvio is very rough too. I've learned to fear it, because I associate it with the pain Silvio's roughness brings, forgot the pleasure Rook's gave me.

So instead of surrendering to the passion and love I feel for Rook, my stomach is clenching in fear, my body shivering as the numbness that protects me from Silvio's touch overtakes my mind, my heart, even my desire to give myself to the man for whose touch I've yearned during these ten cold, cold years. Maybe Silvio has broken me. Maybe I'll never be able to give myself to the man I love, because I am broken.

But I push the thought away, focus on the burning flames of passion entering me through Rook's kiss. Even the numbness trying to reign inside me can't mask their heat completely. And that gives me hope.