Cartel

  He looked down at her hand, a glass of Scotch clutched loosely in perfectly manicured fingers. He looked at her vacant blue eyes and clenched his jaw tightly. Not even 10 a.m. and she was halfway to drunk. No wonder their businesses were losing money. She used to be so reliable. This morning drinking was new. And it annoyed the ever-living shit out of Dornan.

  She didn’t speak, just raised her perfectly groomed eyebrows in question.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, taking her elbow.

  ‘Baby!’ she protested, trying to pull away. ‘Your father wants a meeting with us. Can’t this wait?’

  ‘Don’t fucking question me, woman,’ he spat, wrenching the glass from her hand and slamming it down on a sideboard. Amber-coloured liquid sloshed onto the timber and he shook his wet hand, irritated.

  Bella knew better than to keep going, and she shut up. Dornan dragged her over to the bed and pushed her down roughly. As she righted herself, he stepped over and slammed the door, locking it for effect. He didn’t really care if anyone came in and saw what was about to happen, but he wanted Bella to know that she was not welcome to leave until he was done with her. She got off on that shit.

  ‘I missed you, baby,’ she said, slightly slurring her words as he stalked over to the bed. He pulled her to the edge and let the towel around his waist drop to the ground. Bella’s eyes went round as a dick was shoved at her face, and Dornan felt a glimmer of satisfaction at the power he wielded over his pretty, but slightly unhinged employee.

  Mariana. Tough Girl. He needed to get her out of his mind.

  ‘Open your mouth,’ he said, taking his dick and pressing it against her lips.

  Bella drew back, smiling. ‘This is how we said goodbye. Isn’t it my turn?’ She thrust her hips up at him. ‘I’m bare for you, baby.’

  ‘Bella!’ he roared. He was not in the mood to go on a pussy expedition. Not with Bella, anyway.

  She snapped her watery eyes to his and seemed to realise he wasn’t fucking around. Her smile turned to a lustful gaze, and without hesitation, she moved her face closer again and opened her mouth enough just to let the tip of his painfully hard cock graze past her teeth.

  Impatience peaked inside Dornan’s chest. She should have known better than to tease him.

  ‘I said open your mouth, not brush your teeth with my dick.’ He grabbed her shoulder and dug his fingers in hard, making her moan around his cock as she opened her mouth a little more.

  ‘Open wider,’ he instructed her. ‘Take it all.’ He gripped the sides of her head and wrenched up, forcing his hips forward so that she gagged violently.

  But it still wasn’t enough. He withdrew suddenly, letting his cock bounce out of her mouth. He patted her absent-mindedly on the head as she retched and giggled, her throat probably rubbed raw by his need. Not that he cared. The rougher he was, the faster she got off.

  Theirs was a strange arrangement.

  ‘On your back,’ he said. ‘Hurry up.’

  Just want to tear her apart.

  When she didn’t move immediately, he grabbed a handful of her dark hair and yanked. She moaned. ‘Alright, alright!’

  He pushed her onto her back and crawled on top of her. With his taut muscles and measured movements, he was the perfect predator, but he didn’t want this insipid bitch who was panting beneath him to be his prey.

  He wanted Mariana. Beneath him, writhing and begging for his touch, his name on her lips, as he fucked her raw.

  Bella was wearing a tight pencil skirt, the ones that normally drove him crazy with desire. Half the pleasure was in the thrill of the chase; in trying to hitch it up far enough to spread her legs and get access to what was beneath that see-through lace thong. He was a man who enjoyed a challenge.

  ‘What the hell has gotten into you?’ she asked, desire in her heavy lidded eyes. That made him laugh. She must have thought him mad — and she hadn’t even seen the blood on his hands that had started all of this enraged excitement in the first place.

  Ana has gotten into me. And I need to get her out.

  He ripped Bella’s cornflower blue silk blouse open, sending buttons flying everywhere. Below, her pale flesh and small tits underwhelmed him. What he really wanted was to see that light bronze skin and heaving rack that he’d just feasted his eyes upon in the basement.

  Bella just wasn’t doing it for him.

  He leaned down and took her nipple into his mouth anyway, the feeling of her in his mouth completely disappointing. She hitched her skirt up higher and took his hand, guiding it between her legs.

  He laughed and smacked her hand away. In that moment, he didn’t care about her pleasure. In that moment, she existed for his pleasure.

  He wrenched her legs apart, pushing them as wide as they would go, and pushed her panties to the side, positioning himself at her entrance. She was already wet for him. Yeah, she liked this shit; the rougher he was, the more excited she got. They suited each other just fine.

  He drove into her as hard as he could, enjoying the way her breath caught in her throat and how her eyes seemed to almost pop under the pressure of him inside her. As he set a steady rhythm, it felt good, but something wasn’t right. Apart from the obvious — she wasn’t the woman he was eager to fuck the life out of right now.

  Her hands found his and suddenly she was guiding them to her neck. ‘Choke me, baby.’

  He indulged her; as his large palms pressed around her throat, she started to thrust her hips up harder to match his rough strokes.

  No matter what he did to this woman, it didn’t faze her. The more brutal he was, the faster she got off, and the more she wanted to go again five minutes later. She was unique. She was insatiable. But right now, she was dull.

  He pushed harder. But still, it wasn’t enough.

  Then he saw the pillow beside Bella’s head. He leaned over her pale body and took the pillow, pressing it over her face before she could protest.

  Better.

  She struggled beneath the pillow, but her strength was no match for his, and the pillow muffled her yells. Soon, she stopped struggling, and as he drove harder inside her, her yells turned to lust-filled — albeit muffled — moans. He pressed down on the pillow, not enough to render her unconscious, but enough to make her head spin in circles while he pretended she was somebody else.

  Yes. That was much, much better. He picked up his pace, thrusting into her relentlessly, spurred on by Bella’s wildly enthusiastic response and the image of Mariana’s smooth bronze skin.

  As she clenched tighter around him, Dornan lost it, shuddering violently as he came.

  He withdrew, cleaning himself off with the towel as Bella rearranged her skirt and attempted to re-button her ruined shirt with the few buttons that still held onto the material.

  He should have been satisfied, but he wasn’t. He needed more. He needed her.

  ‘That was fucking amazing,’ Bella said, stretching out on the bed. ‘You must have missed me, baby.’

  He looked to the ceiling and bit his tongue; he hadn’t missed the insolent bitch one single bit.

  ‘Aren’t you late for a fuckin’ meeting?’ he asked, glaring at her. She pressed her lips together and kissed the air that separated them. ‘I love you too, baby,’ she cooed, sashaying out of the room with her ruined shirt clutched tight around her.

  He shook his head. She was insane.

  Thank fuck he wasn’t alone in that regard.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Mariana

  I stared vacantly at the bandages on my wrists, and beside them, the shackles that pinned me to the wall. It struck me as hilarious that I now had deep cuts to both of my arms, especially when Emilio had asked his son to ensure I wasn’t marked. Why, I still wasn’t sure. I didn’t really care at this point. I was just tired and hungry and sore from being chained to the wall for so long. And I wanted to go home.

  What a ridiculous thought. I was never going home.

  The delirium was brought on by my hunger, I decided. Hunger
and blood loss. I eyed my suitcase, wondering if there was something I could eat in there. Not that it mattered, since I was fastened to the wall. I wasn’t even indignant at the way Dornan had restrained me.

  I mean, I had stabbed him.

  I catalogued my diet over the past several days. I’d been told not to eat anything on my flights, convinced that I was a drug mule with cocaine pellets in my stomach. So, apart from the greasy burger and fries Murphy had so graciously bestowed upon me before cutting me loose with the Gypsy Brothers, I’d not had anything to eat in days.

  And then, as if by magic, Dornan was standing in my doorway with a bowl of soup and a plate of bread.

  My eyes practically bulged out of my head when I saw the goodies he was holding. I should have known they’d come at a price.

  Everything always did.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Dornan

  The girl looked terrible when he got back to the room. Her bronze skin had a sickly pallor that he was hoping to fix by feeding her up. He cursed himself as he realised she hadn’t been given a drop of water to drink in the whole time she’d been there.

  He dumped the soup and bread on the small wooden table and left, returning with a glass of water. After removing the heavy cuffs from their bolt in the wall, but leaving them on her wrists, he handed her the glass of water. She thanked him as she took it with shaking hands, but she didn’t meet his eyes this time, fixing her gaze in the distance as she emptied the glass.

  Odd.

  She was a feisty little thing. Maybe she just needed something to eat before she started up the banter with him again. He loved the way she spoke, her slight accent, which gave him a pant-busting crush on her, the way she licked her lips when she was unsure, but, most of all, he enjoyed the attitude behind her words. He liked all of it. And, much to his chagrin, fucking the life out of Bella hadn’t tempered his desire for Mariana at all — if anything, it had inflamed it.

  Perhaps he was just using her as a distraction from the work he needed to do upstairs. From the mess that the cartel was involved in. From the reality that even he couldn’t bear to face. Rival suppliers. Rival biker clubs. Nothing mattered when the white powder flowed freely, but now, because of her stupid father, their precious white snow was sitting in a processing plant owned by the DEA in New Mexico, and Dornan and Emilio were fresh out of product.

  ‘Sit,’ he said, gesturing to the bed. She obeyed without any of her usual snark. Maybe she had broken already. She stabbed you, he reminded himself. No, the girl was definitely not broken. The girl was on fire inside. She was just dormant in this moment, probably from lack of sustenance.

  He dragged the small wooden table in front of her. ‘Eat.’

  She didn’t hesitate, diving in with gusto. Tearing bread, dipping it into the soup his mother made so well, bringing it to her lush lips. Chew, swallow, repeat.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asked. And then immediately cursed himself. She’s a fucking prisoner. She stabbed me.

  Something tugged up at the corner of her mouth for just a second, and he exhaled, amused. She was laughing at him. She was so different to the typical girl they saw here, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to fuck her, or shoot her in the head and be finished with it all.

  ‘How’s your shoulder?’ she asked, meeting his gaze for the first time. Her eyes burned with an intensity he had never seen in a woman before. She wasn’t afraid of him, he realised. That troubled him. Why wasn’t she afraid? Because she was hiding something?

  Or because she had nothing left to lose?

  ‘My shoulder is great,’ he said, leaning against the wall across from where she sat. ‘Never better.’

  And he meant it. She had made him bleed … and it wasn’t a bad thing. It still throbbed from time to time, but the blade was sharp and she’d missed anything major.

  ‘I’ll have to try harder next time,’ she said between bites.

  Huh. It was one thing that he liked her feisty, but he didn’t want her to think she had power over him. Threats were for him to make. He would have to show her that he was the one in control.

  ‘This isn’t a fairytale,’ Dornan said wryly, as he watched her bring the soup-soaked bread to her mouth.

  She paused with the bread in her hand, looking around the room in mock surprise. ‘You mean, we’re not Beauty and the fucking Beast?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Well, you’re certainly beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘And you’re definitely a beast,’ she countered, pushing her empty bowl away and resting back on the bed.

  ‘But there’s no happy ever after for you,’ Dornan added, his eyes trailing over the chains to reach the cuffs that were now permanent bracelets on her wrists.

  ‘No,’ she said evenly, matching his intense gaze. ‘Not for any of us. Not in this world.’

  ‘It probably doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to you,’ Dornan said, ‘but I’m sorry that this is happening to you. Sounds like your dad fucked up majorly.’

  What on earth had prompted him to say that? He was going fucking soft.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said quietly, looking at the wall. ‘It was bound to happen one day.’

  ‘He have a tendency to fuck things up?’ Dornan asked, his interest suddenly aroused. He didn’t give a shit about her dad, but he wanted to learn more about her. About her life. What did she dream about at night? Or were her nights filled with nightmares, like his were?

  He had never cared before. He loved his children, would lay down his life for them. He loved his first wife in some way, and his second. He had a fierce love for his own mother. But he had never been obsessed with what made them tick, what drove them in life, the things that haunted them. Everybody else he had ever known had been taken at face value.

  So to feel this obsession for the thoughts of the girl in front of him? It terrified him. And Dornan Ross did not enjoy being scared. Especially not of dirty, insignificant things like feelings. Feelings and emotions made a man weak. Better not to feel them at all.

  She let out the breath she’d been holding and glanced at him. The brave mask she wore slipped a little, and he saw the exhausted girl underneath all the sarcasm and witty retorts.

  ‘My father is a complicated man,’ she said quietly.

  When she didn’t elaborate, Dornan nodded. ‘Seems we have that in common. Complicated old men. They all have their own … anomalies.’

  Mariana huffed. ‘Anomalies.’

  Dornan rubbed his stubbled jaw as he watched her. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘when you first got here, something about you struck me as odd.’

  Her lip curled up minutely. ‘Just the one thing?’

  He matched her small smile with one of his own. ‘You were so … accepting of what was happening. Almost like … you were expecting it.’

  He saw her stiffen slightly and sit up straighter on the bed. She seemed to be contemplating whether to share more with him. Dornan studied her, not making a sound. People always wanted to fill silence, and if you waited long enough, they’d rush forth to do it in your absence.

  ‘It should have happened years ago,’ she said quietly, massaging her wrists where the cuffs dug in. ‘I’ve been pretty good at holding off the debt collectors.’

  Dornan’s curiosity was piqued. ‘With your pretty face?’ he guessed.

  Jesus Christ. He might as well give her the knife back and let her carve out his heart.

  ‘With creative accounting,’ she said. ‘Take some from here, tack it onto there, and when that stops working, the cheque’s always in the mail.’ Her eyes bored into him. ‘Of course, it’s much more complex than that.’

  Dornan sat back and studied her with newfound appreciation. Beautiful and clever. A rare — and dangerous — combination in the cartel.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Very interesting.’

  She didn’t look interested; she looked positively despondent.

  ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ she asked him again,
and that steely look in her eyes was clouded over with worry. Just for a second, and then he could almost see the way she pushed her panic down and composed herself again. The ice queen. He saw right through her act, good as it was. She must have practised that indifferent stare for years, it was so automatic. He wondered what had happened to her that she needed to hide her feelings away so well.

  ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘Drug mule, maybe. Your English is good enough. But you’d be a flight risk with that pesky family of yours.’

  She opened her mouth to argue, but he put up a palm to stop her. She closed her mouth, and again, that surprised him.

  She really wanted to know what came next. And he didn’t have the heart to tell her.

  ‘You’ve got a pretty face, Ana. I’m sorry that you do. I wish you didn’t.’

  Her eyes grew wider.

  ‘If it were up to me? I’d put you to work in one of our finest gentlemen’s clubs.’

  Only, I wouldn’t. I’d keep you all for myself. But of course, he couldn’t tell her that.

  She huffed. ‘A whorehouse.’

  He nodded. ‘Yup.’

  Her shoulders sagged. ‘When?’

  ‘I imagine very soon.’

  He saw the thought cross her mind, it was so obvious.

  ‘Maybe you could —’

  He pushed off the wall and took two long strides, his fingers coming to rest against her mouth as he cut her off mid-sentence. Sadness bloomed in her eyes, then, watery and dull. And resignation. The resignation to one’s fate was always the thing that got to him the most. He preferred it when they still had fight left in them, because fight meant hope.

  Once upon a time, he’d wanted to save them all. These days, he was numb to it. But now, with this inexplicable woman sitting in front of him, he almost wavered. The temptation to take her away, to save her, overwhelmed him momentarily. Had she seen? Had she caught sight of the fleeting devastation on his face before he managed to wipe it away again?

  ‘I can’t,’ he said plainly, to himself as much as to her. ‘Remember? This isn’t a fairytale. I’m not your hero, Ana. Nobody is. Nobody is coming to save you.’