Then he let go of my wrists and started making his way down, kissing my chest, my breasts, his tongue doing smooth circles over my nipples. He bit them and I cried out, from the shock and pain and the warmth that came afterward, a warmth that spread down my core and between my legs, making them spread open.
He kissed and sucked down my stomach, at my belly button, and then headed lower. I tensed up, afraid, but I felt him pause. I lifted my head to see those sharp lustful eyes staring at me with such want, I wasn’t sure if he was going to kill me or fuck me.
“Just relax,” he murmured, and his eyes never broke away from mine as he passed over my pubic bone and placed himself between my legs, his arms hooking on to each thigh. “I will do all the work.” He looked down between my legs, bare and vulnerable. “You have a beautiful pussy, did you know that?”
My cheeks flamed and I chastised myself for feeling so bashful.
His face lowered even further and my body stiffened in response.
“I want to feel your clit throb between my lips,” he whispered, his breath sending electricity through my thighs. When I didn’t say anything—I couldn’t, I was frozen in shock—he lifted his head from between my legs and gave me a curious glance. “You’ve never had an orgasm before, have you?”
I shook my head.
He grinned with easy carnality. “Do not worry. I’m very good at giving girls an orgasm for the first time. And for every time after that.”
Then he placed his mouth on me, and a million volts of electricity ran through me, making me flinch. The feeling slowly melted away though as the wet warmth of his mouth spread all over, and I found myself relaxing into the most foreign sensation that had ever touched my body. His tongue slowly lapped up and down my slit before concentrating on my clit in slow, easy circles. I knew how my body worked, I just never touched myself before, never realized the pleasure that could be had.
I started thinking I was an idiot for not doing so all this time, but soon all thought was being sucked out of me and into his mouth. I was only sensation, this beautiful feeling that his lips were bringing me. I felt my whole body both relax and tense, and I began to raise my hips into his face, craving deeper contact when his tongue became whisper light.
“That’s my queen,” he said into me, and the vibrations caused me to squirm. “Your pussy tastes seductive, more delicious than milk and honey. I should drink you with my tea in the mornings.”
I moaned, not even blushing this time. I just wanted him, needed him, to continue. I found myself reaching for his hair, burying my fingers into his smooth strands and gripping them. I pulled his face further into me and his tongue started to fuck me, entering in and out.
Now I was bucking my hips, craving him, wanting more.
“You’re so wet, I’m drowning in you.” He groaned. One of his hands left my thighs and he pulled back slightly. Suddenly he put one of his fingers inside me and I found myself trying to clench around it. “You want so much, it’s beautiful.”
“Just keep going,” I said breathlessly, my back arching, my fingers wrapping tighter into his thick hair.
“I’ll keep going until you are coming.”
“How will I know?”
“Well,” he said slowly, and though my head was rolled to the side and I couldn’t see him, I knew he was grinning. “It will feel like this.”
His tongue started flicking my clit harder just as his finger began to thrust and curl inside of me, pressing against my wall repeatedly. The pressure in my core began to build rapidly, my limbs stiffening, my breath escaping me. I held on to his hair as tight as I could while I felt like my whole body was on pause, that moment before falling when you’re in mid-air, when all time stands still, when breath and heartbeat and bloodflow all stops.
It was the most beautifully exquisite torture.
Then everything broke loose. My body became a wave of fire, of pulsating light, of air and heat and explosions that all went off at the same time. I was completely unaware of any sounds I was making—I think I was screaming—and I hadn’t realized I was yanking on Javier’s hair so hard that I lifted his head right off me.
I lay there, writhing, moaning. It was like being Tasered but only with pleasure. Then, as my eyes stopped rolling back into my head, as I began to catch my breath, I was hit with a second wave.
Only this one was pure emotion. I felt like my heart was light and fluttery, and there was pain and sadness and joy and regret and anger, and every single buried feeling being unearthed. I was beside myself, unsure of how to process what had just happened to my body and what happened to my soul.
And Javier, this horrible man, this narco, my captor, he was right there on the bed beside me, wiping his mouth and gazing at me before tucking my hair behind my ear. I could only stare at him in pure bewilderment, my eyes wide, my mouth open, trying to breathe, to remember who I was and what I was to him.
But I could barely remember any of that. I was feeling a pull to him stronger than anything before. This man was capable of such cruelty and violence, yet he had pleasured me, giving me something I’d never had. Well, the sated look in his hooded eyes told me that he found it nearly as pleasurable himself.
He rested his hand on my cheek, soothingly. “You better get some rest,” he said. “Big day tomorrow.”
And then more of the real world, of my life, came back, pecking away at the golden wave I was still riding, making my heart slow.
The thing, the crazy thing, was that as much as I didn’t want tomorrow to come, I also didn’t want him to leave. I wanted him to stay with me. At least until I fell asleep. I needed him, the little comfort he could give me on my last night.
He was staring at me expectedly, like he wanted me to ask him. Or he wanted to ask himself. Maybe we could do something else to pass the time. Maybe I could do something for him. Maybe it wasn’t time to say goodnight.
But then he sat up, perched on the end of the bed, and smoothed down his hair. There was another moment where he licked his lips, his eyes flickering, his mind caught in some internal dialogue.
I almost said something. I opened my mouth and almost asked him to stay, as foolish as it was.
He got up and picked up the blade from the other side of the bed, sliding it into his boot.
“Goodnight Luisa,” he said, and I knew the moment was over.
I couldn’t find the words to say goodnight to him. He gave me a quick, almost grave smile, then left the room, the lock turning loudly behind him.
It was the loneliest sound.
I lay there naked, remembering the feeling I just had moments ago, a feeling I would never get back.
I let a tear fall, my emotions still running rampant in me, and then gratefully drifted off to sleep before the thoughts of his touch could turn into thoughts of his bullets.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Javier
I had woken up with the taste of her pussy on my lips. Proof that it hadn’t been a dream.
Men who think they have to rape and violate in order to assert their power and control have no idea what they’re missing. Real power comes in giving a woman pleasure. Real control is knowing you’ve taken that woman to another place, another plane of existence, and you’re the only one who holds the key. I gave Luisa what she wanted, what she needed, and she would never be the same again.
In some ways, the same went for me.
But today of all days was not the time to dwell on such accomplishments. Today I had to separate my impulses toward Luisa and focus on the big picture, the task at hand.
My empire had so much to gain, so much to lose, and it all rested on one man’s feelings toward a beautiful little woman, lying in bed in the room above me. I knew now that Salvador didn’t love her—he wouldn’t have abused her like he did, she wouldn’t have hated him so much, and he wouldn’t have let this charade go on for so long. But pride was easily confused with love and I knew how much of that he had. Too much self-love could be utterly destructive. I ne
eded to play that card.
“Javier?” The Doctor asked.
I looked over at him, remembering what was going on. I was sitting down in the shitty little office, The Doctor in the seat across from me, Este and Juanito who had just returned from their travels, standing by the door. Franco was outside in the hall. By Luisa’s room I had more guards than normal, just in case she panicked during these final hours.
On the desk was the old-fashioned flip cell phone Salvador would be calling. It couldn’t be traced, but we would still destroy it after anyway.
“Yes?” I asked, tapping my cigarette and watching the stem of ash flake into the ashtray.
“How would you like for us to dispose of her?”
It was the way The Doctor said this, so callously, as if we were talking about garbage, that bothered me most of all. Naturally, I couldn’t show it.
“I think a bullet to the head would suffice,” I said quickly, before puffing back on the smoke. I’d already gone through half a pack that morning.
He cocked a brow at me, the lines in his forehead deepening. “Is that so? Don’t you think we have to send a better message than that?”
I narrowed my eyes at his questioning. “What message is there? This isn’t a secret killing, we don’t have to bury her facedown. We have her, he doesn’t obey, we kill her.”
“But you know how sweet torture can be,” he said with a wistful look on his face. “And it has been too long.”
I stared at him, at the white Panama hat on his head that gave him this air of sophistication that hid all his depravity. “And you know I don’t like women to be tortured.”
“Right,” he said slowly. “You think it’s ugly.”
“It is ugly.”
“Are you sure it’s all women,” Este spoke up, “or just Luisa?”
What a fucking shit disturber. I gave him a dull look as I blew a cloud of smoke toward him. “All women.”
He grinned and crossed his arms. “Interesting. You know, I could have sworn I heard you torturing her last night. There were screams…”
“Would you like another knife in your shin?” I asked. “No? Then shut the fuck up. For now, that is your job. Shutting the fuck up.”
“No need to get violent again,” The Doctor said, leaning back in his chair. “Not today. It’s fine, Javier, if you don’t want to torture Luisa. A bullet to the head will work, as long as we can remove her head afterward. And other parts of her. We’ll mail it out to Cabo San Lucas, have Juanito here display her just so on the steps of city hall. It’s her city, and that city has avoided the violence of the cartels for far too long, don’t you think?” He ran a finger over his mustache, smiling at the thought. “Yes, that would send the right message. It will show the world, the whole world, that we don’t fuck around.”
“Um,” Juanito said, speaking for the first time that morning, “wouldn’t it also show that Salvador doesn’t fuck around? I mean, if I saw a cartel boss’ wife’s body, I would assume that it was because he didn’t negotiate. That his own wife wasn’t worth it. That says some seriously fucked up shit right there.”
Before I had a chance to run that terrible scenario through my head, the phone rang, causing us all to jump.
I snatched it up before anyone else could. It was a horrid ringtone to boot.
I flipped it open. “Hello.”
“I take it this is Javier Bernal.” The man’s voice was raspy, heavy, like talking was an effort.
“I take it this is Salvador Reyes,” I said.
“You’re correct. I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you earlier. You see, it took me some time to figure out who you were.” He snorted in through his nose and I heard him spit on the ground. I grimaced. “I’d never heard of Javier Bernal. But one of my friends pointed out that you were the one arrested in California. Rumor has it that you were turned in by a woman, is that right? And now you appear to have my woman.”
She’s not your woman, I thought, but the thought didn’t stick around for long.
“That I do. I have your wife, Luisa. Pretty little thing. You really shouldn’t have let her out of your sight.”
He grunted. “Have you ever tried to tell a woman what to do? It’s not always easy to lay down the law.”
His jovial tone was making me troubled.
“You’ve heard our demands, then,” I prompted him. I looked over at The Doctor, Este, and Juanito who were all watching me, on edge.
“I did, I did,” he said. He cleared his throat and spat again. “I did. And you must know that I love my wife very much. So very much. But you’re asking a great deal from me. The Ephedra lane is a lot of money, a lot of work went in to that. Surely, as one master to another, you can appreciate that. I’ll have no problems securing another one, but you get so attached to these kind of things.” I could practically hear him smiling over the phone. The happier he sounded, the worse the knot in my gut.
He sighed. “How about this. Give me another week. I’ll see what I can work out.”
Every instinct told me to tell him there was no deal. That I was negotiating here, not him. That I was the one in control. I wanted to tell him that it was over, and I would personally fuck and kill his wife, and then I would hang up the phone. My instincts told me that because that’s what they had been trained to do.
But my instincts were pushed to the side. “Fine,” I told him. “You have another week exactly. If you don’t deliver, we will. Her raped, mutilated body will be on the front page of every newspaper. And perhaps a few toes in your morning cereal. Goodbye.”
I quickly snapped the phone shut and pushed it away from me. I hadn’t realized I was breathing hard, my chest racing. Everyone was staring at me, seemingly in shock.
“What?” I snapped.
“You negotiated?” The Doctor asked in disapproval. “Javier…”
I pulled a cigarette out from behind my ear. “So what? It’s another week. What’s another week when we can get what we want instead of nothing at all?”
“You’re giving him the upper hand.”
“How? How the fuck am I doing that? I have his wife. If he didn’t want her back, he wouldn’t have asked for an extension.” I lit the cigarette angrily then leaned forward in my chair, my eyes blazing into his. “You’ve done this a million times. Sometimes people can’t come up with the money right away. So we work with them. We all know that is how this is done.”
“For civilians,” he said slowly. “That is how it is done with them. Salvador doesn’t need to come up with anything, he has everything. He is playing us.”
I shook my head. “No, you are wrong.”
“This woman is clouding your brain,” he said, getting to his feet. “I should just do us all a favor and kill her right now.”
I shot up, leaning across the desk, fury rocketing through me. “You do that and I will kill you.” I jabbed my finger at him. “You know I will. I will torture you the same way you torture everyone, and I will smile the whole fucking time.”
He stared at me in surprise before his face crumpled into laughter. “You are serious. I like that about you, Javier. I like your edge. So, a word of advice then from your elder—don’t lose it.”
With that he turned and walked out the door. I looked over at Juanito, wondering if he had any more interesting anecdotes, but he quickly followed in The Doctor’s footsteps. Only Este stayed behind. He closed the door behind him and then sat down across from me, putting his hands behind his head.
“Well, that was a doozy,” he remarked.
“What did I tell you about shutting the fuck up?”
He nodded, looking away. “Yes, yes, I should do it more often. I’m just curious, Javi.”
“About what?” I asked in annoyance. My heart was still racing along, my pulse beating wildly against my watch.
“About what you hope to gain from all of this.”
“That’s fairly apparent.”
“Is it?” he asked as he picked up the cell phone an
d began to dismantle it. “You know at the end of next week, you’ll still have to either kill her or send her on her way. You’re delaying the inevitable.”
“I’m delaying what I can to get what I want.”
He shot me a look. “Look, I want to fuck Luisa just as much as you do. Or perhaps, just as much as you have. Her screams last night were not from being tortured. I’m not that much of an idiot.”
I wasn’t sure if I should own up to what I did; after all, I was the “master” as Salvador had called me, and that was our right as the master, the boss, to take what we wanted. Or I wasn’t sure if I should gloss over the whole thing and pretend nothing happened. I didn’t know what would be better for Este to hear. So I said nothing.
He continued, “I also know that another week with her is a mistake.”
“How so?”
“It will be harder for you to … say goodbye.”
“Then you don’t know me very well.”
He shrugged and displayed the phone on the desk, now in tiny little pieces. “That’s true. I don’t really. I should, but I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m not concerned for you.”
“And why would you be concerned about my well-being?”
“I dunno. Being a good friend, I guess.”
I laughed. “Friend. That’s a good one.”
His expression grew serious. “This organization means a lot to me, almost as much as it does to you. I just don’t want us to be in over our heads. I don’t like that Salvador has control back and I don’t like that this might leave us looking like assholes.” He bit his lip, thinking something over. “Are you still in contact with that chick from the DEA?”
“Lillian Berrellez,” I told him. “And I haven’t been in contact with her for a while.”
“Do you think if things go south with Salvador, we could give her Juanito? He can give her all the intel. They could pinpoint one of his safe houses, one of his mansions. I’m sure with some extra inside info, they could make an arrest, make it happen.”