“I meant what I said earlier. You can’t be here anymore. This has become a real problem. I am still waiting for an answer to my question.”
She stiffened against him, and for the first time in a very long time, he actually felt guilty. How the hell could he feel guilty? This woman invaded his life, insinuated herself into his home, and dragged him into the middle of mafia wars. She was San Antonio’s most wanted, and had turned his life inside out. Why the hell should he feel guilty?
She had to go, but he didn’t want her to go. The nutjob had found a way to hook him. Somehow, it was her bite. He knew he needed it, wanted more. She had him hooked, bad.
She growled low, the sound of her voice an instant turn on. “I can’t answer you, because I don’t know. I know it hurts, at first, but then it doesn’t.” She smiled, and he knew she wanted more. Perhaps she even wanted a little more of the pain, too?
Add that to the list of weird shit that was getting longer by the minute. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”
“Why can’t I just stay here, with you?” He heard it in her voice before he looked down and saw her crying. Tears of blood.
He shuddered. This woman, this thing was not human. Put her out the door. Send her off on a Greyhound bus. She did not belong in his life. He knew he’d never do it. But he should, and he was a fool for listening to anything more she had to say.
“You can’t stay. Actually we can’t. We need to leave. Now.”
He slid out from under her, and headed straight for the shower. He had to get his head on straight, and he couldn’t do it with her touching him, sucking and fucking on him. She had a way of stealing his common sense.
Standing in the steamy hot shower, he heard the door click and knew it was her. Always her. She stepped in behind him in the shower and helped soap his back, and then worked around to the front of him. She took extra time and care washing his cock and balls, and he couldn’t help but grow hard in her skilled hands.
Not again.
But he did, again, against the wall of the shower, hard, fast and merciless. Thank god she wasn’t a virgin this time, because he fucked her like a whore. All his anger and frustration, all his anxiety, all the things he couldn’t express to a woman, he pounded into her, between her thighs, and she took it without complaint.
A tough little trooper – she didn’t even whine when she limped out of the shower, obviously sore and walking funny. Without a single word from her, he felt guilty all over again. Him, the guy who never felt guilty about anyone or anything – not for more than five minutes anyway.
He hugged her, and pulled her black wet hair away from her forehead, to kiss her. Dammit, he cared about this crazy chick. Why her, of all the women he could find, why her, why now?
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be taking advantage of you like this. But there’s something you don’t know, and I … I was so angry.”
“I want you to take advantage of me. I’ll survive, don’t worry.” She smiled, and looked like that frail little woman again, almost girlish with her wet hair all tangled up.
He led her to his closet and dressed quickly, handing her another one of his long-sleeve shirts, something to at least cover her ass. “If you keep standing there, naked, I might be tempted to tap that ass all over again.” And feel even more guilty.
She grinned and flicked her tongue out at him.
He shook his head. “You probably know this, but, Mexican Mafia are looking for you. They found me instead.”
Her hand flew to her mouth and she stepped back, a look of horror in her eyes. “What did they do? What happened?”
“It was only one man, and I don’t think he knew you were here. He told me a few things just before …”
She stood there watching him, and he could see it in her eyes when she realized what had gone unsaid. “No!” She shook her head. “No. You didn’t!”
He nodded. “I didn’t have a choice. If he lived to tell anyone about me, then they’d all be after me. You know the old saying, mess with one beaner, and you get the whole burrito.”
He smiled. But it was another one of those inappropriate moments, because she looked even more horrified as he grinned at his lame joke.
“Aye que loco!”
“Me? I’m crazy? Bullshit. You’re nuts. You come here asking me for help, with the mafia and every law enforcement agency in Texas on your tail. You led them all to my fucking door. You know what he said? He said the same thing Detective Coronado said, which means it’s probably true. La Reina has a contract on her head.” Adrian tapped his index finger on her chest. “You are La Reina, some kind of fucking drug queen from South America, and the Mexican Mafia, the guys with black hand tattoos, are coming for you and me both.”
He tapped at her chest again, but you’d have thought he’d punched her the way her face morphed into shock.
* * * *
Chapter 13
That word, La Reina, The Queen, cracked through the dam of blockage in her mind. Suddenly her world rushed back in, a steady stream flowing with memories of her entire life. The stream flooded her in dark, wicked images and recollections, filling her to the point she simply couldn’t take any more.
She screamed and fell to her knees under the weight of revelation.
“Sixteen! I was only sixteen when he made me what I am. Who does that to a sixteen year old girl? Oh my god. I was a virgin. I have always been a virgin ever since…”
Adrian stood there, looking at her with his face full of accusation, and he was right. Oh how she wished she’d never learned just how right he was. La Reina. She had done such horrible things, unspeakable things.
Ignorance is bliss, and she wished so badly that she could have maintained her ignorance, because no one deserves memories like this, such hell. Such horrific hell.
No wonder they called her La Reina, a reign of blood and death is exactly what she brought to the Mexican cartels. And no one knew the truth, no one but her. Dios mio, that’s who was behind this betrayal, behind the contract, him!
Adrian stood looking down on her, eyes full of judgment. “What do you mean you were only sixteen? What does that have to do with it?”
“That’s when I met him. But there’s no time to explain that now.” She grabbed his pant leg. “We must go.” She was on her feet, pulling on his hand to leave. She knew what was coming. She had survived it in Mexico, and again the other night, but what were the chances of surviving a third assassination attempt?
“Texas Mexican Mafia are hunting me.” She pulled him towards the bedroom door. “These guys are recruited out of prison. The mafiosos in Mexico have hundreds of people trapped in US prisons serving ten-twenty years, so instead, they network with the ones who are being released. Their men on the street are soldiers, and they follow orders, like any soldier. They kill whoever, whenever, any time, any place. They take a job, and they have to perform, or their lives are in jeopardy, and the lives of their family. The price for disobedience is death. These men take a contract and fulfill it, or die trying.”
Adrian pulled against her, stopping her from dragging him into the living room. “There isn’t a law enforcement agency in the world that can stop the drug cartels when they put their mind to an assassination. It’ll only be a matter of time before they find me again.”
They could afford to miss a dozen times over. They only had to get it right once.
She gripped his chin, trying to impart the severity of the situation. “You killed one of them? They will come for you. Whether they know I am with you or not, now they will come for you too. When they learn we are together … oh Adrian, what have you done?”
Adrian dragged her back to the bedroom by her sleeve. “I know exactly what I did, and I did it for you as much as I did it for me. But what have you done? Why is the world after you?”
She tried to stop him, but he kept pulling her, heedless of her resistance. “Adrian, you don’t want to know. Trust me, the less you know the better. We have to leave, now, before they come
looking for the one you killed.”
He let go of her, and watched her with nothing but fury on his face. Her heart ached for what she’d done to him. She had ruined his life, and he looked like he understood that. He opened the gun cabinet at the right side of his closet. Relief flooded through her. He at least had the presence of mind to prepare for the worst.
Maybe this could work.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and stood there waiting for him, ready to face the world for her sins. And there were so very many sins, she couldn’t even begin to count them.
Still angry, he glanced at her sharply. “Can you shoot?”
She nodded and he handed her a pistol. “This is the safety.” He clicked it on and off. “It’s already loaded, so be careful.” He watched her holding the gun. “Are you cool with it?”
“Yes.” The woman she had once been, La Reina, knew how to handle a gun. She hefted the weight in her hand, recalled the familiar feel of it, but had nowhere to put it in this ridiculous, oversized shirt of his.
He noticed her dilemma. “We’ll get you some clothes tonight, and a hotel.”
“I can pay you back.” She blurted the words out without thinking, realizing too late how absurd she sounded.
Adrian’s eyes narrowed. “Remembered where your bank account is? Nice. I hope there’s enough money in there to run, because I can’t bankroll this mess.”
“I can get to some money, but not here in San Antonio. I can pay you back when we get to the coast, in Corpus Christi.”
As he checked the rounds in his own pistol, he did a double-take. “What the fuck are we going there for? I’m just taking you to a hotel, that’s it. We need to get out of this apartment.”
“That’s not good enough. We must leave the country, now. Every minute we stay in this country, this close to the border of Mexico, we risk being found.”
“And just how the hell am I supposed to leave the country with you? Our deal is off. You know who you are, I know who you are, and neither of us is happy about it. I’ll get a new apartment on the north east side, and you can find someone else’s life to fuck up.”
She touched his arm, trying to find a way to tell him what she had dreaded telling him, one more sin to add to the extremely long list. “Adrian, look at me for a minute.”
He stopped shoving ammo and clothes in his backpack and stood up. His eyes were so hard and cold. Why did she choose a man like this, so difficult to connect with? Something was broken inside him. Something didn’t quite work right. Who kills a cartel soldier without even thinking twice? Who comes home with that blood on their hands and can still fuck a woman for hours. This man was so wrong in so many ways, but, for better or worse, he was now hers. Her responsibility.
He stood there watching her, wary, the knowledge she had ruined him, written on his face. “What the fuck did you do to me? Huh? You didn’t just suck my blood did you, bitch? You did something to me.” Suddenly his hand was around her throat, lifting her onto her tippy toes. The man was damn strong, especially in his fury.
She pried his fingers from her throat and choked, gasping for breath. “Please understand. I needed you. That’s my only excuse for what I did. I needed you to be there for me. I needed someone. I had nothing, no one, and so I did something. I can’t ask your forgiveness, because, I don’t deserve it. But, I can at least ask that you understand me.”
The look in his eyes twisted her chest with pain. She might never forget his look of hate and fear burning into her soul. She felt sick to her stomach with it. This man of all men, who didn’t have enough good sense to keep from killing a cartel member, was afraid of what she had to say. She suspected he already knew the truth.
“Say it. Besides dropping all your fucked up problems in my lap, what have you done to me?”
This was the moment of truth, so she gave it to him straight. “I claimed you, Adrian. It’s a bond, a bloodslave bond. It cannot be reversed. I claimed you for my personal lover and bloodslave. You will find no peace unless we are together. And now we must go, leave the country before they find us.”
“They? You mean the Police, the Feds, the Black Hands … or someone else? Let’s define for a minute who they are.”
The direction of his focus confused her. Had he not heard her? Did he not understand what she had done to him? They didn’t have time for this! She glanced towards the door.
He was in her face, now, and she feared he might actually hit her this time. “Tell me!”
She stood her ground. “They, are the police, and the feds, and La Eme. All of the above. There might be someone else too, but I don’t know yet. I was setup, and I’m not sure of everyone involved, but I will find out eventually.” Her teeth came down at the thought of hunting for the people who had set her up. But that would have to wait.
The memory of that night stuck vividly in her mind. It was supposed to be a simple meeting to pass on a message to the generals, the hardcore prison lifers who call the shots in La Eme. No explanation, no warning, nobody gave her the classic, I’ve been sent to kill you because speech. They just shot her, over and over, and then left her for dead.
She had died, looking into Adrian’s eyes in that ambulance. In her moment of death the ties to her maker were undone, and her mind shredded to pieces. Now she understood why she had lost her memory. The bond she had shared with her master went deep, and when that bond was torn from her in momentary death, it broke her mind, for a time.
She should have stayed dead. Adrian and the world would be better off if she had died in that ambulance. La Reina didn’t deserve to live. But here she was, and now she had Adrian to worry about.
“I should never have come to San Antonio. This trip was a setup from the start. But that doesn’t matter now. We need to go, immediately.”
Her rage and frustration skimmed the surface. She itched to hurt someone. In the boiling mix of her emotions she also felt relief. Free, finally. Free of the cartel, free of the sick bastard she once called Maestro, Master. He lost his hold on her when she flat-lined. Death freed her of his bond, but the life she had lived … she might never outrun those sins. The bittersweet freedom felt glorious, if only she could live long enough to enjoy it.
He stepped up to her, a frown forming over his face. “If we leave the U.S., where the hell would we go?”
Finally, he was beginning to come around. “Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, anywhere but Mexico. Mexico is a problem.” She should have realized, after what happened in Mexico, she should have seen this coming.
“Why should I go anywhere with you? I’m a free man. You’ll be hunted for … ever.”
Her breath caught in her throat. How to make him understand? “Forever is a long time, Adrian. I don’t intend to be hunted forever. I’ll get us a new set of identities. How’s your Spanish? Puede hablar Espaniol?” She looked at her bloodslave with an aching sadness in her heart. What kind of life had she forced him into? Stupid, stupid, stupid. She came to him, wrapping her hands around his face, wishing there was some way she could undo the past 48 hours. I wish I had died in that ambulance, so that he may live.
“I know you feel it, because I feel it. I feel where you are in the room. I felt when you came home to me. We are connected now, a relationship of blood. I need your blood, and you need to give it to me. I am the perfect predator, because my beautiful, handsome Adrian, you want to give me your blood despite all that I have done to you, despite the fact that you probably hate me.”
More tears. She had thought it impossible to cry, after all those years of hard living, when her heart had sealed up tight against this kind of drama. She hadn’t cried in two decades. She wiped away the blood tears and kissed her slave on the lips.
He chuckled humorlessly and stepped away from her. “This is ironic.”
“What do you mean?” She stepped up, craving his nearness, his touch. The one thing she hadn’t told him about their connection, it went both ways. She had a strange affinity for him, even though he pr
obably hated her.
“All this time, I’ve been trying to do the right thing, trying to help you, trying to care, be the Good Samaritan. What I really wanted was to get laid, but I thought I could prove the Army shrink was wrong. And here you were, doing the same damn thing. You take what you want, what you need, and nothing else matters. We are two of kind, you and I.”
He chuckled again, but there was no mirth on his face.
“No, I am nothing like you.”
“Oh come on, La Reina. The Queen? You think I don’t know what that means? How many people have you killed? Never mind the cartel boys. They can shoot each other to pieces for all I care, but all the innocent bystanders that get caught in the crossfire? And the drugs? How many people’s lives are ruined by cocaine? Millions.”
She could hardly look at him. Every word he said was true, and yet it wasn’t. If only she had time to tell him the truth, maybe he would understand, maybe he would find it in his heart … forget it. Thinking like that would get her nowhere.
“Believe what you will, it’s not important. We must go.”
Thudding sounds of footfalls coming up the stairs near the front door to the apartment attracted her attention. She was up and headed for the door, a sour churning in her belly.
* * * *
Chapter 14
Adrian heard the steps of someone on the landing at his door by the time Her Highness was looking through the peephole. Damn vampires must have ultra-sensitive hearing. They did in the movies.
He could hardly believe the things she had said. She had to be a nutjob. Who talks crazy like that? Claiming him for a bloodslave? He snorted.
She turned away from the peephole, eyes wide, with a finger held to her mouth to be quiet. No more time for chitchat, looked like the shit was about to hit the fan. Adrian reached into his goody bag and pulled out eight pounds of pure Kevlar, reinforced by Kevlar plates. One of several souvenirs he’d stolen from the U.S. Army.