Chapter Seventeen Larissa
Chapter Seventeen
LARISSA
“ME TIENTAS DEMASIADO …” You tempt me too much, he whispers in his native Spanish tongue before ours tangle.
I run my tongue against his, the way he taught me, as he groans into my mouth before pulling away.
“Tengo que estar dentro de ti.” I need to be inside you.
Only catching the gist of what he’s saying, I pull away, eyes wide with surprise.
Since we’ve become intimate, he’s hesitated at every turn to go further than kissing and heavy petting.
“You know I can’t understand you,” I whisper, running my palms over him greedily.
“Mi hai capito.” You understood me.
“Don’t speak to me in Italian, either,” I whisper. “I’m starting to hate it.”
He kisses me eagerly again, far less gently than our kisses before.
A year ago, we were in a heated back-and-forth after my last blowout with Roc.
The next second, we were in a hot exchange of inexperienced lips and tongues.
Hidden away in a hall closet, the two of us were grasping one another like it would be both our first and last kiss.
Which wasn’t far-fetched, considering the danger we were putting ourselves in.
A risk we now face daily in being discovered, careful and aware of our shared longing looks while biding our time for Ciro’s next extended absence.
More and more capable of exploring one another since Roc’s practically moved out.
He often goes weeks without sleeping in his room, and though tight-lipped about where, Roc seems to have found something or someone other than coke and random hookups to occupy his time.
At this point, he only checks in to keep Ciro pacified.
Running enough ‘family’ errands for our father to humor him for a quick cash grab before leaving for another long stint.
Something Ciro’s growing more agitated about.
Though, to Roc’s credit, he seems sober and better off, he’s all but abandoned me and Iggy to deal with Ciro on our own.
Where years ago, Roc and I would lie in the yard planning for the day he would take Mom and Iggy out of this house.
Those plans feel just as abandoned. Though I’m not alone in it now and haven’t been since I grabbed the hand of the boy staring down at me like I’m all that matters.
A boy who’s now my only true constant and protector.
Becoming what Roc has ceased to be, he watches over Ignacio and me without fail.
Often, I catch him near collapsing due to exhaustion while standing at one of his stations.
My affection for him only grows with his vigilance.
Though with Ciro, there’s no such thing as safe.
Both of us are more aware of that than ever, with the company he keeps and the way he entertains them.
On any given day, we have everyone from politicians to notorious gang leaders gracing our cursed doorstep.
Ciro makes sure to prep us all before they arrive, letting us know exactly how we’re supposed to act and whether we’re allowed to show our faces.
The two of us keeping close tabs on who stays for my father’s ‘entertainment’ portion of the evening in hopes of one day using the information against him.
All the hope I have left residing in the surprising partner who’s staring down at me with hunger in his eyes.
It took me months and months after the night I approached him to get the truth from the boy who continues to guard me so vigilantly.
Who is, as I suspected, biding his time to avenge his brother’s death.
A violent death dealt by Ciro’s own hand, and his sole reason for taking this station and following my father’s orders.
My father’s demise is his sole purpose in breathing, in enduring Ciro’s cruelty while surviving life in this house.
His added reason to stay, he proclaimed not long ago—me.
A reason he convinces me more and more is the truth every chance he gets.
With every longing look, every stolen kiss, and every touch since we’ve gotten together, he’s only grown more protective and possessive.
Seeming intent on proving to me where his true loyalty lies, as I have him.
In turn, I’ve trusted him with everything, offering him more of myself during our time alone, though his continual restraint to go further has been infuriating.
Tonight is somehow different, his resistance to getting more intimate seemingly gone as he cups my breast, running his finger over my nipple in exploration while catching my moans with his enthusiastic lips and tongue.
Sensing him on the edge of stepping over the barrier he’s set up for us in his mind, I eagerly run my nails down his back.
Flinching at the contact, he grips my wrists gently before pinning them to the side of my head.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “No one can see us.” I glance toward the house from the stables where we lie tangled together, chests heaving. The two of us safely tucked into a dark corner and away from any watchful eyes, easily able to detect anyone approaching.
“Nothing,” he whispers, eyes glittering down on me, “nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not,” he murmurs as his eyes gently trace my profile.
Pulling my wrists free, I again start to map his skin with eager fingers until he pulls one of my wandering hands over his pounding heart, dipping to further distract me with his kiss. Tongues tangling, we share a moan before he pulls away.
“I can’t feel anything but this,” he says in heavily camouflaged English.
Though fluent, his mixed accents sometimes make his speech a nightmare to decipher—it’s one of the things I love about him.
We share breath as his lips tilt up, his glassy blues sparkling with mischief as he grips and lowers my other hand to the hardened cock in his pants. “And this.”
My lips part at the feel of him in my palm.
Since we’ve become more intimate, I’ve become fascinated by his body, by his effect on me and my own on him.
Though my return touch has been limited—infuriatingly so—tonight I feel liberated by his words.
The look in his eyes being unspoken permission to finally touch.
Freedom ringing through me, I continue to grip and trace the hard outline of him as he hisses through his teeth, eyes lighting fire.
Reveling in the feel of what I do to him, I lift and lick along his bottom lip before whispering my offering.
“I want you to be my first,” I admit freely before pausing, “and my only.”
He shakes his head gently, stopping the hand I’m not using before thoughtfully toying with one of the last buttons of my open blouse.
“Please,” I whisper, taking his hand and guiding it beneath my pleated skirt to the hem of my panties. His eyes close in response as I squeeze his hand, urging him to touch me. “I’m ready.”
Eyes fluttering open, they soften to the point it steals my breath until he again shakes his head. “Not tonight. Not here, in this place.” He glances around, his dark hair cresting over his forehead. “It’s filthy.”
“I don’t care,” I protest. “I don’t care where we are.”
“I do.” He lowers his eyes, and I cup his jaw, aware of what he’s not saying.
“You’re good enough for me. You’re better than all of them,” I remind him, voicing it as often as I can. “But you’re right, we have to stop because my guard dog should be reporting as soon as Ciro gets home.”
His lips lift in amusement. “You despise him so much?”
“Ha, he’s the bane of my fucking existence—”
He silences me with another hungry kiss, fingers tangling in my hair before my own paranoia has me pulling back. Fear for him encircles my pounding heart. “You’re right, we have to stop.”
As if he didn’t hear me, he delves into my mouth, fingers inching up my thigh. Gasping in surprise, eyes wide, I speak into his parted lips. “Don’t be a fool. Is kissing me worth dying for?”
“Yes,” he groans, running the pad of his finger over the seam of my cotton underwear.
Underwear I wish I could burn in exchange for lace I’m laughably forbidden from wearing.
Feeling bolder due to his touch, I guide his hand into my soaked panties.
When the pads of his fingers start exploring, opening me, I grip his wrist and begin bucking into the touch.
The pulse and ache between my legs growing stronger with every deft stroke of his fingers.
It’s when I start to tense, breaking out in a sweat, that I jerk back from his kiss.
“Madonna,” I croak, “something is … feels different,” I admonish, pulling back as he reads the worry in my eyes.
“Nothing is wrong. Let me make you come,” he whispers.
“Come?” I croak.
This time, he jerks back. “You know nothing about this?”
I shake my head, my face heating. “It seems simple enough when the girls at school talk about it, but these things I feel with you, they’re different from what they say.
” I stare into the eyes of the only person I trust. The only one I’ve ever told my secrets to, my heart pounding with permission to continue to trust it. Him.
He swallows, dipping his eyes before nodding. “Because we are different.”
“That’s not our fault. We decided this. We want this, and that decision makes us no different from everyone else. I want you.”
His eyes captivate me as he gives me the look I long for.
“Please … You just have to teach me,” I tell him honestly.
“Because you know they don’t talk about it.
” I nod toward the house, in the direction of the women who gather there on occasion.
Women forever chastising the ‘whores’ that take up their men’s attention before shouting blasphemy-filled curses at their children.
This is while clutching their rosaries. Living contradictions of all they’ve been taught and are supposed to hold sacred.
“That’s because you are supposed to remain untouched.”
“But I’m not, am I?” I snap, raging against the fate of being a don’s daughter and the probability of being promised—if I’m not already.
That fate sure to be delivered soon. One I will refuse because of the boy staring down at me.
A boy turning into a man before my eyes by the day.
“You will be the only one to touch me—by my choice. Not my father’s, and I choose you. So, make me … come.”
Encircling his neck and lifting my hips to meet his fingers, he toys with the beat pounding at my core. Chest heaving, he glides them up and down my soaked middle before massaging me until I’m dizzy with desire.
“I’m—”
“I know, ángel, shhh … Let me show you.”
He swallows every sound coming from me as I start to unravel. In seconds my thighs begin to shake with sensation, eyes bulging as I break away from his mouth.
“I feel it,” I murmur against his lips. “I feel something …”
His lightly freckled lips lift in amusement before his eyes sweep my face. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs, his expression filling with affection. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen … ever felt,” he utters while capturing every second of my reaction to him.
“So are you,” I return just as softly as his touch pulls me back under. With a few sure strokes of his fingers, I begin to shake violently.
“ángel, that’s it … come,” he whispers sweetly as I open wider for him, my lower half tightening as the rush sweeps me, and he clamps his hand firmly over my mouth.
Awareness startles me awake as the orgasm curls my toes, the sound of my own moan bringing me to consciousness.
Hand in my panties, I massage the rest of the pleasure out.
Back arching as it intensifies, I clamp my other hand over my mouth just before snapping my eyes open.
Disbelieving I just had the mythical wet fucking dream, heat covers me as I mute the last of the pleasured noise escaping me.
Realizing where I am, much too late, I dart my eyes around self-consciously.
My worst fear is realized when they connect with twin obsidian pools.
Face flushing, I come further to, slowly pulling my hand from my pants while staring back at the man hovering nearby.
A man standing deathly still at the entrance of our tent.
One of his smaller backpacks dangling from his clenched fist, his other hand gripping the tent opening.
As if he had retrieved what he needed and was just about to exit when he got sidetracked.
The evidence of the aftermath seeps into my panties, and gauging by the look in his eyes, I become acutely aware of precisely what caught his attention.
My heart thuds in my chest as I gulp down air due to the expression of the man staring down at me.
Heat further fills my neck and cheeks as the last of my orgasm subsides while wordless seconds pass.
The air between us bated, I take in his lust-soaked expression as I fight between my own lust and utter humiliation.
It’s no mystery to me why the memory came to me in a dream.
The man staring down at me makes it clear as undeniable thirst rolls through the tent.
Thick, pulsing, heavy, and suffocating. I gulp down another lungful of air as I remain just as still as he stands.
Just as my vision begins to adjust to the dark—further enhancing my view of him—Tyler breaks the unbearable connection and slips through the opening.
Humiliated and utterly stupefied, I stare blankly into the empty space he just occupied, wondering if I imagined the interlude.
If it truly was hunger reflecting in the metal of his eyes and not my imagination.
Just after, my body and mind rebuke that I was in any way alone in that.
As much as Tyler doesn’t want to acknowledge the attraction between us, it’s fucking blinding at this point.
Attraction I just vowed I wouldn’t let him glimpse again.
Furious that it got the best of me, so soon after my vow, I search myself, sinking back into a mindset I know will ground me. Ignacio’s life, and the rest of mine, hangs in the balance of what transpires in the coming days and weeks.
In an instant, I’m sober in that reality because no man, nor my desire for one, has ever or will ever be worth losing focus on my brother’s life or my own.
Ever.