Chapter 30
The house is quiet when we get back, and we haven't said a word the whole way here.
I open the door. Tina trots ahead of us down the hall and disappears into the kitchen like she owns the place, which increasingly, she does.
Delilah drops onto the couch without taking off her jacket. She sits hunched over for a moment, elbows on her knees, staring at the floor. Processing. She does that — goes somewhere internal before she comes back.
Just like me.
I take the cushion next to her. "You gonna tell me what you're thinking?"
She glances at me sideways. "I don't want to."
I huff out a humorless laugh. "That's not a good sign."
She holds my gaze for a moment. Then looks back at the floor. "I'm just making sense of it all."
It's a lot. Her head must be spinning.
"Be honest with me." She pins me with a look that tells me not to fuck around. "Do you think they'll have it in time? The warrant? Before Luther's deadline tomorrow? And if they arrest my dad for something other than trafficking, could that compromise Isabel and Beatriz?”
This is the moment where a lesser man lies. Where he tells her it will all work out. Tells her to worry about her own safety, protects her from Luther Vaughn, his cold, flat eyes, and the things he said in that bar.
But I answer honestly because I will be the last man to control or manipulate her, even if right now, my gut says I know what’s best.
"I don't know," I answer. “But in my experience, we’ve managed to get warrants with very little time. But then, two locations and the potential complexity of the trafficking operation? Yes. It could mean Iron Covenant moves them.” I take her hand in mine. “But it doesn’t change a damn thing about you. You’re not going back, that part I can figure out.”
If Luther comes trying to storm this castle, let him. I will fucking be out there on the front lines myself.
“But there is a chance GhostEye could sort it?” she presses. “Or was it not even worth mentioning that possibility?”
"Realistically?" I lean forward, forearms on my knees. "Murdock’s a connection; we’ve exchanged favors with her in the past. She could fast-track a federal warrant, but it still takes time.
And even with the warrant, the Feds need time to make arrests and plan the extraction.
Then they need to coordinate simultaneous raids on both addresses.
" I pause. “Tomorrow? That's not a lot of runway. "
"So it might not happen in time," she says.
"It might not happen in time," I confirm.
"And if it doesn't—" she starts.
"We're not going there yet," I say. “Enzo was right. We make decisions when they need to be made.”
But what I’m not waiting for is preparing for Luther’s arrival. I need to connect with Gabriel and Anton later. If Luther comes here with a battering ram, we need a plan.
She places her hands on my cheeks and makes me look at her. "Rio… maybe I should…”
Go back? Fuck no.
I interrupt. I can’t help myself. "We're not going there yet.”
"Okay," she says, but she’s not agreeing with me.
I search her features for more, and there’s an apology written all over them.
Her okay was said as if something was just settled and it wasn’t what I proposed. This woman doesn’t operate without a plan any more than I do. It’s what makes me respect the shit out of her. It makes me crave her in a way I’ve never wanted anything in my life.
It also makes my heart thunder with the possibility that she’ll be stubborn, brave, and reckless. All of the above.
She has a moral code most people would abandon when it got this expensive.
It’s impossible not to fall in love with that.
With her.
This woman walked into my life like a lit match and has been burning through every wall I built ever since without even meaning to.
She catches me staring. “What?”
It shocks me how easy it would be to say it right now. That I love her.
I smooth hair behind her ear. “No words for it, Princess.”
She considers me for a long moment, then tilts her head. "You said I belong here."
"I did."
"Did you mean it?"
Here is the woman who broke into my property with a dog on her back and blackmail in her bag. Somewhere between the barn and the balcony, she became the only person I would burn everything else down to protect.
"I meant it," I say.
She turns to look at me fully. "When did that happen?"
"I don't know exactly." I run a finger along hers. "You got on my list somewhere along the way. The people I'd do anything for.”
She presses, needing to define it, even though it might hurt worse to say all of this out loud.
“So I’m someone you want to look after? That doesn’t sound like we’re equals.”
It sounds too much like protection and not enough like love for a woman who's spent her whole life being watched.
I’m laying it all on the line here, but she deserves to know where she stands, so I put it in a way that leaves no room for interpretation. “I want you to stay, Delilah.”
“Until when? Until this is all over?”
I lay myself bare.
“Until I’m in the grave.”
They are five heartfelt, meaningful words and yet I’ve never felt lighter. With Delilah, despite her being lethal in her own way, I lay down my armor.
For a moment, she turns my words over in her mind. She’s lived a life where there was no love and any attention she got had conditions. There’s resistance still in her, even now, with me. The pain she’s endured doesn’t wash away easily.
"I've never trusted anyone before," she whispers.
A confession meeting a confession.
"Trust me now.”
She reaches up and puts her hand against my jaw. Her thumb moves once across my cheek.
"I do," she says. “It seems impossible. But I do.”
She’s staying here. She has to.
I can’t be without her now.
I close the distance and press my mouth to hers. Instantly, she parts her lips, and her tongue tangles with mine. Her fingers slide up my neck, scratching my skin. She anchors herself to me tightly, as if she’s never letting go.
I scoop her up, one arm under her knees, the other at her back. She wraps her arms around my neck without a word and finds my mouth again, kissing me hard, biting my lip before I've even turned toward the stairs.
I climb them with her in my arms, my mouth on hers the whole time, I’m floating and out of my body. I feel her everywhere — in my chest, in my pants, in my hand gripping her tight on her round ass.
Kicking open the door to my bedroom, I take two steps inside and come down over her before she's even settled on the duvet. She tugs me toward her, my t-shirt fisted in her dainty fingers.
I take her greedily like a man eating his last meal.
I need to be inside her. I need to know what she feels wrapped around me.
Without unlocking our mouths, we strip off our jackets and throw them aside. My hands slip under her top and find skin, but it's not enough. It's never going to be enough. I need it all. Fucking now.
She pulls her top off. Her bra straps fall down her shoulders.
She's done waiting, too.
She unclasps her bra in a swift movement, her breasts fall out, full and fucking glorious with dusky nipples pointed right at me.
I tear off my t-shirt and lean over to taste her collarbone and inhale the sweet, sharp scent of her perfume.
"God," she drops her head back, arching, opening up her neck to me. “You're unfairly gorgeous, Rio."
She smooths her hand down my abs toward the top of my jeans and her fingertips slide in, igniting the skin just under my waistband.
"Keep going," I growl.
She unbuttons my jeans and my cock presses eagerly toward her, so thick and full it sticks out the top of my boxers, the engorged tip already leaking for her.
I stand up from between her legs and shove my jeans and boxer briefs down to the floor.
My dick is at full attention, ready to sink inside her, feel her tight cunt wrapped around me.
She's watching me from the bed with blown emerald eyes.
I’m going to claim her, brand her from the inside out.
Luther can never touch her.
I can’t let him anywhere near her.
I tug her jeans down, and now there’s nothing but a scrap of cotton between me and what I’ve wanted since my face was buried between her legs at the hotel.
I kiss and bite the inside of her thigh, and she rewards me with a devastating whimper that nearly makes me blow on the sheets. Her stomach somehow smells of Coco Mademoiselle, a smell that will forever be hers.
I bury my face against damp cotton first — just to hear the sound she makes. Then I get my teeth into the waistband and pull them down the length of her legs, slow enough to be cruel.
And when I come back up between her legs, I can’t help but stare up at the goddess she is, naked, laid bare on my bed. An offering I can’t keep, but that I still take.
She looks down at me and drags her fingers through my hair.
Mine.
She’s mine.
She bites her lip, color rushing to her cheeks.
One day, if I get to keep her, I’ll make sure she gets used to seeing me between her thighs. I’ll eat her so gloriously she’ll fucking demand it.
"Stop looking at me like that,” she whispers.
I run two fingers through her folds, and she writhes against my hand.
"Like what, Princess?"
She closes her eyes and lets her legs fall to the bed for me. "Like you're trying to memorize me."
I slide a finger inside her. "That's exactly what I'm doing." I spread her with two fingers and look. She’s pink, glistening with arousal. A goddamn dream.
The first slow trail of my tongue through her center pulls a gasp from her — her hand flies to my hair and grips hard. She's so soft, so swollen, so completely undone already that a groan tears out of me before I can contain it.
"Your cunt tastes so fucking good," I murmur against her.
She releases a small whimper and rolls her hips, begging for more. It breaks me open, the fact that she wants this as badly as I do. And she's not hiding it; she's giving me all of it without apology.
She’s so needy it wrecks me.