And Take
Glennon
His lips touched her forehead, lingering several seconds before pulling away.
Their eyes met.
It felt as if she were watching what happened next from outside herself, yet she could still feel his touch.
His thumbs brushed over her cheekbones. His soft lips pressed against her own.
His warm breath fluttered over her skin.
The comforting connection as his lips brushed hers again, the contact prolonged this time.
Her eyes closed as she lay frozen, reliving the touch of his mouth. The warmth she felt from his body. The sense of care and concern emanating from him to her, down some invisible conduit linking them together.
His voice was soft as he apologized. “I really shouldn’t have done that.”
Now she opened her eyes. Regret lined his expression and his words.
Tears wanted to burst from her eyes with the anguish his apology provoked.
Of course he wouldn’t want to kiss her. She was a cartel whore.
Clearly, she misunderstood his meaning when they sat at the dinner table.
It was best to keep in mind that there was nothing about her worth wanting anymore, unless he wanted a physical thank-you for saving her.
She buried the pain and the tears, locking her body into a stiffened position, as if to convey that his gesture meant nothing.
“What was that thought?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your whole body went solid. Like if you tried to bend, you’d shatter. And the look on your face. You winced, and then suddenly there was no expression whatsoever. Did I hurt you somehow?”
Did he hurt her? No. No more than she deserved, and likely no more than anyone else would in the future. She would need to get used to shutting out people’s disgust.
“No, you didn’t hurt me.” The words echoed in her head, sounding like they came from a deep part of herself and from a long distance away.
“I’m so sorry. I’ve been fighting the need to kiss you since I saw you in that hotel.”
He’d seen pictures of her. He’d admitted as much. He’d even told her how much he loved the blue dress he’d seen her in on the night of her engagement, with everything on display, as her fiancé preferred.
She flashed back to the night in question.
Guillermo had reveled in the reaction of men out in public as they gazed upon her.
He personally selected the dress, the shoes.
How she styled her hair. Before they left his home, he raided her fashion tape, ensuring maximum teasing of flesh by anchoring the material directly to her skin, providing the illusion she would expose herself at any moment.
The entire night, Guillermo’s eyes glittered with arousal. He got off on the fact that he believed he was humiliating her. His arousal rose to its highest when he knew other men desired her, got hard for her, wanted to fuck her.
The truth was, she’d been numb to it for a long time. The stares. The leers. The whispers. The bold comments. Even the men who touched her, sometimes without her permission, but sometimes with.
No. Not her permission. That came from Guillermo.
That night, back in their suite, he fucked her ass hard from behind, spewing into her ear how they wished they were getting to fill her pussy, her ass, her mouth, but that only he got to do that unless he told her otherwise.
She was his whore to use as he pleased. If he ordered her to suck all of them off, one by one, or for the men to fuck her on the tables in the restaurant to his specifications, she was his to command.
He hadn’t given orders of that sort that night. But there were other nights when she’d been subjected to his whims. The results were never pleasant.
The numbness to what her life had been ended as soon as Triumph had taken her into his protection. For the first time, she wanted someone. Someone who would love her, not just see her as a beautiful object to look at and play with until their use for her was over.
Now there was pain because even if she could steal some of Triumph’s time, it couldn’t last forever.
Eventually, he’d move on, and she’d be left in a different kind of prison.
One that truly had no escape because he wouldn’t be there to open the door.
After all, why would he want someone as used as she was?
The rain on the roof did a poor job of muffling the sound of her heart, galloping out of control.
She tried to drag in oxygen, but something blocked her airways, and she began to claw at the chest in front of her in panic.
She fought. She kicked. She twisted. All of it was in vain.
Instead, she felt herself falling, sinking, drowning, as if she were being dragged under by a current too strong to break.
After some time, she realized the hands grabbing hers, the arms crushing her, were trying to anchor her, not push her deeper into distress.
“Easy, Glennon. Shh… easy. I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Shh.”
His closeness should have smothered her, made her panic even more. Instead, it grounded her. The feelings of safety and comfort returned.
What a mess. She couldn’t make up her mind. Was he worth the pain to have him, only to be cast aside when the initial attraction wore off? Or should she put a stop to this right here and now?
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stop this speeding train even if she wanted to.
Whatever time she got, whatever he was willing to give, she’d take it and guard it—jealously, possessively, like a dragon with its treasure hoard.
He was the treasure she collected. One day, someone would steal it away, just like in the old stories, and she would wither and waste away until there was nothing left.
Large hands stroked her hair, combing through the tresses, keeping her tight to his body.
“It wasn’t you,” she said, her voice muffled because she was pressed so tightly to his chest.
His hold on her let up slightly, and she tilted her head back. “I couldn’t hear what you said.”
She repeated herself. “It wasn’t you. It was him.” She shuddered.
He pressed his lips to her forehead, letting them linger, and his hands stroked up and down her spine, helping to ease down the panic.
He murmured to her, “Do you know what first attracted me to you? It was your voice, all smoky and raspy, like Scotch on the tongue. It made me imagine Lauren Bacall in all those glorious black-and-white films. I might even have a poster of her in that famous black dress from To Have and Have Not in my apartment because of you.” The admission slipped out with a touch of embarrassment.
“You thought I sounded like Lauren Bacall? So much so, you bought a poster of her?”
“It’s autographed,” he grumbled.
Just like that, the tension was broken again. How did he do that? Did he know he was doing it, or was it just the way he was?
She couldn’t help the laughter that began spilling out of her. “That justifies a man your age having a movie poster in his room?”
“What?” he questioned. “She’s sexy as fuck, and that’s before she even opens her mouth. There were no poster people on your walls when you were younger?”
She was still smiling, and there was laughter behind her voice, but not at him. It was good-natured teasing at this point. “Yes, there were ‘poster people’ on my walls. When I was twelve.”
“Well, apparently, I skipped that stage as a teenager. If it’s any consolation, I was thirty when I put it up there, not forty.”
“So, what was on your walls when you were twelve? Dinosaurs?”
“Ha ha. Very funny. Although that would probably be less embarrassing than what was on my walls.”
She shuddered at the thought of the boy bands she’d taped to her walls. What would be more embarrassing than dinosaurs or poster people? “What was on your walls?”
He sighed. “Nothing,” he mumbled.
“No way, Triumph. You don’t get to back out. What was on your walls?”
“Fuck.” He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “The Analytical Engine.”
She blinked. The what? “Is that a science fiction novel?”
He barked out a laugh, then turned his head on the pillow to look at her. “I wish. No. The Analytical Engine was the first computer ever designed. I had a huge poster of it, or a diagram of it, on the ceiling above my bed.”
She tried not to laugh. She really did, but there was no stopping it. “You had a poster of a computer above your bed?” That’s what she tried to say, anyway, between the loud guffaws and the interjections of “Ow! Ow! Ow!” at how much it hurt to laugh.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he agreed sarcastically. “I was the biggest geek in the universe. I get it.”
“Most boys would have had posters of girls in bikinis on their ceilings,” she told him as she worked her way through the giggle stage of the humor. “Did all those tubes and dials get your motor running?”
“Brat,” he said. There was no heat behind it, and his eyes were filled with humor. Then the smile faded as he turned back onto his side, his hand reaching out to her. Like the brush of dandelion fuzz, his thumb swept across her cheekbone. “You’re even more beautiful when you smile.”
She held her breath. Beautiful. He said she was beautiful.
Not gorgeous. Not sexy. There was nothing wrong with those two words, but they were closer to lust and what a man would say if he coveted Guillermo’s woman.
And the look in his eyes was heated, but instead of making her wary, it made her feel free.
Like the person she truly was and the person she’d pretended to be the past ten years were two entirely different people from two separate worlds.
Staring into her eyes, he kept his thumb in a steady back-and-forth motion. She imagined that if this were a fantasy movie, fairy dust would follow behind it, based on how her skin tingled with each pass.
“When I worked on your legend, I had a crush on you. Pathetic, huh? Thirty-year-old man pining after a photo and a voice. Now, here we are a decade later, and I finally get to see that the legend far surpasses the fantasy.”