Chapter 21 #2
“Best I’ve had was on the streets of Saigon.
The owner emigrated from there just before the Americans joined the fray.
He started with a sandwich cart that served homemade banh mi and built up to the hole-in-the-wall restaurant he has now.
I’ve eaten in fancier places, but they don’t even compare.
” He picked up a spring roll and held it to her lips. “Open.”
Their eyes held as she opened her mouth and he fed her the end of the roll.
She bit down on the fried rice paper, the delicate crunch balancing the tender shrimp.
When he began to withdraw the roll toward him, her hand rose to settle on top of his, preventing it from getting too far away.
The intimacy of him hand-feeding her was something she didn’t want to lose.
“Daleyza,” he began.
“Shh. Don’t. Just be in the moment.”
She took a second bite. This time, her lips settled around his fingertips, slowly drawing back as she savored the taste of his skin.
The tension grew tighter, like an invisible net stretched taut around contents that strained to break through the tightly woven spaces. When the weight of it became unbearable, she was the first to break away.
She had only meant to reset the equilibrium between them, yet somehow she’d managed to go beyond that, tipping the scales in the opposite direction. There had always been fire between them. Fire that burned like an inferno. This, however, threatened to consume them both.
She attempted to swallow the food, but it resisted going down her throat. When it stuck, she reached for her glass of water, hoping to ease its passage. When a single swallow refused to help, she forced herself to take several more. Finally, with effort, the food passed into her stomach.
Ildefanso popped the last third of the spring roll into his mouth, dropping his eyes to his food. The rest of the meal passed in silence.
Afterward, they worked together to clean up the leftover food and store it in the refrigerator. There was little left, which was good, considering they were leaving early in the morning.
“Seems a shame to throw it away before we leave,” she mused. “You still eat non-breakfast food in the morning?”
“Yes. Throwing it out would be a waste of a foodgasm,” he replied.
Shocked, she took in the look on his face, which also reflected surprise. She couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “What the hell is a foodgasm?”
He closed his eyes. “Mierda! I’ve really got to stop hanging around with Kubrick.
” Shaking his head, he drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and explained.
“She has a very unhealthy relationship with chocolate. It’s always been a bit of a…
distraction… when she eats it around us.
When we teased her about it the first time, that’s how she described the feeling when chocolate hits her taste buds.
That it was so good it made her…” He wrapped a hand around the nape of his neck, refusing to look her in the eye.
“Well, her eyes would roll back in her head, and she’d make this noise… like a moan when a woman…”
“Ildefanso Colonel! You’re blushing!”
“I am not,” he denied petulantly. “It’s just… It’s weird to hear that from your friend’s woman. Like you’re invading something private. And it’s even weirder talking about it with you.”
She’d never seen him like this before—a touch vulnerable, even embarrassed. He’d always been so strong and stoic. Assertive. Sure of himself to the point of annoyance at times. She liked this side of him that he’d never shown her before.
Feeling daring and like she should offer some of her own vulnerability, she stepped up to him.
With the ghost of a touch, she traced his hairline from brow to ear, then ran the tip of her finger around the shell, down his jaw to his chin, then dropped her palm to his chest, where she laid it over his heart.
She felt the beat quicken with each second she left it there.
“Did her foodgasm remind you of my responses to you?” She kept her eyes on her hand, her attention focused primarily on the racing tattoo beneath his skin.
“Daleyza.” His voice was a whisper, an unmistakable plea.
She looked up at him through her eyelashes. “It was always good between us.”
“Belleza, be careful,” he warned. “We’ve only been back in proximity for less than three days. This path is dangerous.”
“Fanso, we knew the moment we met at the altar that we had incredible chemistry. We may not have had sex the first night of our marriage, but it didn’t take us long to succumb to the passion between us.”
“It was different then.”
Genuinely confused, she asked, “How? We barely knew one another beyond the most surface level. Even though we were pawns in your father’s game, we couldn’t resist one another.”
“I’ve changed,” he lamented. “That man no longer exists.”
“And I’ve changed as well. But in the ways that matter, we are the same. You’re still protecting me. You still want me.” Her hands cupped his face. “I know you feel it. I see it in your eyes.”
“Leeza.” The anguish in his voice was clear. “Wanting you will never be in question.”
Anguish crossed his face, but it was fleeting. He was resigned to the truth she shared with him.
An arm slid around her waist. He clutched her to him, his mouth descending. If she’d wanted to pull away, she wouldn’t have been able to.
She did not.
Like the night she shared her pregnancy with Ildefanso, he swept her into his arms. Automatically, her arms went around his neck, clasping on the opposite side.
Where that night he’d taken her into their room in the Colonel hacienda, this time, he carried her to the room he’d slept in alone for the last seven years.
Once inside, he slid her down his body, turning her so they melded chest to chest, hip to hip.
His brothers had often teased him about his small size.
It had never seemed to bother him, and it certainly hadn’t bothered her.
Being only an inch shorter, she fit into him seamlessly.
She didn’t have to stretch up to kiss him, and when they made love, they were perfectly in line, as they were now.
It made looking into his eyes when he slid inside her that much more powerful.
Twisting, he put her back against the bed. “If we do this, there is no going back. It cannot be undone.”
“We can never be undone, Fanso.”
His hand rose to her temple, tracing lightly down the side of her face.
The next thing she knew, he gripped her throat, his fingers on either side.
There was pressure, but he did not cut off her air or be rough enough to bruise.
Then his mouth was on hers, his gaze boring into hers, the molten glow heating her from the inside out.
It was one of his idiosyncrasies that his eyes never closed when they kissed.
What was such a natural behavior for probably ninety-nine percent of the population was one he did not share.
At first, it had unsettled her. She thought it was a SEAL thing, then protection against his family…
that he was afraid to leave himself vulnerable to attack.
Despite the uncomfortableness of it, she’d found she could never look away. His eyes had always held her captive.
When she finally questioned him about it, he smiled before explaining that while she wasn’t incorrect in her assessment, neither was she correct.
The reason he did it was that he didn’t want to miss a moment with her.
He wanted to witness every twitch, every arch, every blush. To watch her as she toppled into bliss.
It had been the most intimate experience she’d ever encountered in her life.
She found herself on her back, Steel straddling her waist. His hands reached for the neckline of her shirt, taking it in both fists. One quick pull, and the shirt was ripped from top to bottom, exposing the lacy bra she wore.
Her heart rate jumped instantly, her breath heaving in and out, and the space between her thighs flooded with her own fluids.
Ildefanso may have abhorred everything about his family, but in some ways, he harbored some of the same traits. A streak of cruelty. Extreme bouts of cold anger. The quick rise to emotion, especially passion.
A passion she had always been drawn to and returned with equal fervor.
His hand slipped around her throat again, and his head lowered at an agonizingly slow pace. When his lips were within a hairsbreadth of hers, he gave her one last out. “Are you sure, belleza?”
“Yes.”
The word was barely past her lips when he made the connection between them, nipping at her bottom lip and dragging it away from her teeth, a guttural sound emerging from the back of his throat.
Her teeth separated, admitting his tongue to plunge inside and remap every ridge, every dip.
It was like no time had passed.
As he invaded her mouth, she felt his hands scrabbling at the button of her jeans.
When he began to yank the material down, she raised her hips to help.
Together, they fought to remove the denim from her legs.
He shifted his weight left, then right, finally maneuvering them to her ankles.
He reached behind him, grabbed her shoes, and tossed them to the floor.
Then he ripped the pants over her feet, throwing them across the room.
One hand behind his head, he grabbed his shirt and yanked it off, then tossed it away without care.
Her eyes hungrily roamed his chest. She noted each and every area of raised flesh in varying shades of pink, highlighting the scars he’d earned over the years.
On his left shoulder, there was a massive circlet of scabbed-looking flesh she recognized.
It was a bullet wound he’d received while in a firefight with the last cartel assimilated into the Colonel syndicate.
The skin puckered so badly that it looked as if it had been pulled together too tightly because they needed to join it over too much missing flesh.