Chapter 23
twenty-three
Matias
“Are you sure they’ll be okay?” Natalia nods, giving me an encouraging look across the desk.
“Alma is my friend, Matias. I promise Santos will be fine.”
“It’s not Santos I’m worried about.” I tell her, smothering a laugh. I took stock of Natalia’s friend when she walked in. “Your friend is exactly his type.”
“Santos is blind.” She cries, giving me a bewildered look.
“Yeah. Thank God for that.”
“Matias!”
I smother a laugh at her admonishing tone. “What? The doctor said it’s just temporary. He’s already getting better, when he’s not trying to drown himself in the fucking pool.”
Natalia giggles at that, her smile so angelic I almost forget why we’re here. “He really fell into the pool?”
“I told him to wait two minutes for breakfast, and the fucking moron walked into the deep end talking about ‘looking for the toaster’.” I pinch my nose.
“He said the sliding door felt like the pantry door. We’ll be lucky if we keep him alive long enough to regain his sight.
That friend of yours, though, you should warn her about him. ”
“This is a one-time thing. He’s never going to see what she looks like.”
“Her looks have nothing to do with it. Santos likes…crimes of opportunity.” I say, giving her a pointed look. “He’ll charm simply because he can.”
“Alma knows his type. She’s not moved by that—trust me.”
My stomach sinks. “Great. A challenge.” I say sarcastically. “Mark my words, he’s going to be finding every excuse in the book to keep her around.”
“Can we focus on the task at hand? We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Fine.” I pull up the latest tallies Westfall’s been calculating on my computer, tempted to pat my lap with a smug look when Natalia comes around to inspect them.
But no, I stand up and give her my seat like a gentleman, ignoring the zing of energy between us when her hips brush against me as she takes my seat.
Natalia’s always been good about putting up walls.
Even years ago, she had this uncanny quality to turn on a dime.
To be her real self, losing herself to my kisses, my hands—my dick—and then five minutes later, sit across her father like a devoted untouched daughter.
It always amazed me, the way she moved like a chameleon.
She’s doing it now.
Natalia sits at my desk, back ramrod straight, fingers skipping across the keyboard as she works without paying me a second glance. Like she wasn’t just coming on my tongue less than two weeks ago. Like her skin isn’t crackling with the need to do it again.
She freezes and turns slowly, her shoulders stilling from the weight of my stare.
“Um, do you want to sit…over there?” She points at the chairs across the desk, the ones she was just sitting in, and I almost laugh.
“Sorry, am I crowding you?”
“It’s just a little tight back here…” She mutters, giving me a fleeting glance when I actually laugh at that.
“You can just tell me to stop breathing down your neck like a horny asshole.”
Her eyes fly to my face. “No—that’s not—you’re not…” She trails off lamely, her face a rosy shade of pink. Blushing all the way to her hairline, desperately watching the screen.
God, how I’ve missed this.
“We never talked about that night at your apartment.” I tell her quietly, dropping into the seat across from her.
“What’s there to talk about?” She glances at me over the computer and shrugs. “It was a one-time thing.” Natalia says in a measured voice, like she’s trying as hard to keep her wits about her as I am about getting her to lose it.
I stroke a hand down my face, trying really hard to let it be. But every time I blink all I see is that sweet face of hers, watching me with her thighs spread and her glistening pussy waiting for me.
“It doesn’t have to be.” My voice lowers on its own, and her hands freeze over the keyboard, the task in front of her long forgotten. “Your friend sure thought we were going to fuck as soon as we got out the door.”
“Alma thinks we’re on a date?—”
“She thinks we’re screwing each other’s brains out.” I say, remembering the gleeful look on her friend’s face. I reach up, tracing the solid oak desk beneath me, glancing at the frosted glass walls encasing the office.
“It would be so easy for you to just…bend over the desk. We wouldn’t even have to take your jeans off.” She always looked so good taking it from behind. Big hips, swaying ass.
Fuck.
“Or I can help you up on the desk, that way I can watch your face when you come—” Natalia takes a deep breath and holds up a hand.
“Stop, Matias. This isn’t a good idea.”
“Why?” I lean forward, leaning my forearms on my thighs. “You don’t live under your dad’s thumb. I don’t answer to anyone. Everything’s changed.”
“You haven’t changed. There’s no future for us—we were just arguing about this in the hospital.
Sex is just going to…complicate everything.
” She answers firmly, turning back to the screen in front of her.
The words sit between us, sucking all of the air out of the room, until I say the thought that’s been lingering in the back of my mind.
“What if things were different?”
She pauses. “What?”
I’m tired of this job. I’ve been tired of this job. But Natalia…she’s the one thing I’ve been sure about. Ever since I saw her that afternoon at Sunday mass. I come around the desk, leaning beside her as she looks up at me with dubious eyes.
“I could quit.” I say quietly.
She almost smiles. “You’re not going to quit.”
“If I did, would things be different? Between us?”
“…Maybe.” She says slowly, and it’s strange, how such an uncertain word can make me feel so good. I reach out, tracing the line of her jaw, something awakening in me when she sighs and leans into my touch.
She opens her eyes, watching me, and it strikes me how emotion and desire stare back at me. How it’s taking everything in her not to fall back into my arms. Because the last time she did, I let her down. I didn’t do enough.
I can’t let her slip through my fingers again.
“I’m going to make things right.” I whisper, leaning down and kissing the corner of her mouth.
“And when I do, I’m going to come for you.
I’m going to find you, touch you, kiss you.
Like this,” I kiss her bottom lip this time, grinning when she sighs.
“I’m going to make you come so many times you’ll beg me to have some mercy on your poor body.
I’m going to fuck you so good you’ll forget how to breathe again.
” I slick my tongue into her mouth, kissing her deeply, twining my hand through her hair.
“I’m going to make you my wife, Natalia.”
And then not even God himself will keep us apart.
When we break from that kiss, Natalia doesn’t seem surprised at the words. She watches me, quietly, looking at me like she knows me better than I know myself. And then, when she finally parts her lips to say something?—
The door slams open.
“You’re never going to believe—” Toledo stops short when she sees us.
“Leave.” I snarl, sighing in frustration when Natalia puts some distance between us. “Didn’t anyone teach you to knock?”
Toledo looks at Natalia and smiles. “Sorry, were you two about to fuck?” Natalia jumps to her feet.
“Yes.” I say firmly.
“No.” My girl says at the same time, walking around my desk until she’s put the whole room between us. I could strangle Toledo with one hand right now.
“I’m going to check Westfall’s numbers while the crates are downstairs.”
“Don’t go.” I say quietly, hating the way Toledo bites back a smirk. “Westfall is working there now. We’re a lot more fun than he is.”
Natalia pauses by the door, tucking a strand of hair away from her face with a shy expression. “It’ll be good for me to poke around without you and get to know him. People get tense whenever you walk into a room, Matias.”
She darts through the door before I can stop her, and I settle for dropping into the chair with a long sigh.
Toledo takes a seat across from me, curiously looking around the room.
“Where’s Santos?”
“Natalia found him a…temporary sitter.” I glance at my phone, reading the latest poorly worded voice-to-text message from Santos.
This girl is so mean. If you wanted me to be miserable, you could’ve just told me, Matias.
You know, at first I thought you were setting me up with a cute nurse, but with this girl’s attitude I just know she looks like the big lady in Matilda—hey don’t take my phone away hey hey what are you doing?—
I scrub a hand over my face and lock the phone, silently praying everyone will still be alive at the end of the night.
“What do you have for me, Toledo?”
“Not much. I found security footage from the night of Santos’s accident.
Finally got a glimpse of the car that ran him off the road.
” She looks at something on her phone. “Nondescript black SUV, no plates, didn’t stick around for the paramedics.
Either Santos has really bad luck, or someone did this on purpose. ”
I gnaw at my lip, remembering what he told me back at the hospital. “He said he’d just been checking on the shipment when it happened.” I give her a look, and Toledo’s brows draw together.
“He was ambushed?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Whoever did this, they’re getting closer to finding the shipment. We can’t keep sitting on it.”
She gives me a bewildered look. “You want to sell? After sitting on it for this long?”
“I was holding on to it because I was hoping the owner would come to collect. It sounds like they’re finally starting to get desperate.” I shrug, wondering about the faceless puppeteer that’s been pulling strings for years. Whoever it was, they commanded Reynaldo, commanded me.
It won’t be safe to walk away from this until they’re a name on a tombstone.
“If the owner is desperate, then they’ll be sloppy.” Toledo’s eyes gleam. “And selling their shit may just set them over the edge. Okay. I’ll start putting feelers out for buyers.”
I give the young woman a conceding nod. “That brain of yours is why I keep you around, you know that?”
She hums. “Santos is the looks. I’m the brains.”
I almost snort at that. “He’s not looking real good these days. Can we have the barber sent to my house?”
“I’m sure there’s nothing we can’t do…if we throw enough money at it.”