5. Vaughn
5
VAUGHN
A s soon as I closed and locked the door to our hotel room, I hauled Hope against me, cupped her beautiful face, and crushed my mouth to hers.
The kiss was full of relief following a successful meeting, and pride in how well my girl had coped.
“What was that for?” Hope asked, sounding breathless.
I traced my thumb over the apple of her cheek, catching the edge of her scars. “Because I’ve been wanting to do that for hours, and because you were fucking amazing tonight. You had el Capitán enthralled with your doe-eyed looks and every startled sound from your lips.”
She pushed away from me, unbuckled the collar around her neck, and tossed it into the duffel bag. “That’s because I was startled, Vaughn. You could’ve warned me about what you had planned.”
I followed her to the center of the room. “I had a strategy to use you as a distraction, but I wasn’t certain how until I sat at the table. I improvised, and it worked. Miguel was so consumed by you squirming on my lap that I don’t think he realized what he gave away. ”
Hope folded her arms. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t hear him mention Manzanillo?”
She blinked several times. “No.”
I smirked. “I guess Miguel wasn’t the only one preoccupied.” To be fair, I’d been two knuckles deep with my thumb circling Hope’s clit when el Capitán had let that piece of intel slip. “Pretty sure it was an accident when he said he had a contact who could refuel my aircraft at a reduced price before I depart the Manzanillo airport. My bet? The PCC compound is within a one-hundred-kilometer radius of there.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because transportation by road is risky, so the cartel would want to minimize the journey between the airport and storage. Everything on board my plane needs to be taken somewhere for safekeeping. The drugs will be tested, cut, and repackaged, and the women will start a monthlong process of health checks and training to ready them for auction. That’ll all happen somewhere with the highest security, and nowhere is more protected than the compound.”
Hope raked her fingers through her hair. “And Miguel told you to stick around after the delivery to meet Carlos.”
“That’s right. And we know Espinoza hasn’t left his compound in years. He’ll be a sitting duck once we get that location.”
She frowned. “Why would Carlos have lied to me about being in Acapulco all those years?”
“Maybe so if you were ever interrogated, you couldn’t rat him out. I mean, it worked. We’ve been focused on Acapulco all week. Brandon and Sage are damn good at what they do, but if the intel’s been wrong this whole time, they never stood a chance of finding your father. We need to redirect our search to Manzanillo.”
I messaged Brandon, telling him what I’d learned. It was late, so he might not see it until morning, but I didn’t want to wake him with a phone call if he was already asleep. Both he and Sage had been working long hours to track down Espinoza. Waiting a few more wouldn’t hurt. But this lead was huge. For the first time in days, I had hope we might finally locate the cartel’s compound.
I left my phone on the nightstand and faced Hope. “Come here.”
“You don’t get to order me around anymore,” she replied in a playful tone.
“Outside of the bedroom perhaps, but in here, you bet your ass I’m calling the shots.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So bossy.”
Since she still hadn’t moved and her bratty behavior was getting me all worked up, I strode for her, forced her against the wall, and gently wrapped my hand around her delicate throat. As I crowded her in, Hope’s pulse pounded beneath my fingertips and her eyes shone with anticipation.
“You can pretend you don’t like it, but we both know this”—I tightened my hold a little—“makes you drenched.”
Her mouth parted as if she might disagree, but she didn’t. “And what does it do to you?”
“I think you already know the answer to that.” I rocked the straining bulge in my jeans against her and brushed a kiss just below her ear. Then I buried my nose in her hair and inhaled, craving her familiar scent, but all I could smell was cigar smoke.
Nope. That wouldn’t do.
I pulled away and grunted.
“What’s wrong?” Hope asked.
“You need to wash.”
A look of horror transformed her features. “Excuse me?”
“You reek of Miguel’s cigars.” Both of our clothes probably did, but Hope’s hair had acted like a smoke sponge. I didn’t want her smelling like him. I wanted her to smell like me .
Taking Hope by the hand, I snatched bottles of bodywash, shampoo, and conditioner on our way to the bathroom. It was a small, basic washroom with a pale-blue toilet and ceramic sink on one side and a showerhead sticking out of the white tiled wall on the other. I turned on the tap, and thankfully, it didn’t take long before the cool water ran warm.
“Arms up,” I said, and when Hope obliged, I pulled the tight black dress over her head. “Turn.” She did, and I unclasped her lacy strapless bra. Then I hooked my thumbs into the sides of her thong and slowly dragged it down to her feet, where I remained crouched.
I cast my gaze over her body and adjusted my uncomfortably hard cock. “Goddamn, you’re beautiful.”
“Vaughn?” She sounded needy and impatient.
“Yes, Gatita?” My palms kneaded the generous curves of her ass.
“What are you doing down there?”
“Admiring the view.” I made an appreciative growl and bit into one soft globe. Hope yelped, but it turned into a moan when I soothed the red mark with a pass of my tongue.
On my way to standing, I slapped her ass and gestured to the shower. “You first.” After stripping out of my clothes and leaving my weapons on the sink, I followed her.
I wished I could simply enjoy the way her greedy eyes raked over my body, but we couldn’t be naked in the shower together without taking precautions. It wasn’t safe.
“Face the wall,” I said. “Hands against the tiles.”
Hope tried to hide her disappointment, but I still caught a glimpse of it as she complied with my order.
She glanced over her shoulder. “If you’re too uncomfortable being in here with me, I can wash myself.”
I picked up the bodywash, squirted a healthy amount into my palm, and began soaping her shoulders. “And miss an opportunity to run my hands all over you? No thanks.” As I continued along her arms, I leaned in low. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, but after everything that happened tonight, I really want to take care of you.”
She nodded, and a sad smile curved her lips. “Careful. A girl could get used to this side of you.”
I wanted to tell Hope that for her, I could be any kind of man she needed. But that wasn’t true. At best, I was half of what she deserved. The constant need for control? The way I couldn’t completely relax when we were together, because I was afraid of hurting her? It wasn’t good enough, and it was no way for either of us to live.
I took my time washing every inch of Hope’s body, enjoying the feel of her soft curves and the breathy little sounds she made when I paid extra attention to her most sensitive areas.
It struck me again how courageous she was. Not only for what she’d done tonight, but for the way she’d handled every difficult moment that had led her to this point.
Hope had every right to be bitter and untrusting because of the brutal violence that had stripped her of loved ones and almost killed her, but she wasn’t. She was a well-adjusted, thoughtful, confident woman. Her trauma didn’t own her the way mine did, and I envied her that.
Why couldn’t I move on from my past? Why did I let it consume me?
I didn’t even have the balls to tell Hope how I’d gotten my scars. It wasn’t a pleasant story, but she deserved an explanation of why I was so fucked-up.
Maybe it was time to be as fearless as my woman.
“I think I’m ready.” My words echoed off the tiled walls, and Hope glanced over her shoulder with her brow creased. Pointing to the scars on my arm, I added, “To tell you how I got these.”
She tried to turn around, but I gripped her shoulders and held her in place. “No. I haven’t washed your hair yet. ”
The truth was that I didn’t know if I could tell this story if I had to watch every pained expression on her face. It was easier this way.
I squeezed shampoo into my palm and distributed it over Hope’s scalp and long strands. Then I drew in a deep breath and began lathering her hair. “Once upon a time, there was a cocky pilot who thought he was invincible. Everything in his life had worked out exactly as he’d planned. His four-star general father had taught him how to fly a glider when he was seven, and he’d mastered a two-seat Cessna by nine. After college he became a naval aviator instead of joining the air force, much to his dad’s disappointment. The eager young pilot wasn’t interested in following his father’s footsteps to sit behind a desk. He wanted to fly every day and see the world. More than anything, he wanted to take down the bad guys. For a time, that was what he did. Until one day, the bad guys got him.”
Talking in third person and describing my capture from an outsider’s view was the only way I could tell this story. If these things were happening to the man in the tale, not me, then I could get through it. Dissociating myself was enough to keep the impending panic attack at bay.
“Rinse,” I said, and Hope stepped under the spray to wash away shampoo suds.
Over her shoulder, her eyes met mine. “You don’t have to do this.”
My mouth tightened. “I want to. It’s time.” I made a rotating gesture with my pointer finger, and she faced the wall once more.
“It was a black-ops mission in Venezuela. No uniform. No ID. The aircraft options were limited, so the pilot had to rent a piece-of-shit Sikorsky to take supplies over the Andes to his teammates. He didn’t know that the helo had been retrofitted with extra armor plating, leaving it with a reduced payload. With the supplies on board, it was overloaded, and when he tried to gain altitude to cross the mountain, the thin air drained the engine’s power, and he crashed.”
The conditioner came next. I worked it through Hope’s ebony locks, using my fingers to comb out any tangles.
“Somehow, the pilot survived, and while he was unconscious, a group of rebels hauled him back to their camp. They took him deep into their underground tunnel system and left him in a cage. Apparently, the pilot had been muttering in English as he’d come to, giving away his nationality. The rebels wondered what an American was doing on Venezuelan soil with a helo full of weapons and other military supplies. They figured he was someone important. They had questions. A lot of questions.”
Despite Hope’s hair being knot-free, I continued weaving my fingers through those silky lengths, drawing strength from touching her and having her near.
“When the pilot didn’t talk, the rebels got cranky and came up with fun ways to motivate him. One punch for each question he didn’t answer. One cut for each hour he spent in their tunnel. They held him down with their grimy hands and forced him to watch as they slowly worked their bloodstained blade through his skin. Rinse.”
Hope turned to me, her glassy eyes passing over my scars as though she were imagining the moment the wounds were inflicted.
I didn’t want that, so I lowered my chin and delivered her a firm stare. “I said rinse.”
She pressed her lips together and backed under the spray, closing her lids as water cascaded over her. When she emerged from beneath the showerhead and wiped drops from her eyes, she didn’t turn to face the wall again.
My gaze dipped to her hands, and she said, “I won’t touch you. I promise. But I can’t hear the rest of this story with my back to you. ”
Reluctantly, I nodded and, with a sigh, continued. “Days went by, and the pilot kept his trap shut. By that point, he’d been sliced…everywhere. He had more broken ribs than he could count and a busted-up face his own mother wouldn’t recognize. Fingernails were a distant memory. Even the smallest movement caused him more pain than any human ought to know. He begged for death and was certain that if he found a bonfire, crawling into the flames would deliver sweet relief.”
Hope’s distraught expression almost floored me. “God, Vaughn.”
“No.” I gently clasped the nape of her neck. “Let me get through this. If you have to, you can have a pity party when I’m not around to witness it.”
“I don’t want a pity party. I want to kill the people who hurt you.”
“My Gatita is turning into a leona.” A lioness . My lioness. “But like I told you on the beach last week, there’re none left to kill. I wish my brothers had been thoughtful enough to leave one or two for me.”
If I’d been able to murder the motherfuckers who’d ruined my skin and corrupted my mind, would that have made any difference in the man I was now? Would it have been enough to rewire my brain and set me on the right path again? I doubted it.
I swept Hope’s hair behind her shoulders, keeping my gaze locked on her delicate throat so I could carry on. “Soon enough, infection took hold, so the pilot was delirious with fever when his team rescued him. Much later, they told him that they’d thought they were too late. That the filthy, mangled body on the floor surely couldn’t be alive. But the stubborn pilot survived. The injuries to his body eventually healed. The ones to his mind?” I clicked my tongue. “Not so much. Now, every time someone reaches for him, he feels like he’s back in that tunnel, and he goes into survival mode.” My eyes met Hope’s then. “And he fucking hates the beast he’s become.”
Hope’s chest shuddered as she drew in a breath. Maybe I shouldn’t have burdened her with this story. Maybe I should’ve kept it from her to protect her.
She shifted on her feet, and her hands twitched at her sides like she didn’t know what to do with them. “I wish I could hug you.”
“I know. I want that, too, but…” I shook my head.
This. This was why I had to fix things. Fix me . If I couldn’t do it for myself, then goddammit, I wanted to get better for Hope.
Because she deserved more than the scraps I had to offer. She deserved someone she didn’t have to be careful with or worry about or be afraid of. If I was going to keep this incredible woman—and I already knew I wanted to—then I needed to be a whole man again. Not the fractured, unstable mess I was now.
Which meant I had to change. But change was hard. Change was scary. And in this case, change was dangerous. For the first time since Venezuela, I had enough motivation to choose a different path, and if that path let me keep Hope, it was the only one I wanted to take.
“I don’t want my torturers to control me from their fucking graves anymore. I need to take back what they stole from me. I need to own my skin again.” I took Hope’s hands and placed them behind my neck, covering them with mine. Then I pressed my forehead to hers and found the courage to say something that terrified me. “Help me, Hope. Please.” A knot threatened to close over my throat. “I think you’re the only one who can.”
“Of course I’ll help you. I’ll do anything you need.”
“Good.” I nodded. “Because I have an idea.”