Chapter 22 Omar
Omar
Iwasn't sure what her reaction would be to the news that her father and fiancé left her for dead…but it wasn't this. Lyse sat beside me, staring at the bedspread beneath her fingers. “Conejita?” She barely stirred. “Lyse, talk to me.”
“What do you want me to say, Omar?” she asked, and her voice sounded far away.
I wanted to sit up, to hold her, but whenever I tried, my head would swim, and she would press me back down. “Are you sad?” I asked. “Angry? It’s okay to feel…whatever you’re feeling right now.”
She was quiet for a moment. “What are you going to do now that you’ve lost your leverage?”
She’s asking if I’m going to kill her, I thought dumbly. “By rights, you know what I should do.”
Her breath shuddered. “Are you going to?”
Gritting my teeth, I forced myself up, fighting my swimming vision.
She let out a little cry. “Lie down! What are you doing?”
I cupped her face, tracing the apple of her cheek with my thumb. “Who do you belong to, conejita?” Lyse’s gaze met mine. Tears shimmered in her dark eyes. “Who. Do. You. Belong. To?” I asked again.
“You,” she said.
I pulled her in and kissed her. It wasn’t chaste; it wasn’t gentle. I forced her lips open with my tongue, and I claimed her until she whimpered and pressed into my touch. “You’re mine, Lyse,” I said against her mouth. “I don’t break what’s mine. Understand?”
Lyse sniffled. “You don’t?”
“Never,” I swore. “I protect what’s mine.”
She kissed me, soft but insistent, and we settled back together so that she was in my arms again.
We were quiet for a long while. “I knew that my family saw me as a business transaction,” she said.
Her voice was muted. “That’s normal for us, right?
But…” She sniffled. “I thought they felt something for me.” She looked up at me.
“Families are supposed to have some kind of affection for each other, right?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I couldn’t truly say that I loved anyone outside of my siblings. “Matteo sticks up for you, right?”
She shrugged. “He and I have a good relationship, but he would never go against Apá’s wishes.” Lyse swiped at her eyes. Tears were wetting my shirt. “He would never protect me from him.”
“I will,” I declared, feeling nearly savage. “I’ll protect you from everything.”
“From your family?” she asked.
“That won’t happen.”
She scoffed. “I’m a Rojas, even abandoned as I am,” she said. “They’ll never accept me.”
I tightened my hold on her, until my muscles were screaming from the strain. “They will,” I promised. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“But if they don’t?”
“Then we’ll figure something out.” I pressed my lips against the top of her head. “I would do anything for you.” It was a bold declaration, and I wasn’t even sure why I said it…but I knew that I would. Was that love? I wasn’t sure, but I had never felt this way before.
“Anything?” Lyse asked, and her voice was teasing now.
“Anything,” I said. “You want your father’s head on a platter? I’ll bring it to you personally.”
It might have been a step too far, but Lyse laughed and rubbed her face against my chest. The sound thrilled me; I didn’t think that I would ever get tired of it.
“I don’t think people who commit patricide live long in our circles,” she said lightly, but it felt like a bucket of ice water was dumped over my head.
“Sometimes it’s necessary,” I said. My head felt like it was full of cotton.
“What do you mean?”
I took a breath. If I told her this, it would truly lash us together. “My Padre is dead,” I said.
Lyse wasn’t surprised. “My father said he was sick. They had meetings at the hospice he was staying in.”
Well…that’s interesting. I filed that information away for later; it might not matter that Luis was close to Padre, but Angel might want to know just how close our fathers were. “I killed him.”
Lyse sat up, alarmed. “You did what?”
I wanted to pull her down into my arms, but I didn’t.
I wouldn’t force her into my arms if she didn’t want to be there.
“The night that I attacked your engagement dinner,” I said, heart beginning to thump against my chest, “Angel was rushed back into surgery because he was hemorrhaging. My sister-in-law was screaming; everything was chaotic…and I needed to make someone pay. I knew that Angel had gone to the nursing home to visit Padre the night that he was attacked. Angel never told us where he’d stashed him, but it wasn’t hard to find the location in his office.
I didn’t know if he was dead or not, but I had to check.
When I got there, he was still alive, and when he saw me, he started laughing and congratulating me on ‘winning’ over Angel finally, and I knew that Padre had planned everything.
” I sneered. “As if I ever wanted to be in charge. As if I would ever want Angel dead.”
Lyse started rubbing my arm, and after a moment of hesitation, she lay back down in my arms and held me close. I tipped her head up and kissed her; I wanted to be as close to her as I possibly could. “He was a cruel man,” she murmured.
I nodded. “I nearly couldn’t do it.” Shame flooded through me.
I wasn’t sure if I was embarrassed about what I had done, or the fact that I couldn’t put my hands directly on my father.
“I put a pillow over his face. He was too weak to fight me off. It didn’t—” I took a breath. “It didn’t take long.”
The flatlining machine had brought the nurses running while I managed to slip out undetected. I had killed so many men at this point, but this was the only one that I thought about. Had nightmares about.
But that didn’t mean that I regretted my decision.
My Padre had to die, just like the Rojas had to die.
It was the only thing that would make what happened okay.
I could handle the nightmares. I could make Angel understand when I told him, I think.
He would protect me as much as he could when word got out that I committed the greatest of sins. I was nearly sure of it.
Lyse lay against me for a long while. “I wish you would have gotten Apá too,” she admitted softly, ashamed. “He deserves to die.”
“Tell me when,” I said, “and I’ll make it happen.”
Lyse
What I’d said was evil. To hope for my father’s death was evil, but the longer Omar looked at me, the more I shivered in a mix of horror and desire.
“Omar,” I sighed. Why do I want him? He was injured; he had basically promised to murder my family…
and yet I didn’t think I had ever wanted him more than I did right then.
He picked up on it immediately, and a smug smile stretched across his face. “What do you need, conejita?”
“You’re hurt.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Omar.” He took my hand, kissed my fingers, before placing them against the zipper on his dark jeans. I gasped: he was hard. How? “That’s a bad idea,” I told him. “We can’t—”
“What do you need, Lyse? You can have it.” He pressed our hands down against him. “I can give it to you.”
My lower belly clenched with want. “How would this work?”
“Ride me.”
What? “Like…me on top?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Are you up for the challenge, conejita?”
Like I could ever back down from a challenge like that. “Tell me what to do,” I said, sitting up.
Omar reached down and unzipped his jeans, pulling himself out. If I thought about any of the last few hours too long, I would start laughing, and I wouldn’t stop until I cried. Omar lay there, dirty and damp and injured, but he was hard as steel. “Sling your leg over,” he said.
I stood up long enough to push my pants down my hips, and kicked them off before I straddled him as he indicated. I shivered as I pressed against him. “What now?” I asked, breathless.
“Lean down,” he said and dragged me so that we were chest-to-chest. He reached down and angled himself against where I was wet and waiting for him. With a gentle push, he was inside me, and I let out a breath in a long huff. “Now, sit up.”
I frowned. “That won’t hurt you?”
He shook his head, chuckling. “Just the opposite, conejita.”
Shaking, I pushed so that I was sitting on his lap. “Oh,” I gasped. I had never felt so full before. “I need to—” My hips hitched, and Omar groaned.
“That’s it, Lyse.” His hands grasped my hips and helped to guide me as I began to move against him. Grinding against him sent lightning up my spine, but if I used my knees to lift myself up, Omar would let out a delicious sound from deep in his chest.
We found a rhythm that had me breathless, and I tipped my head up, losing myself to the pleasure that was coursing through me.
I startled when I felt his thumb against my clit, and that gradual sensation was suddenly sharp and immediate and almost too much.
Despite the burn in my thighs, I moved against him harder, and half of the sounds that he made were ones of pain, but I didn’t care.
Neither did he.
“Taking me so well,” Omar grunted, tightening his grip on my hips. “Made to take me like this, weren’t you, conejita?”
I nodded, hardly hearing what he was saying but knowing that it was driving me closer and closer to that shining place. “I want you to come,” I told him, leaning down so that I could kiss him. I needed to feel his mouth against mine.
Omar kissed me, long and deep, and he canted his hips against mine. I let out a yelp, and he hissed in pain, but he braced me against him and kept thrusting up until we were both breathless. “Come for me,” he panted against my mouth.
I did. I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself if I tried. I ground into him, chasing that pleasure, and I heard him groan as he let go as well. He settled back, drained of energy, and I lay against him, panting. “Are you okay?” I asked.
He chuckled. “I’ve never been better.”