Chapter 8 #2
“No.” My voice is soft now. Steadier than I feel. “He owed you a lie. He finally stopped paying it.”
The words hit her. No blood. No bullet.
They still wound.
For the first time since she walked in, Carmen’s mask cracks.
Just a hairline.
Enough.
I see the girl under it. The one raised beside power instead of love. The one taught that being chosen meant being crowned, not cherished. The one who watched a bartender walk into her story and ruin the ending.
Then the crack seals.
“You think this is about love,” Carmen says. “That is why you will lose.”
Diablo’s voice comes low beside me. “You’re done here.”
Carmen looks at him, and something venomous moves through her face. “No, Diablo. I’m finally beginning.”
His hand brushes the gun at his back.
“Careful,” she says. “Killing me in your little church with witnesses from the club you blame for everything? That would be messy. Even for you.”
One of the Mutherfukers grins.
Magic points his gun at the man’s crotch. “Smile again. I’ll make your mama cry twice.”
Carmen ignores him.
Her gaze returns to me.
“You should ask why the roses keep coming from Reyes. You should ask what Rafael buried before he died. You should ask why Amour Reyes inherited a business that never should have belonged to her.”
Alpha’s fingers pause on his keyboard.
I see it.
So does Carmen.
Her smile returns.
“Good,” she says. “You’re finally looking in the right direction.”
“Did you send the roses to Eclipse?” I ask.
She lifts one shoulder. “Roses are everywhere in Miami if you know where to buy them.”
“Did you help take Lady?”
“Lady Nyx put herself in danger when she decided bikers were accessories. That is hardly my fault.”
Diablo lunges half a step.
I catch him again.
This time, he looks at me.
I shake my head once.
Not for her.
For us.
Don’t let her steer your hands.
He breathes through his nose, hard, but stays.
Carmen sees that too.
It makes her angrier.
Good.
“Look at you,” she says, voice sweet as poison. “Training him like a stray dog.”
“No,” I say. “Loving him like a man. That is probably why you don’t recognize it.”
Her eyes burn.
There. That one hurt more than her losing her crown.
Carmen turns toward the door. “Enjoy the night, Darling. Chosen women have such short seasons.”
Diablo’s voice stops her.
“You made your choice tonight.”
She glances back.
His expression is cold enough to frost the room. “You walked into Saints ground flanked by Mutherfukers. No more Solano courtesy. No more old debt. No more protection because Rafael was like a father to me.”
Carmen’s mouth thins.
“Then come for me, Diablo.”
His smile is terrifying.
“I will.”
She leaves with her white-coated dogs.
The second the doors close, the room erupts.
Magic starts cursing. Vice gives orders. Six and Dune move to check the perimeter. Key Rat is already chasing feeds. Alpha is typing fast enough to make his keyboard sound like rain. The bird starts screaming from the office.
“?Pendejo! ?No roses! ?Pendejo!”
I stand still, every inch of me shaking.
Diablo turns to me. “You should not have stepped in front of me.”
I laugh.
Wrong thing to say to a shaking woman.
His eyes narrow.
I step into his space. “And there it is.”
“Darling.”
“No. You don’t get to watch me stand up to Carmen, then scold me because I didn’t let you do the easy violent thing.”
His jaw works. “She threatened you in my house.”
“She threatened me in my face, and I handled it.”
“I should have handled it.”
“You did.” I jab a finger into his chest. “You stayed. That was handling it.”
His breathing changes.
Mine does too.
The room is still moving around us, but the air between us tightens, pulls, catches fire. We are too close. Too angry. Too alive after Carmen’s poison. Diablo’s eyes drop to my mouth, and my body answers before my mind can pretend it doesn’t want him.
“Office,” he says.
“Are you ordering me?”
His eyes lift.
“No,” he says, rough. “I’m begging before I forget where we are.”
Heat rolls through me.
That is how I end up in Diablo’s office with the door kicked shut behind us and Disco screaming betrayal from his perch.
“?Pendejo!”
“Not now,” Diablo growls.
Disco fluffs up. “Pretty!”
“Yes, she is,” Diablo snaps, then looks at me like the words were ripped out of him.
I laugh once, breathless and shaky.
Then he is on me.
Not grabbing.
Asking with his whole body.
His hands frame my face, careful around the bruise, and his forehead drops to mine. “Tell me no.”
I grip his cut. “Touch me because you want me. Not because you’re scared.”
His eyes close.
When they open, they are almost black.
“I want you every second I’m breathing.”
“Then prove it.”
His mouth hits mine.
There is nothing gentle about the kiss except the way he lets me choose it.
I push into him, and he gives. I pull at his cut, and he shrugs it off.
Leather hits the floor. My hands are on his shirt, his belt, his skin, and he is cursing against my mouth like I’m the only prayer he knows how to ruin.
He lifts me onto the desk, scattering papers, a phone, two pens, and one offended bird toy.
Disco screams, “No!”
“Agreed,” I gasp when Diablo’s mouth moves to my neck. “The paperwork had it coming.”
His laugh is dark against my skin.
Then his hand slides under my dress, and I stop laughing. His fingers find me already wet, and the sound he makes against my throat is almost angry, like my body admitting it wants him is another fight he intends to win carefully.
The world narrows to his mouth, his fingers, the rough scrape of his beard along my throat, the heat of his body between my thighs.
He touches me like he is starving, but he keeps checking my face.
That should cool the heat. It doesn’t. It makes it worse, because every pause is proof he could take and chooses to ask.
Keeps waiting for the flinch. Keeps making sure the fire is mine too.
It is.
God help me, it is.
“Diablo,” I breathe.
He groans like his name in my mouth hurts. “Again.”
“Demanding.”
“Desperate.”
That word opens something in me.
Not president. Not the man Carmen thought she was owed.
Desperate.
Mine.
I pull him closer, wrap my legs around his hips, and kiss him until the fear shaking inside me turns into heat.
He drags my dress higher, and I tear at his belt with shaking hands.
My nails scrape over his stomach. He catches my wrist, kisses the inside of it, then puts my hand right back on his buckle like he knows I need to be the one undoing him.
“Condom,” I whisper.
He stills.
Not because he forgot.
Because I caught him trying to find another way to control me.
He reaches for his wallet with hands that are not as steady as he wants them to be. I watch him because I need that too. Need to see this man who can command a room take time. Need to see him choose care when his body wants fast.
When he pushes into me, it is slow enough to break us both.
My head falls back.
His forehead drops to my shoulder.
For one second, neither of us moves.
“Okay?” he asks, voice wrecked.
I turn my face into his neck. “If you stop, I’ll kill you.”
He laughs, and then he moves.
The desk hits the wall with the first hard stroke.