Chapter 5 #2
She turned away and fiddled with a wrench before she melted into the floor, pretending she missed his soft chortle as he strolled off down the hall.
SANTIAGO
Fokkin’ hell.
Had he really spouted out ‘greasing pipes and hands-on efforts’?’
Santi masked his faux pas with a timbred chuckle and a turn on his heel.
He strolled out of his cabin with a calm, effortless swagger that hid the fact that his gut churned.
Why had he freakin’ let the banter drift so close to the line?
Why had he also sounded like a kid with a major crush?
He wasn’t some reckless nineteen-year-old letting his pulse steer the conversation. He knew better.
Yet he couldn’t seem to help himself around her.
It went against the norm of his legend; Santiago Alvarro, infamous across the fleet for his unadulterated charm and self-control.
He was a man who made desire appear effortless and left lovers convinced they’d been the ones in the driver’s seat all along.
He built his life on the quiet art of holding people at arm’s length with nothing but a smile and a lingering glance.
However, with Soleil, words tangled somewhere between his chest and throat, and all his curated finesse twisted into a raw and uneven mass of emotion.
Every time she walked into his cabin, when she bit her lip while scrubbing the corner of his desk, he almost lost it.
Or when she hummed as she washed dishes or rearranged his cushions.
Hell, if it didn’t play games with his careful restraint, which threatened to shatter like glass under pressure.
She didn’t know what she was doing to him.
Or maybe she did.
Either way, he was in trouble.
Her quiet, yet sensual presence made his blood heat and sent his lycan spirit flaring like a live wire at the sound of her voice, her curses even as she went about her duties.
He freakin’ couldn’t deal, so he left his home, hoping to get more tasks done at the office.
Gathering his work bag, he headed toward the Deck 27 express lift, where he jabbed the controls with a little too much force.
The doors whispered closed, sealing the chaos of her presence behind them.
He exhaled hard, letting go of the breath he’d been holding.
The elevator docked on the executive level, where the elegance of Signet’s office met him: dark glass, titanium alloy, and clean lines. Precision. Control.
He prowled into the boardroom, jaw tight, seeking quiet and focus.
He needed to remember who he was.
He was the XO of The Sombra.
The smooth-talking enforcer who never lost his shit.
He wasn’t a man undone by a girl with doe eyes, honey skin, and a past she was uneasy about.
Yet no matter how much he told himself otherwise, he was already halfway gone for her.
The boardroom’s double doors hissed open.
Santi sat at the long table, elbows on the sleek, black-glass surface, head bent over a comm tab whose screen had long since dimmed.
Boots hit the floor in steady succession, familiar, heavy strides.
Boaz barged in first, as always, never relinquishing his title as the unofficial battering ram of their group.
He led with broad shoulders, a stern, humorless face, and eyes canted to the kahawa station, for he was a beast without his mandated dos.
At his rear, prowled siblings Kaal and Mak.
Zev sauntered in next, casual as always, chewing on a matchstick.
Finally, Rigo, quiet and calm, the money man, reluctant as always to spend on any mission.
He paused just inside the doorway with his usual measured gaze.
‘Ready, XO?’
Santi blinked.
‘Fokk,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘The meeting.’
‘Give the man a gold star,’ Zev grinned, sliding into a chair with all the grace of a lazy tiger.
Boaz dropped into the seat beside him, cracking his knuckles like he was prepping for war. ‘Invites got sent hours ago.’
‘I didn’t see them.’
‘You didn’t look,’ said a smooth, dulcet voice from the door.
Miral.
She walked in last, her arms folded, an elegant silhouette in a matte graphite suit, her expression cool with disapproval.
Her comm chip blinked once in her ear. ‘I messaged you. Four times.’
Santi looked up at her and offered a vague shrug. ‘Got busy.’
She arched one brow. ‘Busy staring at the wall?’
Nada, busy fantasizing about one woman.
Mak snorted.
‘Someone’s distracted,’ Kaal said under his breath.
‘Or hiding something,’ Zev added, mouth twitching.
‘Why don’t we start the interrogation after the threats to our operations are dealt with?’ Santi bit out, his utterance clipped.
It silenced his pack for a beat.
They all glanced at him, surprised. Santi never raised his voice or snapped.
He was the king of drawl. He was the smooth operator, the calm eye of every storm.
But not today.
Santi cleared his throat. ‘Alright, folks. Let’s get to it. What’s on the freakin’ agenda?’
Miral flicked her hand, and the holo map ignited over the table, spinning with gold and crimson lines that displayed the star chart relative to the flotilla.
‘The Red Skulls,’ she said. ‘For some reason, they’re coming for us hard.
A few months back, they attacked Loup Nine, a secret Signet munitions depot.
When that failed, they laced koko and smuggled it onto The Sombra and other flotilla ships to destabilize our people.
Now, we’ve got three confirmed sightings of their armed vessels within fifty clicks of our outposts last week.
They’re poking at the perimeter. Attempting to plot out our blind spots. ’
‘They’ll find none,’ Boaz rasped grimly.
‘They don’t have to uncover them,’ Kaal countered. ‘They just need one of our pilots to slip out of stealth, and they’ll hack their systems to get to our data.’
‘They won’t,’ said Miral, sliding into a seat and activating the ship’s layered security readouts.
‘We’ve upped the number and frequency of our stealth perimeter codes,’ she continued. ‘But intel suggests they’re not coming through the front doors. They’re trying to infiltrate us, and attack from within.’
‘Like the roaches they are,’ Zev said.
Santi mulled the situation. ‘All this activity points to a major grievance against us. We need to find out what the fokk it is, what they’re driving to, and what the heck they intend to achieve. What if we glean intel from the Red Skulls members already onboard, in the brig?’
Miral arched a brow. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘We’ve got a fair few in one prison wing, and several of them are in gen-pop. Get me in and I’ll try to gain some intel on what might be going down.’
‘You think the prison’s a intel sieve?’
‘Aren’t they all? Miral, one thing about being an ex-con is that I know how resourceful former prisoners can be.
They’ll pick at every crack and loophole until it bleeds.
They’ll smuggle intel written on scraps of paper hidden under food trays, and send contraband out through laundry chutes.
I’m proposing to go in disguise and see what falls when I shake a few trees. ’
‘Mak nodded in agreement. ‘Righteous.’
With the pack on board with the plan, the conversations shifted to how to integrate him into the jail yard.
Santi half listened in, flicked an eye over the risk projections shimmering across the table’s glass, and understood the dangers Miral outlined.
Yet all he could see, burned behind his eyes, was how Soleil chewed her bottom lip as she folded his clothes.
The sound of her humming off-key to herself as she wiped down his glassware, unaware that he had been watching her the whole time, scarcely breathing.
He scrubbed a hand over his mouth to refocus, yet the battle within him raged on.
When the group took a kahawa break, his hermanos’ voices fell into a murmur, accompanied by the hiss of the dispenser steaming into metal cups.
Santi, still out of it, leaned against the credenza, head down, lost in thought.
Mak prowled close, eyes raking his friend.
‘Who is she, brother?’ Mak rasped, his tone deep and amused, pitched so only Santi caught it. ‘She’s in your head. I can see it.’
Santi didn’t flinch, but his jaw twitched.
He locked eyes with his mate. ‘Oi, kinai, you got nada. You’re chasing wraiths, my friend.’
Mak gave him a sustained, piercing stare, the same one that undid prosecutors and warlords alike.
‘You’re mind and soul are roiling, cabrón,’ he murmured. ‘Like you’ve been staring into the sun for too long.’
Mak sipped his kahawa with maddening calm as Santi’s eyes narrowed on him.
How did he know?
Fokk, her name meant ‘sun,’ and heaven help him, she was the embodiment of her appellation.
Soleil glowed with an outer and inner beauty that kept pulling him toward her with an enticing, unseen lure.
‘She better be worth it,’ Mak added.
Santi curled his lips, his silence a tell, cursing Mak’s prescient insight, how well he read the signs of the XO’s internal churn.
‘May I also say she’s the first I’ve seen you so het up for.’
‘I’m not het up,’ Santi growled.
He was though.
Mak, the bastard, was skating too close to the truth.
‘I’m right and you know it,’ The Sombra’s legal eagle smirked before he prowled away.
Santi stared after him.
Since getting married and falling in rapture with his unexpected bride, Saba, Mak’s prescient insights, perhaps ratcheted up by love, were maddening.
Still, the fokkin’ man had a point.
Soleil, and her beauty, quiet grace, and soft smile were slipping under Santi’s freakin’ skin.
Much later that evening, Santi unlocked his cabin and stepped inside.
He tracked into his kitchen and was reaching to open the cooler for a drink when his gaze caught on an anomaly.
Beneath a clear dome lid, a plate of golden-crusted custard tarts sat on the counter, their flaky layers bronzed and shimmering with sugar, dusted with cinnamon.
A small folded card rested beside them.
Made too many pastel de nata. Thought you might like a few. - S.
He stared at the note for a long moment.
Other than his pack mates, no one had left him a gift in years; hell, no one had ever baked for him.
He lifted the lid off and took one tart between his fingers.
It was still warm.
When he bit into it, the shell gave a crisp, airy crack.
Creamy custard burst onto his tongue, sweet and velvety, kissed with caramelized edges and a hint of spice.
‘Fokkin’ hell,’ he muttered, mouth full, head tipping back in quiet ecstasy.
He hoovered the first one.
The second followed with a curse of delight.
By the third, he was moaning while licking sugar from his fingers.
Next to the dome was a small tin of honey-date semolina bars, chewy and dense, with crushed pistachios on top.
He devoured one seated on the terrace by the veranda, gazing over the lake, savoring each bite.
By the fourth bar, he was swearing under his breath again, this time with helplessness.
The woman had no idea what she was doing to him.
He stretched his long legs before him, an empty cup by his foot, and the tin of treats nestled beside him like a talisman.
The faux dusk cast the lake in burnished gold and bronze, and the birdsong was light and rhythmic in the distance.
All he could think of was her.
Of how she didn’t flirt.
She scarcely glanced at him or tried to gain his attention, unlike many other women he encountered.
He remembered the grace in her movements even while folding sheets, scrubbing counter-tops, and working on an under-sink pipe.
Her dark brown hair was always twisted into a loose bun; nevertheless, a few stubborn wisps always trailed down her neck.
His mouth tingled, imagining his lips running down her nape.
Then there were her hazel-gold eyes that seldom met his but, when they did, left him a little winded.
When her dimpled smile sparked without warning, it struck him right in the chest.
Her mouth, lush, full, and curved, only made him want to take a sip of her.
Even her body was designed for slow discovery, one he wanted to embark on with a possessive fierceness.
Still, he didn’t dare make a wrong move, for that’d be harassment, and he was the XO with an example to uphold.
He worked with ex-cons, sharpshooters, and saboteurs. His squad dealt in blood, weapons, and violence.
His purpose was to hold the line between stability and chaos, and sometimes that meant crossing it to the dark side.
He was the master of manipulating that same turmoil for the pack’s advantage.
His spectral power could tear apart the throats of his enemies.
Yet he was wary of letting anyone in.
He had a darker reason for his hesitation, one that compelled him to watch Soleil from afar.
Years ago, he learned a harsh lesson, and its scars still wrapped around his soul.
His first love, Naya’s death during the Great Wars, cut him up in a way that left no room for softness afterward.
Since then, any love he had to share had been locked away, and he wore his charm like armor, slick, polished, and untouchable. He built a fortress of smirks and half-truths and lived in it alone.
Until Soleil.
The irony didn’t escape him. Her sun, her freakin’ essence, somehow, was burning through his shadows.
She also didn’t chase him, nor try to impress him.
She just did her job, sweeping his floors, washing his glasses, folding his linens with quiet competence, her sleeves rolled to her elbows.
She didn’t want anything from him.
This made him crave her even more, yearning for her with increasing intensity.
With every minute, the more enticing the idea of her in his life became.
He inhaled, steadying the growl that threatened to surface.
The need to mark her, to leave his spectral, permanent, soul-bound, and ethereal brand on her, twisted through him with a new ache.
It was a wild yearning, a primal instant instinct similar to the one Xander had experienced when he first met Savvine.
In that moment, in a wild tear, Santi made the call: he would make her his.
He would wait for her signal, never force her, but always entice her.
When she was ready, if she ever whispered yes or offered her neck in silent acquiescence, he would mark her.
Binding her to him, in every way possible, to his spectral spirit, with his scar, wraith-like flames, and undying, absolute passion.
Because his life, his world, was no tower of sugar and sunlight. It was forged in steel, shadow, and secrets.
Yet he was beginning to fear that not even all the darkness in him could stop him from chasing her light.