24. Isabel
24
ISABEL
T he next morning, Miguel woke me up by kissing me. This was no standard good morning kiss after the longest and best night of sleep I’d ever experienced. It was the feeling of his lips and tongue on my pussy that encouraged me to wake up and realize this wasn’t an exotic dream, but my reality. The reality of what it was like to sleep with a sexy man who would always want me.
Dating wasn’t easy for me with my solitary life. Like I told Miguel the night before, Louis was a pariah. And therefore, I had to be a pariah because of his actions and wrongdoings.
Yet, I wasn’t sure that Miguel and I were dating. Were all men this possessive when they were dating a woman? Did all men get to know a woman they’d like to date by reading up on them in a file sent to them from hackers and other criminals in the Cartel?
Probably not.
I didn’t care, though. I couldn’t. I was finally not alone. I’d finally found someone I wanted to be with, a man I could enjoy and trust.
At breakfast, we acted like a normal couple in love.
Then on the walk to the garage where he’d parked his car, we held hands and kissed every few steps.
Unable to keep our hands off each other, we looked like newlyweds. Like two partners. A pair.
“Are you being like this because you want anyone who’s following me to know that it won’t be so easy to get to me?” I asked before we got to the garage.
“No.” He pulled me to the side again and kissed me deeply, lowering his grabby hands to squeeze my ass. “I’m being like this because I can’t imagine not touching you.” He squeezed again, digging his fingers into my ass cheeks.
My breath hitched.
“I’m being like this because I want you so bad, right now, right here.”
I growled, kissing him hard and rubbing up against him.
“And I’m being like this because it makes me happy, Isabel.” He nipped my lower lip at the end of the next kiss. “ You make me happy.”
Oh, God.
He couldn’t say those kinds of things and expect me not to get excited that my dreams were coming true. That I’d finally found a man—or he’d found me as he failed to kill me—who would see me, want me, and value me.
He broke away from me, though, tugging me by the hand to keep walking. The second he twined his fingers between mine, I felt secure and possessed. Protected. The sheer strength in his hand, the rough, callused skin on his palm. Both were physical cues that he was a brutal man and could stand behind his declaration of protection.
“And I’m being like this, hurrying you to get in my car, so we can go talk to my confidant and get back to our room to really take care of this.” In the slightly darker area of the parking garage, with a wall blocking view of us, he turned, slammed my back to the wall, and kissed me hard while he lowered our joined hands until he could swipe his finger—and mine—over the creamy slickness that was already covering my pussy. With my dress flipped up a bit, and with the taboo naughtiness of him making me feel myself at the same time he caressed me, I swore I’d bend over and ask him to take me now. Just like this.
Needy. Desperate.
And… in love?
Love in the face of danger and deception.
I never would’ve guessed that I could put an end to that miserable loneliness by letting my stalker and would-be killer into my life.
We got in his car a few minutes later, and I wondered how long I would be able to behave in here. It was more private, and all I could think about was sliding over the seat and riding him.
Stop. Just focus for once.
I could tell that I was caving to how much we wanted each other in order to avoid thinking about all that was wrong in my world. Miguel was all that was going right, but it wasn’t just the physical. I cared about him in other ways too. Like making sure I could be the reason he gets those sly and slow smiles.
“Rueben should have intel of some kind,” he said as he drove out of the parking area.
“What makes you so sure?” He’d told me over breakfast that his confidante went by the name of Rueben, but that was all I knew so far. Were they old friends? Former… contractors working together on a team?
Even though I knew without a trace of doubt in my heart that what I felt for Miguel was right and unshakable, although new, I realized I had a lot to learn about him. Suddenly, I was eager to ask him everything, to learn it all.
“News is coveted and sold in this criminal world. Holding on to news is a commodity that can always be used as leverage.”
“And… Rueben is good at hanging on to details to share with you ?”
He lifted and dropped the shoulder of the arm that hadn’t been shot. “Within reason. For leverage.”
I furrowed my brow. “Never mind.” I wasn’t sure how within reason could be explained in the context he was referencing. Did leverage mean payment of money? Or a threat of death?
Just… don’t overthink it.
“Rueben has mostly been tied to the Carmello Cartel,” he went on to explain neutrally. “But like many others, he has gossip about all the Cartels.”
“And you work for…” I growled. “I hate that you have a whole file to know all about me but I know nothing about you.”
He took my hand and kissed my knuckles. “You can have the rest of your life to learn everything you want to know.”
Is that a promise? A lead-in to a proposal? Forever was a long time. That was a huge commitment. But the prospect of it didn’t scare me. It excited me.
“I work for myself,” he answered. “I’m an independent contractor that any Cartel can hire. Any organization or individual can hire. But I began with the Gulf Cartel and they hired me the most.”
“Drago, your contact, works for them too?”
He shook his head. “Yes and no. He’s independent too. And that’s part of what makes it so difficult for me to know who put the hit on Louis and then changed it to you. I’m confident Rueben will know something, and I’m getting more confident that the Carmello outfit is behind the hits.”
“This sounds like a lot of politics to follow.”
“It can be.”
I sighed, watching the scenery blur by. We’d left the heart of the congested touristy areas and were heading into a more open coastal area, lined with vegetation. “How did you even get in with the Cartel? Or this job?”
“I learned what the difference is between good guys and bad guys.”
I scrunched my face. “Huh?” That was a cryptic answer that told me nothing.
“There is none. There is no real difference between who we call the good guys and the supposed bad guys. Cops versus criminals. Military versus outlaws. I started out in the military and excelled. I made my family proud. But when one of my supervisors tried to smuggle something in over the border and I caught him red-handed, he laid all the blame on me and got me discharged.”
“Just like that?”
He narrowed his eyes, focusing on the road. “Just like that. His word against mine. He was pissed that I would want to do the right thing and not just look away. He threatened my family if I spoke up, so I didn’t. But he had them killed anyway, as ‘insurance’ that I wouldn’t think of speaking up. The shit he was involved in was terrible, and that was my first lesson that there’s no difference between who is supposed to be a good guy and who is supposed to be a bad guy.”
“Oh, Miguel.” My heart ached for him. No wonder I felt a kindred loneliness with him. He wasn’t much better off than me. He’d lost his family so cruelly. I had too, but in another way—one to estrangement and the other to the disease of the mind and drugs.
“I’m so sorry.” I took his hand and held it tight.
He nodded, exhaling a long, pent-up breath that made me suspect he'd never talked about this with anyone. That he’d kept this secret for years.
“He had them killed. I was kicked out of the military. And then I knew. Both sides of the fence are corrupt. All over the world, in any exchange of power, they were all bad. So, I was recruited by the Cartel and I proved myself and my worth very quickly. I’d take out hits on people the world really didn’t need, and I’d make a killing while I was at it.”
I dared to smirk at him. “Is… that a pun? Make a killing ?”
He laughed. Once. It was a bark of amusement that continued as a rich, throaty chuckle that I wanted to hear again and again. Seeing this serious, strong man lighten up was a miracle.
“Only you’d make a joke like that.” He smiled at me. “Careful. I might fucking fall in love with you.”
I’m already there. “Because I can be witty when the mood strikes?”
“Because you accept who I am. What I do. And you don’t freak out.”
I looked out the window again. “Yeah, because I learned that same lesson you did. That good and bad were just figures of speech. Louis was a bad man, but so were some of the cops and lawyers who’d try to be as corrupt and rotten as he was.”
“I realized that fighting on the side of the Cartels paid more, anyway.”
“Still, I’m sorry to hear you were treated so poorly. They just kicked you out when you only wanted to be ethical.”
“Ethical?” He shrugged. “I don’t regret my time in the military, as short as it was. I needed to witness and experience that twisted play of good versus evil forces in the world. It was eye opening to see that sometimes the people everyone was supposed to trust and rely on were far worse than any criminals out there. Many of the hits I’ve had to take out were really bad people, sweetheart. Murderers, rapists, traffickers, all around sick, sadistic fuckers.”
He glanced at me. “Really bad people the world doesn’t need.”
I huffed a wry laugh at that. “Well, my father having a hit on his back makes sense then. Louis fits right in. He’s definitely a bad guy. He abandoned his family for wealth, he associates with horrible people, and he’s got no issues screwing everyone over if it gets him ahead.”
Only a loveless monster would behave like that.
“Are you saying he deserves to be killed?”
I hadn’t looked at it like that, mainly because I wasn’t involved in deciding when or how or why his death should happen.
“That’s not my call to make.”
“But it could be mine.”
I faced him as he volleyed his attention between me and the road. “Or the call of whoever placed that hit.”
“Isabel?”
I sighed, guessing what he was about to ask me.
“How would your opinion change of me if I were to kill him? To complete this one last job I was given before taking time off?”
I held his hand tightly, showing him that I wasn’t afraid. And that I’d stick with honesty. “It’s not my call to make. And it’s not my judgment to form. You are a hero, Miguel. I’m alive right now because you sacrificed and risked yourself to save me multiple times.”
He exhaled another long breath, as if he were tense for what I’d say.
“The world needs more heroes like you,” I said, truly meaning it.
And I needed us to put this situation behind us so I could show him how much I needed him in my world, in my life, for the rest of our days.