Chapter 32 #2
Nothing left to control.
Except the part of this that has nothing to do with the cartel. Olivia stands near the window, looking out into the darkness.
“You're ready,” I say.
She turns toward me.
“So are you.”
“I've been ready.”
“No,” she says softly. “You've been pretending you were.”
I almost smile.
She walks toward me, closing the distance until she is standing directly in front of me.
“You're worried,” she says.
“About you.”
Her expression softens.
“You don't have to be.”
“I do.”
“Rico.”
I shake my head. “You don't understand what happens when I can't control the variables.”
“Maybe you don't understand that I'm not one of your variables.”
That stops me. Her hand settles against my chest.
“You can't control everything.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I cover her hand with mine.
“I'm learning.”
A small smile touches her lips.
“Good.”
For several seconds, neither of us moves. Then she steps closer.
The kiss comes naturally, without hesitation, without the uncertainty that existed between us before. Her hands settle against me as I pull her closer, and for a moment the cartel, the hospital, the surveillance team, and the operation waiting outside this room cease to exist.
There is only Olivia.
Only the woman who chose to stay.
The woman who is now choosing to walk into danger beside me.
The kiss deepens, slow and deliberate, carrying all the things neither of us needs to say aloud. When we finally separate, she rests her forehead against mine, her breathing soft against my skin.
“We have a couple hours,” she whispers.
“Less than now.”
A quiet laugh escapes her.
“Then stop wasting them.”
I kiss her again.
This time, neither of us is thinking about tomorrow.
The rest of the world can wait.
The operation can wait.
For a little while, there is no cartel, no war, no bloodshed, and no question about what happens next.
There is only us.
When she takes my hand and leads me toward the bedroom, I follow without hesitation. The door closes behind us, shutting out the light from the hallway and the world waiting on the other side.
For the next few minutes, we aren't soldiers, criminals, doctors, or targets.
We're simply two people who have chosen each other. We don’t’ waste any time with our clothes.
Our hands are on each other and removing them quickly.
We know we don’t have much time. I don’t’ even make it to the bed.
I turn her and face the door, her hand grasping the ledge on the side to have something to hold on to.
Slipping my hands around her I slowly caress down her stomach. “I have thought of nothing but being inside you again. Tell me are you wet for me baby?”
She moans deep, her head turned and pressed against the door.
On instinct her hips push out, pushing her juicy ass against my cock and I feel like a kid in high school as I grind back up against her ass.
My fingers rub circles against her clit before slipping inside her to caress her walls slowly.
She gasps and then groans out her displeasure at me making her wait.
I don’t wait anymore as I push inside her in one lunge.
She closes around me tight and I can’t stop myself, it feels too good, the exquisite torture, so I continue to fuck her.
I hear her gasps and moans as she tells me how she wants more over and over.
We both come at the same time yelling each other’s names.
I have never done that with anyone else before.
She is the only person who has ever been able to make me lose control completely.
She is the only one to ever have any control over me like that. We finally make it to the bed.
And when the night finally gives us back to ourselves, neither of us knows that by morning, everything will change.
Later, Olivia lies beside me, her head resting against my chest while my arm circles her waist.
The room is quiet.
For the first time all night, completely quiet.
Her fingers trace slow, absent patterns against my chest, the movement so unconscious that I doubt she even realizes she’s doing it.
Neither of us speaks for several seconds, and in the quiet, I can feel the weight of everything that has brought us here settling between us.
The threat outside these walls hasn’t disappeared.
The operation is still moving. The cartel is still watching, still waiting for an opening.
Yet for this brief moment, none of that seems to matter as much as the woman lying against me.
Eventually, she lifts her head and looks at me, her expression steady despite everything waiting for us beyond this room.
“This doesn’t go wrong.” There is certainty in her voice, not hope or wishful thinking, but the kind of determination I have come to recognize in her.
I brush my thumb gently across her cheek, holding her gaze as I answer, “It doesn’t. ”
She studies me for a moment longer before her expression softens. “You promise?”
I keep my eyes on hers because I know better than to give her a promise I cannot guarantee.
There are too many variables, too many people involved, too many things neither of us can control.
“I promise we’ll do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t.
” It is the only promise I can make, and she seems to understand the difference.
Whatever answer she was searching for, she finds enough of it in my face to accept the truth.
She settles back against me, resting her head against my chest as the silence returns.
For a few seconds, I let myself stay there with her, allowing the warmth of her body and the quiet rhythm of her breathing to become the only things I focus on.
Then, from somewhere outside the room, a phone vibrates once, followed by a second vibration a moment later.
The sound is quiet, but I know exactly what it means. The operation is moving.
I glance toward the sound before looking back at Olivia, already aware that the thirty minutes we were given have disappeared faster than either of us expected.
Whatever brief pause we allowed ourselves is over now.
I lean down and press one last kiss against her forehead before climbing out of bed, forcing myself to leave the warmth of her behind and return to the reality waiting beyond the door.
The cartel thinks they are hunting us. They believe Olivia is exposed, that they have finally found an opening, and that we have made the mistake they have been waiting for. They have no idea that every step they take toward her is leading them exactly where we want them to go.
Tomorrow, they are going to learn the difference between hunting someone and walking willingly into a trap.