Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 108405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
She might never come around. I was not a patient man. I never waited for anything anymore. I took. If my self-discipline with her faltered, I worried I’d enjoy it, and that would make me as bad as those I sought to take down.
That made me my father.
But not even that knowledge was enough to make me walk away.
I strolled into the dining room, staying on the rug to mute my steps. When I reached her back, I wrapped my hands around her neck.
She froze in her chair. Wrong reaction, little girl.
After a moment, she tilted her head back all the way and met my eyes upside down.
“Haven’t you been training with Alejo?” I asked.
“He talks too much.”
I nearly laughed at the unexpected response but managed to maintain my composure. Her safety wasn’t a game. “Excuse me?”
“He won’t let me practice.” Her throat constricted against my palms as she swallowed. I refrained from tightening my grip around the slender column and shifted my focus to the chocolate frosting at each corner of her mouth. “I think he’s afraid to touch me,” she added.
“Then he’s smarter than I give him credit for.” I lowered my mouth to her forehead for a kiss. I wanted more. Was it so much to ask that a husband could kiss his wife’s lips? I moved down her cheek, but the tension in her body remained.
She’ll come around, I reminded myself. It was no victory to take from someone who didn’t want to give.
But then again, I’d been suffering for my lust for some time.
I slid my hands under her chin, tilting her mouth up to mine. She parted her lips for a gasp—or a sigh?—and clearly fought to keep her eyes from fluttering shut. One flicker of my tongue and I’d get that chocolate right off her lips.
I hoped she’d been stewing in her own juices since I’d left her wanting in our bed.
I hoped at that moment, she was questioning the wetness between her legs.
I reached by her and plucked the cherry off the top of her cake. Straightening, I popped it into my mouth, discarding the stem on her plate before I fell into the seat next to her. “You weren’t going to eat that, were you?”
She scowled, wiping her mouth with a napkin as she picked up her plate and stood. “I’ll just have to get another slice.”
I smiled. “Be my guest.”
I watched her until she’d disappeared into the kitchen. Who was I kidding? My attachment to her was already forming. It was hard to avoid that when she’d been under my protection as a child. Now that she was a woman, and my wife, the affection I’d once had was something else entirely.
Her vulnerability was also mine, though. She was my responsibility. Was I doing everything I could to ensure her safety? A week ago, I hadn’t known I’d be bringing her here. Now that it was more than the staff and me in the house—now that I was more exposed—it was time for a full security check-up.
Max and I had come to the conclusion that the only way Barto could’ve entered my bedroom that Monday morning was by scaling the cliff beneath my balcony. It seemed impossible. The beach below the house acted as a port and had its own robust defense in place, yet they’d never seen him. We’d inspected every camera and triple-checked each passageway in and out of the house to no avail.
While security had always been the top priority in the Badlands, it was also important to me that townspeople felt welcome and could take shelter in the house if they ever needed to, no questions asked.
But with Natalia under my care, and with a target on her back as my wife and Costa’s only daughter, it was becoming clear I’d have to take greater measures to protect the house.
Max had begun meeting with ex-military to get us up to date on biometric technology—fingerprint scans and voice and facial recognition, and new steel-fortified, bullet-resistant doors with automatic locks. I’d learned hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship as a boy growing up in a cartel, but I’d learned what it meant to fight for my life on the streets. I hated that I needed all the latest gadgets to protect myself and my people. I’d installed a large, open balcony in the first place so I could taste freedom at all hours of the day and night. I didn’t want to board myself up in a house. But I couldn’t be everywhere all the time.
I’d laughed Max out of the room when he’d tried insisting on installing cameras in my bedroom. If I needed men watching me as I slept, then I deserved whatever attack was coming to me.
But Natalia was in my bed now. I wanted the ability to lay eyes on her at all times if need be.