Cartel (15 page)

Murphy had recovered from his knee in the balls enough to slap me. I knew he really wanted to smash his fist into my face, judging by the way his fingers twitched by his side, but he couldn’t very well mark me just before I was about to be sold, could he?

‘I should kick you in the cunt for that,’ he said.

I didn’t reply, too busy laughing instead. The door burst open and I was still smiling as I spun around in my pretty black dress. The smile died on my face as I saw him.

‘You,’ I whispered.

Dornan Ross leaned against the door frame, the smile on his face almost contagious in its intensity.

‘You’re dismissed,’ Dornan said to Murphy, never once taking his eyes from mine. Something burned between us; something powerful. Something that frightened me, because I liked it. I liked
him
. And I didn’t want to.

‘You’re interrupting,’ Murphy replied, grabbing my elbow. ‘This one’s up first, apparently.’

I drew in a sharp breath as I watched Dornan’s face transform from a smile to something terrifying. He took his gun out faster than I could blink — man, he was a quick draw — and aimed it at Murphy.

‘I said, you’re dismissed,’ Dornan replied, flashing the fakest cheesy grin I’d ever seen.

Murphy looked from me to Dornan and back again. My heart was hammering in my chest now, because he was here, and he had a gun to Murphy. Was this really happening? Was he here to help me? Surely not. He was the son of Emilio Ross.

‘So you convinced him, huh?’ Murphy said bitterly. ‘What a fucking waste of my time.’ He turned on me. ‘Should’ve just shot you when I had the chance, huh?’

I tried to pull my arm away, but his fingers were like a death grip, my skin underneath each one turning white.

‘What’d you tell him, huh?’ Murphy demanded, shaking me as he addressed Dornan. ‘What lie did you come up with this time,
D
?’

Dornan cocked the hammer on his gun. In the quiet, the metallic sound echoed off the walls.

‘Mind your own business,’ Dornan ground out. ‘Or I’ll decorate the wall with your fucking skull.’

Murphy scowled, letting go of me and storming out. Dornan kicked the door shut behind him, and it slammed forcefully in his wake.

‘Feel free to breathe now,’ Dornan said, holstering his gun. I realised I’d been holding my breath, and I let it out in a loud whoosh.

We studied each other across the room. Something passed between us … something that made me want to cry, because his father was about to sell me. The same father whose men had killed my boyfriend, the love of my life.

Part of me demanded that I look away. That I break this stare, stop whatever was happening between us.

‘You didn’t come back,’ I said quietly. And now, it was too late. Maybe it had always been too late.

He smiled. ‘Been busy.’

I nodded.

‘You look pretty,’ he said, his voice a little strained.

And I suddenly remembered why.
Damn.

‘Apparently, I’m for sale. Murphy says he’d buy me,’ I said numbly. ‘What about you? Would you buy me, Dornan?’

His smile returned. I didn’t flinch as he stepped towards me. He leaned down, his lips at my ear. The next words that came from his mouth would define my very existence.

‘Baby,’ he whispered, ‘
I already did.
’

In the back of his mind, during the three days since he’d last seen Mariana, he’d been turning over a plan of what life might look like if he were fortunate enough to stop his father from selling the girl. He’d been holding onto an apartment in Santa Monica, a bachelor pad he’d won in a double-or-nothing game of poker five years ago, for a situation just like this. He’d managed to keep the apartment a secret from almost everyone, especially Celia, and he fucking loved it. It was a place of refuge, the calm away from whatever was brewing at the clubhouse or his own house. Even Bella didn’t know it existed — it was much more preferable to throw her over a table at the clubhouse when they did the dirty.

The last few days he had subjected the club whores to things he had never done before. He had hurt them, made them bleed, and he had liked it. But it had barely scratched the itch that was his desire for the curvy Colombian woman. If anything, it had made the itch worse. Impossible to scratch.

A tiny part of him was a little disturbed by the dark ideas that assaulted him on an hourly basis. He was slipping, losing control over his own thoughts, and he knew she was going to haunt his every waking moment until he could drive himself into that soft, wet spot between her legs.

He had this perverse fantasy that once she was with him he would be able to enact all the wicked fantasies he’d been imagining. He’d be able to stretch her out, restrain her limbs until they ached, and fuck her until she begged him to stop.

Not that he would.

He saw the power he could wield over her, and part of him lusted for it.

He didn’t let her pack any of her things — he didn’t want her wearing the cheap, gaudy shit Murphy had loaded her up with. He would buy plainer clothes, blacks and blues that would go beautifully with her light caramel skin. And with her black and blue bruises, if she didn’t obey him.

He was kind of hoping she wouldn’t obey him. Because he didn’t just want to hurt her. No, that would be too brutal.

He wanted to hurt her, and for her to enjoy the pain, and then he wanted to soothe her, over and over again.

Then again, maybe she would be a terrible prisoner. Maybe he would end up fucking her and killing her, dumping her body in the ocean, weighted with concrete. It was a possibility he’d prepared himself for. He’d never raped a woman, but he’d killed one. Several, in fact. And he had steeled himself for the potential shit storm that might be unleashed when he brought Mariana into his unforgiving world.

The ride to his Santa Monica apartment was exhilarating, an emotion that he rarely felt anymore. At any moment, he expected to see his father’s sleek Mercedes fly past, cut him off, and demand the girl be returned to the tiny little room underneath Emilio’s lavish compound. He’d ridden fast for that very reason, fast and hard, and he’d fantasised about Ana while her slender fingers curled around his waist, gripping him tightly.

So now, shut safely inside the confines of his apartment, they stood across from each other in the long, white tiled entrance hall.

She looked around the hallway, uncertain. ‘I can stay here?’

He tilted his head. ‘My father wants you to suffer. He let me take you because I bought you to be a club whore.’

‘A club whore?’ She raised her eyes to his, her hands were shaking. ‘Is that what you said to Emilio to stop the auction? That you would
buy
me for your club?’

He chuckled. ‘I didn’t buy you with money, doll. I bought you with a promise.’ He dipped his head so his lips were right beside her ear, speaking in a whisper. ‘A promise that I would make you suffer.’

Her eyes widened, and the devious pleasure he felt reached all the way to his cock and squeezed painfully. ‘I told my father I would take you to the clubhouse and let the boys use and abuse every inch of that pretty Colombian skin. Fuck you in every hole you’ve got. Make you bleed.’

She whimpered.

‘But here’s the thing,’ he said darkly, pulling back and down slightly so they were eye to eye. ‘We’re not at the clubhouse. Because I don’t want to share you.’

She swallowed, not moving. He caged her against the wall with his tattooed arms, the bright colours in stark contrast to her bare, bronze arms.

He saw the way she looked at him. He hadn’t imagined it. And the spark that passed between them … He
knew
that she would be his if he just played things right. If he made it seem like she had a choice.

He wanted her to choose him more than he’d ever wanted anything.

He tucked a stray hair behind her ear.

‘It’s your choice, Ana,’ he said. ‘I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’

She didn’t say a thing.

‘What’ll it be?’ he asked finally. He half expected her to rebel, tell him to take her to the clubhouse and let them destroy her, just so she’d have the satisfaction of saying no to him.

But he’d seen the desperation in her eyes the moment he mentioned the Gypsy Brothers clubhouse. He’d figured out her true fears. She didn’t want to be a club whore, a shell that got used up and tossed aside once it was ruined.

‘Do you promise?’ she asked softly.

‘Promise what, baby?’ His tone was conversational.

‘Promise that if I stay with you, you’ll protect me from them?’

He brushed a thumb against her lips and grinned. ‘I promise if you stay here with me, and you do as you’re told, I’ll protect you from the whole world.’

Tears formed in her eyes. Not enough to spill over to her cheeks when she blinked, just enough to make a thin, watery film over the dark blue.

She trembled. ‘Thank you.’

It made him feel like the biggest asshole in the entire world. He was taking advantage of this girl for his own sick purposes, giving her a choice between two different versions of hell. And she was thanking him?

‘Don’t thank me,’ he said gruffly. ‘Just don’t let me down by trying to run away. I don’t do second chances.’

She nodded, the relief on her face palpable. Goddamn it, couldn’t she be a little less grateful?

‘You’ll have to do some other shit too,’ he said. ‘Accounts and things. I told Emilio what you did for your father. The money laundering.’

Her face fell. He could tell she was upset he had divulged her secret.

‘It was the only way,’ he clarified. ‘Your skill set is in much higher demand than a club whore’s. You have a job, and your job helped get you out of being sold.’

She nodded. He’d never seen her this quiet. She seemed … shocked.

‘So …’ she began.

He raised his eyebrows in anticipation. ‘Mmm?’

‘So my job is to do accounts and pretend to be a whore,’ she said. ‘What’s your job? What do you actually do?’

Dornan snorted. ‘I’m a consultant.’

She smiled. There it was. A little of that fire came back into her eyes, made his heart do something weird inside his chest. ‘Oh, really?’ she teased. ‘Can I have your business card?’

He braced his clenched fists against the wall. Without a second thought, Dornan dipped his head lower and swooped on her lips, pressing his mouth to hers like it held the air he needed to breathe. He felt her stiffen momentarily, but he didn’t pull back. He waited one beat, two, and it was like something broke inside her. She melted against the wall, opening her velvety lips wider and meeting his tongue with hers. Her small hands wrapped around the back of his head as she kissed him with the same wild ferocity he had started with. They explored each other’s mouths, and held each other tight.

It didn’t make sense. She didn’t belong in his world. She was much too beautiful, and beautiful things always ended up broken with him. But here, alone, nobody knew. Nobody saw. It was just them.

Dornan eventually pulled away with great reluctance; one more second of a kiss like that and he’d be tearing her clothes off and pinning her to the wall with his achingly hard cock. He didn’t want to scare the shit out of her, not when they’d been in the apartment all of five minutes.

He gave her a devilish smile as he took a step back and drank her in. Dark blue eyes that watched him intently, heavy lidded after that kiss. Her lips slightly apart, cheeks flushed, her long coffee-coloured tresses mussed up from his big hands.

‘What was that?’ she asked, her voice a little strained.

‘My business card,’ he replied. ‘You can get me there any time.’

He liked the way she blushed when he said things like that.

She smiled at him, and his chest swelled.

Yeah. He had fucking saved her.

And now, she belonged to him.

Power.

For days I had had no power. I had had nothing.

And now,
he
had come back. He had taken me out of that hellhole, set me on the back of his bike and brought me here.

He had saved me.

We’d been on the road two, maybe three hours. Still wearing the blacked-out helmet that rendered me blind, I was completely unaware of where we were heading. I clung to Dornan like he was the shore and I was drowning, and with every moment we travelled further from Emilio’s compound, I felt like I could breathe a little easier.

Which was stupid, really. Because for all I knew, Dornan could’ve been taking me out into the wilderness to shoot me and bury the evidence.

I considered letting go of Dornan’s leather vest so I would fly off the back of the bike, through the air, until the hard, unforgiving asphalt broke my body and claimed me.

But something stopped me. I hung on for dear life, for hours, until I felt the bike slow and then come to a stop. I heard the ocean, or at least I thought I did.

‘Open your visor,’ Dornan said.

I hesitated for a moment, sure I had heard him wrong.

‘It’s okay,’ he added. ‘Open it. Look around.’

I flipped the blackened visor up, cold air rushing into the helmet. My eyes watered for a moment, unaccustomed to the wind.

We were in front of a beach. It was the middle of the night and the streets around us were empty, the line of stores and restaurants on one side completely deserted.

‘Where are we?’ I breathed.

‘Los Angeles,’ he said. He gunned the bike and rode off again, as I rested the side of my helmeted head on his back and watched the coastline pass us by.

After a while he made me shut the visor again and we rode for a while longer until the bike stopped again and he helped me dismount. Once we were inside the apartment he took the helmet off and for a moment I thought things might be okay, but then he had said the words ‘club whore’.

Hearing those two words slammed the door shut on the faint hope I’d had since we’d left the compound. Hope that he might let me go. Hope that it might all be some insane nightmare that I could wake up from.

But it was real.

Club.

Whore.

I’d trembled, remembering the way Murphy had held me down as I was waxed. A useless, painful gesture for an auction that didn’t happen. But it was still there, my reddened skin now smooth and hairless, and itching like crazy, a reminder that whoever decided to hold me down and rape me first would be able to see what they’d fashioned me into. A fuck-me doll. A piece of merchandise.

I couldn’t bear the thought of what they would do to me. Faceless men dressed in leather who would press themselves onto me so I couldn’t breathe, who would make sure that whatever they did hurt me so that I screamed.

But then he offered me a choice.

And, among all my fear, he had leaned down and kissed me.

And I had kissed him back.

But it was more than just a kiss.

He had taken me away from that horrible place, away from the auction and brought me here.

Dornan, surprisingly, was the one to break the moment. I saw the moon hanging low in the full-length window at the other end of the hallway we were standing in. And something else — something large and round glittered in the distance. A ferris wheel lit up in the night.

‘What is that?’ I murmured, craning my neck to see. Dornan started down the hallway, gesturing for me to follow. I didn’t move for a moment, watching him stride away with purpose. His leather cut hugged his solid shoulders, the white t-shirt underneath offering a peek at the tattoos that adorned his arms. His dark hair was shorter than it had been the last time I’d seen him just days ago, and I wondered if he’d cut it for me. Of course not. That would be ridiculous.

Though, this entire situation was ridiculous.

I followed him, passing a bedroom on one side, a living room on the other. At the end of the hallway the apartment opened up, a kitchen and breakfast bar on the right. The left side of the apartment housed a small leather sofa and a glass dining table with chairs tucked neatly beneath it. But the real view, the one that had made me divert my gaze from the delicious-looking man in front of me, was outside.

Dornan seemed to read my thoughts, opening the glass sliding door and stepping out onto a balcony big enough to hold a table, two chairs and him, with room left over. We were on the second storey, and beneath us the ocean lapped at the shoreline lazily. I stepped out behind him, greeted by fresh salty air that stuck to my skin in tiny droplets of moisture.

The apartment itself was nothing fancy, but to a girl who’d been cooped up in a cell for the better part of a week, it was beautiful.

‘Is this where you live?’ I breathed, coming to stand beside him at the edge of the balcony.

My question seemed to amuse him. He took his eyes from the water to look at me.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘it’s where you live, now.’

Instinctively, as I had always done before, I put my hand to my chest, searching for my locket. Damn. The events of the past week slammed into me, and I gripped the balcony when my knees turned to liquid. It was only a moment, but he noticed.

‘You all right?’ he asked, and his concern killed me. I nodded, my hand still resting over the bare space where my locket used to sit; where my well-worn photo of Luis had rested. Gone. All of it, gone.

I kept swallowing, trying to clear the lump in my throat, but it wouldn’t go away. My grief consumed me like wildfire, tears spilling from my eyes as I stared at the water below. I thought of climbing up on the railing and stepping off, landing on the sidewalk that ran along the beach. I raised myself up on tiptoes to get a good look underneath me. Not high enough. I’d probably break bones, but I doubted I would die.

Don’t be an idiot
, I chastised myself. I couldn’t kill myself.

‘What was his name?’ Dornan asked. ‘Your boyfriend.’

I swiped my hand across my face, wiping away the tears that clung to my skin.

‘Este,’ I said, my stomach twisting violently at the mention of him. ‘Esteban.’

Dornan nodded. ‘It’s probably not worth much, but I’m sorry for what happened to him.’ His hand pressed into the small of my back, and I felt a little less alone.

‘I can’t close my eyes without seeing his face,’ I confessed. I felt guilty that I was even talking to him about Este, when it had been his father’s men who had gunned him down in the first place. ‘It was so unnecessary, you know? They didn’t need to shoot him. They didn’t need to hurt him at all. He was just in the way, so they killed him.’

I was disgusted with myself. Este had bled to death before me only a week ago, and now I was kissing a strange man in a darkened hallway?

‘And now I’m here with you and I just … kissed you, and he’s probably still laying in a morgue somewhere in the cold.’ I cried. I cried so hard, I could barely breathe, picturing my dead lover zipped into a bodybag and stacked in a fridge. He didn’t deserve that. Nobody did. He had been killed because he loved me.

‘Don’t feel bad,’ Dornan said. ‘I kissed you darlin’, remember? He’s not gonna haunt you for that.’

I thought about that for a few moments. Maybe he was right.

‘Nobody’d blame you for trying to survive. It’s the smart thing to do.’

‘Is that all it was?’ I asked. ‘Just the smart thing to do?’

It hadn’t felt smart, the way I had responded to him. The way I had been disappointed when he’d pulled away.

‘For you, maybe,’ he said, that amused glint back in his eye. ‘For me … I think that was the opposite of smart.’

‘So why’d you do it then?’ I asked boldly.

He laughed, the sound light and innocent, in complete contrast to his fierce demeanour. It floated away on the waves as the tide pulled out from the shore, and all too soon, it was quiet again.

He turned to me, his head cocked to the side slightly. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. He reached out, running his fingers along my arm. ‘You’re cold.’

I leaned into his touch for a fraction of a second, but guilt and revulsion tore me apart again. It was exhausting, this seesaw of emotions.

‘Isn’t your wife waiting for you?’ I asked, shrugging my arm away.

His smile vanished. He let his hand fall away from me slowly. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘She knows better by now.’

He gestured for me to step back inside, locking the door with a key as I moved past him into the apartment.

He looked down at the long black dress I was still wearing. My auction costume.

‘I’m gonna burn that fucking dress the next time I’m here,’ he said vehemently.

He turned to leave.

‘Wait,’ I said, suddenly terrified at the thought of being alone. ‘When are you coming back?’

He scooped up his helmet and walked down the hallway to the keypad by the door, punching in a combination of numbers. ‘When my wife lets me out of the house,’ he threw over his shoulder, slamming the door shut behind him.

And then, just like that, he was gone, my lips still burning from where he had kissed me. I held my fingers to my mouth, and felt them tremble.