The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) (26 page)

“
Mierda, me vuelves loco
.” He jerked her head back and kissed her when she gasped, taking her mouth twice as hard as she had taken his. When he broke away, he gave her a hot look and asked, “What do you think this is?”

She leaned in for another kiss. “I dunno.”

He pulled back, not giving her what she wanted, and asked, “Really? You haven’t figured it out yet?”

“Not yet.” She remembered he’d asked the same question last night. “Tell me.”

Chuito pressed his lips to hers. “
Calor
. Heat.” He sucked on her bottom lip and whispered, “
Estás caliente
.” He ran a hand down her back, tracing the line of her spine. “Very hot. So fucking hot.”

She smiled, her lips still brushing his when she understood what he was saying. “Not cold?”

“Never cold,” he promised her. “Always caliente. To me you’re fire.”

“Does it burn?”

“Yeah, it burns.” He caressed her back again. “So much it scars.”

“It scars me too.” She sighed, knowing what he was saying, that it left a mark, one impossible to forget. “We’ll be scarred together, okay?”

“Ay, mami.” Chuito sighed rather than agree, but then he leaned back on one arm, making his body hers to use as she wanted. It was too much to resist, and she moved over him, ignoring the sting of too much sex as she slid down on his cock. She watched through hooded eyes as Chuito’s head fell back and he groaned, “
Coño, que rico
.”

It was slow at first, with Chuito’s hand on her ass, guiding her body the same as he did when they danced. She was soft, he was hard, and together it worked. Alaine dug her nails into Chuito’s shoulders and buried her face in the curve of his neck as shuddering, gasping moans of ecstasy slipped past her lips.

They stayed tangled together, suspended just outside the oblivion of release long enough that sweat dampened Chuito’s temples and made the slide of skin against skin slick.

Chuito sat up fully once more. He tugged her hair, forcing her head back, and licked a long line up from the base of her neck to her chin. Then he kissed her again, rough and hungry.

“You gonna come?” he asked her, arching his hips up to make his point.

She shook her head. “I don’t want it to end.”

He was supposed to promise her it would never end.

Instead he growled, “
Que se joda
,” and wrapped both arms around her, holding her closer against him. Alaine tightened her arms around his neck when he flipped them over and pushed her into his mattress. He grabbed her knee, opening her wide, and thrust in deep, making Alaine arch and moan against her will. He pulled her arms from around his neck, forcing one wrist against the mattress, and said, “I’ll make you come, then.”

He fucked her hard, fast, until she could barely catch her breath from the onslaught of pleasure. She bowed under him too easily, crying out when the ecstasy slammed into her. All heat, so fiery all she could do was surrender to it as it consumed her.

It consumed him too.

Chuito wasn’t loud, but there was something in his low, grunting sounds of pleasure that made all the fine hairs on her arms stand on end as if she’d been shocked from just how intensely he could turn her on.

When it was over, Chuito pulled out of her too soon.

She wanted to stay like that forever.

But then he rolled her over so that she was tucked into the curve of his arm, her head resting on his biceps. He pulled the sheets up over both of them, and it was intimate, hiding there under the covers with him, the stickiness of sex still between her thighs.

She
really
needed a shower.

She let Chuito hold her instead.

It felt too good not to.

She closed her eyes, once again just feeling the moment for as long as she could until sleep claimed her.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chuito sat on the edge of his bed, still naked, looking at the shades of gray staining the sky through the window. The clock on the nightstand said it was past four in the morning. For a moment he remembered being young and wild, looking at the sky when it was like this, just on the verge of being dangerous.

The night hid sins.

The morning exposed regret.

Like he had when he was younger, he tried to will the sun to stay down, to give him more time, but it always rose. Then he would crawl into bed and try to hide from it in sleep.

Until sleep became his enemy too.

He couldn’t hide from his crimes. They always found him, no matter how tightly he closed his blinds against the sunshine.

“Chu?”

He flinched, having thought she was still asleep.

“Yeah?” he asked without turning to her.

“Are you okay?”

“You never ate dinner,” he mumbled almost to himself. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Alaine rolled up to him and wrapped an arm around his waist. “Are you going to sleep?”

He shook his head. “That’d probably be a bad idea. You go back to sleep. I just want to sit here for a while.”

“Is this about Miami?” she asked softly. “You can talk to me about it.”

He shook his head again rather than respond.

“Please talk to me,” she urged, her fingers on his stomach gentle as she caressed him, running them over his Slayer tattoo as if she knew it on touch alone. “Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t think you can help, mami.”

“But do you think you owe me an explanation, or were you planning on leaving without telling me anything?”

He arched an eyebrow at that. “Is that what Tino told you?”

“Yeah.”

Chuito sighed. “He thinks he’s helping. I should beat him anyway.”

She moved her hand down to his hip and traced her fingers over the O in his Omertá tattoo. “I didn’t know you had this one.”

“It’s new,” he admitted.

“It’s like Tino’s.”

“Yup,” he agreed.

“What does it mean?” she asked slowly, as if she had an idea already.

“I have a lot of ink, mami,” he said with a shake of his head. “You’ve never asked what any of it means. That’s the one you chose?”

“Does the rest of it have meaning?”

“You think I’d get ink without meaning?” He turned his head and gave her a look. “You think I just got it ’cause I was bored?”

She gave him a smile, making it obvious she knew more than she let on. She reached up, touching the Puerto Rican flag on the back of his neck the way she was apt to do. She swept her thumb over the word
Boricua
beneath it. For the first time he really bothered to notice how she did it, lovingly, with a sense of appreciation he had probably taken for granted.

“Pride,” she said knowingly, still caressing the word
Boricua
like it meant something to her too. “Lots of pride.”

“Mmm,” he hummed.

Then she reached around, running her fingers down his chest, finding the cross over his heart. He looked down, seeing her palm spread out over it as she whispered, “Love.”

“Regret,” he corrected her. “Lots of regret.”

She rubbed her thumb over his brother’s name. “And love.”

“Okay,” he agreed, because he couldn’t argue with that.

She reached for his left shoulder next, finding the star that decorated it. She got up on her knees and touched the one that matched on the other side. “And these?”

“They were my first,” he admitted as he turned and gave her a smile. “I was fourteen.”

“That’s very young.” She frowned at him. “What tattoo parlor gave you those at fourteen?”

“I got ’em in the back of a warehouse. Any good gang has a tattoo artist. They mean I’m a thief, mami. They mean I’m bad news.”

“Fourteen was a long time ago.”

He laughed and turned back to her once more. “Yeah, I’ve gotten a lot worse since then.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he said with a wince. “So much worse.” He looked out the window and then glanced around the bedroom he had been imprisoned in for the past five years. “This is all a lie to you. It was a lie to me too.”

“You can stay here, Chu.”

“I cannot stay here,” he said with grim certainty, the pain of it making his chest hurt, because admitting it to her made it true. “Even if my cousin wasn’t in trouble, which he is, I shouldn’t stay.”

Rather than argue, Alaine reached for his forearm, spreading her open palm over the Los Corredores snake on his arm.

He laughed bitterly. “I can’t wait to hear this one.”

“Loyalty?” she suggested.

He nodded. “That too.”

“What else?”

He looked to his arm, seeing the head of the snake peeking out past her spread fingers. “Satisfaction.”

“That’s it?”

“Vindication,” he went on, still staring at the way she touched something so dark with nothing but love. It almost burned him to see her hand on his Los Corredores ink, and he wanted it to burn her too. To make her run away from it as fast as she could. “Revenge.” He let the word bleed out of him like the poison it was. “Hatred.” He closed his eyes, remembering how he had earned all the blood drops that covered the full expanse of the snake’s back. “Murder.”

Her fingers twitched on his arm, and he opened his eyes to look at her hand as the stillness descended on them. He waited for her to pull it away, but she didn’t. She just stayed where she was in the ominous silence after his confession.

“Actual murder?” she whispered.

“Actual murder.” He nodded rather than deny it, even if he was leaving himself wide open to prison for the rest of his life if she decided to do what any normal gringa from a place like Garnet would do. “This tattoo means I’m a killer, Alaine.”

“But I thought it was just your gang tattoo. Your cousin has one too.”

He turned back to her, seeing her eyes were wide and stunned in the darkness. “Yes, he does. Did you notice the difference between mine and his?”

“Yours is finished.”

He shifted on the bed and put his thigh up on the mattress to fully face her as he held out his forearm to her. He grabbed her hand and forced her finger to run down the body of the snake once more, making her touch his sins rather than ignore them. “You have to earn the blood drops. Some Los Corredores can retire without getting any, but most have a few. They’re easy to get in the hood. Someone tries to jump you while you’re dealing. You defend yourself, and if you’re lucky, you get a blood drop. If not, the other muchacho’s getting the ink, and your mamá’s burying you. If a gang war goes down, you can earn a lot real fast
if
you live to talk about it. Or maybe you’re el diablo and you earn so many you run out of room.”

Alaine touched the last two ink drops that were outside the snake on her own, tracing her fingers over the blood drops on either side of his Los Corredores head like a woman who knew his tattoos very well. “You got these after you moved here.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I did.”

“Chu—”

“You should’ve stuck with the church muchachos, Alaine.” His voice cracked as he said it, because even with his crimes laid bare, he didn’t want to see her with someone else. “And I should’ve loved you enough to push you away. I’m selfish. Most thieves are. I wanted to stay here with you in this prison forever. Even if it hurt you.”

“God forgives sins,” she said almost to herself, as if looking for an excuse. “If you repent.”

“I don’t want to repent,” he admitted harshly. “I like my sins. The blood on my arm means I got to kill the motherfuckers who destroyed my family. That matters to me. Very much. It matters so fucking much I am willing to go to hell rather than repent for them. I want
to keep
my sins.”

“Would you repent for me?” she whispered, her voice quivering with emotion. “To spend eternity with me?”

He was silent for a long time as he looked at his arm. Then, almost as if he were in a dream, he shook his head and admitted, “No, not even for you. I will not apologize for what I did. I am not asking a God that has
never
been my friend for forgiveness after he took my brother and Tiá Camila from me. Screw him.”

“This really is a ticket to hell.” She sounded so shocked by the revelation, as if she hadn’t been listening to him for five years. “You said I had to buy a ticket to hell to be with you. You meant it.”

“I did, yeah,” he agreed, remembering the angry twenty-year-old gangster from long ago making that offer to Alaine. “Luckily you’re smarter than that. I’m gonna move back to Miami. You’re gonna stay here and find someone who deserves you. I’m sorry I made it harder. I should’ve left
before
I touched you.”

“I don’t get a choice?” she asked him, sounding hurt by the suggestion. “After what happened tonight, you just decide for me like a caveman?”

He opened his mouth, stunned, before he tilted his head and gave her a look of disbelief. “Did you hear what I just confessed to you?”

“I heard you,” she assured him. “It’s like a war. You said it was like a war. How is a gang war different from any other war? You were protecting your family.”

“I wasn’t protecting my family. I was avenging my family. There’s a difference. I did it for revenge. I am
not
nice. The man you think you love is capable of terrible things.” He gestured to the tattoo on his hip. “And this ink, this brand-new ink, means I will never be allowed to be nice. I can never live the lie for you. I can never pretend I wasn’t that gangster who smoked all those motherfuckers for killing my family. It means the mafia owns me forever. I am never getting out. I am going to be a gangster until I die, Alaine.”

She opened her mouth and then closed it in horror. “Why’d you get it, then?”

“It was the only way to get my cousin out,” he explained, thinking for one insane moment that she might understand. “I committed myself to them so they would get him out. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Why does he get out and you don’t?” She sat up, making it clear she didn’t understand at all. “Why would you do that? You traded our happiness for his. Why would you do something that jeopardized
our
lives?”

“Because he deserves it more than I do,” he said, realizing right then how much he believed it. “And he’s a better person than me. Marcos is trying to save every teenage gangbanger in Miami. What the fuck am I doing? Fighting? Lying to you?”