Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
She felt high on his scent, the deep sounds of his breaths, and the euphoric heat of his body tucked against hers. “Are you still awake?”
He laughed, a rumbling delightful sound. “I doubt I’ll sleep tonight.”
“Why?”
“I want to enjoy this.” He twined his legs around hers and rubbed her back. “Feels too good.”
Her chest fluttered and stretched with his words. “Tell me about you. Your full name. Age. Childhood. Anything.”
“Tate Anthony Vades. Twenty-five. I grew up in a whorehouse.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
His gravelly voice drifted around her as he told her about The Velvet Den, the traumatic way he lost his virginity, and his admiration for the woman who raised him.
She talked about the citrus grove and her favorite memories of Matias and Camila.
He spoke about the roses inked on his arm and the whores he spent his childhood with.
Then she explained how Tiago administered her injections—in his room, without her clothes and weapons, with the safe only a few feet away. Locked. Inaccessible. She’d never seen inside it.
As the night crept by, they got to know each other through words. And kissing. He kissed her often. Lazy, unassuming kisses without urgency or intention. Kissing for the sole purpose of expressing affection.
He told her about his house and his roommates—four men and a woman. Then he kissed her again, his hands never leaving her body and his arms tightly wound around her back.
“I want to call Matias,” he breathed against her lips.
She knew why. In just a couple short hours, she would be back with Tiago where Tate couldn’t protect her, couldn’t control what happened to her, and that didn’t sit well with a man like him. But if he made that call, Matias would come to Caracas and risk his life and that of his men to extract her from Tiago’s world. And for what purpose? To free a dying woman?
She couldn’t even consider threatening Camila’s happiness until she knew there was a chance of survival.
“Wait for the blood test,” she said. “If it reveals a diagnosis and treatment, I’ll go wherever you tell me to go. How long will it take to get the results back?”
“Several days.” His jaw flexed against hers. “I don’t like this.”
“I know.” She snuggled closer, burrowing against his chest. “But I like this. I’ve never slept in a bed with a man.”
He hummed a growly sigh and squeezed her butt. “I’ll be your first and your last.”
What did that mean? She lifted her head. “Why?”
“As long as I’m alive, I’ll be the only man in your bed.”
She stared at him, lips parting, and blinked.
“Close your mouth and go to sleep.” He gripped her neck and pressed her cheek to his chest.
“You’re a Neanderthal.”
“I’ve been called worse. Now sleep.”
And she did. It was the best sleep she’d ever had, and so was the next night, and the next.
For the next five nights, it was just him and her and the protective bubble he built around them.
She went to the compound for her injections in the mornings and the mandatory dinners in the evenings. While in Tiago’s presence, she exaggerated her illness, moaning and stumbling and feigning vertigo until he sent her home.
And Tate was always there, waiting for her.
He stocked her apartment with food and necessities, added discreet bolts on the insides of the doors, and drew her blood when the test kit arrived.
Now it was a waiting game, a delay of action until the results came back. They bided their time in her tiny windowless space, talking, eating, sleeping, and exploring each other emotionally and physically.
His hunger for her was insatiable. They fucked daily and nightly, in every manner of motion, mood, and position. And holy hell, the man loved to kiss. She was kissed more in those five days than in the previous thirty years of her life.
It was five days of intoxicating, Tate-induced bliss. She never wanted it to end.
But like all good things…
The old adage got it right.
Except her good thing didn’t just come to an end. It ripped open and bled out in a devastation of pain.
CHAPTER 18
“Feeling better tonight?” Tiago studied Lucia from across the table in his private dining room.
She let him see the trembling in her hand as she pushed away her empty plate. “No.”
It was the truth. Tonight was going to be a bad night. She felt it simmering inside her—the queasiness, the tremors, and the pinpricks numbing her lower body.
The last time she lost mobility, he left her on the floor in the common area of the compound, paralyzed, vulnerable, unable to move her legs to walk home.
“I don’t feel well at all.” She shifted to the edge of the seat and craned her neck for a better view of the hall outside the dining room. “I’m ready to go home.”
Armed guards lined the corridor. Three times more men than usual. Restless energy buzzed through them as they fidgeted and whispered to one another. Something was wrong.