Thirty minutes later, she swallowed down the last bite of egg soup and leaned back in the chair on the balcony. It was the best changua she’d ever tasted, filling every crevice in her stomach with rich, milky warmth.
A temperate breeze stirred the humidity to a comfortable level, and the landscape pulsed with the sway of large fronds and the bellow of frogs. But the high-pitched, repeating shrills in the distance sounded like something was dying.
“What’s that noise?” She reached for her coffee mug.
“Tinamous.” He wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. “Mountain hens. They lay freaky alien-looking eggs with an unusual iridescent shimmer that changes color at different angles.”
“So basically they lay eggs that scream, Hey, look over here! Eat me!”
The corner of his mouth curled up.
“Are they safe to eat?” She wasn’t still considering going Rambo, but a backup plan wouldn’t hurt.
“The birds or the eggs?”
“Both?”
“Yes.” He studied her for an unnerving moment. “Finding food would be the least of your worries out there.”
“Same could be said for in here.” She pushed away the soup bowl and met his eyes. “You never carry a phone, yet you always answered when I called.”
“I don’t need one anymore.” His timbre deepened. “You’re here now.”
He’d only carried a phone for her? She folded her arms across her chest, refusing to be sucked in by the sentiment in that.
“Every device on this property is locked down.” He touched his fingers together like a steeple. “To make a call or access the Internet, two-factor authentication is required—a pin number and fingerprint scan.”
Fuck, there went that idea. She pushed her shoulders back. “I want to call my friends and let them know I’m alive.”
“Not yet.”
Her pulse jumped. “Does the yet mean there might be a yes?”
“Yes.”
“Gracias.” Now for the hard question. “Can I get a private meeting with Nico?”
“No.” His tone was final, his direct eye contact impenetrable.
“Because you’re afraid to ask him or because you don’t want me to talk to him?”
“Neither.”
Interesting. He’d said the inner circle knew about her history with him and that he kept nothing from them. Maybe he just didn’t want to be left out of the meeting. Damn men and their egos. She couldn’t think of another way to go about this, though. It wasn’t like she could snuggle up to Nico’s chair at dinner and demand a meeting from the kingpin. Not without drawing the attention of forty scary-as-fuck hitmen.
“Okay.” She sipped her tinto, savoring the syrupy cinnamon-coffee concoction. “I want an audience with you and Nico. In private. No one needs to know about it.”
He leaned forward, chewing a bite of bacon, studying her. “Why?”
“To present arguments against human trafficking. Offer alternatives. A different perspective.”
“You think you can win him to your way of thinking?” His eyes squinted, lit with an inner glow.
“I want the opportunity to try.”
Determination and heart—that was what she was made of. If she could interest Nico in the cause, it might distract him from the effect.
If not, she’d paint the glass walls with his blood.
“All right.” Matias leaned back in the chair with a pensive look softening his features. “I’ll think about it.”
“Today?”
“Later.”
Later didn’t come when he gave her a tour of the property and made her kneel in a corset beside his chair at dinner on the veranda. There was no later when he fucked her against the post, in the bed, and any damn place he pleased.
The wait for later plodded into days. Days twisted into unbearable impatience. But time was inconsequential, so she bade it by being a timid little slave when they were outside of the suite, watching and analyzing. When they were alone, she shared her past with him and didn’t push when he refused to discuss the present and future.
Later ended up being two weeks later, but the wait paid off.
He took her to meet with Nico.
MATIAS STRODE ALONG THE PATH on the east side of the property, his boots crunching gravel and an anxious hum in his veins. The gray sky chased away some of the afternoon heat, but the humidity hung on, pasting his thin Henley to his skin.
He released the buttons at his neck and glanced at the woman walking beside him.
A sheen of perspiration glistened on Camila’s adorable nose, her eyes sharp and focused on the path ahead. Her long strides exuded self-possession, though her rigid posture suggested she was beating herself with a thousand over-analyzing thoughts.
He hated the distance between them whenever they stepped outside of his suite. It was necessary, but she took it to the next damn level, refusing to look at him or acknowledge him unless he commanded it.
With an irritated huff, she pulled on the thick leather collar around her throat. While it was there as a statement for others, every time he put it on her, it made his dick hard. Even so, he always removed it when they were alone. Someday, she would choose to wear one, a permanent one—for her and him only, fuck everyone else.
“Camila.”
The command in his tone lifted those huge soulful eyes. He remembered the way they’d smoldered this morning, dazed with desire, glassy with uncertainty, her thighs trembling and hips rocking as he licked her cunt and fingered her to orgasm.
“I assume you have a speech prepared for this meeting.” He clasped his hands behind his back, head forward, and watched her at the edge of his vision.
Her eyebrows pulled together as she gazed back at the estate, zeroing in on windows near Nico’s rooms. “Isn’t Nico’s office that way?”
She scanned the perimeter of trees, pausing on each of the three armed guards who trailed out of earshot. There were five more chaperons she couldn’t see. If she knew they were following, she didn’t let on.
Matias’ suite offered the most privacy, but he wanted this meeting to take place in his personal, most cherished location on the property. He’d never led her this deep into the jungle. She had no idea this little piece of heaven existed.
He’d debated whether or not it was too early to show it to her, that maybe he was revealing his hand too soon. It was her rejection he feared the most. If she didn’t give him the reaction he longed for…
He’d man the fuck up and keep working on her.
“We’re meeting him off-site.” He steered her to the left at a fork in the trail, leading her deeper into the shadowed jungle.
The gravel thinned to dirt, softening their steps, and the thick canopy of smooth oval leaves created a cool shade. He’d taken her all over the property since she’d arrived, never leaving her side when they stepped out of his private rooms. She’d sulked about that for the first few days, as if she’d expected him to give her security access to the entire estate and just let her roam free.
As long as there was still a threat living among them, she wouldn’t be leaving his sight.
He stepped closer to her, resting a hand on the curve of her lower back. “Did you prepare a rhetoric of bullet points and pretentious language for Nico?”
The neckline of her t-shirt had slipped off her shoulder, exposing her bra strap. He wanted to set his teeth in the delicate dip between the collar and her ear and bite down just to hear her breath catch.
“I couldn?
??t pull off pretentious if I tried.” Her jaw clenched, released. “Never received my high school diploma, remember?”
Several times over the last two weeks, she’d spoken late into the night about her captivity with Van Quiso. Though Matias had learned the details years ago, she didn’t know that. It killed him to hear the specifics of her abuse all over again, especially whispered in her soft voice, but he’d held her tightly in bed, absorbing every word, every shiver and teary-eyed glance she shared with him.
She’d also told him things he hadn’t known, like how she completed the remainder of her high school curriculum on-line and lamented the fact that she couldn’t receive a diploma since she was still considered missing.
While her tenacity never ceased to impress him, it twisted a hellacious knot in his stomach. No matter what she said in this meeting, Nico was going to challenge her.
To what end would she go to succeed in her mission?
“You’re going to wing it, then?” His chest thickened with all the things he wanted to tell her.
“I’m going to stand before him as a slave, not a politician.”
“That’s your strategy? Persuade him with your heart?”
“I know it sounds illogical. I mean, he’s the Restrepo kingpin, for fuck’s sake.” She rolled her lips between her teeth. “But he’s also a person, and people aren’t rooted in logic. We’re creatures of emotion, bristling with selfish wants, preconceptions, and brutality. But inside every man is possibility.” She lifted a stiff shoulder. “I’ll just talk to him in terms of what he wants.”
While everything she said was smart and fascinating and maybe even partly correct, it sat in his gut like a red hot coal.
He slammed to a stop. “You didn’t take that approach with me.”
“Because you already had what you wanted.” She spun toward him, with a finger hooked under the collar and resentment in her eyes.
He grabbed her throat. “This”—he squeezed the leather against her neck—“is fucking window dressing, and you know it. I want the real thing, Camila. I want your submissive soul, sighing and replete, in my hands.”
Her face paled as she gasped and clawed at his fingers around her throat. “I can’t…I won’t survive that.”