The helicopter wobbled, and she leaned away, tilting her head as she stared at Tate. “How did you get to Colombia so quickly?”
“I’ve been in Bogota since you left,” Tate said. “Waiting for this guy to fly me to you.”
“Oh.” Her eyebrows drew together. “Do Liv and Van and the others know?”
“Yeah.” Tate picked at a hole in his jeans. “I filled them in after Van dropped you off.”
“Bet you had a good laugh when I had that chip put in my tooth.” Her jaw hardened. “That damn thing cost me a lot of money.”
Tate grimaced. “Sorry about that.”
She blew out a breath. “This is a lot to take in.”
“You wouldn’t have come to me any other way.” Matias gripped her hand. “I couldn’t capture you, couldn’t chain you to my bed and force you to love me. It would’ve created a huge ugly thing between us. So I devised a plan that would bring you to Colombia, one that wouldn’t put you in a situation where you’d be consumed with trying to escape.”
“Wow,” she whispered, staring at their entwined hands. “Fucking brilliant, really. I never once tried to escape. My interest was solely on you and your slaves.”
Exactly.
Tate angled his body toward the window and closed his eyes as a smile played on his lips.
“You looked past my criminal activities.” Matias traced her fingers where they curled around his. “The weapons, drugs, torture, my position in the cartel—all of it. You wouldn’t have accepted any of that had I knocked on your door and explained it to you.”
“You’re right.” Her grip tightened, and the vertical lines between her eyebrows deepened. “I probably would’ve stopped calling you if you’d told me you were a capo. But that doesn’t mean I’m not angry about your secrecy.”
“I’ll make it up to—”
The soft weight of her hand covered his mouth.
“You’re going to make it up to me by stepping out of my way when I take over your anti-slavery operation.” She raised her brows in challenge.
He pulled her hand down and held on to it. “How about a compromise? I’ll stand by your side while we run this thing together. It’ll be one of my priorities, but I can’t leave the cartel. I have too many enemies. If I walked away from this life, I would lose the protection and resources it gives me. It would be a life on the run, and I wouldn’t be able to keep you safe the way I need to. Believe me, mi vida, I will chain you to my bed before I sacrifice your safety.”
For the first time since she stepped onto the helicopter, her eyes shone bright.
“I never asked you to leave this life, but sometimes…” She leaned up and peppered his mouth with quick electric kisses. “Sometimes I might ask you to chain me to your bed.”
THE NEXT MORNING, CAMILA stood in Matias’ closet—their closet—and stared at the door that hid skeletons. It’d been a low priority on her list of things to puzzle out, and he’d said she would have access when she was ready. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready.
She continued to stare at the mysterious door as she dressed for the day. A simple white sundress. Flip-flops. No bra or panties, since he had a habit of ripping them in his haste to remove them. And no collar because she didn’t find it in its usual resting place beside the bed.
He always removed it at night—a thoughtful thing to do since the stiff leather was uncomfortable to sleep in. But she felt naked without it. Disconnected from him.
He wasn’t around to ask about it. A few hours earlier, he’d left her utterly exhausted and satisfied after waking her with his mouth on her pussy. As she’d drifted back to sleep, he’d kissed her and told her to find him when she was ready for the day.
She smiled as she strode out of the suite and wandered the halls, searching for him. She passed dozens of guards and other cartel members, and no one gave her a questioning look as to why she was collarless and strolling alone. Had he made some kind of announcement?
Twenty minutes later, she found him on the terrace by the pool, deep in conversation with Nico and Tate.
Tate.
Seeing him here really fucked with her reality. In a good way. Her worlds had collided, but instead of everything crumbling down around her in a fiery crash, it all just kind of…gelled.
Even so, she’d had a long talk with him and Matias on the flight home about how all their planning behind her back was the same as lying, and lying was the opposite of trust, and if they pulled that shit again, she wouldn’t be as forgiving.
On the far side of the terrace, Matias sat with his back to her. As she emerged from the interior living room, he turned immediately, like he had some kind of internal radar tuned in to her location.
His white t-shirt pulled across his muscled shoulders and put his gorgeous ink on display, giving him a rough and dangerous look that made her heart shiver. He was powerful and infuriatingly domineering, but he was also so deeply sentimental she felt like a cold-hearted bitch in comparison.
He gave her a wink that liquefied her insides. Then he turned back to his conversation.
A quick scan of the terrace revealed two paths to reach him. One would take her around the left side of the lounge chairs. It was a few extra steps out of the way, but far more appealing than the other choice.
If she took the direct path alongside the pool, she would pass Yessica and the bevy of giggling women in string bikinis. Since she hadn’t left Matias’ side over the past three weeks, his presence had served as a buffer between her and these women. A conversation with them was overdue.
She looked at the safer path longingly.
Don’t wimp out, Camila. Show them your teeth.
Squaring her shoulders and straightening her spine, she chose the path of most resistance.
The giggling stopped as she approached the lounge chairs, and four pairs of mascara-caked eyes locked on her.
“I heard Matias removed your collar.” Yessica fingered an olive out of her martini—at ten in the morning?—and popped it in her mouth.
So Matias had made an announcement, but it could’ve been anything. The slave is off her leash. The slave was never a slave. The slave is my life, and I’m going to marry her and have lots of babies…
She sighed. How to reply?
Touching a hand to her naked throat, she went with honesty. “I miss it already.”
Matias sat some thirty feet away, his upper body twisted in the chair and hands gripping the armrests as if moving to stand. She gave him a sharp shake of her head, and he relaxed, but didn’t turn away.
A warm wind rustled across the terrace, rippling the water in the pool and producing a backdrop of whooshing noises. She doubted he could hear her from where he sat.
“Don’t get too comfortable.” One of Yessica’s friends, a pretty blonde, adjusted the strap of her red bikini top. “He’s not a one-woman kind of man.”
“Oh really?” Camila kept her tone light and playful as her stomach boiled with acid. “How’s that?”
“Well, we’ve all fucked him.” The blonde gestured at the other three women. “He visits lots of beds.
Never sticks around.” She shrugged. “He’s the boss. Too important to be tied down.”
Camila tried to ignore the twitch in her eye and the pang in her chest as her smile strained her face. She focused on the fact that this woman had casually mentioned Matias’ role as the boss in front of his supposed slave. Now she really wanted to know the specifics of his announcement.
“But he seems to prefer Yessica.” Another blonde plucked an olive from her bloody mary and tossed it in Yessica’s modest cleavage.
They all laughed as Camila tried her damnedest to keep her fists from bloodying their noses.
“He makes his rounds, but he always comes back to me.” Yessica stretched in the lounge chair, her tiny swimsuit revealing far more of her Latina curves than it covered. “I’ll just hang out here until he comes in me…I mean, comes to me again.”
“Huh.” Camila gave her a thoughtful look. “When was the last time he came in you?”
“It’s been…Oh, you know.” Her eyes darted away, and she grinned, but it was taut at the corners. “He holds out for a while then he comes to me all pissed off and sexy. Sweet Jesus, that man gives good angry sex.”
Camila’s stomach threatened to hurl. She felt Matias gaze hot on her face, but she refused to look at him. It was crucial that she establish her position here without his dominating interference.
“And good gifts, too.” Yessica’s eyes sparkled. “He always gives me dresses and pearls and makeup—”
“Does he give you the belt?” Camila asked sweetly.
She really didn’t want to hear this answer, but she needed to understand if Yessica had been just an orgasm to him or if she was one of the women he’d shared a more intimate relationship with. The kind that involved pain and acceptance and trust.
“A belt?” Yessica pursed her lips. “You mean, does he beat me?”
“Yes. Did he whip your ass with a belt?”
She snorted then exaggerated a full-body shudder. “No, sweetheart.”
“Interesting.”
“Why is that interesting?” She narrowed her eyes.