8
Rafael
Her chest sunk, her body dropping as if she might fall where she stood. She caught herself, her bottom lip trembling as tears trailed down her flushed cheeks. I'd known the moment I went to bed that I'd taken my life in my hands by leaving the shards there.
I needed to know what Isa would do, given a choice, and the fact that, despite all I'd done, she couldn't bring herself to truly hurt me spoke volumes about the feelings that still consumed her.
They were just hidden beneath the surface of her anger. Of her fear.
She'd chosen to run instead, proving something I wanted to show her. Something she needed to discover for herself.
No matter what she did, or where she tried to go, there would be no getting offEl Infiernowithout my knowledge. If I wanted it that way, she would never leave the fucking island again.
"Do you understand now, mi princesa?" I asked, slowly closing the distance between us. She backed up a step, as though she might try to flee again. Stopping herself at the last possible moment, a ragged moan tore from her lips as she forced her body to be still despite the fear waging war on her body.
"Why wouldn't they help me?" she asked. The innocence in the question tugged at whatever remained of my heart. My poor Isa was so naïve to the ways of the world, so lost with the wide eyes of her youth, that she didn't realize the simple truth that drove our world to spin.
People were selfish. She'd spoken the words to me once, but now she would fully understand the truth of it. "Because I put food on their table. Because I amEl Diablo,and they worship me as their King."
Her legs shook as she fought to remain upright, pushing through her fear of what was coming as I closed the distance between us. She jolted when I reached up a hand to cup her cheek, running my thumb through the tears on her cheekbones as she turned stunning eyes to mine.
They were always vibrant, but they intensified when she cried, turning a bottled green that women everywhere would envy.
"I own this island. I own the people. If I wanted, they would watch me slaughter you and not so much as move a muscle to help you. There isnobodywho can save you from me, Princesa. It is time to come to terms with your new life." She didn't move as I touched my other hand to her hip, sliding my fingers inside the hem of her t-shirt.
Her eyes danced with movement as her brain tried to find an escape. As she frantically fought against the truth she now knew.
She'd be mine until her dying breath, and then I would chase her into the afterlife.
"Why are you doing this?" she murmured, her voice quivering as she asked the question. I slid my hands down to her thighs, grasping her around the backs of them and lifting her into my arms. "I don't understand what I did."
She was so close to breaking, so close to the point of no return where I needed to put her in order to rebuild her the way she'd always been meant to be. Anger pulsed in my body, uncontrollable and all consuming, but with her hollow eyes on mine and the sight of her lips quivering in my face, I lowered her to the ground more gently than I might have.
I wanted to shove her body into the tree and ravage her, to show her everything I would take and all that she would give me willingly. Instead, I placed her on the ground carefully and sealed my weight over hers.
The lights of the village twinkled out slowly as my people went to bed for the night, forced into their homes earlier than they might have planned because of Isa’s moonlit run.
She couldn’t possibly know they’d been celebrating my return with my bride to be in tow. ThatEl Diablowould finally have his heirs to continue the Ibarra legacy and give them the stability I’d been unable to provide without Isa.
I touched a hand to her hair, brushing it back gently as I pushed her legs wider and settled my hips between them. She flinched back from the touch, her body able to feel the violence barely restrained in me.
The time would quickly come when I showed Isa what it could mean to be with me. If she didn’t want to accept the man, then the nightmare would fuck her in the dirt and break her body into submission.
The choice was hers to make.
"I knew the moment I saw you that you would be my wife," I murmured. Her eyes widened at my words, and I wondered how they could come as a surprise. My intention to get her pregnant should have been enough to communicate to Isa that this was not a temporary situation for me.
"But I don't want to be your wife. I just want to go home." The words faded, the melancholy sound like that of a woman as she realized her home was gone. That it had been destroyed, and in a way it had.
It would never be her home again.
The shorts clinging to her sweat-slicked body kept me from touching what was mine. I grasped her around the back of her thighs, lifting her legs and ass off the ground to rest against my body. Sliding my hands into the elastic waistband, I pulled them down and over her ass while she stared up at me.
"You will never try to leave me again. I am sure you can see that it is pointless now," I said, watching as she nodded slowly. The movement was as hesitant as I would have expected, as if she was barely there.
Drifting away in the ocean, lost to the tide of my possession.
It would take the flames of Hell to bring her back to life, to resurrect her asMi Reinaso she could withstand the fires to stand by my side.