I chewed the inside of my cheek. Cristiano was a god, and he called me perfection? He declared his loyalty to me when I’d fought him tooth and nail up until recently? I agreed more out of curiosity than anything. “Understood.”
“Jaz was half-dead when we found her. It has been a long and arduous road to rehabilitate her. It will be a while still before she lets a man touch her, and I’m one of the only people in the world she trusts. Eduardo and Alejo, too. So, no, she’s not, and never was, a mistress.” He drummed his fingers along the table’s wood edge. “She can be scrappy, but when it comes to learning more technical hand-to-hand combat, there are still too many triggers. Sandra, on the other hand, took to it very well. She wants to fight back.”
I curled my hands in my lap. I shouldn’t have brought Jaz and Sandra into this, but apparently, something about Cristiano with another woman changed the chemistry of my brain—and it had even in the beginning of our marriage. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sandra—I already told you her aunt sold her into prostitution—she doesn’t sleep well, so some nights, we stay up late strategizing how she’ll attack the ones who bought her years ago. She’s hoping to take down all of them on her own—and then her own family for the way they betrayed her.” He cocked his head. “That’s why you found her in my office so late at La Madrina. We were breaking down her strengths and weaknesses in the fight earlier that night.”
I had the infuriating urge to apologize again. It was a strange feeling for me, believing every word Cristiano said. But instinctively, I knew—he wouldn’t lie about this. The subject was too raw, and the evidence of his efforts to help was all around me.
He’d only ever shown such undeniable honesty with his kiss and his touch, when we’d each been stripped of anything but primal urges. I had never doubted our chemistry, but I had his words. I didn’t now.
“None of that changes the fact that you’ve been intimate with Tasha, and now she’s under this roof.” I never would’ve deigned to tell Cristiano how to live before, and even now, I faltered. It was my place, but it would take time to grow into this role. Time, and practice. “I don’t care if she saved your life,” I said. “It’s disrespectful for her to stay.”
His eyes scanned my face. “I told her our marriage was simply an arrangement between two families for the same reasons I told Senator Sanchez you’re a spoiled brat who doesn’t compare to the kind of women I can get.”
My face heated. “Then why didn’t you steal one of them?”
“You know why. Because I wanted you.” The buzz that came with hearing that never wore off. With Cristiano’s knuckles whitening against the table, and his lids lowering, I had to restrain from arching toward him. “Because even though marrying Natasha would’ve been a better business move,” he continued, “it never crossed my mind to marry anyone until Diego laid you at my feet. I knew you were bait, and I bit the hook anyway.”
Cristiano—hooked. I’d done something no other woman in the world had been able to, and I was sure many had tried. “Why me?” I whispered.
He undid the button at his collar with one hand. “No one else has been able to give me what I want.”
“More power?” My eyes dropped to the pulse at the base of his neck, the veins running along the back of his muscular hand. “No,” I said, answering my own question. “That’s not what you’re looking for. There’s no lack of powerful families with eligible daughters around here.”
“You’re not a spoiled brat. Nor did I make our arrangement solely for business reasons. I said those things, and I keep you at arm’s length in public, for your protection, Natalia.”
He slid one foot forward. His nearness, and his protectiveness, only made me want to be closer to him. I moved my sandal to graze the inner edge of his dress shoe. Making a fist in his lap, he ran the sole up my ankle. I couldn’t help my shudder. How could such an innocuous touch send a thrill up the inside of my leg?
“I don’t have many attachments.” His tone remained firm, but softened at the edges. “My cartel is one, but its people can fend for themselves. As you did when you were forced to. It’s why I go overboard with the safety measures. When someone suspects my weaknesses, they attempt to exploit them.”
I hadn’t forgotten Jaz’s words to me—that Cristiano loved me, even if he didn’t know it. Did he love me? And did he know it now? He’d been ordered to care for my family and me in the past—maybe all this was because he’d never stopped. “I’m a weakness of yours.”