“That doesn’t make any sense. What are you—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Niall’s voice is full of barely restrained anger. I recognize the sound, except not that long ago, it was barely restrained desire instead.
“It does to me,” I insist. “You said that one night—about your world back home and the kind of men in it—whoareyou? Who do you work for that you’re making deals with my father?”
“Who are you?” Niall fires back, his handsome, chiseled face set in angry lines. “What the fuck were you doing, the eldest virgin daughter of bloodyRicardo Santiago, trying to pick up a man in a bar like theSangreas if you were just any girl trying to foist it off?”
“I wanted to choose!” The words explode out of me, so sharp and full of resentment that I see Niall flinch back as if I slapped him. “I’m going to be engaged to someone tonight, if you hadn’t heard. I don’t know who it is, but I can guarantee you it won’t be someone I want. I won’t get to choose my husband, but I could damn well choose whether or not he got to be my first. And I fucking did.” The words rip out of me, cutting the air between us. “I’m sorry I didn’t fill you in on the truth, Niall, but you can see why that was.”
“That doesn’t make it alright!” His voice cuts back, the two of us slicing the space between us to ribbons with our fury. “You’ve made me put everything on the line for yourchoice.Where was my choice,Isabella?When did I get to choose if I wanted to risk my bloody life deflowering you?”
And just like that, I wilt back because I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t thought it would matter. “You were just an American on vacation,” I whisper. “If I’d known you had anything to do with my father—but you lied too. You didn’t tell me you had business with the cartel. Why?”
Niall rubs a hand over his mouth. “Because I thought you’d run clear in the other direction if you knew,” he admits, deflating a little too. “I saw you, wrapped in that red dress like a fucking Christmas gift under the tree, and I wanted you. I already thought I was too rough for the likes of you—my accent, my motorcycle, my clothes.Me, at my core. Knowing I was here to work with the cartel? It would have been too much. But you’re fuckin’ right, because if I’d said, you would have known to walk away.”
He shakes his head, and I see pure pain in his dark blue eyes now, instead of the rage that was there before. “I’m a bloody fucking idiot, though. Giving you that cheap topaz when you’re the daughter of the richest man in Mexico, like it was something special when you have rubies like that waiting for you at home. What’d you do, throw it away? Laugh with that sister of yours over it?”
“What?” I gape at him, astonished. “No—Niall! It’s in my jewelry box upstairs. I couldn’t get away with it tonight, not in this dress, but I’ve been hiding it under my clothes for days. I didn’t want to take it off—” I bite my lip hard, the tears threatening again. “It meant everything to me, Niall.Youmeant everything to me. I would never have put you in so much danger if I’d known—”
As I speak, I step towards him unconsciously, reaching out for him, pinpricks of blood on my palms from the diamonds in my skirt. We’re a breath away from each other as I finish, looking up at him with pleading eyes, and when he meets my gaze, the pain there takes my breath away.
All I want is to make him stop hurting, to take away what I’ve caused. It’s all I’m thinking as I go up on my tiptoes, reaching for his hands with my bloodied ones, and brush my lips over his mouth.
A guttural groan comes from deep in his throat, his entire body going rigid, and then his hands are wrapped around mine as he drags me to him, moving to my face to hold me there in an almost punishing grip as he devours my mouth. “Isabella—” he breathes my name into the kiss, at last, the way I’d dreamed, and I soften into his arms as my lips part for him.
There’s nothing soft about him, though. His every muscle is wound tight, his cock rock hard against my thigh, and his fingers press into my skull as he kisses me with a ferocity that’s terrifying and arousing all at once. He’d said he wasn’t a cruel man, but I can feel hints of cruelty at that moment, a cruelty that he’s only keeping leashed because—
I can’t be sure, but I’d guess it’s because he felt something for me, just as I felt something for him.
The kiss deepens, desire winding over us like the vines in the garden, as Niall pushes me back against one of the hedges. His hand slides over the top of my breast, curling around the edge of it as his tongue licks into my mouth, his teeth nipping at my lower lip, and I reach down to touch him.
I can almost feel him throbbing through the fabric of his suit; he’s so hard, straining the limits of it. I want him badly, and I feel his hips push into me, his cock rubbing against my palm as his control frays.
“Once more,” I whisper against his mouth. “After tonight, I—this is all I wanted, Niall. I just wanted you—and after tonight, we can never do this again.”
He shudders, a ripple going through his entire body, and his hand closes around the ruby necklace. For one brief, terrifying moment, I think he’s going to rip it from my neck as he breathes the next words against my mouth.
“We never should have, Isabella.”
He steps back then, the anger back in his cold blue eyes. “I told you about Saoirse,” he says, his voice low and darker than before. “About what she did to me, how she made me feel. How I was nothing but a side piece to her, ameans to an end, a way of hurting another man who she felt wronged her. I told you all of that, trusted you with it, and you went and did the samefucking thing.You asked to go back to my room, convinced me to take even more of you under the guise of wanting me, and instead, you were just using me all along. That’s all it ever fucking was.”
“Niall, no—” I whisper, my throat choked with unshed tears, but he’s not listening any longer.
“You made me feel wanted again, desired, but it was all a bloody fucking lie. You lied from beginning to end, because you thought you wouldn’t get caught. And even when I figured out you were a virgin, when you had a chance to come clean, you fucking lied then too. Made up another fucking story.” He shakes his head, his expression darkening.
“Niall—” My voice is pleading, and I try to go to him, but he backs away.
“No. No more, Isabella. We’ll be lucky to both get out of this in one piece now, but I’m going to do my damnedest. But as for us? You lied, and we’re done. Simple as that. I’m leaving tomorrow, and as for you and whoever the lucky man is tonight?” He inclines his head to me, smiling grimly. “I wish you well.”
He turns then, stalking out of the garden, and I feel like I can’t fucking move.
I crumple onto the grass, my hands flat against the ground, and the tears start to fall.
---
I don’t know how long I stay out in the garden, but it’s long enough that by the time I make my way back inside, having dusted myself off and fixed my eye makeup as best as I can, my mother is pinning me with a glare that says she’ll have something to say to me about it later.
It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing she could say that could make me feel worse than I do right now.