At any given time, three other men hover about, boxing me inside an invisible shield. One wrong move or misguided touch and the snow blanketing this campus will run red.
I shrug. “Maybe some other time.”
There won’t be a next time, and she knows it. Luckily, she doesn’t voice the questions pooling in her bright green eyes. “You’re a mysterious girl, Daniela Torres,” she mutters, walking away.
Daniela Torres.
It’s the name my father assigned me before allowing me to return to the States with my entourage in tow. It took twenty-four long weeks of solitude and repentance to earn my way back into his favor. After skipping town, hell, the state, with Sam, I had to do some fancy tap dancing to cover my ass.
Our asses.
So, I lied.
Valentin Carrera is one of the two most feared men in the world. Looking him in the eye with a lie on my lips was terrifying. My father loves me, but he also has the power to lock me away from civilization, from life…
From Sam.
I couldn’t hide what we’d done. Not only did we leave a trail of destruction in our wake, but a neighbor saw us leave, giving the police a description of Sam’s Bugatti and his license plate. The sharp jaws of truth were already snapping at our necks.
So I drew first blood.
I told my family the story they wanted to hear. The story of how I ran for help when Sam stopped for gas near New Haven, Connecticut.
Unfortunately, the reality was substantially less dramatic.
As my beautiful captor slept, I dressed in darkness, then scribbled a note on the stained motel stationery sitting on the nightstand.
When the mouse strays, she gets punished. I wrote, twisting his own words into a fate I must endure. Slowly and painfully until she wins her freedom. When that time comes, the hunt is on… Catch me, and I’m yours forever.
With a soft kiss goodbye, I placed the tear-stained note on my pillow and closed the door behind me, running away from his freedom and back to the chains he shattered.
I spoke nothing of Newport or the run-down motel where his cock left a delicious scar inside me, matching the one carved on my skin. After six months of penance in Mexico, mamá became my champion—the calm voice of reason in a testosterone-fueled war.
“Give her a second chance,” she crooned into papá’s ear. “She’s a free spirit, Val. A hummingbird thrives on perpetual motion. Clip its wings and it dies.”
Mamá always had a way of bending papá’s iron-will.
Begrudgingly, he conceded, enrolling Daniela Torres at a Newport, Rhode Island school where the biggest danger comes from crossing the street.
I allow a secret smile to tug at my lips. I care nothing about this school. However, its location calls to my soul.
Because it’s ours…
Making my way back to my heavily guarded apartment, I slip my key in the door as four shadows close in behind me. “Buenas noches,” I sing-song, bidding Miguel and his men goodnight with a private smirk.
Once I close the door, the air inside the darkened room changes. Turning the lock, I let my backpack slide off my arm while slowly drowning in the charged electricity of his presence.
“Did you miss me?” I whisper.
My answer is a firm grip around the back of my neck as I’m slammed against the wall, my pulse thumping a furious beat under his rough fingers. Sam doesn’t greet me with a kiss or a soft caress. His greedy hands tear at my leggings until they’re nothing but ribbons of confetti tattering the floor.
“Catch me, and I’m yours forever,” he growls, reciting the words from my note through clenched teeth. “Well, I’ve caught you, sweetheart. There’s no escape from me now.”
The heat of his warning skates down my neck.
“What if I run?” I ask, biting my lip.
“I’ll catch you again.”
“What if I scream?”
His hand slides up my throat, gripping my chin and twisting it until it brushes his unshaven cheek. “I’ll steal it from your lips.”
“And if I fight?”
“I’ll come twice as hard.”
He fortifies his promise by grazing his teeth against my jaw while thrusting a finger deep inside me. I moan at his rough possession. This is the game we play. Intruder and victim. The same act that started our torrid affair now feeds our addiction.
The dark can’t mask what has only grown stronger with time. I feel him everywhere: in the air, on my skin, in my soul… I spin around, and like two magnets, our mouths crash together, drinking the life from each other to soothe the thirst our separation caused. His bare chest rubs against my breasts, the scarred L carved into his flesh fanning the flames of my desire.
L for Lola.
L for lust.
L for love.
“Happy birthday, Lola.” Removing his finger from inside me, he hums out a dark, satisfied groan as his tongue laps at my arousal. He lowers his hand, and I shake in anticipation at the sound of his jeans unzipping. “What’s your wish?”
“Freedom,” I whisper, gasping as he spins me around and pins my back against the wall. “Blood and salvation.”
As I voice my demands, Sam grabs the back of my thighs and lifts me off the ground. Instinctively, I wrap my legs around his waist, crying out as he thrusts his swollen cock inside me, the searing pain easing the ache in my heart. “Blood I can give you, sweetheart. You have to earn freedom and salvation for yourself.”
He’s right. It’s a battle fought with patience, not force. I’ll embrace my role as a pawn in this cartel chess game. I’ll move strategically across the board, hiding in plain sight from both deadly kings.
For now, we’re forced to play by their rules.
But one day, I’ll graduate. One day, we’ll break the chains binding him to Colombia and me to
