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  “What are you doing?” he asked behind her.

  “Going swimming.” She looked at him over one shoulder while she unhooked her bra. “Are you coming?”

  She didn’t watch to see if he would answer, but a moment later he was beside her, his body naked in all its beautiful, muscular glory. He looked like a Roman god, with impressive lean muscle in all the right places. His shoulders were twice the width of her body, his pecs smooth and hard, tapering to rippled abs that her tongue knew only too well. Below them, a trail of dark hair led the way to his impressive cock, and she had a sudden memory of him poised at her entrance, his crown thick and wide as he drove into her.

  She turned back to the water and rushed headlong into the waves, knowing it would do little to cool the heat already boiling in her body. She shrieked as a wave crashed near her, then dove under the next one. When she came up, Luca was next to her, his blue eyes shining like shards of sea glass in the moonlight, water beading his shoulders.

  “Feeling dangerous tonight, are we?” he asked.

  There was no malice in the question. None of the hidden meaning that always laced Diego’s words. In fact, he was smiling a little, like he might actually enjoy this side of her — probably because he hadn’t had to dive unwittingly into a swimming pool to save her this time.

  “Maybe a little,” she said, letting a small wave buoy her body off the ocean floor as it swelled under them.

  He reached for her, and she laced her legs around his waist, wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “Not because you need to feel free, I hope,” he said.

  She shook her head, kissed him gently and tasted the salt on his lips. “No, my love. Because I already feel free. I already feel alive.”

  She felt like a traitor saying it. Sofia was still out there somewhere with Diego. Maybe she was scared or hungry, or god forbid, even hurt. It wasn’t right that Isabel should have even a moment’s pleasure before her sister was brought safely home.

  Luca reached up, smoothed her hair. “It’s good that you feel free,” he said. “You can’t be miserable all day, every day. Sofia wouldn’t want it, and it doesn’t do her any good anyway.”

  “Worrying about her is all I can do for her,” Isabel said sadly. “When I’m not doing it, it feels like I’m doing nothing.”

  “You’re doing everything that matters,” he said. “You’re sticking around, waiting for her to come home. Making sure you're there when she does. Not everyone would do that after everything you’ve been through. Sofia is with her big brother. One of her legal guardians. Plenty of people would take their chance to get away while they could.”

  “I would never leave without Sofia,” she said fiercely.

  “Which is one of the many things that makes you amazing. Now stop being so hard on yourself. Besides, you dragged me out here into the ocean naked. I demand that you enjoy it.”

  She laughed a little as another wave rolled under them, and Luca’s hands cupped her ass, holding her securely as she locked her legs around him. She felt the press of his erection, long and hard against her clit. The sensation was erotic — the water moving under them in primal rhythm, his manhood jutting perilously close to her already wet pussy, their slightly shallow breathing.

  He tugged on her ass cheeks, spreading her a little until his cock nestled against her folds, the tip pressing against her clit. She moved against him instinctively, seeking out the source of her pleasure by moving him up and down against the tiny bundle of nerves.

  He dropped his mouth to her neck, and she dropped her head back, letting the water capture the long strands of her hair as his breath blew softly against her collarbone, her legs still locked around his steely hips.

  “Luca…”

  “What is it, baby?” he asked. “Tell me what you want.”

  She’d passed the point of being surprised by the question. It was one he asked most often in his attempt to teach her about her body, to rid her of the shame Diego had saddled her with in the wake of the assault he’d orchestrated, then video taped to use as blackmail. Now she thrilled a little in the question, in knowing that she could tell him every dirty thing she wanted and he wouldn’t flinch. Her words would only arouse him further, make him harder and more ready for her.

  “I want you to put your fingers inside me,” she said as he trailed kisses up her neck.

  “Yeah?” He continued without waiting for her response, his voice a murmur against the corner of her mouth. “I bet you’re already soaking wet for me, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she moaned, wiggling her hips, half-hoping his cock would plunge inside her instead.

  He held onto her ass with one hand while the other one slipped between their bodies. She felt the loss of his cock against her, but it was replaced a moment later by his hand, cupping her pussy like it was something to treasure while he found her clit with his thumb.

  Her head fell back again of its own accord, eyes closing as he made circles around the little bud, the water as calm and warm as a giant bath. The large waves had been replaced by a set of smaller ones, each one lifting their bodies the slightest bit as it made its way to shore. It was a primeval rhythm, one matched by the slow stroke of his thumb against her clit until she felt the rumble of her orgasm build at the center of her body, a warning of what was to come.

  He stopped circling her clit and slipped his fingers between her folds. She moaned from the exquisite pleasure of it, then gasped when he slid two fingers inside her.

  “You’re so hot, baby,” he murmured. “So wet.”

  “It’s for you,” she said, moving on his fingers, letting the water do some of the work as she matched his pace. “All for you.”

  He lowered his head to one breast, the nipple hard and peaked with her arousal, water beading the plump flesh of her breast. A moment later his mouth, warm and moist, closed around it while he continued fucking her with his fingers.

  “Luca…” She let her body sink lower, wanting his fingers all the way inside her.

  He raked her nipple with his teeth, then soothed it with gentle laps of his tongue before taking the whole thing in his mouth and sucking until she arched her back.

  She wanted more. All of it. All of him. Everything.

  She lifted her head. “I need you inside me.”

  “I am inside you,” he teased.

  She met his gaze, fierce and intent in the moonlight. “I need your cock inside me, Luca.”

  He slid his fingers out of her and positioned her ass over his head, then captured her lips with his mouth as he plunged into her. Her cry of pleasure was muffled by the hunger in his kiss, and he sucked on her tongue as he drove into her again, then nibbled on her lower lip as he dragged his cock out of her. They were working with the sea now, their timing every bit as primal as the tide moving around them. She tightened her thighs around his hips, then sunk deep onto his massive shaft as he drove into her again.

  He growled. “Fuck, Isabel…”

  He moved faster, the gentle rush of waves to shore a backdrop to their shallow breathing as he grew bigger and harder inside her, filling her wall to wall until she thought she might explode from the pleasure of it. It was so exquisite that it almost bordered on pain.

  Almost.

  But she didn’t want him to stop. It felt too good, his body rubbing her clit, the friction nudging her that much closer to the cliff of her orgasm as he pumped into her again and again.

  “Please,” she said, moving with him.

  “Please what, Isabel? Tell me,” he commanded.

  “Fuck me harder, Luca. Make me come on your cock.”

  She was in that place he always took her. A place where she was no longer Isabel Fuentes. No longer fearful of being called a whore. No longer ashamed of her body. Of what it wanted. What she wanted. The words that came out of her mouth when they were like this hardly seemed to belong to her, and at the same time, they were the truest words she’d ever spoken, said from a place of raw desire, a need th
at blacked out all others.

  He moved faster, drove into her harder. She was lifting into the air, her body weightless as the orgasm took hold, first around the edges of her clit and then to the deepest part of her pussy until it exploded, a ferocious volcano that kept erupting even as he dragged out of her and pushed into her again, shuddering as he pumped his hot seed into her, spreading her ass so he was buried all the way inside her, letting the contractions from her own orgasm milk him of every last drop of his.

  When it was over, she clung to him, the water lapping against their bodies. She was limp with pleasure, and he turned her around in his arms so that he was carrying her like a small child, her naked body wet and bare to the sky and moon above them. He gazed down at her with something like reverence.

  “I keep thinking I’ll get used to how beautiful you are, Isabel. But it never happens. You’re so fucking beautiful you make my heart hurt.”

  Her own heart squeezed, and she looped an arm around his neck and pulled his face down, touched her lips softly to his.

  “No pain between us, querido,” she said softly. “Only love.”

  47

  Three days later Luca was leaving a seedy bar in North Miami when the hair stood up on the back of his neck. He glanced around behind his sunglasses and continued to his car at the far end of the parking lot, trying to act casual while every nerve in his body was on high alert.

  He was on dangerous ground. After his failed attempt to get information from Benito, he’d resorted to frequenting establishments reportedly under the control of the Columbians, hoping someone had heard about the feud between Lorenzo Sanchez and Diego. The information he wanted wasn’t directly related to the business, but he worked his way from those questions to others; did anyone know where Diego met his shipments? How were his pushers supplied? Did Diego and Sanchez ever meet in person?

  His questions had nothing to do with the feud between Diego and Lorenzo Sanchez. Frankly, he couldn’t have cared less if they blew each other to bits and fed the pieces to the sharks.

  But Sofia had been gone almost six weeks. Isabel was getting more and more grim. Even Marco’s expression belied his worry — and that was saying something. Elia had taken to stalking the house, uttering strings of curses that could have won awards for originality. Luca knew the words were aimed at Diego, but it seemed futile when the man was nowhere to be found. At least Elia made a point to zip it when Isabel was around.

  He heard footsteps on the pavement behind him and resisted the urge to look back. He was being followed. That much was obvious. He wasn’t even that surprised. He’d been courting the devil by asking questions on Sanchez’s territory. Maybe he’d even been subconsciously hoping the man would show himself.

  But somehow he’d never counted on it going down like this — alone in a deserted parking lot at the end of the night.

  He made a subtle move to position his hands near his weapon. Or maybe not so subtle at all, because a second later, someone grabbed him from behind and shoved him up against his car. He spun in the guy’s grip and landed a vicious blow to his face before bringing his knee up to his stomach.

  He hardly had time to notice that the guy wasn’t very big, not nearly as big as he should have been to come after Luca, when a black van barreled forward from the other end of the parking lot, skidding to a stop in front of them. He pulled out his weapon, but he wasn’t fast enough for the five men who swarmed around him, all of them with semi-automatics raised and ready to fire. He was trying to figure out a way to take them all down when the first guy stumbled off the ground and punched him in the stomach.

  Luca barely felt it, but then the guy pulled a weapon out of his waistband and turned it around in his hand. He brought it down on the side of Luca’s head.

  After that there were only flashes.

  A hard metal floor pressed against his face.

  A series of leering expressions set against a backdrop of Spanish spoken too quickly for him to grasp the meaning in the words.

  Metal pipes and beams overhead.

  Cold.

  When he woke he was strapped to a chair, his head throbbing like a motherfucker. Something dripped from his forehead, but he was prevented from swiping at it by the restraints around his wrists.

  And his feet, he noticed next.

  Fuck.

  “Oye, el cabron está despierto.”

  The asshole is awake.

  Luca lifted his head, wincing at the pain behind his eyes, and searched the shadows of the cavernous space around him. He was in some kind of warehouse. A bare bulb shone above him, but the rest of the space was dark, the shadows seeming to reach with dark fingers from the edges of the room.

  Or maybe that was just unconsciousness threatening to take him again.

  “¡Oye! ¡Cabron!”

  Right. The voice. Luca tried to focus on it, following the sound to a figure leaning against the wall of the warehouse a few feet away.

  “Who are you?” Luca asked. The words felt strange coming from his mouth. Thick and swollen. Had the bastards beaten him up after they’d knocked him unconscious? Fucking cowards. “What do you want?”

  “Nosotros hacemos las preguntas aquí,” the man said, his eyes unreadable from across the room.

  He turned, his shoes squeaking on the concrete floor as he disappeared through a metal door. The room was quiet except for a humming sound from somewhere in its bowels. Electricity? Some kind of machine? Luca didn’t know.

  He tested the strength of the restraints at his hands and feet and discovered they were zip ties — the kind law enforcement now routinely used in lieu of handcuffs. The kind that were almost impossible to break or stretch.

  No escape then. Not until they untied him, made a mistake. Or until he could get his hands on something sharp enough to cut the ties.

  He turned his attention to his captors. They obviously wanted something. If they hadn’t, they would have killed him already. It was a good sign, although Luca had learned not to trust drug lords to do the reasonable thing. Still, they would talk to him before they killed him at least.

  Which meant his best chance of survival lay in proving he was worth something even after the conversation.

  The metal door opened and five men stepped through it. There was the man from the parking lot — the one he’d clocked who had returned the favor by pistol whipping him — and three others flanking a man at their center. Luca knew who he was immediately.

  Lorenzo Sanchez.

  There weren’t a lot of pictures of the Columbian kingpin on the internet, but it was impossible to be totally invisible in the era of social media, Google, and mass surveillance. Luca had come across the few photos he’d found when he’d done his homework on Sanchez, hoping for an angle that might lead him to Diego. Now it was easy to tell he was looking at the infamous drug lord, both from the dark hair slicked back from his head and the small, brown eyes that seemed to see right through him. He was tall and slender, with a narrow, angular face that made Luca think of a viper.

  He recognized the formation of the men, two on each side, Sanchez in the middle. It was the same formation he had once used while protecting Nico, and it immediately told everyone who was most important.

  They came toward him, their shadows expanding across the light cast from the bulb overhead. Sanchez’s dress shoes clicked on the floor, and when he came to a stop in front of Luca’s chair, Luca saw that his suit was immaculately cut.

  The men fanned out on either side, giving Sanchez some space. He studied Luca with a practiced eye before speaking.

  “Luca Cassano,” he said. “What are you doing in my territory?”

  Luca shook his head. “Your territory?”

  Sanchez sighed, twisting a ring on his finger. “Playing dumb is a very bad idea.” His English was heavily accented, his diction careful and polished. The accent of a well-educated man. Luca wasn’t surprised. He’d heard that Sanchez was a first generation immigrant who had attended Yale. “We know t
hat you’ve been sniffing around, and since you work for Diego Fuentes we can only assume you are doing so at his behest.”

  “Fuentes isn’t my employer,” Luca said through his swollen lips. “Not anymore.”

  “You still live at the Fuentes house in Coral Gables, yes?” he said, his tone bored. “You’re still fucking Fuentes’s sister?”

  Hearing Isabel mentioned so casually by someone like Sanchez set off the barely controlled rage in him, and he strained at his bindings, his voice guttural as he yelled at Sanchez. “Don’t you fucking talk about her. Don’t you fucking dare.”

  Sanchez smiled. “You Italians. So protective of your women. It’s a liability, you know.”

  Luca didn’t answer. He focused instead on getting his temper under control. On trying to figure out his next move.

  “If you don’t work for Fuentes,” Sanchez continued, “why have you been asking around our territory?”

  Luca considered his answer. If he told Sanchez that Diego was missing, he was alerting Diego’s competition to a hole in the Miami territory, and while he couldn’t care less if Sanchez took over Diego’s turf, he didn’t want Sofia to become a pawn in a drug war, didn’t want to alert Sanchez to a weakness that might compromise Sofia’s safety before they could bring her home.

  “Fuentes is a crazy bastard,” Luca said. “I heard there was a rift between you.”

  Sanchez raised an eyebrow. “And you seek to… capitalize on this rift?”

  Luca shook his head. “I seek to understand it so I can get Fuentes’s little sisters out before the war starts.”

  Sanchez paced in front of him, considering Luca’s words. “Why should I believe you?”

  “I don’t give a fuck whether you believe me.” He could have tried placating Sanchez, sucking up. But that wasn’t the right move with someone like him. He wouldn’t respect Luca then. Wouldn’t see him as being on the same playing field as he and his men. “It’s the truth, and if anyone knows what a fucking psychopath Fuentes is, I assume it would be you.”