Untamed Hearts 1: The Viper (10 page)

* * * *

Marcos was jerked out of the memory when the front door to the apartment opened. Again his hand acted almost of its own accord, reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. A blessing, he realized, as he caught sight of the long strawberry-blonde hair of Chuito’s neighbor.

Alaine.

She walked in like she owned the place, wearing only a thin white nightgown that was conservative but sheer in the dim light. It left little to the imagination, but this wasn’t Marcos’s kind of girl. Alaine lacked the real curves of a woman, but Chuito had always been strange like that. He’d liked the skinny ones back home too, no ass, but he never cared.

Maybe that was why he fit in so well here in gringo land.

“
Toma tu tiempo
, Marc.” Chuito’s voice from the bedroom was colder now, more dangerous and calculating. “
Haz que el cabrón sufra
.”

Marcos flushed, and he looked to the gringa, who hadn’t noticed him. She walked to the bedroom fearlessly, and Marcos realized now why she wasn’t running the other way. She couldn’t understand Chuito. He’d been speaking Spanish the whole time. She didn’t hear him, with harsh, unfeeling determination, tell Marcos to make sure to drag out the pain of death rather than just kill the guy.

“Chica,” he called out, because he wouldn’t want to go into that room when Chuito was having those sort of nightmares. “Hey.”

Alaine didn’t hear him. She just slipped past Chuito’s bedroom door and closed it behind her like she was in a dream too. As if she had done it a thousand times before and didn’t bother to notice the tattooed ex-con sprawled out on Chuito’s couch in his underwear because he wasn’t part of the routine.

He looked to the closed door cautiously, his body tense. He was half expecting to have to go in there and save her from Chuito, who Marcos knew from experience could lash out when he was having a nightmare. He’d shared a room with him for most of their childhood and gotten nailed more than once, because the drive-by wasn’t the only terrible shit that had happened to cause nightmares.

After a few breathless minutes, Marcos started to hear whispers. He couldn’t make out the actual words, but he could hear the tone. Soft, endearing, Chuito’s low voice mingling with Alaine’s gentle one.

What the fuck?

Marcos knew his cousin wouldn’t lie. They’d depended on each other too much over the years to lie. Honesty was ingrained and bone-deep. If Chuito said he wasn’t fucking Alaine, then it was true, but what was happening here? A hot preacher’s daughter slipping into his room every night in see-through nightgowns, and Chuito wasn’t doing her.

Had he really been fighting this same battle between conscience and cock over that skinny gringa who just walked into his room like she belonged there?
For five years?

No wonder he was talking about moving back to Miami.

That sounded like hell to Marcos, but then he’d never been quite as disciplined as Chuito when it came to things like that. If there was a beautiful woman leaving the light on, chances were, Marcos was going to take her up on it.

Especially one he wanted with every fiber of his being.

Just once.

A single taste to make it easier when he ended up back at the warehouse in the next few days. To last him when he ended up in prison eventually.

Or dead.

He didn’t want regrets, but he didn’t want to hurt Katie for a taste of the other side either. He was searching for a compromise. This conscience thing was new. He hadn’t tested the boundaries yet. He wasn’t even sure where it was supposed to lead. He had been proud of himself for walking out of the diner today, even if he was hard and miserable and filled with the never ending what-ifs because he’d never had a connection like that before. He got the impression he might never again. It felt rare. Like something few got the chance to touch, but he’d left Katie sitting there because he’d realized the risk to her wasn’t worth it.

Now he was questioning all those good intentions.

Marcos had never done well with rules. If something tried to harness him, he almost immediately started pulling at the leash, fighting and snarling like a pit bull who’d been damaged by life.

He looked at his phone, noting the time and remembering he still had the police report from the accident in his glove compartment.

With her home address on it.

His mind was screaming at him, reminding Marcos of every sin he’d ever committed and comparing it to Katie’s nice, orderly life spent molding the minds of eager young people, helping them reach their highest potential.

Kids like Juan had been.

Marcos needed to keep his Boricua ass on that couch. Even if it meant Katie’s life was never anything more than safe and boring. Lord knew, boring was better than the alternative. The fast lane was cruel to everyone eventually.

Marcos, more than anyone, knew it.

But he got up and pulled on his jeans anyway.

Chapter Eight

Katie couldn’t get into the romance novel. She was high-strung and antsy. Lightning crashed outside, and she jumped as the storm raged and the rain tapped against the windows. She should curl up and go to sleep, but she couldn’t relax. She’d checked craigslist on her phone at least a hundred times tonight, even knowing Marcos would never reply that way.

He had driven from Florida to avoid it the first time.

And it was
very
hard not to be flattered over that fact.

Katie wasn’t one of those women like Ashley who got lots of male attention. She’d always been kind of invisible to them. Not bullied. Just completely unnoticed. Not fat, but certainly not thin. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Unbelievably pale, even at the height of summer. She didn’t have a big personality or an overly sweet nature. She didn’t cook very well, nor did she have a high-powered job.

Her feminine market value was low.

She didn’t scream good wife material any more than she screamed sex goddess. It was probably the reason she’d jumped on Grayson the second he showed interest in her wits, if nothing else.

It was also the reason things soured so quickly, because Katie wasn’t a doormat either. She wasn’t able to just put up with the bullshit to keep a man. Since her divorce, she’d grown used to the idea of spending her days teaching and coming home alone, knowing she’d eventually retire to her little house like spinsters did from days gone past.

She spent a lot of time wishing she were more creative. Women like that were supposed to knit, weren’t they? That wasn’t happening, so she considered buying a cat instead. She was too practical not to try to plan for a simple but lonely future.

Until Marcos had showed up and disabused her of
all
those notions.

She checked her phone again like a lovesick fool, knowing it was probably sad to do so. Nothing from Marcos, just a bunch of texts from Grayson. Each one was more desperate and annoying than the last. It seemed he was stepping up his game since the little incident in the parking lot.

This was starting to become a real issue. She wished he would date Ashley and just leave her alone. She was
so
tired of him.

Katie was still pondering it when her doorbell rang.

She was so distracted, she didn’t bother to remember that it was past one in the morning. In fact, she forgot everything that had kept her strung tight and anxious all evening.

She was thinking it was Grayson. It was the first day of spring break after all. That could motivate him to stay up past eleven, and his texts were borderline stalkerish.

She grabbed her robe off the hook on the bedroom door and tied it on to cover her nakedness, because she had crawled into bed earlier in nothing but a pair of pink lace panties. The boldness it took to post that invitation on Missed Connections left her feeling frisky, and sleeping naked was one of the small benefits of living alone.

And that was when it hit her all at once.

The Missed Connections post.

The pink panties, uninspiring when she thought of Grayson being on the opposite side of the door, felt totally different when she considered the other possibility.

She looked past the window in the front room, her heartbeat now throbbing in her ears, her legs shaky, a pulse of something hot and undeniable between her thighs. Through the rain, it was hard to see the vehicle in the driveway.

“Who is it?” she called, her voice caught between a rasp of hope and fear.

She wasn’t even sure what she wanted the answer to be. Grayson was annoying but safe. She could snap at him and send him on his way like she had the thousand other times he’d shown up at her door.

As for the other possibility…

“You know who it is, chica.”

Katie sucked in a startled breath, that combination of fear and lust slamming directly into her solar plexus.

Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod.

He showed up.

What seemed like a great idea two glasses of wine into her bath, was a lot more terrifying when the possibility was looking her in the eye, and she was wearing nothing but pink panties and a shaggy blue robe she’d had since high school.

Her eyes were wide as she stared at the door.

“You don’t have to open it,” he said on the other side, his voice resigned rather than angry, as if he could sense all her fears in the silence. “It’s probably better if you don’t.”

That wasn’t very comforting.

“Shit, that sounds all off.” Marcos groaned, as if reading her mind. “I’m not saying I expect something. I’m not that guy. It’s just you’re…you, and I’m me and— Coño, I shouldn’t have come. I just—”

Katie jerked the door open, because there was something about the low rasp of pain in his voice that spoke to her. The fear of the moment had caused temporary amnesia of why she had posted all those Missed Connections posts to begin with. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly in him that could somehow mirror all her own insecurities, but it resonated in her so strongly she couldn’t
not
open the door.

Marcos stood there, protected from the storm under the shelter of the awning over her porch. His short dark hair was wet but standing up in inky spikes as if he’d run his hands through it repeatedly. The tight plain blue shirt he wore clung to his powerful chest and muscular arms like a second skin. The light from the house reflected in his pale eyes, making the emotion swirling in them stark and undeniable as his gaze ran over her standing there in nothing but the robe. The low dip in it must have made it obvious there wasn’t much beneath it.

“
Ay Dios mio
,” Marcos choked, his voice low in a way that made all the fine hair on Katie’s arms stand on end. He shook his head, as if doubting his claims that he didn’t need anything from her. “You shouldn’t have opened the door,
cariño
.”

Katie should ask him in, but she was still frozen in a pulsing, stunned state of lustful shock. As much as she enjoyed just being around him, a part of her couldn’t believe this was actually happening. To her of all people. She was supposed to date men like Grayson, not ones like Marcos, who bled raw sex appeal so potent she could almost taste it on her tongue. Everything about him was hard and unforgiving as he filled her doorway, those inked-up biceps now dripping wet and begging to be touched.

“W-what does cariño mean?” she asked rather than do the logical thing like invite him inside, because the way he had said it in that low, husky voice made it feel almost like a caress. She pulled her robe closed unconsciously, because his gaze kept dipping to the V of it. “You make me wish I’d taken Spanish in college instead of—” Katie’s rambling was cut off when he lifted his light gaze back to her face, that unbridled intensity still swirling in it to the point that she had to suck in a breath because she actually felt a little faint. To say this was a situation she wasn’t accustomed to was a vast understatement. She pushed the door open wider in invitation. “I-I’m sorry. I’m being rude. Would you like to come in? You’re all wet. I can get you a towel or—”

She stopped when he grabbed her hand on the door and pulled her forward. Her nerves were such, she would have tripped, but Marcos caught her and wrapped his other arm around her back to keep Katie on her feet.

He smelled really good, like soap and man and rain, all things raw and natural. She closed her eyes, needing a few seconds to feel everything about this moment. Her emotions, her thoughts, her heartbeat, and the sharp, hard breaths she found herself taking. Everything was going wild, as if her world had just exploded in a prism of colors after a lifetime of nothing but black and white.

“One night.” Marcos sounded breathless too. As if he was experiencing that same coiling burn in the pit of his stomach that Katie was. “Then you kick my ass out of your house and
promise
to never post another message on craigslist.” He ran his fingers up her arm, tracing the scars the accident had left her with. “Try to forget I ever happened.”

She blinked at that, the frown marring her forehead before she even grasped the full meaning of his words. When she did, she shook her head in denial. “No.” She couldn’t promise that.
Just couldn’t
. She wasn’t going to give this feeling up for anything. She wasn’t going back to black-and-white again. “No way.”

“Promise, Katie,” Marcos urged, sounding hard in a way that made it obvious he wasn’t used to people arguing with him. “Do it, and I’ll—” His voice cracked as his gaze slipped back down to the curve of her breasts. Some of the fierceness left, replaced with a smooth, compelling tenor that melted like honey off his tongue. “I’ll make it good.
Very good
.”

That slight accent she’d noticed a few times before became more pronounced now, but all the more compelling because of it. Katie actually shivered in response. She almost agreed, but she was stronger now than she’d been before the accident. She shook her head instead. “Please don’t ask me to do that.”

“I have to.” His thumb swept over the scars on her arm again, as if reminding himself. “Let me do the right thing. It’s not just about you. It’s about me too. I need to know I can make the right choices. That I’m not all bad.”