Page 89 of Desperate People

Thick and hot and humming under my skin.

I’m so hard I could break steel.

And that’s not even touching the fact that danger’s still circling us like a buzzard.

But I push all those thoughts away for now, because both homes I’ve built are fucking fortresses.

This one I’m taking her to is a fucking dream in white stone and steel and tinted bulletproof glass from floor to ceiling, and it sits right on my strip of private beach outside Rincón.

My house.

My safe place.

Our sanctuary.

The plane lands at a private airstrip I’ve rented for years. We don’t even have to go through customs.

A car is waiting on the tarmac. Her heels click softly as she descends the jet stairs, her hand in mine.

“Wow,” Lucy breathes, her voice awed.

I turn just in time to see her eyes—those glittering sapphires I adore—roaming the landscape.

Wide. Bright. Curious.

She’s taking it all in.

The endless stretch of white sand, the waves crashing like music, the palms swaying in the warm Caribbean breeze.

Her eyes flicker to mine, and for the first time in hours, I exhale.

“Have you ever been?” I ask, needing to know.

She shakes her head, smile tugging at her lips. “No. This is a first.”

A first.

I want to give her more of those.

I need to.

The woman has everything money can buy, but somehow she still looks at my world like it’s magic.

She’s not jaded.

Not spoiled.

She sees me—not the hacker, not the fucked-up street rat in a suit—but the man trying to keep her safe.

My heart beats harder.

We drive through the coast town, past faded murals and small cafés, down a winding road canopied with flowering trees.

It’s late. Not many people are out.

And it’s not luxury the way she knows it.

But it’s soul. It’s pride and roots and salt and earth.

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