Page 55 of Veiled Amor

“You know, I’d buy what you said better if I thought sleeping with me was a mistake. And for years, that’s all I could assume. But, Capone, we fucked for hours. It wasn’t only once. It happened so many times. One time is a mistake. Seven times is a choice. We both chose a day that wasn’t probably the best timing, but it wasn’t a mistake. Lie to yourself, push me away, but it doesn’t negate the fact we wanted it to happen.”

The silence was deafening. She saw the lust in his blown-out pupils, watched how his nostrils flared and his fingers flexed. Not to mention the rapidness of his breathing.

“What is it that I don’t know?” He persisted, sitting on the side of the bed, exposing powerful thighs and a chest she’d be happy to curl up against for the rest of her life.

Getting that dream was growing further away by the second.

Catching him watching her, Lucia warmed all over. Even smiled. “For an outlaw biker, you have some weird personal principles. I thought it didn’t matter who you slept with?”

“What do you know about bikers?”

“I know enough.”

“What don’t I know, Lucia?” His voice was stern. And you know what? She almost buckled to the commanding tone. But she could be as stubborn as he was being. He either wanted her or he didn’t. She wasn’t giving him reasons to make it easier.

“It doesn’t matter.” Rifling through her case, she came out with her running gear. “I’m awake now. I think I’ll take a run around the compound.”

“Lucia.” He growled, making her eyes cut across to him, “you’re holding something back from me.”

“Yes.” She admitted. “And so are you.”

“Then tell me what I don’t know. Let’s get it out there.”

“No. You need to base how you feel right now, Gi. Not influenced by anything I might say. Because it’ll be fake, it won’t be your genuine feelings. And I want them real. I want them truthful and raw, even if it’s not what I want to hear. Even if it doesn’t go the way I want it to go. It will be the truth.”

“When did you get this level-headed,amor?”

“You left when I was nineteen. It gave me a lot of time to grow up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you got out. You needed out before you headed to a place you couldn’t come back from. You wanted my father’s blood, and I was so afraid it would get you killed. I’m happy you got a better life.”

“It wasn’t better.”

“Wasn’t it? But you didn’t get killed, so it is better. Even had I never seen you again, I’d be happy you were alive somewhere.”

She heard his low curse.

“Anyway. I want to go and run for a while. I won’t go out of the gate.”

She escaped like a coward. Even when he called out her name, she kept walking down the long corridor and clomped down the stairs.

Confession wasn’t always good for the soul, she decided.

Not when it hurt this badly.

And so, for a while, she pushed the Mercado brothers out of her head, though one always dominated her thoughts, and she jogged around the biker facility.

One foot in front of the other, leaving her stupid hormones at the entryway, Lucia ran.

SIXTEEN

“Don’t make an enemy of me, Mercado.” - Nicholas Cole

“Catch the bouncing ass on her.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting up early if I knew we had that to look at.”

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