Page 13 of Come Alive
Mateo held the anger in his chest as best he could, but it ignited his skin on fire. He had guessed the pain Yara held. The years of agony she went through. He knewDanielwasn’t the only one who had caused her to suffer.
“If I spoke, I was made to feel stupid.” Mateo’s throat closed up around the words. The embarrassment that he had spent years crushing down. “Thrown into one of the holding cells with my father’s victims. If I survived the night, I would earn a spot in the home until he decided to do it again.” Mateo clenched his jaw. “I understand now that myfatherwas inferior. That my mother dying in childbirth had permanently stolen his warmth. She was his soul, and I was the monster who had taken her. He turned me into a cursed apparition.”
Yara’s hands lifted, her soft palms landing on his cheeks, but he did not meet her gaze. He did not feel strong in this moment. He felt as if he were a child again, holding a bloody knife, shaking in the back of a cage, and waiting for someone to come for him.
“Look at me.” Yara’s uncharacteristically soft voice broke through his spiraling.
His attention found her. He examined her bright blue eyes specked in a galaxy of hues, filled with empathy. The scar on her forehead, a testament to the past she suffered through. The fullness of her lips, begging for him.
“You are not stupid. What you have to say is important and you should remember that. The world deserves your words. Your story…” She paused. “And I want you to always be heard. If you speak, I will listen. Even if I don’t always like what you have to say.” Her tone turned joking.
And then her cushioned lips were on his. His previous pain extinguished in an instant.
One of his hands found her ass, the other gripping into her hair as he tried to pull her closer to him.
He wanted to live inside her skin. Figuratively,literally. He wanted to never be apart from Yara again. He wouldn’t survive it.
His obsession grew as she rolled her hips onto his hard cock.
He was self-aware enough to understand he wasn’t any good for her. But selfish enough to not fucking care.
She is mine.
And he would share her. With Kazi. WithJames. But he would only ever be hers.
And if anyone ever hurt her?
Yara readjusted until she was straddling him, her small body pressing into his.
She pulled apart from him. “My father was a bad man too.”
Mateo’s fingers dug deeper into her. He was afraid that was the case, he had recognized her kindred energy when they first met, but the confirmation set light to his temper.
“But he is dead. Thankfuck,” Yara reassured him. “And I will tell you all you want to know about it. But right now?” She dragged herself across his length.
He was hard,uncomfortably so,but he had been doing his best to ignore that. He wasn’t going to push her for anything. He wanted to let her take control. Give her the space she needed to decide for herself.
“Mi pequeña abeja,” he cautioned.
She quirked her lips, but then her attention found something behind them. A wrinkle formed between her brow, her lips flattened into a line.
Mateo recognized what this was now. She had found her own reflection. “Look at me.”
When she didn’t immediately, he readjusted, grabbing her face this time. His large hands covering most of it, he carefully drew her to him.
Yara’s eyes were glistening. “I can’t help it. I see myself andhis wordscome bubbling up. Years of them all at once.”
“Let me replace them.” Mateo’s heart beat in his chest. He wished more than anything to take her trauma. To consume it and let it fuel his revenge. Except the man who caused it was dead. “You are beautiful. But it is more than that.” He mulled over what he wanted to say in his mind. It took him a few minutes before he spoke again. “You fill up every room with an irresistible energy. You are both live-wire and a soothing warmth. A bee.”
The wrinkle between her brow smoothed out. “That’s why you call me a bee?”
“Yes.” He decided it was best not to explain the entire meaning of the nickname. At least not yet.
She poked him in the chest, and caught off guard, he made the mistake of wincing.
“Mateo?” Her tone turned accusatory. “Are you injured?”
It acted as the distraction she needed, and he figured he might as well show her now.
