Page 12 of Don't Trust Him

Okay, yes, I know, technically, he betrayed her cartel. She’s not even in charge of Cabeza Dios cartel. So it isn’t Eliza’s cartel.

But I’m seeing red.

I’m doing the one thing I don’t hesitate on for a second.

I pull him off of Eliza and toss him like a sack of fucking air to the ground several feet from her. I grab Eliza’s hand and wrap my other hand around her waist, pulling her up so she’s up against the wall.

Then my energy goes back to Juan. All of my focus and attention is on ending him with a single-minded violence that actually, in the back of my mind, frightens me.

Against all logic and reason, I’m fucking punching this prick so hard his face is turning to hamburger. I have this thing about loyalty and betrayal, as you’ve surely noticed, and this tripped my wire and triggered the absolutely insane part of me that reacts first on instinct without regard for anything else.

He lunges for Eliza, and I lunge for him. His knife knicks my side and it should sting, but pure fucking adrenaline and rage just takes over. I hit him so hard the first time that it knocks him to the ground. Every time after that makes a raw, wet, smacking sound like packing meat into a small container. That’s not a good sound. It does something to a normal person’s stomach and turns it. Not me. I just keep fucking punching. I slam my fists into this fucker’s face so many times I know he doesn’t have a face

anymore, and he’s long past the point of being tough and fighting me. I make him cry for his mother, make him pray for the God he hasn’t talked to his whole life.

Still, I’m not paying attention to any of that, and I’m not sure when he dies, but its probably sometime in between him screaming and him gurgling up some of his teeth and my blood mixed in with his.

Eliza’s voice slowly filters in, even though she’s barely whispering. “He’s dead,” she says simply.

But something about this devilish angel’s little whisper pulls me back into reality.

She isn’t stunned.

But she is hunkering in a corner with her head between her knees and puking because I beat a man to death.

“This man betrayed you,” I state.

“Yeah,” she says, nodding. Her eyes are narrow and she’s looking at me. Yeah, what just happened was pretty fucking odd.

It isn’t exactly normal that the woman I was supposed to be killing, and who just saw me take out some other guy who came to kill her, isn’t afraid of me.

Her words are going through my brain as I survey my situation. My gun is still on the floor across the room. She’s not brandished a weapon either. “I’ve heard about you. You’re not carving me up, Teague.”

She’s not goddamn wrong.

I’m not.

I turn to look at her and her hands are shaking a little as she brings them to my fist. There’s blood everywhere, and some fragments of bone, teeth, maybe even some brains or tongue in there. Shockingly, the sight doesn’t horrify her. But her little womanly instinct there has her wanting to wash them off. She tears her shirt and wraps them first, since we’re nowhere near anything either of us is looking to wash anything off with.

I am still breathing heavily, and so is she, though hers is not the adrenaline of beating a man to death but instead the effect of watching me do it.

“Don’t you want to ask me if you’re next?” I say, looking at her standing there with her body glistening with sweat, her hair all tousled, and her stomach exposed in a way that makes me want to get her back up against that wall again. “Or should I kick the shit out of someone else so I can see what kind of bra you’re wearing?”

She laughs.

Eliza laughs. What kind of woman can do that after what she just saw, or after me laughing at her after what I just did?

Maybe this is why I recognized something in her.

And she says something to me that no one has ever said to me.

“Thank you,” Eliza says. “And generally a man who chokes me on the first date has already seen my bra,” she manages to laugh.

She’s fucking amazing. And that little comment of hers has me noticeably hard. At this point, she should be running for the fucking hills.

“You held back,” Eliza says, and it’s not a question.

“I’ve killed women before, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I quickly retort. What, it’s somehow important for me to let her know that I specifically didn’t want to kill her?

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