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“No,” I immediately blurt out, maybe a little too disgusted to properly make my next case.
“So, you’re married to him?” It’s like he’s a jungle cat pawing a little mouse. What a fucking bully.
“Not yet,” I spit. Ha! As if I’d ever marry someone like Carlos, I don’t care how rich and connected that chubby brat is.
Montoya’s dark eyes dart back and forth between me and my cowering date. There’s a mischievous intelligence in his stare that makes it hard to look away. I’m somehow both thrilled and completely overwhelmed by fear. He could crush me with his thumb and no one would care...
“Do you know who I am?” he suddenly asks me. His deep and throaty voice echoes softly through the underground garage. A chill crosses my skin. I want to hug myself and scurry off to some place warm and private, but I can’t back down now, it’s too late for that.
“A brute,” I hiss, not sure what exactly I’m hoping for him to do with me. Why do I always have to antagonize everybody?
“No,” Montoya slowly shakes his head, that evil smirk returning to his ruggedly handsome face. “I’m your captor.”
5
Angel
She puts up less of a struggle than I expected. Maybe she really is just looking for a ride home. Well, I’m not taking her home—at least, not to her home. She’s coming with me, and I’m going back to my compound. I’ve got a hostage to deposit.
I don’t buy for a second that she’s Carlos Cuadrado’s future bride, despite all of his father’s wealth and connections, she’s still way out of his league.
Sweet light brown sugar skin, tight around the limbs and waist and plump everywhere else; sharp cheekbones, with a straight nose and perfect pillow lips. She’s hotter than I remembered, but when her shapely figure finally slipped into that faceless silhouette that’s been floating through my mind since the gala, it hit me like a jolt of electricity.
Her. The quinceaneras girl. Catalina None-of-your-business. She’s what’s been rubbing me the wrong way for the past few days. It wasn’t because of André that my thoughts kept getting stuck on that night, it was because of this tiny little fireball; the pretty lamppost who stood in my way when I first arrived; the only person at that stuffy event who had the guts to do something like that; the hostage I now hold between my chest and the handles of my speeding bike.
She’s small enough that I can reach all the way around and steer comfortably from my position behind her. She’s not dressed appropriately for a motorcycle ride—her thin yellow summer dress sticks to her body, warped backwards by the rushing wind—but she’s not cowering, or even holding on particularly tight. Stupid girl. If I crash, she’s going to get some serious road burn.
I’m not going to crash, though. I never do. But she doesn’t need to know that.
I take a sudden sharp turn around a wide bend, racing past a lazy group of sauntering cars. Catalina’s carefree grip immediately shoots for my forearms, tightening around the weathered denim of my favorite riding jacket.
Not so brave now, huh?
We jump onto the highway and I weave between the slow hunky behemoths, leaving every last one of them in our dust, before turning onto an off-ramp and speeding up even more. The road isn’t as well-paved on this route, and I have a hard time distinguishing between the natural vibrations of the ride and the scared shakes of the tiny girl shivering beneath me.
This lost jungle bird may be tough, but no one survives one of my thrill rides unscathed. I’m about to strap her onto a rollercoaster, and the best she can hope for is to come out of it all with some messy hair and a few frayed nerves. Right now, I hardly even care about her use as a hostage. Catalina may not be a future Cuadrado, or even anything more than a whore that those pigs take advantage of for kicks, but the further we jet away from the city, the less worried I am about making either of them talk—instead, my attention becomes entirely focused on making Catalina shiver some more.
She doesn’t hold out. By the time the gates open at my countryside compound, the warm bundle of fire is shaking like a leaf in a hurricane—though, whether it’s more from fear or from the cool wind that whipped against us on the way here is impossible to tell.
“Who’s the girl?” Juan is the first to greet me when I step off my bike at the front entrance.
“Leverage,” I half-lie.
“Against who?”
“That fucking accountant.” Another empty truth.
Juan pinches the bridge of his sharp nose and squints painfully. “And what’s she to him?” he groans, like I’m giving him a headache. Usually, I couldn’t care less about Juan’s wise-old uncle shtick, but I’m not having it right now, not in front of fresh meat, especially not in front of fresh meat I’m planning on taming to my will.
... It also doesn’t exactly help that I don’t actually know what she is to André Cuadrado. “Future daughter-in-law,” I growl, unconvincingly. It’s not like I believe that bullshit for myself, but what else am I going to say to my closest advisor? I thought she was hot and I appreciated her fiery attitude, so I stole her from an underground garage with no real plans except to loosely hold her as a hostage for an undetermined amount of time and for unconfirmed reasons.
Juan won’t like to hear that, and I don’t want to deal with his nagging sensibilities, so I just shoot him the kind of look a king shoots his underling. Don’t question me right now.
“Very well,” Juan sighs. “And where shall we keep her? In the pit with Dante’s whores?”
I can tell he’s pissed at having to deal with a hostage, but something stirs inside of me at his demeaning words. Don’t call her a whore... only I get to do that.
That silly thought is gone as quickly as it appeared. I only just met this chick, the last thing I need to do is get that possessive over her.