Page 18 of Zorro

But he looked out at his family, his brothers, the laughter and light, and for once, it felt like enough.

Luxom, Philippines, three weeks later

The fan turned lazily above Everly’s bed, stirring humid air thick with exhaustion and unspoken grief. After six months in the Philippines, Everly Quinn was burned out, and now, in seven days, she was expected to stand before a global audience and deliver a tribute to the man she once called husband.

Her phone lit up. Tiffany D’Alessio.

Of course.

“Caroline Devlin dropped out,” Tiffany said. “Family emergency. You’re our keynote now.”

Everly sat, stunned. “The week I’m already delivering Rob’s tribute?” The thought of Madeline, Rob’s former assistant and her co-collaborator on the tribute, tightened something in Everly’s chest. Together they’d crafted a carefully polished version of a man whose legacy Everly could no longer carry without shaking.

“You’re the only one who can do it,” Tiffany said gently. “You’ve earned it.”

She gave Tiffany a hollow yes, promising to review the revised agenda. But when the call ended, her thoughts veered sharply, not toward Rob, but toward another man. The one who kept surfacing in dreams, in memories, in heat she couldn’t shake.

Zorro.

Mateo Martinez.

He was impossible. Dangerous wrapped up in healing hands.

A medic who could save a child in a war zone, even as blood soaked his shirt. A warrior who smiled like sin and bore his grief with quiet grace. He’d unsettled her in Niger, challenged her in the Philippines, and now lived under her skin in a place she couldn’t reach, much less deny.

He was both protector and storm. Stillness and fire.

How could those contradictions exist within one man? What kind of soul did it take to carry both death and life so seamlessly inside himself, and remain quietly intact? Could she continue to resist his pull?

4

Everly felt the heat first, thick, clinging, the kind that slid down the spine like a lover’s hand. The air tasted like smoke and salt, steeped in gold, the world lit by a fire that pulsed just beyond reach.

Why is it so hot?

The flames licked at the walls, casting shadows that danced like ghosts across her skin. Heat pressed around her, wrapping her in a haze of want and warning. It wasn’t just the temperature.

She felt him…Zorro, in every breath that skipped, in the sudden ache blooming between her thighs. The flames whispered his name, their crackling a seductive murmur, tugging at something low and primal inside her.

Her nipples peaked, her clit throbbed, as tendrils of fire seemed to stroke her with deliberate tease, licks of heat across aching skin. She gasped, her breath shallow and sharp, and her body arched into the touch that wasn’t touch at all.

Mateo. The flames whispered his name.

He stepped through the glow, naked and devastating, each step lighting the ground beneath him. The curve of his chest begged her tongue, his abdominals were a map she wanted to lose herself in, and below, hard and heavy and needing, his cock jutted upward, thick and unapologetic.

His eyes were molten molasses, fixed on her like she was the fire now.

She reached without thinking. Her hands found his shoulders, traced the flame-warmed ridges of muscle and bone. Her body aligned with his like it had always known the shape of him. Like it had been waiting.

“No,” she whispered. But her fingers dug deeper. “I can’t. Why are you doing this?”

His hand cupped her breast, thumb grazing the hardened tip, and she cried out at the heat of it, how helpless she felt. His mouth followed, hot, wet, devastating, sucking until pleasure rippled out from her core like shockwaves, and it felt so good.

“You’ve wanted me to take you, Everly, for so long.”

“No.”

“You want my body, every hard inch of me, my mouth on you in places where you burn for me.”