Page 78 of Bad Blood

My head snaps up. “Did you just call me a fucking jerk?”

“I’m half-Colombian. You don’t think I know Spanish, too? Now if that’s all…”

Fuck, she’s beautiful when she’s angry.

I grab her arm before she can take a single step. “About last night—”

“It was a mistake—on both our parts. I have my agenda and you have yours. As long as we remember that, they’ll be no more ofthis.” She motions between us with a disgusted look on her face.

“And what isthis?” I demand, mimicking her gesture.

She smiles sweetly, venom dripping from her lips. “Emotional extortion. Something I’ve become depressingly familiar with over the past week.” Thalia turns back to the door and once again, I find myself stopping her with a firm grip on her arm. Her body tenses beneath my fingertips. “I’ve said all I have to say, Santi.”

“Good, then maybe you’ll listen for once.”

“Fuck you,” she snarls, pushing me away. There’s fire in her eyes, but it’s not a solitary emotion. Somewhere, in that river of molten rage, there are ribbons of pain too. “I may be your wife, but I won’t let you treat me like a whore.”

“You’re no one’s whore,mi amada.”

A bruised laugh rumbles in her throat. “After the way you acted last night? I let my guard down. I confided in you about my sister’s illness, and you twisted it into something ugly.”

“You don’t think I let mine down, too?” I’m advancing closer and closer to her as I speak. At this rate, we’ll both be crashing into that wall.

“For a second maybe,” she admits reluctantly. “Then it shot up pretty goddamn fast again.”

“And with good reason.”

Damn it. I didn’t want to have this conversation, but she’s forcing my hand. She doesn’t want amends, she wants blood.

Fine.

I’ll slice a vein for her. But what spills out isn’t going to be what she expects.

“I amnota monster.” Reaching out, I trail the backs of my fingers across her rigid jaw. “Not all the time, anyway. I’m a man of extremes. If there’s a middle ground, I’ve never found it. The line between hate and lust blurs too easily for me. Once it’s crossed, I crave…something more.”

She swallows hard, her throat constricting against my skin. “Did you want to hurt me?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you wanted me to beg for it last night,” she whispers. “Because you knew I wouldn’t.”

The stark truth in her words is something she’ll never understand. It’s a truth buried deep within the dents peppering my bedroom wall. Her refusing me was the only salvation I could offer her.

My cruelty wasn’t simple malice. It was a lifeline.

I cradle her face in my hands—a tender gesture wrapped in a sharp warning. “I’m not a gentle man…in or out of bed. And you,mi esposa, are a virgin.” She opens her mouth to refute my words, but I press my thumbs over her lips. “You have no idea what I’d do to you, Thalia Carrera. Vile things no virgin should ever know.”

Silence tucks itself into every corner of the room. Waiting… Listening…

“I just want to go home,” she says, her lips trembling beneath my touch.

Those deep brown wells are brimming with unshed tears. One finally breaks free and trails down her cheek. When it hits my thumb, instead of wiping it away, I smear it into her skin. “You and I were born into a nightmare, and we’ll die in one too. This is the hand we’ve been dealt. But even in nightmares, we can control our own destiny. We can claim what’s ours and live by our own rules…our own desires.”

Her breath catches.

“What do you desire,SeñoraCarrera?”

Holding my gaze, Thalia opens her mouth and wraps her lips around my thumb. There’s a skipped heartbeat where we stare at each other—one of us testing boundaries, the other daring them to be crossed.