Page 14 of Danger Close (Mourningkill #3)

Appealing

Teri

Greg did abandon me in the most delightful way. A pretty girl with a heart-shaped face, sun-streaked, dark brown hair, and freckles across her nose entered, her willow-leaf shaped hazel eyes darting around, as if looking for a friendly face. Greg lit up like a child at Christmas.

I told him—no, in fact, I insisted— that he speak to her.

I watched the young lovers from my new seat at the bar, wondering if they had the same flutters I’d once had all those years ago.

Young love is still a beautiful thing.

“Hey.” A gruff man pulled his seat up next to me, his shirt smelling distinctly of beer and motor oil. “You out with your son?”

Ouch. I almost laughed at the insinuation, but I suppose it was to be expected.

“Something like that,” I said cryptically, unsure if this man was friend or foe. It took me two seconds to decide that I was not interested, and turned my attention to the television over the bar.

It was set to the news, where a journalist, Gavin O’Malley, chronicled the recent ICE raids that left a mother and daughter dead in their home when they entered a home, without a warrant, and attempted to kidnap the people inside.

The most tragic part was that the two victims were legal residents, not “illegals” as the agents would have called them.

“Awe, shucks, that’s sweet,” the man beside me purred. “I’ve got a kid about that age too. Am I detecting an accent on you?”

The man was roughly built, his skin certainly worn from the weather.

“Indeed,” I said gently, enjoying the flirtation, even when there would be no happy ending for me. “I’m French.”

“I really find French women to be so…” He looked my body up and down in a move that he must have thought was a seductive gesture. It just made my skin crawl. Especially when he followed it with a graze of his knuckles against my bare arm. “Appealing.”

“You won’t find it appealing when I plant my fist in your face.” The growl from behind me had me sitting up straight, the sirens in my head blaring the word “Danger! Danger! Danger!”

“Cobra,” I gasped.

“ Mrs . Guerro.” Cobra’s eyes were positively volcanic.

“I’m not your wife.” I narrowed my eyes, disliking what he was implying.

My bar companion decided that I was too much trouble and quietly slipped away, probably correctly assessing that Cobra was capable of extreme physical damage.

And yet, I didn’t fear him.

“How dare you,” I seethed.

“How dare I? ” he said with special emphasis, as though through all of this, the kidnapping, the dinner, the hostility, I was the crazy one! I was the unreasonable one?

Cobra leaned into me, those hazel green eyes, the heterochromia he’d passed on to our child, stared at me with undisguised scorn.

“You run off with our kid’s friend to what? Hit on strangers? Smells pretty fishy to me, sweetheart.” He sniffed, like he was scenting me. “Were you about to get in his car and run off? You going to go back to his trailer and show him a good time?”

I slapped him. Hard.

His face barely turned even though I had put my entire body into it.

The men at the gym said I had a good right hook, and though I had used an open palm instead of a closed fist, I expected more of a reaction.

Maybe even a stumble? I at least expected him to turn his head with the force. But he didn’t.

I’d mistake him for a statue if it wasn’t for the burning in his eyes that made the grin of his irises more prominent than brown.

Just like our daughter, his eyes changed colors with his mood.

Any extremem emotion like fury, sorrow, or even happiness made their eyes green. Brown was their temperateness.

Right now, his eyes were almost as green as the forest of pines right on the edge of this tiny town.

Then they flashed, the tension in his eyes softened, and a lascivious smile pulled at his lips as he quietly growled, “You want to get laid, sweetheart, why don’t you try asking the guy who pumped a baby in you?”

I gasped, “ Putain .”

It was a filthy, disgusting thing to say! But still, heat pooled in my core.

My eyes fell to his plump bottom lip, his prominent nose, his brows that had grayed with age, making him even more distinguished than he had been when we were young. He’d lost the softness of youth, and had broadened into nothing but corded, ruthless muscle, like the animal of his namesake.

He stepped closer. I put my hand on his chest. I didn’t know if it was to stop him or because I wanted to touch his heated skin.

“Cobra,” I whispered, shaking my head, “Don’t.”

He paused. His smile disappeared. He clenched his jaw tight, and even through the rough beard, I could see the muscles in his jaw ticking.

He took my no as a rejection of his advances, but I wasn’t sure if that was what I meant.

Don’t tempt me. Don’t make me feel. Don’t drown me in memories of a happier time.

Don’t force me to be more than the walking corpse I was. Corpses can’t feel pain anymore, and I’d rather avoid pain than feel… this.

“Everything alright here?” The bartender said, as she pulled a rag off her shoulder, and slapped it on the bar. “I’m not into having trouble in my house, Cobra. If you’re going to get in a fight, take it outside.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m so sorry.”

“You know me, Ellen,” Cobra said, his eyes never leaving mine even though he directed his words at her. “I don’t lay hands on a woman unless she begs for it.”

Heat pooled in my core, and I clenched my thighs together. I almost whined, suddenly wanting to beg for exactly that. For his hands, his kiss, and all the ways I knew he could satisfy a woman.

But then I looked away, staring at the woman behind the bar, my mouth open.

She knew him? Did that mean that he’d… had they…?

Lust was quickly amplified by jealousy when I turned my fury to my ex-husband.

As if he could read my mind, Cobra smirked. Then he turned a steely gaze to Ellen . “The missus and I were just leaving.”

“ Missus , huh?” Ellen’s snide tone was all the answer I needed.

He had carnal knowledge of that woman, and the fury that burned through my body had me slapping him a second time. “ Batard !” Bastard! .

His head whipped to the side, and when he slowly turned back to me, that smirk was back. He didn’t answer me.

“I don’t care what you do, Cobra Guerro, just get it the hell out of my bar.” Ellen put her hands on her hips. “I don’t have time for this nonsense. Not today.”

Cobra broke eye contact with me to talk to his… liaison.

“Everything alright?” his brows knit together.

“Jessa’s disappeared.” Ellen put her hands on her hips. “Until she comes back to work, I don’t even know what we’re going to do.” She then crossed her arms. “She just vanished, her husband and kids have no idea what happened to her.”

“You think something bad happened?”

Ellen’s hard eyes softened. Beneath her temper was an underlying current of fear. “You know as well as I do what’s going on around—”

She let out a sigh, gesturing with the rag in her hand towards the television, to the bar itself, and to the world at large.

“People disappearing, children crying themselves to sleep… No one knows what to do, how to help, or who to go to.” She swallowed. Then her moment of tender worry switched to: “So take this shit outside, because I am not in the mood for your little domestic.”

Cobra’s eyes turned back to me, and I stepped back.

His smile was predatory, gorgeous, and terrifying. “You got it, Ellen.”

In one swift move, he dipped his shoulder, jamming it into my waist and throwing me over it. I fell over his back, my head dangling around his ass as he seized my thighs to his chest.

“Put me down!” I screamed. I tried to push myself upright, only for him to violently drop his shoulder until I slipped, losing any grip I had on his shirt.

He walked us through the crowd, and no one helped me, even as I screamed for it. I screamed for help, and saw nothing but averted eyes.

No one was coming to help me. Everyone was on his side. He’d made me the crazy one.

Kidnapped, broken, humiliated, and I was the villain once more! So fucking typical.

I wanted to cry. That’s what I would have done ten years ago. That’s what any normal woman would have done. But instead, I went limp.

I allowed it to happen, as my mind went foggy, and the fight I had worked so hard to cultivate at the MMA gym left me. I was defenseless once again, caged in my traitorous brain. He easily man-handled me, and he could do so much worse! There’d be nothing I could do about it.

Let him do what he wanted. I would retreat into myself, into the last vestiges of my pride. If I could keep that flicker alive, then I could survive. If I didn’t… then I was sure that I would simply stop breathing.

He dropped me to my feet in a move that was so gentle, it surprised me far more than violence.

“What the hell are you thinking?” Cobra said, his voice vicious. “What were you going to do, huh? Fuck our daughter’s friend? Is that why shit’s so god damn tense between you and Trinity? Are you more Mrs. Robinson than you are Mrs. Guerro?”

I felt the blow of his insult. But I did not react to it. The best thing I could do was stand still. To take what was coming. To let it happen with little resistance.

I clenched my jaw and blinked the sting of tears away. I could breathe through the pain.

I summoned what frail shreds of dignity I had, and whispered, “You know nothing. Neither does my daughter.”

“ Our daughter,” he corrected.

I simply rolled my eyes. Apparently no one had managed to strip me of my sarcasm, even when my dignity was ripped to shreds.

Cobra’s fists clenched tight; his knuckles white. He might hit me.

But I would not recoil. I would not back down. As he was unmoved by my slaps, I would be as unaffected by him.

I said, “My daughter thinks I’m the villain? Fine. As long as she is safe, she – and you – can believe whatever you wish.” My voice wavered as despair seeped into my veins.

His hand shot out, and I whimpered, recoiling, my hands up, defensively protecting myself like a wounded animal.

So much for pride…

He didn’t hit me. Instead, he cupped my jaw, and forced me to look back at him. I withered more under his gaze. He was too difficult to look at.

“I’m never going to hit you, Princess.” His voice was gentle, reassuring, with just a hint of surprise beneath it all. “Why does my daughter, a Green Beret—a fucking warrior!—need to be kept safe?”

His question surprised me. I didn’t know what to say. No one, not even Trinity, had ever asked me about what it was that haunted me in the nights. I averted my gaze when his eyes became too much for me to handle.

“Answer me, Princess.”

I acted submissive, just as I had been made to over, and over, and over again. His wrath was painful. That was true. But his gentleness? That was even more unbearable.

“Hey!” Greg called. “Cobra!”

That sweetness in my ex-husband disappeared. He straightened and the air shifted.

“You can follow us back to the farm, or stay here,” Cobra yelled, his eyes still on me. It felt as tangible as a caress. It made a blush crawl up my cheeks, until I almost shivered under his scrutiny.

Cobra opened the passenger door and pushed me into the low-riding car.

Again, I complied. Any rebellion had been sucked from my bones, leaving me a hollow shell.

“You and me?” The coolness I felt when Cobra’s eyes turned to Greg was like being doused with cold water. I shivered, but not from the fear of his sharp scrutiny, but from the overwhelming desire to request his attention again.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

“We’re going to have some fucking words, later.” Cobra was threatening the boy.

What for? For showing me kindness? My lips pulled back as I tried not to weep.

I blinked back tears, because I should have known.

Only one person had ever shown me kindness, and the destruction that I brought down on her life still filled me with absolute guilt.

Was I rubbing my bad luck on Greg now, too?

No. I could not let that happen.

“Mama Guerro!” Greg jogged over to us. “Are you okay?”

He reached out a hand to me, but Cobra pushed it aside, squaring up to the young man with cold cruelty.

“I told you, boy ,” Cobra said, “You can follow us to the farm, but stay the hell away from my wife .”

My breath hitched at that word. That insipid four letter word that blossomed through my heart, confusing me. Wife. He’d called me wife.

Greg ignored him, looking at me with concern. “Ma’am? Are you okay?”

Men like Ray, and I suspected Cobra as well, would think nothing of killing someone as kind as Greg. That was the great injustice of our world, wasn’t it? The gentlest creatures are always the ones that get hurt, while the devil wins.

“I will knock you out right here and now if you get any closer to her,” Cobra growled, leaning in towards Greg.

The quiet calmness of his tone was how I knew he’d be capable of incredible violence.

As he lifted his fist, ready to punch Greg, I hastily cried out, “I’ll be fine.”

I was far from fine.

“He won’t hurt me.” Not worse than Ray, at least. “I can take care of myself.”

Because I had no other options.

I would not let anyone else get hurt because of me. No kind heart with the audacity to think they could make a difference in my bleak fate would find themselves broken on a hospital bed. Not again. Not anymore.

I might be a very stupid woman, but I learned from my mistakes.

Greg’s head tilted to the side with an expression of abject pity.

Greg snarled and stood up, eye-to-eye with Cobra, “I’m going to be on your tail. Don’t think I won’t pit maneuver you if you get off course.”

“You want to try me?” Cobra got right up against him like they were two MMA fighters before a match, practically nose to nose.

“I ain’t scared of you, Cobra,” Greg snarled. “You are on the wrong fucking side of this.”