“I’m free and I choose you, mi mundo,” I tell him, because he is. He’s exactly that… my world.
“Beth,” he whispers, pulling me into him.
“Te amo. Eres mi mundo.”
His strong body trembles against me. His forehead pushes down against mine. His hands grasp along each side of my neck, his thumbs stroking up along my chin.
“Te amo. Eres mi mundo,” he repeats. I feel the vibration of those words into the soles of my feet. They’re a promise. His hands push into my ass and pulls me up his body. I wrap my legs around his waist and hold onto him, locking my hands at the back of his neck, my eyes never leaving him. I hear the others talking as he takes me back to our room, but I have no idea what they’re saying.
I don’t even care.
“How does it keep getting better each time?” Beth asks, her voice soft, her breath still ragged.
She’s got her head on my chest, and her fingers trail over my side. If I live to be a hundred and fifty, right here is where I would want to be. At her words, I smile. Fuck, I’ve been doing that nonstop since her declaration.
I love you. You’re my world.
Mierda! How could a man not smile when his woman tells him that? I take a breath because I need to talk to Beth. I know Torch will have already told Katie about Tucker and I don’t want Beth to think I’m keeping things from her.
“We need to talk, mi cielo.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head while keeping her face buried in my neck.
“Beth?”
“No, Skull. Things are too perfect right now, and whenever anyone says ‘we need to talk’ it’s never good. And right now, what we have is too amazing. I want to keep it longer. So, no.”
“What do you know of your mother?” I ask her.
She goes still in my arms and slowly pulls away to sit up in bed. She’s staring at my stomach.
“Why are you asking about my mother?”
“Are there things I don’t know, querida?”
She sighs. “Yes, but not because I was keeping it from you. It’s not that. It’s just… I didn’t find out until Redmond took me and Katie back to France.”
“Okay.”
“And honestly, Skull, since I’ve been back… we’ve been at each other’s throats, or…”
“Fucking our brains out?”
“I was going to say going at it like rabbits, but yeah,” she says, laughing weakly and finally looking at my face.
“It’s okay, mi cielo,” I tell her, knowing she’s worried that I might think she’s keeping more things from me.
“My whole life, you have to understand, we thought that Isabel and Redmond were our parents. We may not have liked the fact, but that’s what we believed. That’s all we knew.”
“But they weren’t?”
“Well, no… not really. When we got to France, grandfather would take great pleasure in telling us what a blight we were on the family. He kept saying we were weak, that we were too much like our mother, and how blood always tells…”
“He didn’t like your mother?”
“Well, that’s what we couldn’t figure out. Grandfather always seemed to adore Isabel, even after her and Redmond divorced and she married his brother, which personally upped the creepy factor for me. I mean, I know love is blind and all that, but that would be like me getting with Torch if something happened to Katie.”
“That will never fucking happen. You stay away from Torch.”
She rolls her eyes at me like I’m crazy—which admittedly I am. The thought of her being around any other man nearly destroys me.
“Please, Skull. He’s getting married to my sister. That’s just icky,” she says, scrunching up her face so fucking cutely, I can’t resist kissing her. I press my lips firmly against hers one more time.
“I get a little crazy thinking about anyone else near you, mi cielo.”
“I’m gathering that, but relax. You’ve ruined me for other men. If I didn’t go anywhere in the time we were apart, I sure as hell won’t now that I finally have you back.”
My hand is at the base of her neck and I squeeze once, smiling at the joy those words send through me before letting go so she can finish.
“We soon found out that while Redmond was married to Isabel, he had an affair with a girl that the family bought… God. The Donahues are involved in human trafficking,” she whispers. “They all deserve to die…”
I reach over and pull her up into my lap, hating that she looks so lost and alone in that moment. I used to feel guilt that I pursued Beth when she was so young. I’m not anymore. I was meant to find her on the street that day. I was meant to rescue her from this fucked up family and be here for her. I was meant to do all of the things Tucker failed to do when it came to her mother. Beth is my purpose. Mierda, she’s my reason for living…