Home was a small, low-rise condo with a balcony that faced an open-air market. It was in the newer neighborhood, between Paza del Mar and Casa Paloma. The bus that took me to Valdemoros stopped across the street. The beach and Sierra’s school were within walking distance. The location made up for the ceaseless traffic and noise from the market during the day. At night, when everyone was gone, you could hear the sound of the ocean. Sometimes I closed my eyes and pretended I was lying under gauzy, mosquito netting in a little villa nestled among the trees.
But today, all pretenses were stripped away. Papers lay strewn around me. There was no escaping the reality before me, the reality that was Damian—in my room, in my chair. It was pointless to ask how he’d gotten in. He had picked up more than a few tricks in Caboras, and no doubt, in prison too. What alarmed me was not that he had broken into my place, or that he’d hired a private investigator to look into the last eight years of my life. What alarmed me was that Sierra was sleeping in the next room and I had no idea what Damian’s intentions were, now that he had found out about her.
“You should have told me.” He got up and walked over to the bed. The air shifted around him, like a force field of barely contained energy.
“What do you want?” I shrank back against the headboard. Being alone in a room with Damian, with all of his attention focused on you was heady and dangerous. “Nick—”
“Nick is in San Diego. Happily married. He was here to help you set up a charity for the women in Valdemoros. Or should I show you his folder?”
Shit. So much for trying to get the man to leave. I had seen the way Damian had looked at Nick. His jealousy had burned like a red-hot spear, ready to gouge the other man’s eyes out, before he’d retracted it and left.
“You’ve done well for yourself, all things considered.” Damian sat on the edge of my bed and regarded me, his eyes falling on the strap that had slipped off my shoulder. “The princess who lives among the peasants.”
“I did what I had to. No thanks to you.”
“I didn’t know.” He slid the strap back into place and let his fingers linger on the small scar that the bullet had left.
It took every bit of control not to close my eyes. Eight years. Eight long, lonely years. I’d gone out on a number of dates. I’d wanted to fall for someone else, but nothing came close to what Damian’s touch did to me. Once you’ve been loved by a man like Damian, once you’ve been branded and molded in the fires of that possession, you will never be moved by tepid, impostor kisses.
“I assumed that your father had set up some kind of fund for you, something separate from his finances.”
“He did. But I used it to pay for his medical expenses towards the end.” I couldn’t stop scrutinizing his face. The jaw was more solid. Everything was more set—his brows, his nose, his mouth—like they’d finally found their place. If he leaned any closer, I’d feel his breath on my neck.
“You and Sierra had nothing?” He let go of the strap and tilted my chin, forcing me to meet his midnight black orbs. They glittered with something raw and fierce.
“We managed.” I pushed his hand away.
“You should have told me.”
“Why?” My temper flared. “So you could swoop in and make things right? You can never make things right, Damian. You can never take back what you did. Maybe I took a page from your book. Maybe I wanted to punish you for destroying my father. Did you ever think of that? Vengeance begets venge—”
He cut off my tirade mid-sentence, one arm around the small of my back, crushing me up against him. He ravaged my mouth, forcing my lips open, thrusting his tongue inside. This was no soft, dreamy kiss. It was a blistering, roaring flame that crackled and fizzed through my veins. The kind of kiss that welds hungry souls together. It was Damian, wild and erratic, like a summer storm. His fingers twisted in my hair, yanking my head back, holding it immobile. There was no escaping him, no denying him. He didn’t let up until my body went limp in his arms, until the resistance ebbed out of me.