Page 52 of Wild Heart
“This is my boyfriend,” I told him, but I sort of hated that word.
It was only three weeks ago that I held his blood in my palms, but time with Ivan was different. It was fuller. Denser. It took up more space in my life than the last fourteen years did, and I knew if there were other worlds out there, I loved Ivan in those too.
My father made a humming sound and took a tentative step forward. “Your boyfriend looks forty.”
“Don’t be a dick, Luis. He’s thirty-eight.”
Ivan chuckled in my ear.
“Helookslike a predator. Was it his influence that’s led you to believe you need to abandon your family?”
“Was that a fucking joke?”
It didn’t make any sense.
How irrevocably unaware he was.
Just because a man was in pain didn’t mean he was exempt from causing any. It just meant it was worse for all the people they buried beneath it.
My jaw strained, clenching and unclenching as I waited, stupefied and pissed off. Blood warming, my pulse kicked, and I thrashed against Ivan’s hold until he placed me on my feet. Hands in fists at my sides, my nails bit into the skin covering my palm as I walked across the office.
We were toe to toe, and where his eyes carried confusion and quick disapproval, mine held pain-induced anger and a few wayward tears.
“The only predator I see here is you,” I said. “That’s what you do. You prey on my guilt until you’ve manipulated me into feeling sorry for you. It worked… because I care about you, but caring about you hurts me, and I’m so goddamn tired of hurting.”
Callused fingertips brushed the edge of my forearm when he reached for me. I moved away before he could bend his fingers and capture me in his fist.
“I quit… and I’m taking Carl.”
ChapterFifteen
Ivan
Dead leaves and clumps of moss littered the uneven gravel I drove over, crunching beneath my tires. Marcos stared through the truck’s window, chin lifted as he searched for the tops of the overgrown trees that stood tall on either side of us.
It smelled of wet grass and animal shit, and beneath the rumble of the engine, there was the sound of rushing water. Nose to the window, Marcos studied every broken branch and fallen log we passed by. There was a pinch between his eyebrows while he struggled to decide whether the surroundings were familiar to him.
“This looks like the type of place a true crime documentary would be filmed. Is that it? We’re going to picnic over dead bodies covered in pine needles and twigs?”
The fuck?
I barked a laugh. “Baby, what the hell do you think I do?”
“I don’t know. Push drugs? Torture people? Smoke in casinos?” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Freddy’s not out here somewhere?”
Freddy was in a block of cement at the bottom of the Pacific, but my baby’s heart was still red, and I wasn’t about to blacken it with the details of the shit I did for a living.
“No.”
“A regular picnic then? One with finger foods and forest fucking?”
“Forest fucking?” I grinned. “A picnic isn’t your surprise, but if you want to be fucked up against a tree, I could find some time in our day to rough you up a bit.”
His cheeks flushed, and he pressed the heel of his palm against his cock. “Are we almost there? I could run faster than you’re driving,” he complained, but I didn’t miss the way his eyes found me from their corners.
Teeth in his lip and nails in his thighs, he waited.Waitedfor me to call him a brat and threaten to slap him on the ass. My handprint was his prisoner now, and he wanted it with the same ferocity as he wanted spit-soaked bruises and streaks of blood.
He riled me up just because he knew the sort of marks his skin would wear when I was done with him.
