The Faster They Live, the Harder They Fall . . .
Raised by con artists, Ellie Watt has a lot of crazy childhood memories-but none crazier than being scarred with acid by the demented crime boss Travis Raines. Now Ellie is a full-grown woman who lives for revenge, and Travis is a full-blown drug lord who kills for pleasure. The sadistic bastard has kidnapped her good friend Gus as well as her mother, whom he's been holding as prized possessions in his heavily guarded lair. And Ellie has only one chance in hell of getting them out alive-using two dangerous men who love her to death . . . One is Camden McQueen, a talented tattoo artist who's made a permanent mark on Ellie's heart. The other is Javier Bernal, her fiery ex-lover who's busted more than a few heads in his time. From the crime-ridden streets of Mexico City to the predatory jungles of Honduras, this unlikely trio forms an uneasy alliance in the deadliest game of all-a gun-blazing battle to the finish that will pit enemy against enemy and lover against lover. And Ellie must choose the right man to trust . . . or die.
The motel room was a lot nicer than
the one we stayed at before. Sort of a Best Western, middle-ground quality of
place. No roaches on the floors, no geckos on the wall. Shit mattresses, I
discovered as I pounded my fist on the bed, but I didn’t care.
Camden had just put the final box on
my bed, Violetta sprawled out on hers in a state of drug-induced euphoria, when
I noticed Javier lingering at the doorway.
“I’m going to be meeting Dom in
about twenty minutes,” Javier said to me. “Is that enough time for you to get
ready?”
I frowned and he quickly added, “You
know he’ll want you there, if this is going to get anywhere. I figured you
might want to shower and look nice.”
He rapped his fingers along the
doorframe, his mouth opening as if to say something else, then he turned and
walked off.
Camden eyed me. “I’m going with
you.”
“You might be kind of drunk,
Camden,” I told him, though the determination in his voice warmed me like the
finest cognac.
“I’ve never felt better,” he said,
enunciating each word. His eyes, my god they were still such a clear fucking
blue, even in the pallid light of the hotel room. They bore into me with such
startling clarity, sending shivers down my back like trailing fingertips. He
would be coming with me.
I wished he’d be coming in me. A
vision of us in this hotel room, alone, him nailing me to the bed, the
headboard banging, slammed into my head.
“Are you okay with that?” he asked.
I suppressed the thought, the flare
of heat between my legs, and smiled quickly. “Yes, of course.”
Meanwhile Violetta’s head flopped to
the side, her arm still bound to her stiffly in the sling, and started snoring
lightly. I motioned to her. “Do you think it’s safe to leave her here?”
He watched her for a few moments,
blinking a few times, before saying, “I think she needs to sleep it off.” He
went and sat down on my bed. “I’ll be here when you get out.”
I grabbed my bag of clothes I had
brought out of the car and brought it into the bathroom. I had a quick shower,
trying to rub off all the grim – both real and imagined – with the flimsy hotel
soap, then picked through my clothes. Everything that had been in my trunk was
musty and wrinkled, some even dirty. I had a packet of unopened (and decidedly
unsexy) Hanes underwear, a bra, another pair of jeans, a pair of gladiator
sandals that I thought were dressy enough, a pair of Timberland hiking boots, a
plain white tee shirt, a couple of wife-beaters, a coral-colored blouse, a
plaid shirt, and a light blue tank dress that went to the ground. I wasn’t
exactly known for my fashion sense and even with the cherry blossoms covering
the scars on my leg, bringing me beauty that I didn’t have before, I didn’t see
myself branching out anytime soon. Dressing up in my old clothes for Javier
hadn’t exactly helped either.
I slipped on the tank dress, opting
to go commando for the evening, and put on the sandals. I looked at myself in
the mirror. Once again, I felt like a different person was staring back at me.
This me, this Ellie, was tired and hardened. I rubbed the residue mascara away
from under my eyes and applied a new coat. My skin was brown from the sun now
and I didn’t need much else.
When I came out of the bathroom,
Camden straightened up on the bed. I felt strangely shy in front of him,
especially as his eyes trailed up and down the length of me.
“Do I look okay?” I asked him,
feeling the need to say something. “I mean, if you can see me, that is.”
He bit his lip and stared, a
multitude of emotions flashing through his eyes, too fast for me to pick up on
each individual one. I thought I saw lust in there – maybe that’s what I wanted
to see.
When he still didn’t say anything, I
walked over to the dresser where I had my clutch purse left over from the other
night at Travis’s and rifled through it for my lip stuff. His silence at my
back was a heavy weight, laden with too many uncertainties between us. It was
eating at me, burning through me, rendering me with a lead heart. There were so
many things I had to focus on, to worry about, fucking impossible things, and
yet I needed him to tell me I looked beautiful. I needed him to tell me I was
something to him.
I heard him get off the bed and walk
toward me, that heaviness, that warmth that he brought with his bones, teased
at my back. He stopped, close enough to touch me, and I was about to turn
around, perhaps to do something foolish, when he crouched down.
“How is my art?”
His hands found my leg, one of them
lifting the hem of my dress, the other slowly moving over the cherry blossom
tattoo. I sucked in my breath, holding completely still, trying to contain my
nerves that were firing wildly as his fingers ran along the ridges of the ink.
He touched me gently over every vine, leaf and petal, until I had to supress a
shaky moan that that tried to escape from my lips.
“It feels fine,” I said softly when
I found my voice.
“It looks beautiful,” he said.
“I had a beautiful artist,” I told
him. I turned at the waist and look down at him, my blue dress glowing in his
tanned hand, his other one placed firmly around my calf, his strong fingers
imparting heat that sunk deep. He was looking up at me, lips parted slightly.
I couldn’t take a second more of
this.
I turned and dropped to the ground,
my knees rubbing against his.
I grabbed his face, his rough
stubble pressing into my palms, and kissed him.
Hard.
There was surprise for a second, a
hesitation, a pulse that refused to beat on. Then Camden kissed me back, his
soft lips enveloping mine, his mouth opening to give me life. He put his hand
behind my head, holding it there with power and control.
My heart was an elevator car, the
cable suddenly snapped, and I was freefalling and falling and falling as his
lips and tongue and hot, wet mouth took away every inch of my resolve. The more
he kissed me, the deeper and longer we found each other, the thirstier I got
for him. I felt like if we stopped, I would die, empty on the inside and
forever longing.
Karina Halle is a former travel writer and music journalist and the USA Today Bestselling author of Love, in English, The Artists Trilogy, and other wild and romantic reads. She lives in a 1920s farmhouse on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of books.
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