Page 16 of Defy

An hour into shooting, my stress level is coming down, my shots with the pistol are more accurate, and the mid-afternoon Venezuelan sun is making me sweat. I struggle for about five minutes but finally manage to get my shirt off when I see Diego wince.

“Sorry about that.” He lifts his chin in my direction.

“You did me a favor, D. No apology necessary.” He hands me another magazine just as I hear a low, feminine whistle.

“Christ, Dominic, what’d you do for the last eighteen years? Lift weights and eat all day?” Camila and Irina are approaching the shooting range. Camila’s pulling her sunglasses down so I can see her eyeing me. Irina flashes me a friendly smile, looking almost apologetic. She’s less energetic than the last time I saw her and I wonder if she’s sober or just on something else.

“Ladies,” Diego and I say at the same time.

Camila walks up to me like she owns me. Like she still knows me after all this time and I hear Libby’s words in my head.Find some other way to get the information.She reaches a hand out to touch my bare skin and I stop her.

“Camila,” I say in warning. She knows the tone.

“Dominic,” she challenges, arching a brow and pursing her red lips. I notice they match the barely-there top she’s wearing and although she wears it well, she doesn’t hold the temptation for me that she once did.

“Can I help you with something?” I ask, meaningwhy the fuck are you down here.

“I can think of a few things,” she says seductively using her other hand to reach for the waistband of the shorts I have on.

“Camila, stop. Why are you down here?” I ask directly so she can’t avoid the question with a flighty answer.

“I was hoping we could get reacquainted. It’s been a long time, Dom.” She flashes a quick glance at Diego. “When you boys are through, why don’t you come find me? We have some catching up to do.” Her tone has enough mystery in it that I can’t figure out if she just means sexual catching up to do or if she has information she wants to share. Her next statement is too obvious though and that’s when I realize she was sent by my mother. “Unless you avoiding me has something to do withLibby. She didn’t seem too happy about our reunion.”

I’m getting better at controlling my emotions and reactions. The target practice helped.

“Camila,” I say patiently, like I’m talking to a toddler, “I haven’t been here long enough to be avoiding you. And if my mother wants to know something, tell her it would be easier if she would just ask me herself.”

Camila looks like I smacked her. I might as well have but she rallies and tries to play it off. “Interesting. I didn’t think you could be a bigger asshole than you were when you left. You’ve proven me wrong.”

She called me an asshole but she didn’t deny that my mother sent her to test me. If sheisspying for my mother, I can potentially control what Camila tells her, but like always, I have to give a little to get a little.

I nod my head toward the back of the range where a small shelter was built to provide cover over a couple of picnic tables to organize ammo. Turning to Diego and Irina, I give them a tight smile. “Give us a minute.”

As those two head off toward the shelter, leaving Camila and I alone, I reach up and run my thumb along her cheek. She melts into my touch immediately while she fingers a pendent around her neck seductively, her long red nails communicating a promise of their own.

“God, I missed you so much,” she breathes sincerely.

I give her the apology I owe her. “Look, Camila, I’m sorry I left you without a goodbye. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I couldn’t. Not after what I’d done.”

She reaches for my waistband again, but I don’t try to remove her hands this time because she isn’t trying to get my shorts off, she’s seeking connection and I need her to connect with me as an old friend, not as my mother’s servant.

“Why’d you come back?” she asks, genuinely curious, leading me to believe my mother uses her as a one-way street. Camila is to report everything she sees, hears, and learns while given no information in return.

“I didn’t intend to. I was backed into a corner and needed help. The kind of help only Luis could have provided on short notice. The price for his help was that I return to Venezuela with him.” It’s the truth and my parents already know this so I’m not really giving anything away.

“And the girl?”

I raise my eyebrows while letting my hand trail from her cheek to her exposed collarbone. The skin beneath my fingers no longer that of the girl I once knew, but familiar nonetheless.

“What about her, Camila?”

“Who is she?” Her eyes flutter closed as I continue to caress the base of her throat back and forth.

“If you’re asking why they’re so interested in her, then I honestly have no idea. I tried to save her from an abusive fiancé and instead, I delivered her to my parents which we both know could be a fate worse than death.”

“Dom,” she whispers, seeing through my half-truth. My lie of omission. But she doesn’t press for more. Her heavily lidded eyes would suggest she’s making a negotiation of her own. “Your mother only knows what I want her to know.” She’s walking backwards, pulling me with her behind a retention wall, out of eyesight of Diego and Irina. She cups her hand over my crotch and starts rubbing me slowly through my pants.

She’s blackmailing me.

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