Page 33 of His to Bedevil

“My love?”

My gaze snaps over to him, and from the looks of it, he was talking to me and I wasn’t listening. “Hmm?”

He gives me a small smile. “What would you like to drink?”

I finally notice the busty Latina standing too close to him, her breasts all but shoved in his face. “I’ll have a glass of Grand Marnier,” I say, and focus back out the window as we’re now in the air above the white clouds. I can feel Alejo’s eyes still on me. Turning back to him, I cock an eyebrow. “The doctor said I can have alcohol as long as I have something in my stomach. We just ate less than two hours ago,” I point out.

Sighing, he looks up at the flight attendant or stewardess or whatever she is and nods his head. Her eyes linger on him for a little too long as his are lingering on me. Then she disappears toward the front of the plane, and I’m a little surprised he didn’t watch her walk away. The woman washot. Even I watched her walk away.

“Nervous about flying?” he asks me, and I gaze out the window again, trying to ignore the surge of jealousy simmering in my chest.

“No, why do you ask?” I clip.

“You seem a little on edge.”

I throw my head back and laugh. When I meet his gaze, he’s still just staring at me as cool as ever. “Yes, I’m on edge. Consider me always on edge, Alejandro.”

He doesn’t respond, and I don’t need him to. I lean my head back against the headrest and stare out the window.I seem on edge? For real?Well, let’s see. I was abducted by him and his men, stolen off the streets of Little Havana in broad daylight. I was tortured for almost a freaking month. Now, I’m living in his bedroom with him in some sort of vexing relationship that I cannot even try to understand anymore. And now, he has my one and only friend who he’ll torture as well, but it’ll be much worse for him. Then I’m being taken to Cuba, where I have no idea what is in store for me. He wants me to meet his mother and make nice with her and using Matches to barter with. I’m not only on edge, I’m stressed the fuck out and perturbed as shit.

The stewardess comes back with our drinks and sets mine down in front of me, not even glancing my way, as if I’m not even there or I’m irrelevant. But when she sets Alejo’s drink down in front of him, she bends down and whispers something in his ear. The act causes that simmering jealousy in my chest to spread throughout my entire body, heating every cell as if I’m about to erupt and start spewing out molten lava. When she stands up, she smiles at him seductively then turns to leave, swaying her hips dramatically along the way. Alejo gets to his feet, and my stomach plummets. I hate this ugly feeling inside of me and the fact that I care at all. He means absolutely nothing to me. He can go fuck whoever the hell he wants because it sure as hell won’t be me.

“I’ll be right back, my love,” he murmurs, and it takes all of me not to flip him the bird.

Flaring my nostrils, I focus back out the window and refrain from punching my fist through it. Why does it physically hurt to know that Alejo is going to go hook up with that whore who threw herself at him? Of course he’s fucking other women. Since I’m not fucking him, he’s got to get it from someone else. It makes no fucking sense that I’m at all jealous. God, I am so fucked up in the head.

Alejo comes to take his seat only a few minutes after he left. “That was quick.” There’s a lot more bite in my tone than I intended, and I internally berate myself for not having a better grip on my sanity. I shut myself up by occupying my mouth with my drink so that I don’t make myself any more obvious.

He has his laptop with him now and opens it without looking at me. “What was quick?”

I scoff and shake my head, looking away. “Whatever,” I mutter.

“I just fired the stewardess, so if you need anything, you need to let me know.”

My head snaps back to him. “You just fired her? Why?”

He’s looking at his laptop and continues to do so when he answers me. “She bothered you, so I told her she no longer works for me.”

When I lean forward to make sure I heard him correctly, he glances up at me with a straight face. “What makes you think she bothered me? And why would you care anyway?” Yeah, she bothered me, but I didn’t want him to know that. He does not need to think I was jealous, it’ll incite him.

“I told you, Irma. You are mine, which makes me yours. I do not have a lingering eye, and I will remain faithful to you.” Here it is. Here is the answer I’ve been looking for. An answer I was not at all prepared for.

“Are you—are we—what?” I shake my head and pick up my glass again, draining it dry. “Alejandro, when you say faithful—I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to paint me a picture here of what is going on between us. You say you want to remain faithful to me? But we aren’t…” I can’t even finish the sentence. It’s just too absurd. Too foreign and unexplored.

“We aren’t what,mi amor? In a relationship?” He pauses. “What did you think when I told you that I want everything from you? That you’re mine? That I’m keeping you?”

I unconsciously pick up my glass to drink, forgetting it’s empty. Setting the glass down calmly, I lick my lips, and Alejo follows the movement with his eyes. It excites something inside of me to see him look at me with heated eyes from such a casual movement. “I thought maybe I was a toy or something to you,” I say quietly.

“You are not a toy for me, Irma. You are so much more than that. I want everything from you, and I want to give you everything of me. I want to make you my wife, and one day I want your belly swollen with my child.” I can barely breathe as words keep tumbling out of his mouth. Words I have never imagined ever being said to me. “I want your mind, your body, your soul, and most of all, I want your heart.”

Holy fuck.What insane asylum did he escape from? What on earth makes him think this could ever work? He kidnapped me, for Christ’s sake! He locked me up in a concrete room for weeks with hardly any food or water and a small bucket to piss in. I was knocking on death’s door when he finally pulled me out. Now, he’s threatening to torture and kill my only friend in the world. He thinks I can just look past all of that and learn to love him? I don’t even know if I know how to love, to be perfectly honest. I forgot what love feels like many years ago.

Swallowing hard again, I lift my glass. “Can I get another one?”

Alejandro

Iknow my proclamation of wanting to marry Irma and have children with her shook her to her core. We haven’t even had sex yet, and I know that normal people fall in love before any of that, but she and I are both aberrant creatures. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t do it the traditional way. I can’t let her go and pick her up from her home to take her out on dates like the common people do when they first start dating. This is what I have to work with, and I will make this work.

I let her have more than one drink on the plane, and by the time we are in the SUV on our way to the estate, she’s relaxed and, dare I say, happy. It’s nice to see her like this. I can’t wait until I see this every day from her and not due to the consumption of alcohol. It’ll be because of her life with me.

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