Page 29 of Blood Ties
My eyes snap open. "Don't call me that. I can’t be your whole world, because I’m not your fucking anything."
"Let me help take some of that weight off your shoulders. Let me love you."
My eyes water and I tear my face away from his hard stare. "You can fuck me, but that's all. I might as well get something out of this dreadful visit. Everything else is off the table. I won't let you have more than that. Not now, or ever again. It doesn’t matter what pleasure you bring to my body tonight; I’ll still hate you."
"That's what you say now." He pulls my face back toward his.
"It's what I'll keep on saying."
"Things change."
"Not the past."
"No, but we can overcome it with time. I know I made mistakes and I know I was a coward before. Just know, I would have never purposely left you behind if I knew you were alive."
My eyes widen. "What do you mean? You had a choice, and it wasn't me."
His brows furrow and he shakes his head. "What makes you think I had a choice? I thought you died in the fire, they even showed me your burned corpse. I should have known they were lying. I should have—"
I cut off his next words. "Wait, are you saying you didn't make a deal with Jorge in order to save your own ass?"
He tilts his head, squinting his eyes. "What deal? I was thrown into a room with my hands tied, forced to watch what I thought was live footage of the man I love burning. They beat me until I stopped asking about you. They put pictures of a dead man in your clothing all over the walls."
I shake my head in disbelief. "You're lying."
"I'm a bad man, precious, but I'm not a liar." He pulls my face toward his. "Whatever they told you wasn't true. They played us both."
"You...I…" I stare down at the floor, not sure how to feel about all this information coming at me all at once. This whole time I thought he had willingly let me go. I spent all these years hating him, wishing him dead. Can he really be telling me the truth?
"Maybe I didn't do all the things they told you I did, but I still let you down. I was dumb enough to think they'd let you go. I should have never allowed you to walk out of the hotel room that day. You don't have to forgive me today or ever, but I'll do whatever it takes to make you realize how sorry I am. Fuck, am I sorry Marcus." He kisses my nose. "If I could change things I would. I'd make sure it was me rotting away in that cellar instead of you."
My heart squeezes in my chest and the more I stare into his genuine eyes, the more I believe every damn word. My lips press against his. The kiss is long, passionate, and way overdue. Tonight, I surrender my body to him while barricading my heart with walls of steel. I'm not ready to let go. Fully giving myself to the man in front of me again terrifies me way more than anything. Even more than death itself.I was left broken before and had to slowly glue back together the pieces. If I pull all my trust in him again, I could lose everything I’ve rebuilt.
I won’t give in. I can't.
Chapter 13
Miguel
Something hard pressing into my head has me shifting awake, attempting to adjust my eyes to the bright light. There's something weighing me down, keeping my back flat on the bed. Marcus is sitting on top of me with a gun in his hand and the rumpled version of him becomes clearer after my eyes fully blink open. His lips are swollen, and his hair is strewed, falling in every direction, appearing as though he was thoroughly fucked. I'm eager to get more than my tongue and fingers inside him this time around. “Morning, precious.”
“Hardly. You only took a short nap. You actually think I’d let you spend the night. That isn’t what this is, and I won’t change my mind.”
“You keep saying that. Eventually you’ll grow tired of holding up those walls of yours. What goes up, must come down.”
“You can keep telling yourself whatever you need to help you sleep at night.”
“Is that an invitation to stay? It must be lonely being in such a large house with so many empty rooms.”
“The house is rarely ever empty. People come in and out of it all day long.”
“That's not what I mean, and you know it.”
He groans, sliding lower until his cock is rubbing over mine. “Listen, this is what's going to happen next. You are going to lie still and I’m going to fuck myself on your cock, and today I’ll be the one to decide if you get to come or not. Not the other way around.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “I don’t think so, precious.”
“Either we play by my rules, or you leave right now. No more kissing and no fucking touching me unless I ask. Got it?”
