Page 47 of The Slayer
“You love me?” she asked softly.
“Yeah,” he whispered into the semidarkness of the room, the throbbing in his head and worry over his cousin forcing him to let walls down. “I love you. You’re my family too. You make it easier. Wish you were here.”
“But Jules is there. Who would run the office?” she said as she took a deep breath, as if she needed to remind herself how to breathe.
Chuito didn’t argue with her, because they both knew even though they didn’t talk about it that letting Alaine come to his fights would make it obvious to the whole world that they were closer than just neighbors.
He didn’t want that for her, not when all of Garnet would gossip about it.
Chuito had crossed her father’s path many times, and every time it was tense. The preacher didn’t say anything to Chuito, just stared him down as if he knew what Chuito didn’t admit to anyone.
That whenever he closed his eyes and thought of a woman…it was Alaine.
“Chu,” she whispered into the silence, pulling him out of his thoughts. “I love you too. Just so you know.”
“Love me. Don’t be in love with me,” he warned her. “You wouldn’t want to bein lovewith me.”
“So you love me, but you’re notinlove with me?”
Chuito opened his mouth, wanting to say yes, it was just a friendship-type love he felt for her, because lying about how he really felt would shut down what was growing between them.
He couldn’t do it, so he said, “I just love you. That’s it. Only love. Not sex. I can just love someone. Love is good. Sex is cruel.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said with a bitter laugh. “But I think sex can be kind.”
“It’s dirty.” Chuito confessed it like a sin, because he thought about dirty sex with Alaine all the time. “Angels don’t like dirty.”
“Except I’m not an angel,” Alaine corrected him.
He smiled. “You are an angel. You cry during fights. You’re sweet, mami. You don’t wanna be with someone like me. Not like that. Friends are good.”
“I do want it, Chu,” she said without hesitating. “I want it more than anything.”
Chuito closed his eyes at the white-hot rush of lust that surged into his bloodstream, so hard and blinding it made his head throb worse. It had been so long since he’d touched a woman. Just the thought of having Alaine under him, flushed and breathless, made him almost dizzy with the longing.
If it had been a different time, he might have caved, but he was feeling like the devil himself for agreeing to stay in Garnet when his cousin was in deep with gang life again.
He needed a little self-punishment.
Or a lot.
“No sex. Friends only.” He groaned because that honestlyhurtto say. “Friends last longer. I’d die for my friends. I’d do anything for you.Anything.”
“Not anything. But that’s okay. I’m patient. Love is enough for now.”
He laughed at that. “Maybe you wouldn’t like the way I do it.”
“Maybe I would,” she countered. “Maybe I would like it a lot.”
Coño.
Chuito had to take a shuddering breath. His cock got harder at the way it sounded when she said it, with that teasing catch in her voice. He was saved from having to say anything when Wyatt pushed the door open.
Chuito rolled onto his stomach and turned his head to look at him. “What?”
“Are you ready? Jules went to get done up. I told her we’d meet her at the club. There’s a place at the other hotel. We’ll walk. She’ll take a cab.”
“You want to go to a club? Really?” Chuito gave him a wide-eyed look of horror. “Do you dance?”
