Page 51 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

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Rafael

Cradling Isa to my chest, I stared over her shoulder at her nude form in the bath tub. The hot water turned her skin a light pink in a way that should have been relaxing, but her body was tense. “Is it the heat?” I asked, murmuring the words as I dipped my face down to brush my nose over her cheek.

“Is it the fucking heat?” she snapped, turning her head to glare at me. “You just mauled me on the staircase after youhuntedme in a ski mask.”

“But did you die?” I asked, quirking a brow at her.

Her mouth parted in shock, her lips tipping up as a snort burst out of her. “What did you just say?” she giggled, covering her face in her hand.

“Am I not allowed to make jokes?” I asked, smiling down at her and the joy on her face. As much as I loved seeing her afraid, feeling the heady mix of her arousal and her fear of me and the way they combined to drive her higher and higher, that smile was everything. “You’re spending too much time in the sun. You have a new freckle,” I observed, tapping the side of her nose gently.

She flushed, her chin dipping as the smile drifted off her face and her lips twisted with the shyness. Given that I’d seen everything there was to see on her and fucked every orifice, it seemed unreasonable that my wife would still blush in my presence.

Even knowing that, I wouldn’t change it for anything. I hoped she spent the rest of our long lives together being intimidated by my presence, because I wouldn’t ever stop trying to overwhelm her.

My thumb trailed over the corner of her mouth as I cupped her cheek in my hand, tugging her back until she rested firmly against my chest. She snuggled into my neck, her breath a reassuring caress on my throat. “Tell me about Chloe,” I murmured, wincing when the deep sigh left her and she pressed deeper into me.

“You mean your minions didn’t already tell you everything?” she asked, a bitter acceptance of the eyes I kept on her at all times. Isa had long since come to terms with the fact that she had no privacy or secrets from me, and that my obsession with her would keep it that way, but that didn’t stop her from hating every moment of it.

“Not everything.” I didn’t bother to deny that Joaquin had given me a brief summary of the conversation. To do so would only be an insult to Isa’s intelligence. Keeping secrets to protect her was one thing, but now that she knew the truth about me and the kind of man I was, those were the only secrets I would keep from my wife. There was beauty in those lies that served a purpose, in the half-truths that protected her soul from fracturing. “And I want to hear it from you.”

Isa sighed, sitting up straight and turning to face me. “She didn’t understand. She didn’t even try to,” she said, dropping her eyes to the brands on my chest. Her hand raised to touch the fading marks from where she’d stabbed me with a fork on our wedding night. “I can’t say I blame her really. That’s the hardest part. I know they’re only being logical and doing what they think is right for me. They don’t mean to hurt me.”

“But they are,” I said, raising a hand to touch her back. My fingers trailed up and down her spine, making her shiver despite the warmth of the water surrounding us. “Whether that’s the intent or not, you can’t deny it’s how they’ve made you feel.”

“I wanted to come home. I was so desperate to get back to them that I was willing to turn my back on what I felt for you,” she admitted, standing from the water and grabbing the towel off the rack next to the tub. I didn’t move to stop her even though I would have rather she stayed and let me hold her. Isa didn’t like to be naked when she was emotionally vulnerable. She dried off in a hurry, wrapping the towel around her body as I stood. I couldn’t contain my smirk as she kept her eyes purposefully off the erection at my waist.

It never seemed to go away when she was near me.

Only when I was covered and pulled the drain on the tub did she move to speak, picking up the comb and starting to frantically work her way through the wet snarls in her hair from our fight. I took it from her, easing the comb through her hair as she leaned her hands on the counter and stared at me in the reflection of the mirror. “I can’t stop wondering what it would have been like if you hadn’t stopped me. Would I have come home and felt this...out of place in my own home? Would I have regretted leaving?”

“I think we both know the answer to that question,mi reina,”I murmured, turning my stare to her face as tears threatened her vivid eyes. “The way we feel about each other, that doesn’t just go away because you go to the other side of the world. You’d have felt my loss just as keenly as I felt yours.”

“You don’t think I could have buried myself in the life I’d planned?”

“Do you think you could have?” I asked, my voice dropping lower. Fury threatened a haze at the edge of my vision, that feeling so reminiscent of the moment she’d chosen her family over me.

She stared at me in the mirror, watching the signs of my anger on my face and studying them intently as she considered her answer. I knew Isa well enough that whatever left her mouth wouldn’t be a lie. Her ability to reflect on herself and her feelings so thoroughly was something I admired in her, something I hoped she’d pass to our daughters so they’d have more emotional depth than I did.

I was a puddle compared to the ocean that surged inside Isa.

“No,” she said finally, and the relief I felt was tangible in the air. I didn’t know what I would have done if she’d said she thought she could forget me so easily.

Probably take her back toEl Infiernoand never let her leave.

“I think you were doomed to need me from the first moment I touched you,” I said, smirking at the roll of her eyes.

“Were you born so arrogant?” she asked.

“I believe that was likely developed over years of careful practice,” I chuckled.

The laugh she gave in response was hollow as her thoughts threatened to consume her. “They don’t understand me anymore,” she said, smiling sadly as she looked at her reflection. “I don’t belong here anymore, do I?”

My heart clenched in my chest, the admission something poignant for the woman who would have done anything to get back to the family who she’d sacrificed so much to please. “No, because you belong with me.”

I finished working through the knots in her hair, helped her into a nightie to sleep in and guided her to bed. She was so tired as I tucked her in, the weight of the emotional epiphanies surrounding her family weighing her down. Tucking her into my arms, I held her until her breathing evened out in the peacefulness of sleep.

Rolling away from her, I sat up and looked over to watch her. Her face was so peaceful, unstressed and unperturbed by the events of her life that made her become so trapped in her head. My cell dinged on my nightstand, a text from Joaquin to let me know that all shifts had returned to their posts around the house and everything was secure following myexercisewith Isa.

The date at the top of my phone gleamed back at me, feeling significant as I tried to think of whatever responsibility I might be missing back at home. It wasn’t until Isa rolled onto her back in the dramatic way of hers that I stared at her stomach and awareness dawned. I wondered briefly if she’d done the math and realized it yet, but knew without a doubt she was too stuck in her own stubborn denial and the stress of all the changes in her life to realize the one truth that had always been only a matter of time.

Isa was two weeks late.

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