Page 79 of Hostile King

This one is all him.

Power. Temptation. Sin. Devotion.

“Carina, will you marry me and spend the rest of our days together as husband and wife?”

23

TOMÁS

Five days later

“Congratulations.”

Bianca throws her arms around Carina’s shoulders, the tropical scent of coconuts and wildflowers wafting from her glowing complexion.

I discreetly fix my overused dick behind the cargo shorts that my soon-to-be brother-in-law had given me, not minding the relaxed camouflage style when it fits my surroundings. Nothing beats the neatness of a tailored suit or the feeling of a clean, starched shirt next to my skin—except when Carina’s nakedness is plastered on top of me.

Then I’m alive.

Buzzed.

Ready to take on the world and kill anyone who dares to come near her.

My hold on Carina’s waist slips as I take a reluctant step away, moving across the damp walkway close to a large helipad skirting the rainforest. It isn’t easy to let go since I've had her all to myself these past few weeks, nonetheless, I allow her space to show off the engagement ring she proudly wears.

The vintage style I had commissioned fits her dainty finger perfectly, frequently catching my eye when she moves from shade to sunlight.

It’s a one of a kind, just like my forever girl.

That is the epitome of us—dancing with darkness and thriving in each other’s light. Electric lust and endless, warm devotion. She’s not just my sunshine—she’s a collection of flickering flames, my burning sun and the lava filled core of my existence.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.” Bianca splays her fingers over her heart, dropping onto each wooden step, flip flops clapping her heels.

It’s odd to see a cartel princess in her afterlife, looking nothing like the well-presented woman she was when we first met. Baggy shorts and a blouse hide her figure and a long bohemian braid drapes her spine. But it’s that genuine smile she offers Carina that seals the decision I made to not wage a war against her family.

“I hope I’ll find a man who looks at me the way he looked at you at the dinner party in Mexico,” she adds, clutching Carina’s forearm like they’ve known each other a lifetime.

Since Sal and I are on speaking terms, albeit a fragile relationship paved with wafer-thin sheets of ice, we had arranged for Bianca to move from the safehouse she was hiding in to the secluded jungle resort owned byel Fantasma. She’s been here for a week now and slowly settling into her new reality of becoming a single parent.

While my brothers had helped to organize the bomb and decoys from the morgue, Shane and I sorted out a bundle of paper notes and a safe place for her to lie low until she could cross the border with fake identity papers.

It was a risk I willingly took, because there wasn’t a chance in fucking Hell that I’d risk losing Carina again. Bianca chose to run from her uncle—she put her unborn baby first. The baby he would have made her abort had he found out about it.

Here, she can reinvent herself and eventually, when the time is right, she’ll pick a country from anywhere around the globe to live in. However, she seems more interested in helping the latest victim who had arrived on site yesterday.

She lowers her voice and walks with Carina to the scattered orchids fringing the far edge of the helipad.

“There was something in his gaze I could never understand.” She pats her blooming belly as they stroll. “When I first stared into his eyes, they were indecipherable and distant—so lifeless for a man who had everything he could ever want. I guess he didn’t have you, because now they shine.”

My girl glances over her shoulder to find me staring, unable to take my eyes off her. What can I say, she’s priceless. The shy smile hitching the corners of her pretty mouth sends my balls into a spasm and makes my pulse beat as if I’m a hunter eyeing the most prized game he’s ever seen.

“Your guy is out there somewhere,” she replies, all the while returning my hot gaze with one of her own, then nips her bottom lip with her teeth and turns her head away.

Some might assume this bone-deep love I have for her is simply an obsession, to fade as time passes. Maybe it is, but my intuition is never wrong. If it’s not Carina next to me in this life, then there’s no one at all.

Thisobsessionof mine is undying like ardent coals blazing in an eternal inferno. I can’t get enough of the way she smiles at me with an undercurrent of wicked longing, how she secretly begs me to rip her apart only to put her back together.

It’s not just the tangles of her dark hair, or the softness of her skin against mine, or even the taste of her cum on my tongue—it’s her mind. How her darkness speaks a language that mine understands.

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