I watched him for a moment, unsure of whether to wake him or not but when his yelps grew deeper and more pained, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I hopped over to him and stood at the foot of the couch.
“Derrin,” I called out. “Wake up.”
He didn’t. I said his name again, louder, then I grabbed his leg, giving it a squeeze. I didn’t want to get any closer than that when it came to waking someone from a nightmare.
I chose wisely.
Suddenly he bolted out of the couch, practically leaping sideways until he was standing on the ground in a crouch, a gun drawn, his eyes focused stiffly on the blank space in front of him.
Actually there was no gun at all – his hands were empty – but he had made the motion as if he pulled one out from under his pillow and was holding it.
Okay then. Maybe he knew more than something about guns.
“Derrin?” I said softly.
He slowly turned his head to look at me, his chest heaving, and blinked a few times as he took me in. Then he looked down at the way he was posed and slowly straightened up.
“Sorry, I …” he trailed off and pressed his hand against the back of his thick neck, looking behind him at the couch.
“You were having a nightmare,” I told him. “I heard you in the other room. I didn’t want to wake you up but …”
He nodded and licked his lips. “Some nightmare,” he said, looking visibly shaken.
“Did it involve guns?” I asked, nodding at his hands that were clenching and unclenching.
He shook his head slightly. “No.”
“Did it involve Carmen?”
He looked at me sharply. In the dim light his eyes looked like black holes. It scared me a little but I stood my ground.
“How did you know?”
I gave him a shy smile, feeling awkward over it all. “You were calling for Carmen.”
He sighed and sat down on the couch, his face in his hands.
I gingerly hopped over to him and sat down beside him. “Want to talk about?” I asked hopefully.
“Not really.”
I chewed on my lip for a moment, considering the options. I guess I could tell him the truth about me for once, at least one little slice of the truth. “I have them too, you know.”
He rocked his head to the side and peered at me inquisitively. “Really?”
I nodded. “Yup. Usually the same ones, though in the past they were less frequent. Now I get them all the time. Ever since the accident.”
“The accident,” he repeated.
Shit, I’d forgotten I’d only told him so much about that.
“Yeah. The hit and run. I guess it triggered something.”
“That kind of trauma would do it. What do you dream of?”
And here’s where things got complicated. I hemmed and hawed about it for a moment and then decided to just bite the bullet. Sorry little pun, but there it was. But I wasn’t about to tell him everything.
“It’s usually me and my brother and sisters in our house in La Cruz. It’s a little town, just north of here on the curve of the bay. We’re sometimes in bed and then my brother comes into the room and tells us we all have to hide. Sometimes it starts when I’m already in the closet. Sometimes I’m alone, sometimes it’s all of us. Sometimes I’m under a bed. Sometimes I’m out on the street and watching it all happen.”
His leg pressed again mine. “What happened?” he asked gently, his voice low. “In the dream?”
“Some men come to kill us all. They kill my mother. My father is already dead at this point. We’re all spared because we were hiding and the cops came soon after. But in the dream, sometimes we all die.”
He frowned, his body stiffening. “What do you mean in the dream you sometimes die? Did this all happen in real life?”
I took in a deep breath, trying not to choke up over it. I so rarely talked about it because the tears often came after. It’s like it wasn’t real unless I was saying it outloud, as if my words could conjure it from the air.
“When I was young, yes, it happened. I’ll never forget it, even though I’ve tried. It’s like my brain won’t let me forget. It keeps bringing it up in my dreams.”
“What happened?” His full and rapt attention was on me now, those intense blue eyes pouring over every inch of my face. “I mean, why?”
Here came the harder part. “My father was mixed up in some bad business. I guess they took out my mother for revenge. I don’t know. But it left us all orphans. My brother had to step up and take care of us, along with my older sister Beatriz.”
“Your brother, Juan,” he said.
“Yes,” I said hesitantly. Javier’s fake name felt wrong.
“And Beatriz. I thought your sister was Marguerite. What happened to Beatriz?”
And here came the can of worms.
“Beatriz died later. So did my other sister, Violetta.”
“How?” Derrin seemed almost hyperactive now over this information. Now I was really scaring the poor guy away.
“They are long stories.”
“I have time.”
“You’re a tourist,” I reminded him. “You’re leaving soon. You don’t have time.”
He put his hand on my arm and squeezed it lightly. “I’ve met you. I’m not going anywhere.”
There was something so kind and sincere in his voice, in his eyes. This tough solider who had been through so much, yet he was trying to comfort me.
“They were both murdered. Horribly. Brutally. That’s all you need to know.”
He frowned as he took that information in. “And your father was the same way?”
“Yes. The cartels shape our lives here. The cartels can take it all away.”
I know this was a lot for someone like him to understand. I knew Derrin wasn’t naïve – the moves he just used springing out of bed on defense told me he was far from that. But Canada didn’t have the same problems as we did in Mexico. Neither did the States. Mexico was as backward, corrupt and Wild West as a second world country could get. The poor were destutely poor. The rich were rich beyond their wildest dreams. The rest of us struggled in the middle, assured that the only way to get higher was to become like the rest of them. Drugs ruled our lives. It was a fact we had accepted, along with the violence that came with it.
“If most of your family were murdered,” he said slowly, deliberately, “wouldn’t that mean that you’re at risk too. You, your other sister, your brother?”
I grimaced. “Marguerite is safe. My brother … probably safer than I am. And me … well, I can’t live my life in fear.”
“But you have been, haven’t you?” He was staring at me so intently but I refused to meet his eyes, afraid he might see more than I wanted him to. “The accident,” he went on. Exactly what I was afraid of. “When you were hit. There is more to that, isn’t there?”
I dipped my chin to my neck and nodded. “I still don’t know who hit me. The police think it’s someone who worked for the airline, a mechanic. He certainly looked like one I would see. The car might have looked familiar too but I don’t know. They tell me it was a hit and run, an accident … and I believe them. I guess. I mean, no one has come after me now. I’m here, aren’t I? But the weird – the weirder – thing about it all, is that he’s dead. Someone shot him in the head moments after he ran me down. They just caught up to him, stopped him, killed him. And no one can figure that part out. If it was vigilante justice, why hasn’t the person come forward?”
“Because the person has blood on his hands,” he suggested gravely.
“True. But it doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen some horrific things. I’ve never heard of someone acting this way. I think it’s all related but I don’t know how.”
“You could be in danger, Alana,” he said.
I rubbed my lips together and sighed. “I know. But I just … I just want to ignore it. I want it to go away. I want to pretend it’s all over.” I looked at him with hope. “This cou
ld be all over, couldn’t it? If the accident was on purpose, the guy is dead. He’s not coming after me again. If it wasn’t an accident, then I have a guardian angel out there, looking out for me.”
“Or maybe the guy botched the job – because it wasn’t a fatal hit and he knew it – and someone else was hired to take him out and make sure he didn’t leave a trail.”
I frowned at him, unease gripping my heart. “There you go, all acting David Caruso again.”
He didn’t smile. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re scaring me. And you’re a nice Canadian boy. If what you’re saying is true, and I have reason to be scared, then I’m a target and you’ll be put in danger because of me.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Don’t ever worry about that.” He paused. “I know how to take care of myself. And I can take care of you.”
Those last words were music to my soul.
Still, I said, “That isn’t your job.”
“It shouldn’t be anyone’s job. But I’m making it mine.” He brushed a strand of hair off my face and I close my eyes at the rough brush of his fingers. Damn, he could take care of me all he wanted.
“Now, do you know why you were hit?” he asked, soft enough not to break the spell of his fingers on my face. He ran a thumb under my bottom lip and I nearly lost it.
“No,” I said quietly, sucking in my breath.
“Everything that happened to your family, didn’t happen recently. You have no idea why someone would do this to you now?”
I shook my head. Everything in the past had been done to hurt my father or to hurt Javier. But honestly, I didn’t know if that was it. If someone really wanted to make a statement, they would kidnap me, not try and take me out. If they kidnapped me they could get Javier to bend at their will.
The only thing was, I wasn’t certain that Javier would do that. Sometimes I felt like I wasn’t even related to him. Though he always said how important family and loyalty was, sometimes I wondered if he would let me die in the streets if it suited him. Family came second to the cartel, to the drugs, to the money, to the power. It always had. He was just good at fooling people.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, inching closer to me.
“About all the ways there is to die.”
“None of them are going to happen to you.”
“You sound so sure.” And yet I believed him. At least, I wanted to. I wanted so much from this man. I could feel the intensity burning off of him, infecting me, making me feverish from head to toe.
His face was so close now, his eyes half-closed with lust and focused on my lips.
“Are you going to kiss me?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he murmured.
“Are you going to fuck me?”
“Oh, yes.”
A small, brief smile flashed across his lips and then he leaned forward. The kiss was soft for a moment, just enough time for me to luxuriate in the dreamy fullness of his lips, the way they covered mine, wet and warm and wanting. It pulled me in, stirred something deep inside, like a small candle flame that was growing with each feathery stroke of tongue against tongue, each long, lingering taste.
He pulled his lips away a millimeter to catch his breath and it felt like he was stealing mine.
Then his mouth came back onto my own, hard and fast and urgent. His large hand gripped the back of my neck, the other wrapped around my waist as he tugged me toward him. My nipples immediately went hard, brushing against the inside of his baggy shirt I was wearing. Heat pooled between my legs, throbbing for him already.
Damn, he was good at kissing. Each passionate melding of our lips and tongue was stoking the fire inside until I felt ready to self-combust. I moaned against him, trading in the ability to breathe for the ability to be fucked by his mouth. He was so needing, probing, greedy. I loved it, wanted more, wanted everything.
He slipped his hand under the shirt, finding my breast. He gasped, raspy and deep, as his fingers found my nipples, rubbing over their stiffness.
I loved a bit of foreplay. Making out was a long lost art.
But I needed this man inside me and badly. I needed him for a few days now. From the stiff bulge in his boxer briefs, I could tell he felt the same way.
“Fuck me,” I whispered as his lips found my neck and sucked along there. “Don’t be gentle.”
He paused for a moment, probably remembering my injuries.
“Don’t be gentle,” I repeated, my good hand holding the back of his head, his buzz-cut hair both rough and soft against my palm.
“I won’t,” he mumbled against my neck. Then he pulled away and got up. In a second he got his strong arms under my body and was lifting me up in the air. So effortless. I really felt like I was going to get fucked by superhero or something. He definitely had that whole Captain America thing going on.
He put me down on the bed and pulled the rest of my dress off as I tried to shimmy out of it. There was lying naked, legs open on the bed, bare for him to see. And boy, did he seem to see it. He stared down at my body, his eyes roving over me in such a way that I could feel their heat on my skin.
“You’re gorgeous,” he said, voice raspy and dripping with lust as he slid his large rough hands down the sides of my body.
“So are you,” I said, trying not to feel bashful. That wasn’t like me at all. “Take off your clothes. It’s not fair that I can’t do it myself.”
He gave me a cocky grin then removed his shirt over his head. I propped myself up on my elbows and admired the sight of him undressing between my legs.
His chest was a work of art. Everything about him was a work of art, like a living breathing sculpture of what a real man should look like. His pecs were so hard and wide you could bounce pesos off them, his shoulders broad and muscled, his abs a perfect, grooved six-pack leading down to the flattest stomach imaginable. Most impressive of all was his arms. Obviously I’d been admiring them before, their thick, veiny example of Derrin’s brute strength, but now with his shirt off he was the total package. He looked like a killing, fucking machine.
“All of it,” I told him, my intentions bold even though my voice was barely above a whisper. I was so fucking eager for him I could barely stand it.
He kept up that arrogant grin – one very rightly earned – and pulled down his underwear, stepping out of it.
Against the virile strength of his thighs, his erection jutted out like a mast. I had been right when I assumed perfect head equaled perfect dick. This man was all man and definitely didn’t use any steroids for his body. His cock was thick, long and dark with want. He even had a nice set of balls that I wanted wrap my lips around.
He stepped to the edge of the bed and I quickly remembered I had condoms in my purse.
“Condom,” I told him. “I haven’t been taking my pill properly since the accident.”
He nodded, almost looking a bit sheepish for not suggesting it, and went over to the chair and fished a foil packet out of the purse. He ripped it open and slid it on him and I couldn’t help but bite my lip at the sight.
He came back to the edge of the bed and took a hard hold of my thighs and yanked me toward him.
“I need to be inside you,” he said, his voice sliding over me like rough silk. I agreed and wrapped my legs around his firm, tight hips. I winced slightly at the sight of my cast, knowing it couldn’t feel too nice against his skin but he didn’t even seem to notice. He positioned the head of his cock at my opening and moaned as his fingers drifted over my slickness. Then he grabbed my thighs even harder, holding them up as he thrust into me.
I gasped from the welcome intrusion, his stiff length as it struck deep. He felt so good inside of me, so full, so thick. My fingers grabbed the edges of the blanket, holding on as he pulled in and out, so slowly, so deliciously, and I expanded again and again to take him all in.
“Yes,” he hissed as he
pumped into me. I stared up at him, at the mammoth man, my legs looking so small in his capable hands. There was a sheen of sweat over his hard body, his muscles flexing as he fucked me harder and harder, his hips swiveling and driving in as deep as he could go. When he was pushed into the hilt, he paused and then started to rub my clit with his thumb, even though I was so close to coming without it.
He stared down at me as he brought me to orgasm, his eyes filling with lust and want and maddening desire. There was something else in them though, some kind of sadness or loneliness that would have hit me in the heart if he hadn’t just pushed me over the edge.
I came violently, my body screaming with the release of it all, the release of everything. I writhed and spasmed, feeling no pain, no weight, no shadows. It was all just light and I was warm and fuzzy and in an angel’s hands. An angel who was coming himself with a few loud grunts and a well-placed, “Fuck, Alana, fuck.”
I moaned happily, feeling satisfied like nothing else. That was one hell of a fuck.
He pulled out of me, disposed of the condom and then climbed into bed, pulling me up so I was beside him. I wanted to get up to go to the washroom, to have some water, to wash my face but before I knew it I was succumbing to his arms once again.
We must have dozed off for a few hours because when I woke up in his arms, the sun was bright and relentless through the window. I turned to look at him and was surprised to see him staring at me, blinking at the light.
“Hi,” I said softly. I couldn’t help smiling. It danced on my lips. I couldn’t remember the last time I had woken up with a man beside me. Usually one of us left during the night.
I also couldn’t remember feeling this warm and secure before. For once I wasn’t waking up with a pit of loneliness inside me.
“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”
I nodded. “How long was I out for?”
“Hours.”
“Did you sleep?”