It was near the end of the ride that I found myself falling asleep. I must have dozed off for quite some time, because the car jolting to a stop woke me, and when I raised my head, I realized I had fallen asleep on Javier’s shoulder. The feel and smell of him must have been strangely comforting. I felt embarrassed for some reason but said nothing, wondering why he had let me sleep that way.

“We’re here,” he said in a quiet voice. In the darkness, it washed over me like silk.

I heard the doors open and felt his grasp on my arms as he gently pulled me out of the vehicle. I gulped in the air, still smelling fresh and sweet. Mountainous. It was cool, making my skin erupt in goosebumps. It figured he would have a fortress somewhere up high. I started to miss the dry, hot desert air and sea breezes of Los Cabos. I started to miss a lot of things.

I was brought down a smooth path that felt like cobblestones beneath my shoes, and unfamiliar voices greeted Javier from all sides. I was ushered inside, across a tile floor, then up a long, curving flight of stairs. He took me down a lushly carpeted hall and finally into a room.

The door clicked shut behind me. Locked.

“Where am I?” I asked as he led me across the room. The floor here was tiled but I nearly tripped over a rug. His grip on my arm kept me upright. I expected him to remove the blindfold by now, but he didn’t.

“We’re in my room,” he said. His hands went around my waist, and he picked me up and placed me back down so I was sitting on something lavishly soft, like a fluffy cloud.

His room.

His bed.

My pulse began to quicken.

“Don’t look so scared,” he said. “My room is a very good place to be.” He leaned over me and I felt his hands go to the blindfold. I thought he was about to untie it, but his hand slipped down to the back of my neck and he gripped me there.

“I have been dreaming about you in my room,” he murmured, his grip massaging my neck. “About what I would do to you if I ever got you here. And here you are.”

I had expected to be brought to my own quarters, to be left alone or brought some food. I hadn’t expected this. This was taking me completely off-guard, and the handcuffs and blindfold weren’t helping at all.

“And what is that?” I somehow managed to get out, though the words felt lodged in my throat.

“Do you want me to tell you,” he said, pulling down the front of my dress so my breasts were exposed, my nipples tightening from the air, “or would you rather I show you?”

“I’d rather you tell me,” I said warily, even as his lips so softly grazed the tips of my nipples, causing a flood of need spread through me. Now I knew for sure what cards were on the table.

“And I’d rather I show you,” he said. Suddenly he was pushing me down on the bed and flipping me over so that I was on my stomach. In one quick motion he pulled my ass up in the air and flipped my dress over my hips. “This has to come off.” He pulled my underwear over my cheeks and down my legs, taking his time.

This position felt awfully familiar. “You’re going to come all over me,” I said.

“No,” was his response. I tensed as I felt a hand skim between my legs, sliding up toward where I was becoming increasingly wet and hot. “I’m going to fuck your cunt with my fingers and your ass with my tongue.”

It took me a full moment for what he said to register. Then it hit me like a brick.

“What?” I gasped, utterly shocked.

He put one hand on my ass cheek and began to knead it with his fingers. “I’ve been staring at your perky, firm, heart-shaped ass for too long. I want you to clench around me as you come, I want to experience you from the inside out.” He paused long enough to kiss me, slowly, on both cheeks, while one of his fingers slipped inside my opening, his thumb on my clit.

“And what if I say no?” I asked. I swallowed, trying to gather up the desire to say it. But it wasn’t there.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Not exactly,” I admitted breathlessly. He hit a sweet spot that made my back arch, my eyes clench shut, my body want more of it, so much more. I was surprised at how fast it was betraying me, like an addict after a fix.

“Let me rephrase that,” he said. He plunged his finger in further, causing me to release a moan. “Don’t you trust that I can make you feel better than I did last night?” He rubbed at me harder, increasing the pressure, making me swell. “Don’t you trust that I can make you come so hard, you won’t be able to stop yourself from screaming my name?” His tongue teased the top of my crack. “Don’t you trust that I can give you things you’ve only dreamed of?”

I did trust that.

“Well?” he asked.

I nodded my response.

He stopped what he was doing. “I need to hear you say it.”

“Yes,” I said quickly, eager for him to continue. “I trust you.”

“Good,” he said soothingly, kneading my skin again.

“Isn’t it…” I started, then decided it was too embarrassing to say.

“What?” he asked, his voice rough and low now, like sandpaper.

I bit my lip as the pressure continued to build inside me. How do I say this?

“You’re a very dirty man.”

“Filthy,” he corrected me. He smacked my ass lightly, causing me to jump. “Oh, that’s just fucking beautiful.”

He did it again and again, not enough to hurt but enough to sting. Each time, he licked the place where his handprint would have been. Then, with one hand he gently pried my ass cheeks open. I couldn’t help but cringe.

“You need to relax,” he whispered. “This won’t hurt. And I’m sure you took a bath this morning, didn’t you?” I murmured yes in response. “Then you’re clean and you have nothing to worry about. As for me, I’d take you anyway I can. It’s all exquisite to me.”

He was right. He was filthy.

“Relax, Luisa,” he said again. “Relax.”

And so I tried.

The first contact from his tongue made me shudder. The sensation was so entirely new to me, but what wasn’t at this point? Yet his mouth, lips, tongue, were all warm and wet and gentle, and I found my body immediately relaxing into the steady motion. I pushed aside all thoughts about how unpure this was. Purity had done nothing for me anyway. It was better to be dirty. It was better to take what you could. It was better to embrace your lustful, needful, animalistic side because that was the side that lived.

I let those languid thoughts roll through me until they were replaced with deep-seated desire. His tongue became more forceful, entering me with an in-and-out motion that matched up with the same rhythm as his thrusting fingers. He was completely fucking me in every way and I was letting him more and more, my body opening up, craving him.

“Oh, god,” he said, pulling away slightly. I could feel a trickle of saliva roll down my crack. “You feel like velvet. You taste like sweet cream.”

Then his tongue returned again, making my body shiver and rock from the sensations that were blurring my mind and shocking my senses.

At the sound of his fly unzipping and him moaning into my ass, I knew he had started to pleasure himself while pleasuring me. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to do it for him. I was surprised at my desire—after what I’d been put through, I’d never wanted a cock near me or my mouth. But now I wanted him. I wanted to see him naked, see his cock, see what he looked like, wrap my fingers, lips, tongue around him and give him the same kind of ecstasy he was giving me.

But there was no time for that because he was just as skilled as he was relentless. His mouth and fingers brought me to the edge of a frenzy, the pressure building inside me from so many different sources that it had to give. My arousal splintered, rocketing through my body in hard, violent waves. I cried out, yelling Javier’s name, my hands curling into fists behind my back, pulling against the cuffs.

He came too, loud, angry sounding grunts, but I was so far gone I barely heard him. I was swept away on that ship of emotions again, keeping pace with my body that was still spasming into his mouth and hand. I was so overwhelmed by everything rushing to the surface that I found myself sobbing quietly into the bed as the world ebbed and flowed around me.

There was a long pause, then his zipper went back up.

He placed his hand gently on the small of my back. “Luisa,” he said, his voice throaty but touched with concern, “are you all right? Did I hurt you?”

I shook my head. “No,” I mumbled into the soft bedspread. “I’m fine.”

The truth was, I didn’t know if I was fine or not. I didn’t know anything except I had experienced something so achingly familiar it brought my head back to a moment in my life. What I felt just then was the same thing I used to feel when I drove to work in Cabo San Lucas, when the sea air flew in through my open window and I felt I was more than my reality, as if I were an element like the sun and water. Something simple and whole and everlasting.

I just never imagined that something like sex—or whatever just happened—could make me feel that way. It made me feel like a fucking queen. A rush of anger went through me as I cursed Salvador for nearly ruining me, for tricking me into thinking pleasure was one-sided, that sex was such a horrid, disgusting, cruel act. I could have died with that in my heart, never knowing the truth.

Javier’s hands were at my wrists now and I heard him undo the cuffs, carefully taking them off. My arms burned in pain as I tried to bring them forward, and he gently eased me over onto my back, running his hands down my arms calmingly before removing the blindfold from my eyes.

I blinked rapidly at the intrusion of light, my eyelashes wet from the weak tears. I looked up at Javier’s face as he leaned over me, his cheeks flushed, his hair messy, his eyes glazed. He smiled shyly and put his hand on my cheek. “My darling. You’re going to be my undoing.”

* * *

Javier

She looked so soft and delicate beneath me that I had meant what I said. Her beauty, her very essence, the way she cried out my name as she came around me, they were starting to fray my ends. It was only in that very moment that it didn’t frighten me because my own completion was still rippling through my body. If only my cartel could figure out how to export this kind of high.

Granted, I’d much rather have made her come first then thrust myself inside her. My hand was getting a bit tiresome, and I knew how velvety soft and slick she’d feel around my dick. I wanted to shoot my semen high inside her and then watch it all run out between her legs and onto the sheets. She needed to be stained on the inside.

But that wasn’t an option. If I fucked her, if I even kissed her, I would lose control of everything I kept chained together. It had happened years and years ago—with Ellie—and I wouldn’t, couldn’t, let it happen again. I had paid too dearly a price.

Still, the wetness around her eyes, the pretty way her mouth parted as she stared at me, was making it hard, in more ways than one. Even earlier, when she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, the smell of her hair intoxicating me, I didn’t have the courage to make her move. I enjoyed every second of the ride home.

And now, she was here. In my home. Everyone said it was a mistake to bring her here, but I didn’t care in the slightest. Their opinions had become so tiresome and predictable. The fact was, she would be safest here. This was my throne. This was where I held all the power and all the control.

It would be nice to have a queen, even if just for a week.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I stared down at her in confusion, tucking a few strands of sex-mussed hair behind her ear. “Why?”

“For doubting you.”

I smiled. “Most women do doubt … that. But if they’re brave enough to be open-minded and own their sexual curiosities, they are greatly rewarded.”

Her forehead furrowed slightly and I realized that alluding to other women probably wasn’t something she wanted to hear. Oh well, I wasn’t going to pretend I hadn’t fucked a million women.

I cleared my throat. “Do you want to take a bath or something? I have a large Jacuzzi. I have a lot of things here you may enjoy.”

She shook her head. “Am I sleeping here?”

I slowly sat up, distancing myself from her a bit. “No. You have your own room. Down the hall. I can assure you it is much nicer than the shithole you were in before.”