And she had a few choice words for Cristián, the rotten, couldn’t-follow-orders bastard. A small part of her, though, a very small part, was glad he would be the one treating her wound. An even tinier fragment admitted relief that he hadn’t stolen Singer’s bike and disappeared from their lives.
Even if it would be best.
A few minutes later the
taberna
had cleared out, as neither Ex nor Falco could resist the chance to go stare at new women. She had faith in Viv’s ability to play mother hen, should the need arise, and Singer could be surprisingly fierce, especially with Ingrid as her role model.
Rosa arranged herself in her chair to mask the fact that she was about ready to fall out of it and waited for Chris. He arrived with none of the chastened quality a bravo should have, especially one who had proved less than diligent about obedience.
But he doesn’t wear my mark. I can’t hold him to those standards. Not yet, anyway.
There would be consequences for Manuel’s death. She had not avoided those. The women’s arrival might delay them. Maybe it would give her time to devise a strategy to consolidate her leadership and reassure people that one mistake didn’t make her incompetent. It remained to be seen how Falco would handle things, what with the perfect moment to foment rebellion.
“You wanted to see me?”
Rosa resisted the urge to relax and absorb his voice, just drink it into her skin. It was not relief. And it was not desire. Couldn’t be.
“I may need stitches,” she said tersely.
Surprise sent his eyebrows shooting toward the lock of chocolate brown hair that tumbled over his brow. “What happened?”
“Gunshot wound. A graze, but it needs to be closed.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Don’t let me faint. Not in front of him.
She leaned her head back, eyes closed, hoping that would help the dizziness. But he caught her at it, returning much faster than she’d expected. A low flush of shame surged through her at being exposed, but Chris didn’t react. Instead he focused on the blood staining her shirt. With gentle hands, he raised the fabric, tucked it under her arm, and cleaned the surrounding area with the soap and clean water Viv had left behind.
“Six stitches should do it,” he said. “And you were right. It’s a graze.”
She laughed softly. “I think I’d know if I had a bullet in me.”
“You’ve been shot before?” he asked, threading the needle.
“Five times.”
His gaze was keener than she liked. “How many since the Change?”
“Three.”
“So you were shot twice before?”
She shook her head, and then regretted it when the room spun. “That isn’t something you need to know about me.”
Cristián—
Dios
, why did her mind insist on calling him that?—took the rebuff without protest and fell quiet, sewing her up with capable hands. He had tended such injuries before. Maybe he hadn’t been a real medical doctor in the world before, but he was the closest thing they had now. With a faint sigh, she realized she needed to keep him here. Whether he felt like trouble was irrelevant. He would be good for the town, and that made up her mind.
After he finished bandaging her wound, he asked, “Do you want something for the pain?”
“No. Let’s save it for people who hurt more.”
“Or who aren’t as strong as you?”
How could he know that? The pain was a test of her mettle. If she gritted her teeth and tolerated it without aid, she proclaimed her power. She ignored the sense that he could see inside her and examine all the dark places not even she could touch.
“I intended to bitch at you,” she said then.
“But you’re not going to?”
“No. I don’t think it would do any good. And I’m not sorry you saved those women. So I guess I’m wondering how you knew where to find them.”
And whether it has anything to do with that hot dream.
Dios
, it was so hard to look at him now without seeing him beneath her. A trickle of sweat rolled down her temple. She’d had far too much bad sex to want a man touching her ever again. And yet she did. Just him. Not Falco or anyone else.
Cristián.
A flicker came and went across his expression—not the usual blank confidence she assumed was a front for something else. Rosa was a master at hiding her true self too, so she had to respect a fellow magician of the soul. But she wasn’t backing off either. His inexplicable behavior had to make some kind of sense, somehow, or she couldn’t strategize. Or sleep at night.
“I saw them,” he murmured, an edge in his voice, as if he too thought that sounded crazy. “No, that’s not exactly right. It was more of a . . . dream?”
That single word shot fire beneath her sternum.
“Like when Peltz’s men came in on foot?”
“Like that, yes.” Chris paused, gazing at her with an inscrutable expression. “But neither was clear. They came in bits and pieces. The closer we got to the moment, the more distinct the two images lined up—dream and reality.”
Things since the Change had been chaotic and strange. Rosa didn’t discount the possibility that he’d developed some kind of gift as part of the magical tide washing the world. Others in Valle could do marvelous things, like Tilly and Bee calling to their animals.
“Do you dream, Rosa?”
Mierda.
He was going to bring it up. Best not to seem timid. “
Sí.
Last night.”
He leaned in, just a little. Rosa caught the scents of sweat, dry dust, gasoline, and sweet sage. His lovely, sculpted mouth was very, very close, and she watched him frame the words. “I’ve never . . . I’ve never known anything like that.”
Her breath caught. “Me either.”
EIGHTEEN
Chris was going to kiss Rosa. No two ways about it. Truckloads of starving women, gunshot wounds—none of it mattered.
He leaned closer, his fingers gripping the armrests. Deliberately, needing a coconspirator, he nudged her legs apart. Rosa sat trapped between him and the chair, but she didn’t stop him. Didn’t blink or flinch or offer that sarcastic smile. Instead, her nostrils flared on a ragged inhale. Her dark brown eyes were wide and fixed on his. Memories of the heat they’d shared that morning burned away the distance until his mouth hovered so near to hers.
So near now to the flesh he wanted to taste, he whispered, “Say my name.”
“Cristián.”
That one word, soft as a sigh, was a starter pistol firing. Game on.
Chris touched his lips to hers. Just a hello. Electricity arced between them at that gentle introduction. She was as tough as a woman could be, but there, beneath his mouth, she was softness. Dizziness that had nothing to do with the real world slunk into his brain like opium smoke. He could get drunk on her—Rosa and the knowledge that here, now, impossibly, she was giving in.
The pull of more sweetness to come called to him, tempting a more forceful connection. Chris eased into her space with his body and nudged into her mouth with his tongue. He slipped just the tip along the seam of her lips. Another jolt of pleasure and primal conquest when she opened to him. She tasted as she had in his dream, all sugar and salt, but this was like a rainbow after years of monochrome.
As he deepened the kiss, his muscles hardened. He angled his head and did what he’d wanted to do for days: he plundered. With tongue and teeth, hard, demanding, he kissed her the way they’d dueled in his dream.
Their
dream. Because, just like he knew the sound of pleasure in the back of her throat, he knew they’d shared that same erotic encounter.
That impossible knowledge intensified the privileges he demanded. He cupped her nape, then curled his fingers into her hair. She met him with ferocious energy. His invasion was repelled—not entirely, but to establish the terms of their duel. Rosa pushed up from the chair, her arms wrapped low around his back. A quick tug later, his shirt hiked up and her fingernails scored his skin.
Chris knelt on the floor in front of the chair and pulled her up, out, onto his lap. She straddled him as if she’d done so a hundred times, knowing just how to snuggle her breasts against his chest. Her ass filled his hands. All blood fled his brain, concentrating into a fierce erection. Rosa worked her hands up to his shoulders, teasing, testing.
They should stop. This was crazy.
Dangerous.
But she’d figure that out soon enough. He abandoned her mouth for the taste of her throat. She tasted of dust and sweat and sweet woman beneath. Chris sucked the thin, soft skin in the hollow behind her earlobe. Rosa moaned against his temple. She bucked her hips against his, a most excruciating rhythm.
Something changed then. The urge to lay her back and continue plundering was as driving as hunger, but Rosa . . . swayed.
Chris knew enough about the woman in his arms to know she never swayed. Not even, he suspected, in the midst of some fantastic foreplay.
He pulled back just enough to see her, catching her face between his palms. Her pupils had dilated. Her eyelids fluttered.
“Rosa?” He shoved the hair back from her temples, then more roughly, trying to rouse her. “Hey, now. Stay with me, Rosita.”
When the fainting spell continued, Chris eased from beneath her body and up from the floor. He lifted Rosa with relative ease, again struck by how such a resilient woman could be so small. Though nearly limp from exhaustion, she was not a burden to carry. He nudged open a rear door and found a little break room with a shabby couch. The couch was a bonus, as he’d only had privacy in mind. No one could see
la jefa
this way.
He stretched her out on the couch, her head angled against a flattened, dingy throw pillow. No satin for her. No finery. Not ever. At the moment a little respite was all he could offer—away from curious eyes who would harshly judge her momentary lapse.
“Rosita, c’mon, now.”
She roused back to full consciousness with a start, then a grimace.
“¿Qué—”
Chris caught her upper arms and eased her back onto the pillow. “Relax. Relax. We’re in the little room in back of the tavern. No one here but us.”
“So that means you can continue now, does it? Don’t think so,
cabrón
.”
“It means you can catch your breath without wondering who’s watching.”
He slumped cross-legged onto the floor, his back to the couch. He couldn’t look at her, not and regain some minuscule control over his body. The dream, the shower, and then the truck in the desert—he was a man wound goddamn tight. But it wasn’t enough just to have permission, however tacit, to kiss Rosa. He was the same greedy fool he’d always been, wanting more than he deserved. He wanted all or nothing. That impulse had landed him into two marriages before he was ready.
Right then, however, she simply didn’t have it in her to finish what they’d started, even if she was willing. Now that the rush had passed, he didn’t think so. So he breathed deeply and tried not to think about the taut pressure of her firm, small breasts against his chest.
“Gracias,”
she whispered.
“De nada.”
Chris dropped his head back against the couch cushion and stared at the ceiling. “I told you, I have no intention of messing with your position here. But I want you to consider something.”
“What?”
“Us. Consider indulging, just a bit.”
“I don’t think I can,” she said, her voice pinched.
But she touched his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. Chris closed his eyes. Such a wonder—being touched. The soft pattern of her caress continued long past when he thought she’d stop.
Any second now.
He offered a stunted little laugh. “Are you sure?”
She surprised him with a soft sound; it wasn’t much of a laugh, as malformed as his, but it
was
one. “I’m sure.”
She exhaled, then pushed into a sitting position. Chris turned to face her. Her dark gaze wasn’t entirely focused, but she was back in control. He respected the wall she rebuilt between them. At least, he told himself he did.
“I have this urge to take a nap,” he said with a half smile. “And you should do the same.”
“What are you talking about?”
Chris shrugged. “Maybe we’ll get lucky there instead. No one else would know.”
“
I’d
know.”
He tongued his lower lip, still tasting her there. “It’s a wicked turn-on. I like being what you think about, Rosita.”
“You don’t get to call me that.”
“Yes, I do.” He stood and took her hands, brooking no protest as he helped her to her feet. “But not in front of anyone else.”
“You say that like I’m going to give you the chance to get me alone again.”
“Don’t see why not. Isn’t that what Valle de Bravo is all about?”