Revenge by Meli Raine Read Free Book Online Page B

the horizon, just beg i nning. Again? The rolling bliss of bonelessness changes. It shifts, my body clenching and pulsing. My blood plumes and recedes, the buzzing bliss like a gift from the divine.  
    He moves with tight, taut thrusts and a kind of primal push that tells me Mark has abandoned reason, pitching into that privileged state where he’s willing to be vulnerable not only with me, but to me. He moves with such power and grace, the heat and fullness of him suddenly changing as he groans, the sound like an expression of love, my hands on his back, pressing him to me as he comes.
    We breath e in short spurts against each other. We’re sweaty and panting, our bodies spent and happy.
    Hearts, too.
    He gives me a look that I can’t describe. I see all of him when he looks at me like this. Every part. And he sees me. In his eyes I’m turning, slowly, like a ballerina on a music box. His eyes admire me. He cherishes me.
    I’m his .
    The word “love” hangs in the air between us. It’s like a pendant on a gold chain, suspended between us. I want to say it. I feel it. I breathe it in and out. I touch it in the slick heat of his skin. I absorb it in the salty scent of his skin. I taste it on his lips.
    But it goes unsaid.
    That’s fine.
    We have the rest of our lives to say it.
    I am exhausted. I crash, the weight of my eyelids so heavy suddenly. Mark feels it, too. We snuggle together, wordless and weightless. Sleep takes us to another place where love is unencumbered by the real world.
    Where we just are .
    Exactly where we’re meant to be.
     

Chapter Seven
     
    Everything that happened with Mark feels like a dream as I wake up and stare at a strange ceiling. The bed is cold. Birds chirp unfamiliar songs outside. A foreign odor of men’s cologne fills my senses. I shift my legs under the covers and snuggle in to the pillow and then halt.
    I’m not in my own trailer.
    I sit up suddenly and a blast of cold hits my chest. I am naked. The sheet feels like it’s judging me as I yank it up, covering my nakedness.
    I am unclothed, alone, and in Mark’s bed. I close my eyes and take a deep bre a th, inhaling his essence. My palm seeks out where I know he was last night. The bed is still warm.
    Then I hear the unmistakeable sound of a coffee maker gurgling. Leaning back, I rest my head on the pil l ow and look up at the ceiling fan as it makes its slow, lazy circle. Over and over, all it does is spin. It has one job.
    I wish my own life were so simple.
    My thighs ache and my nipples brush against the soft fabric of well-worn sheets. Mark’s bedroom is neat as a pin but everything is old. Faded. When I knew him, he bought everything used. Second-hand. We haunted yard sales and consignment shops for fun. I once asked him why he liked to buy everything this way and he passed it off with a wave and a grin.
    “I don’t like to be tied down to my possessions. If I ever had to leave everything behind, I don’t want to leave anything important behind,” he’d said.
    Those words had lingered, staying with me the night I snuck out of town three years ago.
    Now, though, they take on a completely different to n e. I know the truth about Mark. He’s dee p undercover and in thick with drug dealers at the university. He’s searching for El Brujo —not “a brew home,” like I thought.  
    El Brujo is the biggest drug lord in North America. The guy’s been featured in all the major newspapers and magazines for years for the size of his drug operation. When the President of the United States talks about the “war on drugs,” he really means the war on El Brujo.  
    Mark told me what happened to his brother, Chase, and his brother’s girlfriend, Allie. He tol d me everything. El Brujo, their father, and Allie’s stepdad were caught in a competition that almost led to Allie being handed off to El Brujo for a drug debt. Women are traded like property. Given away for their virginity.  
    Treated like something you consume.