Untamed Hearts 1: The Viper by Kele Moon Read Free Book Online Page B

illegal to have a tattoo.”
    Mia didn’t seem as concerned, but she also hadn’t spent most of her life being dogged by law enforcement either. He should be mad at Katie for it, but he wasn’t. She couldn’t know what posting about the ink meant. She was completely naive to Marcos’s reality, and that was all the more reason to forget the post and go back to drinking away the pain his life was always inflicting on him.
    He wanted to read more, to see if Katie had posted anything else, but he was very aware of where he was and who was watching him.
    “Whatever,” he said, his gaze on Mia as he forced a grin. “You wanna finish that dance?”
    Mia’s smile was wide and pleased. “Sure.” She flipped her hair, looking triumphant.
    “You’re just gonna ignore it?” Chuito huffed. “And let me keep dealing with your issue? What the fuck, Marc?”
    “I’ll call you later.” Marcos clicked the button on his earphones to end the call and then tilted his head back toward where others were dancing under the stars. “Come on, chica.”
    He let Mia lead the way, waiting until her back was turned to pull his phone out of his pocket and text Chuito before his cousin got pissed and started calling back.
    No worries, bro. I’ll take care of it.
    * * * *
    Marcos managed to slip out of Mia’s clutches with the excuse that he was far too drunk to give her the night she deserved. Fortunately for him, Mia was the type of woman who wanted her men at 100 percent when providing “bodywork.”
    So Marcos ended up on a couch in the warehouse once the party had wound down. He lay there in the early morning hours, reading through the other messages Katie had posted in Missed Connections. There were dozens and dozens of them, and no amount of rum and coke could pull his eyes shut now that he knew where to find them.
    They all had the same tagline, but the messages themselves varied drastically. Some were to the point and professional, but others were intimate and vulnerable. Marcos reread one in particular over and over again, feeling himself fall under Katie’s spell even if everything in him knew it was a mistake.
    I’ve thought of you every day since the accident, but tonight I dreamed of you for the first time. I was so disappointed when I woke up that I decided to write you another note, even if it is the middle of the night, and you’ll probably never see it anyway. In my dream, we were on the beach in Miami. We were both happy, and there wasn’t a stroke of bad luck in sight for either of us. I told you I had never seen the ocean. You laughed, and it was such a nice sound. Now I am lying here wondering if you laugh a lot in a real life or if your days stretch on like mine do, with so little to smile about.
    Maybe that’s why I can’t give up hoping that one day we’ll talk again. I can’t stop thinking that maybe two negatives might equal a positive. That together, even something as terrible as a car accident can be beautiful.
    What do you think?
    It was a nice theory, if not completely naive. Marcos tried to imagine never seeing the ocean and couldn’t even fathom not spending at least one day in the sand, listening to the surf and feeling the sun on his back. Then he found himself fantasizing about taking Katie to Puerto Rico. The beaches on the island were more intimate than Miami—unscathed by the hordes of tourists.
    With the rum still lingering in his system, he wanted to believe her theory. That in the small town of Garnet there was a pretty gringa with the ability to turn his negative life into a positive one. The oddest thing about the fantasy was that as he lay there on the couch in an illegal chop shop, what he wanted most was the chance to show Katie the world. To see her laugh. To watch those wide, innocent brown eyes light up with amusement and know he was the one to give that to her.
    Then he started wondering what that soft gaze would look like hazed in passion. Didn’t two negative forces have to