“I’ll always love you,” she whispers, curving her hand around my cheek, and the feeling grows stronger, the dense heat spreading until it fills every hollow corner of my soul.
With Yulia, I feel complete, and I treasure the sensation.
43
Yulia
In some bizarre way, it feels like Lucas and I are newlyweds, and this unusual period—this lengthy truce between us—is our honeymoon.
Part of it is definitely the sex. Far from fading with time, the attraction between us only burns hotter, the magnetic pull intensifying with each passing day. Our bodies are attuned to each other in ways I could’ve never imagined. A look, a breath, a touch, and the flames ignite. Neither one of us can get enough. As many times as Lucas reaches for me, I respond, my body craving his no matter how sore I get. His touch reduces me to someone I don’t recognize, a primitive being of wants and needs. It’s like I’ve been programmed to exist solely for his pleasure, to desire him in all ways. He pushes me past my limits, and I want more. Rough or gentle, my captor consumes me, my need for him tethering me tighter than any ropes.
Beyond the sex, however, there is a growing emotional intimacy between us. Every day, Lucas demands my love, and I give it, helpless to do anything else. It’s not an equal exchange; Lucas never says the words back or gives me any indication of his feelings. However, after we have sex, he holds me close, as if afraid to let me stray to the other side of the bed, and I know those quiet, tender moments are as important to him as they are to me. They give me hope that one day, I might have more of him—that I might reach the man underneath the hard shell.
“You know, you never really told me how you ended up here… how you went from being a Navy SEAL to Esguerra’s second-in-command,” I murmur one night when we lie there like that, wrapped in each other so completely it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other one begins. Tracing a circle on his powerful chest with my finger, I say, “All I know is what I read in your file, and there was nothing that explained why you did it.”
“Killed my commanding officer?” Lucas’s voice doesn’t betray any emotion, but his shoulder muscle flexes under my head. “Is that what you want to know? Why I killed the bastard?”
“Yes.” I scoot back a little so I can look at him. In the dim light of the bedside lamp, my captor’s face is as harsh as I’ve ever seen it. It doesn’t deter me, though. “Why did you do it?” I ask softly.
“Because he killed my best friend.” Cold, ancient anger creeps into Lucas’s voice. “Jackson—my friend—caught Roberts selling weapons to the Taliban, and he was going to report him. But before he could, Roberts had him killed… made it look like an ambush by hostiles. I was there when it happened.”
“Oh, Lucas, I’m so sorry…” I reach up to touch his face, but he intercepts my hand, catching it in a viselike grip.
“Don’t.” He glances at me, his eyes slitted. “It was in Afghanistan, a long time ago.” His gaze returns to the ceiling, but he doesn’t release my hand. Holding my fingers tightly, he says, “In any case, I survived. It took several days for me to return to the base, but I made it. And when I got there, I killed the bastard. I took his own gun and peppered him with bullets.”
Of course he did. I stare at my captor with a mix of sadness and bitter understanding. Like me, he had been betrayed by someone he trusted, someone who was supposed to have had his back. I don’t know what I would’ve done to Obenko had he lived, but it neither shocks nor appalls me that Lucas chose this brutal method of retaliation.
“So what happened then?” I prompt when Lucas remains silent, his gaze locked on the ceiling. “Were you arrested?”
“Yes.” He still doesn’t look at me.“I was taken back to the States for a court martial. Roberts had friends in high places, and my allegations against him were swept under the rug faster than I could make a formal report.”
“How did you escape then?”
Lucas finally turns to face me. “My parents,” he says in a hard, flat voice. “They couldn’t tolerate the embarrassment of having their son tried for murder, so they arranged for me to disappear. My father made a deal with me: he’d help me vanish in South America, and I’d never contact them again.”
“They wanted you out of their lives?” I gape at him, unable to fathom any parent making such a deal. “Why? Because of the murder charge?”
“Because, according to my father, I’m a bad apple—‘rotten to the core’ is the way he put it.”
“Oh, Lucas…” My heart shatters on his behalf. “Your father was wrong. You’re not—”
“Not a bad man?” He quirks an eyebrow, a sardonic smile flitting across his face. “Come now, beautiful, you know what I am. My parents sent me to all the best schools, gave me every advantage they could, and what did I do? I threw it all away, joined the Navy so I could satisfy my urge to fight. That’s pretty fucked up, no? Can you really blame my parents for wanting to have nothing to do with me?”
“Yes, I can.” I swallow, holding his gaze. “You were still their son. They should’ve stood by you.”
“You don’t understand.” Lucas’s eyes glint with ice. “They never wanted a son. I was to be their legacy. A perfect extension of them… a culmination of their ambitions. And I ruined all of that when I became a soldier. The murder charge was just the last straw. My father was right to offer me that deal. I didn’t fit into their lives—I never had—and they certainly didn’t fit into mine.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to hold back the tears stinging my eyes. I can picture Lucas as a volatile, restless boy constantly pushed and prodded to be something he didn’t want to be. I can also see how his corporate lawyer parents must’ve been out of their depths trying to raise a child who was, at his core, a warrior—a boy who, by some strange quirk of genetics, was utterly unlike them.
Still, to tell their son that they never wanted to see him again…
“So you haven’t spoken to them since then?” I ask, keeping a steady tone. “Not even once?”
“No.” His gaze is pure steel. “Why would I?”
Why would he, indeed? To me, family is sacred, but my parents were very different from Lucas’s family. I can’t imagine Mom and Dad walking away from either me or Misha, no matter what path we chose to follow in life. They would’ve stood by us no matter what, just like I would stand by my brother.
And by Lucas, I realize with a sudden jolt of shock. In fact, I am standing by him, even as he and Esguerra lay waste to the organization I worked for. His father wasn’t completely wrong—Lucas is not a nice guy, by any means—but that doesn’t alter how I feel about him.
Maybe I’m rotten to the core as well, but somewhere along the way, my ruthless captor has become something like my family.
I push the startling revelation aside to focus on the rest of the story. “So how did you end up with Esguerra, then?” I ask, propping myself up on one elbow. “Did you just run into him somewhere in South America, and he hired you?”
“It was… a bit more complicated than that.” The corners of Lucas’s mouth twitch. “I was actually hired by a Mexican cartel to guard a shipment of weapons that they purchased from Esguerra. But when I showed up to do my job, I discovered that one of the cartel leaders had gotten greedy and decided to steal the shipment for himself, double-crossing Esguerra and his own people in the process. There was a nasty shootout, and at the end of it, Esguerra and I were among the few survivors, each of us pinned behind cover. He was running low on ammunition, and I had only a few bullets left, so instead of us continuing to try to kill each other, he offered to hire me on a permanent basis. Needless to say, I agreed.” He chuckles darkly before adding, “Oh, and then I shot a guy who was sneaking up behind Esguerra to try to gut him. That sealed the deal, so to speak.”
“Is that why you said Esguerra owes you?” I ask, remembering his long-ago words. “Because you saved his life that time?”
“No. That was just me doing my new job. Esguerra owes me for something else.”
I look at him expectantly, and after a moment, Lucas sighs and says, “Esguerra was hurt last year in a warehouse explosion in Thailand. I carried him out and got him to a hospital, but he was in a coma for almost three months. I kept things together for him during that time, made sure the business didn’t fall apart, his wife was safe, et cetera.”
“I see.” No wonder Lucas was confident that Esguerra would let him keep me. True loyalty had to be rarer than unicorns in the arms dealer’s world. “And you weren’t once tempted to take it all for yourself? Esguerra’s business has to be worth billions.”
“It is, but Esguerra pays me quite well, so what would be the point?” Lucas gives me a wry look. “Besides, I kind of like the guy. He used his contacts to take my name off the wanted lists after I started working for him. Not to mention, he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what he is, and that works for me.”