Page 88 of Corrupted Sinner

I might not have known her as long as others, but I knew her well enough to recognize this kind of quiet was abnormal. Something was eating at her.

She tipped back her drink, then set it down on the granite counter.

When she looked up at me, her gaze was heated, her pale hazel eyes blazing with desire. Whatever was eating at her, she was burying it beneath arousal at the moment.

She slid her hands up my chest to my shoulders and leaned in closer, pressing her tits hard against me. Blood drained into my cock, making me hard in an instant.

“Talk to me, darling,” I said, stroking her cheek.

“Later.” She shook her head, then reached for my cut.

I grabbed her hands, stopping her—which was not generally my go-to move when a hot woman was making it clear what she was after.

“We talk now,” I said, confusing my cock, which certainly had other plans.

She looked up at me, and there was no missing the flash of something angry there amid the lust. “If that bit of restraint play I went along with earlier gave you the impression you can control me and order me around, let me set the record straight,” she said, yanking her hands out of mine. “I’m nobody’s obedient little girl, Brute.” She smiled; it was a look of sex and sin and everything a man could ever want. “And Ialwaysgive as good as I get.”

I had a feeling I was about to get the payback she’d mentioned earlier.

And didn’t that just make me a lucky son of a bitch?

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Greta

My phone rang from somewhere on the floor. It was still dark, and it must have landed face down in my jeans’ pocket because there was no light coming from the screen.

I slipped out of bed and felt around blindly on the floor, but the sound was coming from higher up, at the end of the bed. Brute must have put my clothes there at some point after I fell asleep.

I grabbed the soft denim and fumbled around for the pocket, Even as I did, I wondered when Brute had left, whether he’d fallen asleep at all, whether the neat pile of clothes at the end of the bed was a polite way of saying, “it’s time to get dressed and be on your way”.

As I pulled the phone out, the light from the screen cast a glow around the room. It was Gabe’s number on the phone screen. I was surprised he’d waited this long to call.

“I was just about to send out a search party,” he snapped from the other end of the line the moment I answered the phone.

Talk about an abrupt awakening. “Why? What’s wrong?” I asked.

He scoffed. “I’ve called you four times.”

Whoa. Really? I took the phone away from my ear and checked the screen for missed calls. Sure enough, there were several, all from Gabe, all in the past hour. It wasn’t like me to sleep like the dead.

“I’m sorry,” I said, putting the phone back up to my ear. “I guess I slept right through it.”

Silence. That seemed to stun him too. I was generally a very light sleeper.

Eventually, he sighed. “No worries,amica.”I could imagine him scrubbing his hands through his hair, similar to the way Brute did. “Aldo said it looked like you’d spent a little time with one of the bodies he disposed of; I was just wondering if you managed to get anything useful out of him.”

I reiterated the highlights of the conversation I’d had with the asshole, hoping he could glean something from it that I’d missed.

“Nothing about this makes any sense,” he said when I’d finished, coming to the same conclusion I had.

I swallowed, licked my lips, then looked up at the blackout curtains on the window like they could somehow tell me whether what I was about to say was the right move. Unfortunately, the curtains had no feedback for me.

All right. I guess it was all on me then. “I don’t know if it’s an eye for an eye, or if Domínguez has just pegged me as trouble for some reason, but after Fred and after the two assholes tonight, it’s clear he’s after me, Gabe. And that gives us a clear way in,” I said, ignoring the way my heart had sped up and the room seemed to get a little colder

“You want to play the same move we used onEl Víbora,si?” he asked.

Did Iwantto? Hell, no. But was it the right move? “Si.”