Page 105 of Guarded

“Ya Pa!” Gen screams before pulling herself up.

She opens the door, and Conejo grabs her.

I’m left standing there trying to process how the hell my night went from that strange tension between Rosie and Preston to my best friend attempting to murder someone because of me. I really should apply for reality television.

Preston, Lionel, and Paola are walking toward me when I return to the courtyard. Paola is holding a box of food in her hand.

“We got an early morning tomorrow,” Preston explains.Adios.

Bye, see you never.

I wish.

Pressing a quick peck on my cheek, he exits in the limo, waiting at the end of the lot.

On my now empty table is a brand-new bottle of Don Julio, a large cardboard cutout of Pedro Pascual and Thalia waiting for me with a wicked smile.

Chapter 30

Nero

God. Don’t. Stop.

My three new favorite words. Preferably when Ariella Jolene Reyes was screaming them at the top of her lungs while I eat pussy for breakfast on the kitchen counter.

That was this morning,en el día de su santo.Right before that bastard, Preston sent a fucking mariachi band for her birthday to singLas Mañanitasto her in the hotel lobby. Accompanied by photographers, of course.

Pretty boy Preston was the reason I was in a piss-sour mood. He was also the reason I spent all week fucking Ariella every and which way I could. When I found out our “services” were not needed the night of Ariella’s birthday, my feelings of resentment resurfaced.

I hated that fucking feeling.

Just the fucking thought of her celebrating with Preston while I was here on a gun run made my blood boil.

I hate it when I don’t have control over my own feelings. Shit, I thought I wasn’t capable of feelings until her. For a brief moment, I thought a taste of her would satiate me. That it would be enough, and you know what I found out instead? It’s never enough. Not with her.

Years of discipline and restraint went down the fucking drain. She was all I thought about every second of every day. Her very pink presence was suffocating me. The color was embedded into my mind. Images of her pink nipples, her cheeks when she blushed, and her fingernails grazing over the scars on my chest.

Even the ride over here was torture. A faint pink line painted the sky before me as the sun leaned down to kiss the earth. She was in everything beautiful. Fuck- am I writing poetry for this woman now?

I let out a dramatic sigh before scavenging through my saddle bag for a pack of cigarettes.

“I don’t know about this place,” Jasper says, looking around the empty forest.

I shrug. Jasper lives in a constant state of paranoia about everything. It’d be one thing if his gut intuition told him something, and it got us out of trouble, but that wasn’t the case.Ever.

I took his gut feelings for lactose intolerance and stopped trusting it years ago.

“Hey Nero, you got any more of those tuna sandwiches?” Louie asks.

“No.” I lie and watch the frown fall on Louie’s face.

I don’t like him eating Ariella’s food. That was for me, and since she found out I was giving them out, she would make extra and write pink little hearts with Louie and Jasper’s names on the baggies.

Fuck that.

I’ll eat them all or share them with Guapo. We were the only men she was allowed to feed.

“You know Hueso is talking, man,” Jasper says, breaking the silence. I shrug again.