LITMIR.BIZ

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just have the means to achieve things. So I do.”

      “And you hide your altruism while you leak info about a criminal past and affiliations. You want the world to learn about your lethal edge but not your gooey center, huh?”

      He swung her around to her squealing delight, grinned down widely at her. “See? You read me like no one ever has.” Putting her back on her feet, he probed, “But how did you know about Casa do Sol? Did you investigate them, too?”

      “No. I just made visits everywhere, and they were the only ones I felt...good about.”

      “So again your instincts proved infallible. You read everyone, not just me. It’s your superpower.”

      “It never felt like a good thing. It leaves me with precious few people in my life.”

      “You only need a few who are precious.” He squeezed her tighter. “Though I’d rather you only need me.”

      The flush that flooded her face was adorable. Before he commented on her paradoxical shyness—given that she hadn’t batted an eye while asking him to have sex—he realized his hand was hurting like hell. He’d been using it as if nothing was wrong with it.

      He raised it up. “Aren’t you going to ask about my hand?”

      A stubborn look came into her eyes. “No.”

      “You don’t care that I broke it?”

      “Are you going to take me now?”

      “No.”

      “Then I don’t care.”

      He guffawed as she stuck her nose up at him. He’d never laughed that way, so elated and unfettered.

      Still laughing, he swept her up, and his heart boomed at the way she clung to him, fitting into his every emptiness. The memory of her earlier rejection jolted through him, making him gather her tighter. He was never letting her recede from him again.

      In her bedroom, another place full of her mementos, he laid her down on the burgundy comforter and came down half over her. She wriggled beneath him until she’d brought him fully over her, pulling him into an all-body hug.

      He rose on one arm, the pain in his loins becoming agony. “You’ll blow all my fuses.”

      She arched up into him. “Serves you right.”

      “It wouldn’t serve you right.”

      She giggled, clung harder and brought him down between her thighs.

      He groaned. “I was right. You are an enchantress.”

      “I was wrong. You’re not a sorcerer. That sort of implies a level of benevolence. You’re pure evil.”

      At once laughing at her pout and grunting in pain, he rolled off her. It was unheard of for him to defer having anything he wanted. But doing so with her was the most pleasurable thing he’d ever experienced.

      If anyone had told him last night he’d be lying side by side with her in her bed, just to hold her and talk, when he’d never hungered for anything as much as he hungered for her, he would have thought them insane. But now, he couldn’t imagine anything better as she slipped her limbs into the exact places where he needed them, holding on with the exact intensity he craved.

      Sighing after she’d settled into him as if she’d been doing so all their lives, he reached over her and picked a frame off her crowded bedside table.

      The photo was of a woman and a little girl, both grinning unreservedly at the photographer, throwing their arms wide as if to embrace him and the life they loved with him. The object of their all-out affection was obviously her father.

      A pang twisted in his gut at yet another proof of the depth of emotions she had for that man.

      Banishing Ferreira from his thoughts, he focused on this piece of her past, another detail bringing him closer to her.

      “You got a lot from her.”

      She nodded, threading her fingers through his hair. “I also got a lot from my father.”

      After seeing them together, he hated to admit that was true. But then, on the outside, the man was a perfect specimen. Rafael was certain that on the inside Eliana hadn’t been tainted by any trace of his weaknesses and evils.

      “Whatever you got, wherever you got it, you became this one-of-a-kind amalgam.”

      She gave an adorable little snort. “Did you go to the University of Extravagant Descriptions? Then got a PhD in hyperbolic metaphors?”

      “Hush. I have all that vocabulary that I never found use for. You’re getting the benefit of it all.”

      “Whether I like it or not, huh?”

      He tugged a thick tress. “Oh, you like it.”

      A sigh clasped her even closer against him. “Yes.”

      He kissed her forehead. “Do you remember her?”

      Her eyes became suddenly turbid. “Everyone thinks that I couldn’t possibly remember all that I do about her, since I was just three when she died, and that what I think are my memories are just from what Daddy kept telling me about her as I grew up. But I do remember her. Very well. Too well sometimes.”

      He feathered kisses all over her face, needing to take away the raw edge of memories. “Is this why you give so much of your life to orphans?” Almost every weekend, and after work almost every day. “Because you feel like one, and you feel her loss so keenly?”

      “If I feel that way when I have the best father in the world, I can’t imagine how those who’ve lost both parents, or never had anyone feel.”

      The best father in the world. The man who’d sent him to hell. But she had nothing to do with his crimes. And he’d keep her away from their fallout, whatever it took.

      He forced down the bile that rose to his mouth. “Next time I see Sister Cecelia I’ll correct her. You’re the angel.”

      Her eyes widened. “You heard her?”

      “I have very, very good hearing.”

      Her eyes grew heavy as they traveled down his body. “Everything about you is very, very good.”

      He caught her tongue in a gentle bite, sucked it inside his mouth. “I’m agonizingly thrilled you approve...as you can feel.”

      He ground his hardness against her and she mewled, became even more pliant against him. His head almost burst with the urge to forget his promise and just take her as she’d asked. But he had to wait. Had to deepen her involvement until she was as dependent on him as he was on her.

      Insinuating a leg between his, she pressed her knee into his erection, wringing a growling thrust from him.

      She chuckled, eyes telling him she considered them equal now. “But Sister Cecelia got it right, even if at the time I wanted to tell her that fallen angel would describe you better.”

      “It would. I’ve done very, very bad things in my time. I still do, when the need arises.”

      Her eyes grew serious. “But not to innocents.”

      It was a statement, not a question. Pride expanded inside him that she trusted him again, and saw his fundamental truth.

      “No. But the law still calls what I did and do illegal.”

      “The right thing to do isn’t always legal. And as long as no innocents were harmed, as long as you help them like when you crush those corrupt people to save helpless children, then I call what you do heroic.” She sighed wistfully. “Sometimes I wish I could do the same, but I don’t have enough power. I’m only thankful someone like you who does exists, and that you use your power this way.”

      Was

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