Stolen By The Queen: A Narcos Romance

Chapter 17

Ryan quietly closed the door of the bathroom as Camila worked to catch her breath, her skin coated in a slick sheen of sweet with her cheek pressed fully into the mattress. The release had been blissful, her mind so quiet, so empty while Ryan had controlled her body with his.

But she stopped believing in happy endings when she was a young girl. Like always, good things must come to an end. And in her case, quickly.

Like falling snow, each of her anxieties slowly fluttered back down to her consciousness, resting like wet snowflakes on her shoulders. 

The Benitez men in Sinaloa territory surrounding her motel.

The upcoming meeting with Carlos Sinaloa.

The round of gunshots on the surrounding streets.

Like an incoming storm, she felt him nearing, a chill breaking out over her previously flushed skin. Like the smell of rain, or the crack of lightning, she could feel him.

Her father.

Ryan exited the bathroom, his clothes readjusted as he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms of her his thick chest. Arms and hands that had just been clenched so tightly around her hips she knew they'd leave a light bruise. He eyed her with the same keen aloofness he always conveyed, a heady wave of indifference masking his features as if he hadn't just been finding his release inside of her minutes before.

Camila suddenly felt too bare, too naked. She rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed, her long hair falling like a veil around her bare shoulders, trailing down the length of her spine. Reflexively her arms came up to cover her heavy breasts, her gaze cast down to the ground. 

Reality was settling in, time was running out, and it was threatening to suffocate her. Before she could stop herself, fat salty tears rolled silently down her olive cheeks, dropping like rain onto her bare thighs. 

She noticed Ryan move out of the corner of her eye, coming to rest on his haunches in front of her. Still he studied her with a clinical look in his blue gaze, hard and impassive as ever. He reached up and dragged a rough thumb across her cheek, wiping her tear. 

"Not usually the reaction I am for after fucking a woman, Camila." His words were crash but his tone unusually soft like crushed velvet, landing gently across her skin. She shook her head, her hair jostling with the movement as she lifted her head to meet his eyes, blinking away the tears. 

"I'm not crying about the sex." Her voice was a broken whisper, so desperate sounding even to her own ears.

"I know." Ryan angled his head, another question on his lips but he kept his mouth shut. Brusquely he tucked some thick strands of dark hair behind her ear and Camila found herself leaning into his palm, into his warm touch. It was selfish, she knew, especially when this man would vow to use those same hands to kill her someday. She had not doubt about it. 

"Get cleaned up, now we just wait." Ryan stood slowly, still staring down at her before walking over to his laptop clacking away at his keyboard, the intimate moment over. 

Camila stood and padded on bare feet to the bathroom. She ran the water in the shower as hot as it would go, stepping under the ruthless spray, letting it sear into her skin. The slight pain paled in comparison to the mental distraction that Ryan's body had offered her but it was something to focus on other than the panic. 

She thought of her mother, of the rose that bloomed from her chest that fateful day on the patio overlooking the lands surrounding their hacienda. It had looked just like the dark petals of a flower unfurling from her breast, the petals turning to liquid and gathering down her torso like a ribbon of crimson. 

That's when she'd noticed her father, standing a few yards back, a gun in his hand.

Her mother's knees hit the deck first before she fell forward onto her face, a snuffed-out cry on her lips. And Camila had just stood there, too young to understand, to comprehend, as the liquid rose petals swam toward her like syrup, coating her bare toes. 

"This is what happens to putas, Camila. Don't forget it." *Whores.

Then her father turned his back on the women in his life and re-entered the house, two of his men trudging forward loyally, dragging her mother's lifeless body away from her. 

Sometimes when she remembered the scene, she'd see her own face instead of her mother's. Like an omen, an image into the future. Her fate. One she'd been outrunning with every breath since that moment. One that threatened to drown her whole. 

She lowered herself to the floor of the shower, curling herself as small as she could get, letting the wash continue it's assault on her sensitized skin. 

She'd leave the young version of herself in this shower as she'd done many times before. She would fight until the last moment, even if she was just racing faster toward her own death. She would not be docile, she would not give up. Even in death, she'd fight.

Camila didn't know how long she stayed there until finally she stood, turning the water to ice cold, so frigid it stole the breath from her lungs and gave her a shot in the arm like a line of cocaine. She blinked through icy lashes, letting the shiver rack her body, rattle the teeth in her mouth until she couldn't take it anymore. 

---

That night, Ryan and Camila hardly spoke. He spent most of the evening on his computer, taking a few sporadic and clipped phone calls that Camila couldn't quite piece together. She didn't have it in her to probe him, to ask him any questions. All she focused on was her meeting with Carlos Sinaloa. On readying her body and her mind for the moment she'd been preparing for since that fateful day her father sealed her fate. 

The sky outside turned from golden-streaked to dark, Ryan finally closing his laptop and stretching his long, muscular legs. Camila couldn't stop her gaze from trailing down his body, remembering the weight of him against her. 

"Hungry?" Ryan eyed her, his gaze dark and unreadable, something swirling beneath the surface. Camila simply shook her head 'no' and Ryan dragged a frustrated hand across his mouth. Then he ripped his gaze from her, darting his stare around the room. "I'll sleep on the floor tonight." 

"That's ridiculous." Camila shifted over to one side of the bed. "There's plenty of room here. I don't kick I swear."

Ryan chuckled darkly, shaking his head. "Not worried about that." 

The way he said it left tension lingering between them, the unsaid insinuation of what he did worry about sleeping next to her. Camila tried to shake the thought from her mind, reaching for a book on the nightstand and focusing on its pages like her life depended on it. 

Ryan sat on the bed, the mattress dipping under his strength as he pulled off his boots first, followed but his shirt, his arms reaching behind him to pull it over his head in that brusque, blood-simmering way men do. Then he stood, his broad muscled back to her as he unzipped his jeans, the denim hitting the floor with a loud clank. 

He turned to look at her over his shoulder, barely shaking his head as if trying to clear his own thoughts as he reached back down and pulled his cell and burner phone out of the pockets of his jeans and set them on the nightstand. 

Just as he slipped under the bed's sheets, a small vibration sounded. The sound hardly in anything, but the air seemed to thicken and still with it.

Ryan reached over to the nightstand, clasping the burner in his large palm, his brows slanting slow over his blue eyes. 

He stared at the phone screen for what felt like an eternity and Camila found herself shifting with unease, desperate to ask him the question they both knew hung between them.

"Tomorrow." One word and it yet it meant everything. Ryan didn't look at her as he set the phone back on the nightstand, turning off the lamp, descending them into blackness.