Untamed Hearts 1: The Viper (8 page)

“This is why you shouldn’t be here with me, chica,” he told her as he ran a thumb over the largest scar, watching as the fine hairs on her arm stood on end. “You can see right here I’m bad for you.”

“You gave me something that night, but it wasn’t these scars.” Katie didn’t pull free; instead, she let him touch her, to feel for himself the damage he’d done to something so beautiful. “I’m stronger than I was before the accident. You gave me that. You taught me to be like you.”

He grunted in disbelief as he continued to run his fingers over the injuries, wondering about the pain she went through in recovery and knowing he’d caused it. If only he’d turned the wheel the other way. They would’ve driven right by each other, and neither of them would bear the scars of that night. He wouldn’t have spent the past four months fighting to be something the world didn’t want him to be, and those wounds were likely just as painful as hers.

“I, um—” He brushed the scar on her wrist reverently with his thumb, caressing it instead of just touching it. “The first memories I have are of working on cars with my dad. I’ve always had a passion for cars, all cars, but I’ve spent most of my life hacking them up. Cutting into perfectly good vehicles for the parts until they’re nothing but empty frames.”

“Okay,” Katie said slowly, not sounding nearly as judgmental as she should. “I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say.”

“It’s like a curse.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles because he couldn’t resist. “Hurting the things that are most beautiful to me. It keeps happening to me over and over again. I don’t know why, but it does. I loved my mother so much, and she died.”

Katie shook her head. “My mother died too. That’s not—”

“She was killed in a drive-by.” Marcos cut her off before she could finish. “The whole front of the house was full of bullets.”

“That couldn’t be your fault,” Katie whispered, her voice strained with pain, and when he looked at her, he could see the agony in her gaze. “I’m so sorry.”

“They killed my cousin too. He was only thirteen.” Marcos flinched over the memory, remembering the screams that night, the way Juan had died in Chuito’s arms. The wide, set gaze of his mother staring at the ceiling in shock. He shook his head. “Those bullets were supposed to be for me. They killed Juan and my mother instead.”

Tears rolled down Katie’s cheeks, as if she felt the pain as deeply as he did. “Marcos—”

“I couldn’t respond to your messages because the tattoo”—he lifted up his arm, showing it to her and musing to himself that he was branded even more horrifically than she was—“it’s a gang tattoo. The heat’s probably watching. We’re a known gang in Miami, and they’ve been coming down hard on us for the past few years. I’m sure they sent a subpoena to craigslist.”

“You’re not
still
in the gang?” She gasped. “Are you?”

“You don’t get out of a gang,” he corrected her. “Until they bury you.”

She was silent, her eyes wide. He thought she might get up and leave, and really, that would be best. It’d be so much easier that way, and it’d save him from doing what he knew he had to do if he was going to obey his newfound conscience.

Except Katie didn’t say anything. She just sat there, like a deer in the headlights, making him feel like a Mack truck, and he hated it.

“I want to be the guy who shows you the ocean. I do,” he admitted, because why the hell not. He was spilling his guts at this diner anyway, and he really hoped no one could hear him, because he hadn’t said this shit out loud to anyone. Ever. “But I’m not, chica. I’m sorry. For both of us.”

It felt sort of like cutting off his own arm, and he didn’t even know why. He barely knew this chick. She was hot, sure, smoking actually, but he didn’t really have a hard time picking up beautiful women. So why this one, with her wide, deer-in-the-headlight gaze and absolutely zero understanding of his life and his reality?

That seemed about as unfair as everything else.

When she finally broke her silence, her voice was a squeak of misery that he understood all too well. “Then why come all the way up here?”

He jerked, not expecting that. “I told you, the heat’s probably—”

“You could’ve given the message to your cousin.” Her voice grew stronger, more reasonable, making him envision her standing at the front of the class teaching. “How long of a drive is it?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, fourteen hours without stopping, but—”

“Did you stop?”

“No, but—”

“You drove fourteen hours without stopping to sit here and tell me it’s impossible?” Katie arched a dubious eyebrow at him.

“Yes.” Even to Marcos’s ears, it sounded like bullshit.

“Liar.” She called him on it. “What if two negatives—”

“One negative.” He gestured to himself and then looked at her. “Just one, and what happens when you mix a positive and a negative, Katie?” He hoped she knew the answer, because his ass dropped out of high school, and he wasn’t real sure. He was tempted to Google it on his phone. A part of him was hoping for a different answer than the one he suspected was correct. “What does it equal? Tell me.”

“A n-negative,” she whispered miserably. “A negative and positive equal a negative.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took out the last of his cash and tossed it on the table. “I have to go now.”

“It’s just a stupid math analogy,” Katie said, her voice shaking as her eyes welled up like they had the night of the accident. “I hate math. I don’t even know why we’re using it. Let’s use history instead and—”

He stood up and gave her a long look. “I drove fourteen hours to tell you that you’re beautiful, chica. That’s it.”

She surged forward, grabbing his hand before he could walk off. “I don’t want you to go. I still have your jacket and—”

“Keep the jacket.” He let her hold on, because a part of him wanted her to win. “You know all those things going around in your mind. The stuff you know gangs do, but you’re telling yourself I’m different. That I never did those things. You’re wrong. I’ve done them.”

Katie shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t care if you’ve stolen a few cars.”

“We’re not talking about cars.”

“Drugs?”

“No,” he said and then shrugged. “Well, yeah, but no. Ask me what you really want to know.”

She swallowed hard, as if considering, and then looked him in the eye and actually did it. She asked, “What happened to the men who killed your mother?”

“They’re dead now.” He couldn’t even taper the pride he felt when he said it. “And I don’t feel bad about it. Not even a little.”

Katie released him, her hand dropping back to her side.

She let him go.

“I’m sorry you lost your mother,” she whispered and then looked away rather than meet his eyes. “And your cousin.”

“I’m sorry too.” He sighed, meaning it, because that horrible night had stolen something else from him. Something he wouldn’t have been able to fathom back then— wanting a pretty gringa from Garnet County to look at him as a positive instead of negative. “You have no idea how much.”

He turned to leave before she had to say anything else.

Chapter Seven

Katie ended up in the bath, as she had originally planned. Glass of wine in hand, she was reading, but it wasn’t a romance novel. She lay there with her phone, using the information she had to form a clear picture of the life Marcos had described.

One that didn’t match her vision of the man from the accident at all.

He thought she was sheltered and naive.

As she read, she realized he was probably right.

It wasn’t that hard to find the information. By typing in the description of the tattoo, Miami, and, on a whim, the fact that they were Puerto Rican, the name Los Corredores popped up almost instantly. They even had their own Wikipedia page, filled with all sorts of nasty facts like:

A particularly territorial and dangerous Miami gang. They are one of the largest and deadliest gangs in south Dade County. Known members of Los Corredores have been arrested for a wide range of criminal activities, including narcotics trafficking, shootings, homicides, assaults, and auto theft.

There was even a picture of a tattoo like the one on Marcos’s arm.

And Chuito’s.

How stupid was she to think that it was some sort of cousin-bonding thing. She had imagined that they had gotten them together.

Perhaps they had.

This picture on the Internet had only two ink drops filled in red on the back of the snake’s back, which she realized now weren’t supposed to be ink drops.
They are blood
. The Internet was filled with grim facts that made Los Corredores look like a very scary gang indeed.

She had a hard time equating the information with the Marcos she knew, with those beautiful, soulful light eyes that had set her on fire as he looked at her across that booth today. She just couldn’t believe the picture these articles were painting of him. She couldn’t even put Chuito in that role, and she and Chuito weren’t exactly the best of friends.

It made her realize, as a history teacher, how very different the reality was from the facts on paper, but she couldn’t stop reading, searching through the different resources, though most were police related.

One article was a study on Los Corredores’s success as an exclusively Puerto Rican gang, when Miami had a much larger Cuban population. Most of Los Corredores’s rivalry was with Cuban gangs. According to the article, they’d managed to establish a strong foothold over the past decade in Dade County through swift, deadly action whenever their territory was threatened.

Katie wondered if by
threatened
, the article meant shooting up a house with women and children in it. None of these articles and posts had the whole stories in them. Not even close.

She was certain of it.

And she was regretting letting Marcos go so easily, which she knew made her absolutely insane. He’d all but admitted to murder, but going after his mother’s murderers was sort of like self-defense, wasn’t it?

Katie wanted it to be. Desperately. She needed another excuse to see him and touch the magic that she felt in his presence before he left.

She closed her eyes and dropped her phone to the mat by the tub and sucked in a shaky breath, because there was no amount of denial that was going to let her believe the lie for long.

The murders he’d confessed to weren’t self-defense at all.

They were revenge.

Which led her to wonder why, of all the people in the world, did Marcos admit it to her. She got the impression he didn’t trust easily. If he was anything like his cousin Chuito, he likely didn’t trust at all, but he had just spilled his guts out to her at Hal’s Diner today like they were the oldest of confidants.

Which meant she wasn’t the only one who felt this connection. With her eyes still closed, she remembered the way Marcos had looked at her, like she was the most beautiful, tantalizing woman in the world. It was so bizarre for Katie, who never considered herself anything more than plain at best.

She’d gone through high school with her nose in a book.

Grayson was the first man she had ever kissed, and that wasn’t until her junior year of high school. He’d always made it very clear that her mind was what appealed to him, and sex with him had been like everything else in their relationship. Neat, scheduled, and to the point. Tuesday and Saturday nights were usually slotted for evening intimacy, well spaced during the week and usually finished before the local news at ten.

For some reason, Katie didn’t think sex with Marcos would be on a towel spread out under her to protect the Egyptian cotton sheets, quick and efficient to ensure they heard the full weather report before bed.

For just a moment, she allowed herself the luxury of fantasizing about something other than ordinary and boring. As sad as it was, for years even her fantasies had been bland because she had no point of reference to extend them. The romance novels, even the really steamy ones, were so far outside her reality, she could never put herself in the spot of those beautiful heroines, with their gravity-defying tits and tiny waists.

Now, for just a moment, fueled by those hot looks from Marcos before he had left, she was able to believe that one man in this world actually thought she was valuable for something beyond her mind. As she sat there, she realized that though she knew Marcos was probably as dangerous for Katie’s nice, neat little world as he claimed, she also knew she was utterly sick of nice and neat.

She wanted something a little edgier. A little risky. She wanted tattoos instead of a briefcase. She wanted someone to like her tits instead of her degree.

She got out of the tub and craned her head to look in the mirror as she stood there dripping. She found what she expected—an ass that had always been a little too big and hips that could afford to lose a few pounds too. Her tits were nice, even she knew that, but they still had those little white lines on the side, and they were too full to ever defy gravity.

Even with the flaws, for the first time in her life, she believed a man could think she was beautiful just as she was. She saw it today in the diner. She felt it in his touch, and maybe she’d known it all along. Maybe there was such a thing as soul mates. Her brother worked at the only car dealership in Garnet County, and he always said there was an ass for every seat.

Well, maybe there was an ass for every man too.

And she got the distinct impression the man her particular brand of ass was made for might not be the safest bet, but he just might have the biggest payout for Katie even if no one else in the world understood it but her and Marcos.

He was dangerous. She knew that now for a fact. He’d flat-out admitted it, but she knew he wouldn’t hurt her, had absolute confidence in it after he’d faced down a DUI rather than leave her alone. That was no small sacrifice, especially considering his past. If he could take that sort of risk for her, then she could do the same for him.

Six months ago, she wouldn’t have believed she would be confident enough to seek out sex from
any
man, let alone a handsome, MMA fighter who could have any girl he wanted, but the accident changed her.
Marcos changed me
. She liked who she was because of him too much to let him go without a fight.