Trust in Me by Skye Warren Page B

told it not to. If I managed to get free, it would only result in more pain for me. So thank goodness Carlos was strong enough to hold me down. Thank goodness for that.
    “Stop,” Tyler barked.
    Carlos froze. His thigh muscles tensed, his fingers tightened in my hair, holding me still, but it wasn’t the moment of climax, it was an unnatural stillness. An animal sensing danger.
    “What did you say to me?” Carlos asked.
    “We don’t have time for this,” Tyler said. I could tell he was trying to calm down, trying to play it cool, but he was failing fast. “That’s all. We need to go.”
    Carlos was no fool. He pulled my head off his dick and held it there, suspended by my hair, like he was some kind of conquering Visigoth regarding the detached head of his vanquished enemy with pride and scorn. Except, of course, that my head was still attached to my body. But I was no less conquered, no less damaged than if my body were broken in two.
    The shame that had nipped at my heels my entire life overtook me completely, flattened me, as I was humiliated in front of the man that I…loved. I’d loved him ever since he’d thought a gangly little girl in dirty clothes was worth standing up for, even if it hadn’t worked.
    “I don’t think you’re upset about the security schematics,” Carlos said pleasantly. “We went over them last night, and nothing has changed. I think you want me to stop shoving my dick down her throat. Now why would that be?”
    Tyler said nothing, but the tension swirled around us, threatening to drag me under. It was a tangible thing: Tyler’s impotent rage, his misdirected fury, weighty and thick.
    Carlos’s sharp tone sliced through the air. “Do you like her?” He shook my head with a flick of his wrist. “Do you like my whore?”
    “You know I do,” Tyler said. “I offered you a fair price.”
    I thought with despair that Tyler did like me. Maybe it wasn’t just that he was a good guy. Maybe it wasn’t that he felt guilt over back then or now. Maybe he genuinely thought I was a regular person, worthy of his possession.
    Carlos let go, and I fell to the floor like a worthless sack of flour, the dust rising around me in protest. “Take her if you want,” he said. “But if you leave, don’t come back. You won’t participate in the drop. You forfeit your cut.”
    Freedom.
    For a second, just a second, I allowed myself to revel in the possibility. Tyler and me, together. Happiness, a family. Life flashed before my eyes, one I’d never live. A fantasy.
    The offer was a trick.
    No way would Carlos let me go. I’d known that ever since the first time he shot down one of his men in front of me.
    I’d been new here, barely off the streets for six weeks. As embarrassing as it was to acknowledge, I’d even developed a romantic attachment to Carlos. Well, maybe it wasn’t so ridiculous. He was very intelligent and attractive enough, if you couldn’t see the monster underneath. And he was my knight in shining armor. The age difference between us didn’t matter to me. Maybe I did have daddy issues.
    He’d fucked me on his bed—this was before he got too rough. Maybe he thought that I’d run then, even with nowhere to go. And I might have, without those delusional romantic feelings.
    One of his men walked in on us. I saw him first and made a surprised squeak. Carlos looked over, his hard cock still inside me, grabbed the gun from the drawer in the bedside table and shot him dead. Then he went back to fucking me with fervor.
    I started crying, but that only excited him more. He finished and then called in Leo to clean up the mess. A dead body. Very little blood. The smell of piss. I’d never forget any of it. I found out later that the guy had been skimming off the top. Only a fool would steal from Carlos. The man had already been dead when Carlos shot him, that’s how inevitable his death was.
    Still, I thought that he’d done it in front of me on purpose. It signaled a change in