Feeling my throat clog so tight I felt I would choke, I fought to gasp for air, only to whisper, “La mia luce,” as I stared at this woman beside me, completely fucking astounded by her defense of a loser like me.

Aliyana’s face blushed and she dipped her head to my chest, her arms wrapped around my waist. Reaching out to my side table, I picked up a smoke and lit it. I took a long a drag.

“I can’t smell smoke now without thinking of you,” Aliyana murmured. I ran my hand through her hair and she asked, “Why is there a crucifix now covering your Heighter star?”

Stiffening, I took another drag and said, “A couple of years after I went into prison, my Heighter inmates came into my cell and scrubbed it out with a needle and ink. They’d heard Alessio was coming in and didn’t want him to think they’d let me off for two years without some form of payback. I didn’t even bother fighting back, just let them erase a gang I no longer wanted to belong to anyway. After the shanking a few months later, I got a needle and ink off my cellmate and changed it completely.”

“But why a crucifix?” Aliyana asked carefully.

Sighing, I said, “Mamma used to cross my forehead with holy water every night when I was a kid. I don’t know why, but when I picked up that needle that had erased my past, the image was in my head and before I knew it, a cross was on my face.”

“Axel,” Aliyana said, and lifted her head. “About your mamma—”

Covering her mouth, I shook my head. “No more. Fuck, girl, I can’t take no more talking about all this shit tonight. I’ve told you more than I’d ever planned to ever tell anyone. I need you to leave it alone now.”

I just couldn’t go there about my mamma. It was one part of my locked heart I never wanted to open. I wouldn’t be able to take the guilt.

Aliyana nodded, getting I couldn’t talk no more. My head was spinning with whiskey, but more than that, it was spinning that Aliyana came back to me knowing who I was.

Smoothing back the lines on my forehead Aliyana confessed, “I can’t believe that I am completely and utterly infatuated with Axel Carillo.”

I froze at her confession, my heart slamming against my ribs and, smiling, she peppered kisses all over my neck. “No one will be happy about us. They won’t understand. But I can’t bring myself to care.”

She might not. But I did.

I could hear the sadness in her voice when she thought of her friends, of her fucking cousin finding out she was my woman. They wouldn’t go for it.

Needing to protect her, I said, “They can’t ever know, Aliyana. It’s better all ‘round if they never know ‘bout us. I don’t want them thinking bad of you for wanting me.”

Aliyana nodded, then her head tilted to the side and she smiled. “I do want you, Axel. Flaws and all. And call me Ally, okay? Outside of work only my mama calls me Aliyana.”

I took one last drag of my smoke, flicked the cherry to the floor then rolled Ally onto her back, working my hips between her legs. “No more talking. I want in that wet pussy again.”

Chapter Fifteen

Ally

One month later….

“You good, darlin’, you don’t look too well?”

I’d been standing in the hallway waiting for Molly to come down the stairs to go to Austin and Lexi’s, and I frowned when she appeared at the top of the stairs looking weak and frail.

Molly batted her hand in front of her face. “Ally, I’m fine, just tired,” she said, but my eyes narrowed in concern. Over the past few days she’d been real quiet and tired. I was worried, and by the way Rome wouldn’t leave her alone, fussing twenty-four-seven, I knew he was too.

“You ready to go?” she asked. I nodded my head, not wanting to push my concerns. Molly didn’t like to be fussed or pitied.

Cassie and Jimmy-Don had arrived from Texas for a visit and they were staying with the Carillo’s.

The Carillo’s… including my Carillo. My dark and tortured Axel Carillo. The man I had fallen head over heels for.

Tonight, Lexi was throwing her best friend and husband, Cassie and Jimmy-Don, a small party to welcome them to Seattle. Of course I was going, they were some of my best friends after all, but after not seeing Axel in nearly two days because of work commitments, I also couldn’t wait to go to see him… to hopefully steal a moment to hold him… to just be in close proximity.

After weeks of being almost nightly in his bed, I was addicted. More than that, I was captivated, obsessed and completely enamored.

He was my fast becoming my everything—my sun, my stars, my moon, everything. Although I believed he felt the same way about me, I was never completely convinced. Axel Carillo was a fortress, an enigma. His cold demeanor spoke of him being one way but with me, in bed, when he stroked my hair or pulled me close after making love into the shelter of his thick arms, I felt it in him more. He still didn’t open up much, had never again talked of his past, kept his feelings buried deep, but I knew I made him happy, and on occasion, I was able to make him smile…

There was nothing more beautiful than a smiling Axel Carillo.

I yearned for him to open up to me. I could see he was haunted. He barely slept. He worked every hour God sent on his heartbreaking sculptures, as if purging his past. I knew that if he just shared his demons with me, he could perhaps begin to heal, but for now, I was content to just have him in my life. I knew, that to many, the idea of being in this man’s company would be a living nightmare. But, to me, being in his strong arms was the sweetest of dreams… my heartfelt wish come true… my bolt of lightning.