Free The Club by Suzanne Steele Page A

neck.
    “I love you so much, Roxanne,” he says once again, right before he enters me. “God, I love you so much.”
    His eyes search my face as he gently makes love to me for the first time since my capture. There is no rough possession; there is only a soft, gentle persuasion.
    He is begging me, with every ounce of his being, to forgive him. I know that Antonio is everything I should stay away from but I find myself grateful for the fact that I am his captive. I don’t have a choice and I am glad because I don’t want to be without this man. His intensity is as alluring as it is dangerous.
    Every day, he lodges himself deeper into my soul. At least I don’t have to deal with the guilt of choosing to be with a monster. I have no choice; he has taken that away… the same way that he is taking my heart.
    I open my legs, moaning his name. He slowly moves in me, touching and staring as if he is trying to soak up my very essence.
         I can see, by the earnestness in his eyes, that the words he speaks to me are true. I know that he is falling in love with me. I just can’t figure out why. I know that he is damaged goods. I’m glad I overheard the night terror he had because it helps me to understand why this man is so tormented with thoughts of me abandoning him. My freedom will be his undoing. I am torn but, for now, I lose myself in the love of a monster under the pale light of the moon in a forbidden castle.
    Antonio is like me—broken.
    Maybe that is what draws us to one another. The broken, fragmented pieces crying out from the atrocities of the past just beg anyone to understand. We are two beings with shattered souls reaching out to each other because we recognized a kindred, broken spirit. We are like two peas in a pod. Maybe that is why he gets to me. This is the worst sort of man that I could fall in love with.
    Why is it that we always gravitate towards the things that are forbidden? Tonight, something is happening as he speaks softly and tells me how vulnerable he feels. He’s telling me he has never loved anyone but his brother. Antonio opens up a part of himself to me—a part he has never shown anyone.
    How can I turn away a man who needs me? I can see his anguish. No one can fake the depth of pain that I see in his eyes tonight. No matter how much my head warns me not to connect with this man, my heart and my body are not listening…
     

     
     

Antonio Wayne
    I turn around in my office chair and stare out the window as my mind drifts back to my childhood.
    My brother and I had grown up in the violent backstreets of Colombia. Our drug-addicted mother’s violent boyfriends assured that we would rather sleep in the streets than return home in the evenings. We literally grew up stealing to eat and fighting for our lives.
    We were all each other had and still are to this day. When I lost him, it crushed me. Roxanne is causing a lot of memories to resurface that I have kept buried. Things I thought I had buried deep enough to never bother me again are suddenly plaguing my mind.
    Roxanne is causing an emotion in me that I can’t remember feeling since I was a child: fear. It’s ridiculous. I can handle things like violence and bloodshed without batting an eye. Only one thing causes me to feel true fear and that is the threat of abandonment.
    I am afraid of losing her and the thought makes me violent. It is all that I can do to restrain the vicious beast lodged within me. I don’t want to physically hurt her. I was reacting in anger because of the fear. I can’t lose her; I just can’t.
    My brother, Ricardo, sent me to live with an uncle in New York City when he began running drugs for the cartel. I went from the jungles to the city and I will never forget the day I left. It literally broke my heart and I vowed that day I would never love again. I have kept that promise all these years until now…
    My private line rings. Only one person has that number and that’s my big brother,