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  “You don’t know who I am because you’ve never had the good fortune of meeting me,” he said and I tried not to roll my eyes at the guy’s incredible conceit. “My name is Valentino Perez,” he said with a flourishing bow and a charming smile, “head of the Los Lobos Surenos.”

  I knew just enough about mob life from Alejandro to know the Surenos were groups of loosely affiliated gangs that all paid tribute to the greater Mexican Mafia families. Although they were all interconnected, either by marriage or camaraderie, each had its own identity. The Los Lobos, or “the wolves,” was a tough innercity Chicago gang of ruffians with a reputation for being unusually bloodthirsty. They had once paid tribute to my father, but after he was murdered, they went their separate way. I had thought to never hear from them again.

  “What do the wolves of Chicago want, and can’t it wait?” I said angrily. He might have had a gun, and I might have been kneeling in front of him, but my anger still overwhelmed me. Perez had an awful lot of gall to be interrupting my wedding to Connor.

  Perez smiled as if impressed by my anger and said to one of his goons flanking us on the other side, “La Senorita has a lot of courage. She reminds me of El Padre.” The padre looked insulted by the gangster’s words, but then Perez added, “Not you, father. El Padre of the royal Vasquez Clan of Chicago, of which our dear bride here is a monarch of sorts. Aren’t you, little princess?”

  He said it all mockingly, not like he respected my father or family at all. I’d had enough out of his odious mouth and stood up. I did not care if he insulted me, but he would not insult the proud Vasquez Family. I reached out and slapped him soundly across his handsome face.

  He smiled at me and touched his cheek as if I had kissed him, completely unaffected by my outburst. So I tried to slap him again.

  He caught my hand that time, halting it in mid-swing with surprising strength. His hand was cool and felt like a band of steel. The goons automatically moved forward, but Perez commanded them to stand down in Spanish. His dark, intense stare never left my face. “You have a quick hand, princess, and a quicker tongue. You dress like a gringo, but I see you have a Latino temper buried under all that nonsense. You are not so different from El Padre. Still, I think you would not be so sure of yourself if I slapped you back.”

  “You would not dare,” I hissed.

  His smile grew hungry and wolfish. “Perhaps not. But I might be persuaded to take you over my knee.” He pulled me to him and kissed me. It was a fiery, carnivorous kiss that left my mouth tingling and my nerves jangling. No one had ever kissed me like that, not even Connor. As he kissed me, his hand moved to my rear end and he slapped me once, sharply, which drew the gasps of all those around us.

  Something about Perez made the muscles of my stomach jump, which hurt quite a lot, considering how snug the bodice of my wedding gown was. “Let me go!” I said as my courage withered on the vine.

  “I might be persuaded…but only if you tell me where the Golden Hand is.”

  I frowned up at him, vaguely disturbed by how my body was crushed against his. I was further surprised by the feel of him…how interested he was. I could smell his cologne and his own musky maleness. “I have no idea what you are talking about, Perez.”

  “Your father knew. And the Golden Hand is my birthright.” He pinched my chin in two fingers and jerked my face close so only our breaths separated us. “I want to know where it is, or there will be no wedding today, princess.”

  As I stared into his fiery black eyes, rage burned inside me. Rage and fear. “And I have no idea what the Golden Hand is!” I cried.

  A slick smile crawled across Perez’s face. “Very well, princess.” He bowed his head and kissed my hand, suddenly every bit the gentleman, then he let me go, and he and his big gun pushed through the wall of his goons and back up the lily-strewn church aisle, looking tall, dark and so very dangerous against the backdrop of the pastel wedding decorations. But before he was halfway up, he spun around and waggled his gun at his goons. “Bring the princess! We shall see what she remembers after she spends a few days with me.” He laughed maniacally, like a cartoon villain.

  The goons grabbed me and I screamed. And that’s how I wound up kidnapped on my wedding day.

  * * *

  I was quickly blindfolded, my hands bound in my lap with rope, and stuffed into a too-small car, my skirts and bustles all twisted up on me in the backseat where I sat between Perez and one of his husky goons. My heart was racing in my chest, but I was still mad as hell, and that helped. I worked on being mad so I wouldn’t be so incredibly scared.

  “You will never, ever, get away with this, Perez,” I told him, thinking how I sounded like a character in a mob movie.

  Perez stroked the side of the gun against my lower jaw and I jumped in my seat. “Princess, I already have.”

  We drove for about an hour, which didn’t mean a thing. We could have driven far outside the city to some remote location, or we could have just circled the city for a while. But when we finally stopped and Perez pulled away the blindfold, I found myself more inclined to the former than the latter. All I could see for miles and miles were pine and fir trees, and when he opened the door and pulled me from the car, I could smell the sweetness of the deep forest. Ahead lay a luxury vacation home on the side of a manmade lake, and there were horses in a corral nearby, but otherwise, the place looked isolated and lonely. There were no other homes, and no paved roads. I thought about trying to make a break for the nearest line of trees, but I knew I wouldn’t get very far in my big, frumpy wedding gown before Perez or one of his goons put a bullet in my back. So, trying to remain as docile as possible, I let him lead me down a gravel drive to the summer home.

  Perez, his steely hand on my arm, steered me through a richly decorated foyer and down a long hallway until we reached one of the bedrooms. It was tastefully decorated in summery white curtains and carpeting. Billowy white linens covered a vast, four-poster bed. He pushed me inside and closed and locked the door.

  “Perez…” I began, then stopped.

  He looked me up and down in that hungry way he had, then reached for a handmade pinewood Shaker chair by the matching desk and pulled it out and turned it around. He straddled it, showing me the Desert Eagle in his hand. He smiled, though this time it did not reach his eyes. For the moment, he was all business. “And now, again, I ask you, princess: where is the Golden Hand?”

  I narrowed my eyes and backed up a step toward the bed. “And, again, I tell you, Perez: I have no idea what the Golden Hand is.”

  He stared at me intently for a long moment. “You lie!” he suddenly shouted, surprising me.

  “I have no idea what that means!” I shouted back.

  Perez sat there like some unhappy demon, scratching at the side of his cheek with his gun as he considered his options. His eyes looked dark, broody, undecided. “I think we shall speak again, princess,” he said, and got up to leave the room. “Time alone here may loosen your tongue.”

  He left and the door clicked shut behind him. I rattled the door, but it was locked soundly. I shouted and demanded to be let go, but no one came for me for several hours.

  * * *

  During that time, of course, I explored the room for possible avenues of escape, but there were bars on the window, in both the bedroom and adjoining bath, and when I tested the door again, I realized there was some kind of electronic lock on the other side that probably required a keycard, like in a hotel, and no amount of fiddling with hairpins was going to unlock it.

  Finally, I went to sit on the bed and thought about my remaining options. I knew screaming and making a scene was out of the question—we were obviously out in the middle of nowhere. But if only I could reach the woods, maybe I would have a chance. Maybe I could club the next person who came through the door, or fashion some kind of primitive weapon. But I’d still get nowhere in this damned dress, so I spent the next twenty minutes wriggling, cutting, unlacing, untying and shucking the stupid thing off o
f me. In retrospect, it was not the dress I had wanted for my wedding. I had wanted a sassy salsa dress, but Connor had insisted we have a more traditional wedding.

  I thought about Connor as I sat back down in just my chemise, garter, stockings and blue boy shorts. I’d worn the sky blue skivvies as my “something blue,” and because, again, they appealed to Connor. I had learned early on in our relationship that he liked more conservative clothing on his girlfriend, reasonable heels, nothing too flashy or overtly sexual. I wondered where he was, if he was combing Chicago, looking for me, worried sick.

  Looking down at myself, I got an idea into my head. I knew if I thought about it too hard, I’d chicken out, so I wasted no time slipping the boy shorts off but getting my garters back on and sliding back into my bridal shoes. As I heard footsteps approaching from down the hall, I assumed what I hoped was a sexy magazine pose on the bed.

  The door clicked open and Perez stepped inside, carrying a tray. My heart started knocking at the sight of him again, the fitted darkness of what had to be a $10,000 Vercace suit made of pure silk. It hugged the width of his shoulders and the slimness of his hips, and it made him look more like an A-list Latino actor who belonged on the red carpet at the Academy Awards than some innercity Chicago hood. He was slender but muscled in all the right places, the slim, steely strength that comes with good genetics and a youth doing hard manual labor. I thought it wasn’t very fair that my enemy should look so edible.

  He smiled at me as if he could read my thoughts, then his attention quickly strayed to my garter belt, which barely covered the most intimate parts of me. “I brought you something to eat, princess,” he told me.

  I looked him over, being bold about it. It was a nice show, but what I was really interested in was what was in his pancake holster under his suit coat. Of course, there might be goons in the house, but I would worry about burning that bridge when I got to it.

  “I’m afraid I’m not very hungry,” I told him, tossing my long sable hair over one shoulder and giving him what I hoped was a saucy look. I wasn’t very good with sex games, all told. I was a little too short and too plump to be called a sex goddess, and growing up, I was more inclined to books than boys. Even after Connor and I had decided to get married, our sex life remained pretty vanilla. I’d always found sex a little boring, in fact—a lot of work for very little reward. All that thrusting and grunting for maybe a second or two of pleasure. Connor always seemed to get more out of it, and usually fell right to sleep afterward.

  But when Perez looked at me, I felt really beautiful, and electrified, and very bold. He uncovered the fine silver chafing dish to reveal some fast food that had seen better days. He said, “I would have served you a more traditional Mexican dish, but I know the princess prefers her gringo food.”

  “My mother was white, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily consider myself gringo,” I complained. It annoyed me that he kept referring to me as white, as if I wanted nothing to do with my Mexican roots. “Next time, bring something better,” I said, and sassily pushed the tray and dish off the side of the bed and onto the floor.

  His eyes flared, but then he worked on composing himself. But that one peek was enough. I realized I could push his buttons. Now I just had to push the right ones.

  “That was an extremely naughty thing to do, princess.”

  I gave him a sultry look. “I do as I like. And stop calling me a princess.”

  He laughed at the irony of my words, then reached out to brush his hand along the outside of my exposed thigh, the pads of his fingers whispering over my silk stockings. “The gringo princess has bad manners,” he said. He latched onto my garter belt and turned me just a little on the bed so I was more fully exposed to him. His eyes roved over the thin, silken chemise covering the mounts of my breasts, then traveled down to my garter belt. At this angle, it didn’t hide anything from him and he took a few seconds to drink in the sight of my fully exposed sex before tearing his eyes away and saying, “Enough games. Tell me know where the Golden Hand is.” But he sounded less sure than he had several moments ago.

  I felt wetness gathering between my legs. I may not have liked Perez, but there was something incredibly hot about having a dangerous man look at me that way. He might have been a bully, but he was s sexy bully. “If I knew what it was, don’t you think I would have told you already just so I could get out of this dump?”

  Again I saw the flare of anger in his eyes. I got the impression that this place meant something to him, something important. I had insulted what he cared about, and now I had to pay the price. “The gringo princess needs to learn some manners,” he growled.

  Before I could utter a protest, he reached for me and dragged me easily across his lap, laying his arm across my shoulder blades to keep me immobile for the sudden, sharp blows of his hand on my bare ass. The pain, rage and humiliation flared through me with each smarting blow, and each time his hand cracked against my ass cheeks, and the sound echoed in the small room, I screeched and protested, wriggling with unbridled rage in his lap. No one had ever hit me like this, not Alejandro, not my dad. But Perez was a strong bastard, and he didn’t relent, raining his blows quickly and decisively until I felt my ass was on fire.

  Finally he pushed me backward on the bed and I found myself lying there with my throbbing, smarting ass burning beneath me and my legs parted so his eyes could devour the glistening folds between my legs. “What a very bad princess,” he told me, and in that moment I realized things had changed between us. In that moment, neither one of us cared why we were here, or our roles in this little melodrama, or even what the Golden Hand was.

  Perez, running on all instinct now, pounced on me, pushing me back into the nest of soft pillows on the bed. He cradled my cheeks in one of his big hands as he kissed me, growling against my lips, his tongue sliding over my teeth and fucking into my mouth, as his other hand roamed over the chemise, gripped it, tore it away. I was small-breasted enough that I didn’t need a bra, and he easily palmed my breast, his thumb circling my nipple before pinching and twisting it until I heaved a breathless sigh and arched upward into his palm. He bit my bottom lip, chewing on it delicately as he rubbed the front of his expensive suit against my sex until my juices had soaked him, not that he seemed to mind much.

  Then, just like that, he jerked back to look down at me with caution, as if I had bewitched him in some way, as if I might bite him. I saw my chance, and I went for it. I slid my hands under his suit coat, over the wall of his silken-shirt-clad chest, feeling the snug nylon of his armpit holster. I pulled him down against the front of me, the roughness of his jaw grazing my face as I nuzzled his cheek, kissed along his face, then snagged his earlobe in my teeth.

  He grunted and growled in the deep of his chest as I worked on seducing him into a better state of submission. I felt the hardness of his fully erect cock pressing against my belly. Groaning, he humped me a few times while whispering the sweetest and most perverse things in my ear in Spanish before gripping my breasts in his hands, stroking the nipples until I felt twin fires in my body, and finally pushing me down into the bedclothes and out of the reach of the gun.

  He lowered his head and snagged one nipple in his teeth, sucking it deep inside his mouth and suckling so fiercely I cried out as I felt a bolt of pure desire racing from the tip of my breast straight down to my sex, making me wetter than ever. An urgent and aching desire overwhelmed me, momentary blotting out all reason, including my reasons for doing this. Under Perez’s suckling and licking, I had to concentrate hard to remember what I was trying to do here.

  As his hands slid over the generous curves of my body, I managed to slide my hands under his coat again and found the gun—not the Desert Eagle, but a slim, heavy manstopper, all the same. But his big, strong hands parted my legs and stroked the insides of my thighs with such tenderness and concentration that I lost my grip on it and instead reached for the bedding to anchor myself as his thumbs pressed deeply into my sex, parting the dripping fo
lds. I arched my hips up in response, my body reacting automatically. “Oh, dios Mio!” I said, totally unaware of what was coming out of my mouth.

  Perez growled and purred against my wetness and said in English, “There is my girl…my little Latina.” He slid two fingers inside of me while simultaneously using the thumb of his other hand to unhood my clit. He blew softly upon my swollen bud, and the sensation made me roll my hips and twist and moan on the sheets like some common slut. The warmth of his touch spread fire through my lower body, and as he pumped his slippery fingers in and out of my sex, the pressure of a sudden, overwhelming orgasm washed over me, leaving me screaming and writhing as I came right in front of him, spilling my juices over his hands and down between my legs and over my ass.

  “Ah…tu eres muy sexy,” he said, and no one had ever said that to me before. No one had ever said I was sexy until now. He pinned my lower body and glared at me dangerously. “Make love to me, princess.”

  In all the heart-pounding excitement, I realized I had totally forgotten the purpose of this exercise. I whispered some endearments and closed my legs around his waist, drawing Perez up against my body while simultaneously liberating his gun from his holster. As I pulled it loose, I also raised it to the level of his face.

  He looked at me with a wry expression on his face. “You make love in unusual ways, princess,” he said. “Is this how you planned on giving yourself to your husband on your wedding night?”

  “I only do this for bullies who kidnap me and try to seduce me,” I told him, my hands shaking as I attempted to hold the gun on him like you see in the movies.

  Perez cradled his cheek, giving me a bored look that infuriated me. “And who offered herself up to me like some succulent dish? It is you who was trying to seduce me, princess.”

  I realized, half pinned under Perez’s body, I had no choice but to shoot him if I wanted to get free. But it wasn’t nearly as easy to do in real life as it was in the movies—or my own imagination. I was no killer, no gangster, even if my daddy was El Padre.