Mi Carino

• Title Page
  
• Prologue
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty -one
  
• Epilogue
  

Mi Carino

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Mi Carino © Copyright 2012 Sienna Mynx

Cover art by Reese Dante

Electronic book publication February 2012

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Prologue

The sheets were cool. After a long stretch they drew down to his pelvis. His chest expanded and heaved before a contented sigh of release escaped his broad nostrils. Diego’s lashes were long for a man, a cursed trait from his mother. They were so long that when his lids parted a fraction, he saw little and had to stretch his eyes to see more. He thought he heard tiny bells. A melody of soft chimes echoing with the wind.

Why the hell are my doors open?

First his gaze, then his head dropped over to the right. He missed the heat of his woman’s body. And she was his. After everything, she had returned to him, on his terms. Diego found her side of the bed empty. The melodic clinks were not wind chimes but the hollow sound of her restless gold bracelets on her wrists. He scanned the room and found her. She was at the closet, snatching off clothing from hangers.

She was leaving
.

“
Que pasa
?”

She froze. He could see her hand tremble as it lingered on a hanger for a moment. Slowly she cast her dark locks back over her shoulder and peered out at him from under long bangs. Diego inched back on his pillows, sleep had clouded his conscious mind, but the sight of her removing her clothes from next to his things was a sobering moment. Marcella turned and faced him but he saw it took inner strength for her to do so. She looked as if she wanted to bolt from the room. With a nervous bite to her bottom lip, her eyes flittered from him to the floor. There was something far more distressing. Diego noticed how red and inflamed her nostrils were and slick her cheeks remained with fresh tears. She’d been crying. Taking a deep breath at first, she tucked her long locks behind both ears. She wore a NYU sweatshirt and a faded pair of jeans. She was dressed?

“
Are you leaving?” Diego asked, considering that sometimes she would take her things to be dry-cleaned. But if that were her intent why was she up at four in the morning, after a night of allowing him to make love to her? They made love several times last night, as many times as he needed. She was so giving, so willing to please him. He forgave her. She forgave him. He was addicted to every inch of her. So what was she doing? And where the hell did the tears come from? They were past it now dammit. No more debating their affections, they were one. They understood each other.

Instead of answering him she walked away. Out of the room, to the next then back with an arm full of her things. Diego eased from the covers with a curse under his breath. He slipped on his robe and followed her when she headed out once more.

Marcella had a lot of clothes. He loved her style. The sexiest most feminine suits and dresses he had seen on a woman. He remembered how the moments when she was away he would go into the closets and run his finger over the fine threads. Now he stood in the door watching as her hands, those gentle beautiful slender fingers folded her things neatly then laid them flat in her bag. He watched her sniff, wipe at her wet cheeks with the back of her hand and struggle not to cry. She was leaving.
She wasn’t supposed to go.

“
Stay.” Diego heard himself say. A request he never made from his heart until that moment. Sure he wanted her, desired her even, but he was speaking from a place he always thought was barren—his heart. “Marcella stay.” He stammered. She shook her head sadly and continued to pack.

Diego’s hands went up, he grabbed the back of his neck with both. The pressure in his skull became so intense he then slammed his fist as hard as he could into the wall. When he looked back she continued to pack. When he opened his mouth to plea he realized he couldn’t do it. There was just so far he would go. Of course her pain had been his doing. How could he care so passionately for her and not be able to tell her? Hell he hadn’t told her anything in the short weeks they’d been together. And she’d asked him over and over, begged him to let her in. She turned and started picking up her shoes and he felt a growl form deep in his throat as his hurt met with age-old pain. Women had hurt him before, one woman in particular. But none ever meant as much to him as his sweet Marcella. Finally he found his voice.

“
I was born in a city called Barranquilla to a woman named Marie Andes Juarez. She had three children, me, my sister Ana and little brother Enrique. All of us were from her marriage to a man named DeMarco Andes. When I was seven we moved to a neighboring village called Santa Catalina. My Papi had gotten a good job working for a man named Juan Juarez. He set us up with a cottage. My father ran the coffee bean fields, and my mother worked for him and his wife as a domestic in his mansion. The affair started soon after, and went on behind Papi’s back until I was ten. I know this because I was forced to be the lookout for my mother while she indulged Señor Juarez’s urges. Then unexpectedly Señora Juarez, his wife, took ill and died. It is rumored that my mother poisoned her. I think that may be the case. If you met my mother you would understand why. She and Juan Juarez decided they needn’t hide it any longer. But my Papi was a proud man. He went beyond his position and challenged Juarez for his life. I was there the day they dragged him out into the coffee fields and butchered him with machetes as my mother and Juan watched. No one saw me, but I was there. She didn’t care how much he loved her, how much he sacrificed for her. She betrayed him, she didn’t care at all.”

Marcella froze.

Shock registered over her entire being. Her lips quivered as if she would speak. He expected her to come to him. Throw her arms around him and kiss him the way she did whenever his hurt became too much. He never denied this. He felt entitled to it because this moment was the one she had been asking for, for months. Then like the dawn the truth cast a dull haze of light over the fact that he had blown it. Pushed her too hard, forced her to submit and bend to his will until there was nothing left. Instead of returning to his arms she turned away. She picked up her shoes and continued to pack.

“
The watch you asked about? It’s Papi’s, and his father before him. The only thing of value he owned. He wore it in the fields, to church, to my sister and brother’s christening. He was never without it. After his death Juan Juarez wore it as a trophy. My mother had given it to him off of my father’s cold body. It’s the only thing I stole from them when we fled… after.”

Diego felt his chest cave under the weight of his confession. And still she continued to pack. She should be still. She should listen and not move. His mouth curled in fury and his chest tightened to the point that his neck and face flushed deep red. “Did you hear me? Marie had no use for us I said. She left us there, in the cottage, never visited her baby boy who was only three and cried for her every night. I believe the food we received most days was from Juan Juarez and other villagers’ kindness not hers. So I decided to run away. I took them and ran to the coast. We slept on the streets, on the beaches, I danced for change and juggled cans for tourists until Enrique slipped away from me and drowned in the ocean. His body washed up two days later.”

Marcella burst into tears. This he expected. His story was a horror story. One he never wanted to share with her. She had forced him to reveal the ugliness of his past and like he suspected she was going to run from him. Just as most did when they saw what lay behind his mask.

“
Enrique’s death broke Ana, she ran from me. I found her two years later. She’d become a prostitute strung out on cocoa. She had only been nine. She died before she ever saw ten.”

Diego watched helplessly as she zipped her bag. He never cried, never permitted it, but he never spoke the story aloud to anyone. “I did what I could. I did things you don’t want to know to get my fortune and justice. I’m telling you this because… I made a mistake. I punished you to keep from loving you. I know that now. I crossed the line, and I couldn’t stop myself. This is my curse. Still I can’t be the man that lets you go. I need you Marcella, desperately.”

“
It’s too late.” She said.

Diego stepped to her. He blocked her from leaving. “This is me. Pain and fury is what I’m made of. I understand, because of you Marcella that life can be about more. Teach me. Teach me how to love you and I swear I will never hurt you again.”

She dropped her head and covered her eyes, her shoulders shaking with her sobs. He ached to touch her but he knew he’d lost the privilege.

“
Marcella. When I hold you in my arms, it’s the way you feel. It’s not the sex, it’s the way you feel
nena
. It’s something I didn’t count on, I didn’t plan for. That’s why I can’t stop touching you, desiring you. I know it started as sex, but it’s something more between us. You were never supposed to happen. But you did. I never counted on… on… on…
loving you so much
.”