Ally gasped, eyes wide as saucers, as she trembled beneath his touch. “Undercover?”
“Yeah, little mouse.”
“You're a cop?”
“Used to be. Then I joined Prey Security as part of their undercover team. You’ve heard of Prey?”
Nodding, she continued to stare at him, like she was seeing him for the first time. “Why didn't you tell me?”
Sighing, he sat down on the bed, picked her up, and set her in his lap. She struggled to get away from him, albeit, half-heartedly, but he just tightened his hold on her and buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in, and relishing the feel of her in his arms. “Need to hold you for a moment, little mouse,” he told her, his voice uncharacteristically shaky.
After a moment, she froze, then a sob burst out, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, shifting so she was practically melded against him, her knees on either side of his thighs, and clinging to him while she wept. His hand stroked her back, tracing the length of her spine, and he dotted kisses to her cheeks, her forehead, the top of her head.
“I didn't tell you what I do for a living because I was scared,” he admitted.
“Scared?” Her wet face tilted back so she could see him.
“Yeah, baby, scared. I’m not good enough for you, you deserve the world, and I can't give you that.”
“You gave me more confidence than I've ever felt before, you helped me learn who I am and what I like. I would never have thought you weren't good enough for me because you were undercover. In fact, I probably would have thought it wasanother point in your favor and another reason I wasn't good enough for you.”
“Don’t say that, little mouse,” he growled, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, holding it tight enough to make her wince. “You are perfection. I love every single thing about you, and have pretty much from the moment I met you. I ghosted you because I was a coward. Because I started working here at Azure, and I was worried about you being in danger. I didn't know that they already knew about you. I knew that ghosting you was the only way I could leave, because if I told you that I was leaving and you asked me to stay, I would be powerless to stay away from you, to not give you what you wanted.”
“I thought you left because you realized I was the freak everyone else always thought I was,” she whispered.
Crushing his mouth to hers, he kissed her like he’d been wanting to for five long months. Mateo tried to pour everything he felt for her, his love, his guilt, his regret, into the kiss, so she would never again doubt that he loved her with a ferocity he’d never believed himself capable of.
“I didn't know you were going to be brought here until I saw you in that cell. It’s a test. For me. To prove my loyalty to Azure. We had a … well, it doesn’t matter, but we had an incident, and now our boss is unsettled, wants us to prove we’re not traitors. I never volunteer to train the girls, I can't, it makes me feel ill. But you … I couldn’t let anyone else get their hands on you. I don’t want to be doing these things to you, baby, I hate it. Despise every second of it. But I don’t have a choice. If they find out I'm not who they think I am, they will use you to punish me. You think the things I've done to you so far are bad, they're not. They’re me doing everything I can to protect you, shield you, while still maintaining my cover. What they could do to you is so much worse than you could ever imagine.”
“I believe you, Mateo,” she said softly, framing his face with her small hands, and the relief that those words gave him was incomprehensible.
“I don’t deserve you, baby.”
“You shouldn’t say that. I think maybe … we’re both more deserving than we realize.”
Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to her forehead and let them linger there. “You are deserving of only good things, little mouse.”
“Are you working on a way to get me out of here without breaking your cover?” she asked, and the trust in her eyes was like a punch to the gut, because in answering her question, he was going to shatter her heart all over again.
Chapter
Nine
August 18th
2:51 P.M.
Everything was going to be okay. Everything was really going to be okay.
Ally could hardly believe it. Maybe it sounded silly, but she was just as relieved to know that she hadn't been wrong about Mateo after all, that he was still the man she had fallen in love with, as she was that she might be going home any day now, as soon as he put into practice whatever plan he’d no doubt been working on.
“Mateo?” she asked when he didn't immediately offer up an answer to her question. Perhaps he didn't want her to know any details. Even though she hated that he’d let her believe that he was part of this, she understood that it was safer for her to remain in the dark. While she’d do her best not to slip up and let anyone know that he was undercover, there was a chance something could slip out when she was in the midst of being hurt by these men.
The last thing she would ever want was to cause him any pain.
Yes, he’d stood by and let horrible things happen to her, participated in it, too, but she didn't doubt him when he said he’d done the best he could to protect her while maintaining his cover. She also didn't doubt him when he said that if one of the other guys had been her trainer, things would have been so much worse. Or that they would be so much worse if he was found out, that she would be used against him.
Not wanting to think too closely about what that would look like, Ally smoothed her fingertips over Mateo’s cheekbones since she still had his face cradled between her palms. There was a weariness she hated seeing in him, and she couldn’t imagine how stressful it must be to live under the constant pressure of having to worry about every single thing you said and did.