Born Sinner by Cora Kenborn

Chapter Three

Sam

I sensethe brunette while she’s still circling, but I’m not quick enough to dodge the swoop.

“Hey,” she chirps, crinkling her eyes at me. “Cool party, huh? Love the apartment. Your folks must be loaded.”

Yeah, with piles of dirty money.

“Thanks,” I say dryly, looking right through her. The roofie Troy slipped Lola must be out-of-this-world phenomenal. She’s already swaying in her heels.

“Wanna give me a guided tour?”

Oh, Jesus… She’s cute,but there’s only one woman here who makes my dick hard.

“Maybe later,” I lie.

Troy has Lola by the arm and he’s guiding her toward the open glass staircase. By the time they reach the second floor, she’s all over the place—her long, dark hair messing up her face as her head flops sideways onto his shoulder; her dress riding up to expose more tan skin.

“Okay, well, make sure you come find me…” Brunette trails off as I push past her like the devil himself is hot on the heels of my Amiri check sneakers. Meanwhile, Lola’s friends are waving her off with catcalls from below, looking as dickmatized by Troy Davis as she appears to be.

“Have fun, María!”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

Choke on those grins, you stupid bitches. She’s a fucking Carrera. Don’t they know she’s smarter than that?

She shouldn’t even be at my party. Her brother would never allow it, not if he knew my real last name was Sanders instead of Colton. I took my mother’s maiden name the day I enrolled at Rutgers. Lola and I are both here under false pretenses to protect us from the war that’s raging up and down the East Coast.

There’s an invisible line drawn down this campus. It’s the same one that divides New Jersey and New York, her family from mine, truth and lies… Me from her. We stay the fuck away from each other, or people die.

Santi Carrera is happy to enforce the rules for his baby sister, but he’s not around right now and I get the feeling she had a little something to do with that. She’s fighting for her freedom, just as much as I am, and that makes her fucking irresistible.

I move toward the stairs, fire and ice surging through my veins.

Protect her.

Reject her.

This contradiction is giving me a headache.

“Nice party, Colton.”

Troy’s crew try to block my access. All it takes is a single look from me and they’re like sliding doors at the mall.

Pussies.

“It’d be even better without the dickhead parade showing up.”

“Aw, you serious?” They clutch at their chests, all offended, like I just gang-banged their moms.

Fucking idiots.

“Get the hell out of my apartment,” I say coldly.

“Or what?” says one cocky asshole.

“Or you won’t be playing football for the rest of the season.” I meet each of their shocked expressions in turn. “It’s hard to find your own dick, let alone run ten steps, with two fractured ankles.”

They wince.

“You’re a sick man, Colton.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

I take the stairs three at a time and head straight for my bedroom. I know the mind games that provocative pricks like Troy Davis like to play. There’s no love lost between us, and he’ll come twice as hard knowing it’s my bed he’s defiling as well.

If he’s touched her already…

Behind the door, it’s a scene from every college chick’s worst nightmare. Lola is passed out on the bed, her black minidress and heels already discarded on the floor. Troy’s standing over her with his jeans around his ankles.

He looks up and smirks. “Come to join the party, Colton?”

“Consent’s a tough word to purchase from the unconscious, frat boy.” I glance at Lola’s breasts in that black lingerie and feel my own traitorous dick stir. “You sure she’s selling?”

“What’s it to you? Pissed I’m buying first?”

“Wrong answer, asshole. Your libido lost its way, and the rest of you is about to pay.” Reaching into my back pocket, I pull out the silver pocket knife the senator bought me for my eighth birthday. I learned to demand respect long before I learned to drive. I learned it on an island a long way away from a man who I have every intention of working for one day, no matter what my stepfather has to say about it. You can’t keep the bad away from the bad. We’re like magnets around one another.

Troy glances down at my hand, and the blood drains from his face. He yanks up his jeans and backs away from me like I’m the goddamn antichrist.

“What the hell, Colton? If you want the bitch so bad, you can have her.”

“Did you touch her?” I tap the exposed blade against my lower lip as I saunter deeper into the room.

I find my answer in Troy’s silence.

I press the blade into my lip until I can feel something hot and wet running down my chin. “Did you taste her?”

Troy looks like he’s about to shit himself. “Just a kiss, man. I swear. I-I didn’t know she was your girl.”

Damn right, she is.“Didn’t your mom ever teach you it’s wrong to steal?”

“My mom’s best friend is a vodka bottle. She didn’t teach me nothing!”

“Poor little rich boys of the world unite.” I swipe a hand across my jaw and it comes away red. “Get on your knees.”

A tic jumps to life in his cheek. “Wh-what?”

My foot connects with his thigh, and a dark satisfaction fills my soul as he goes crashing to the floor. Crouching over him, I take his jaw between my fingers as he cringes away. “You fucked up, Troy Davis.” With my other hand, I press the blade against the nervous glide of his throat. “You just violated my property, and that shit has consequences… Lift up your shirt.”

He freezes. “No way.”

“I said, lift up your fucking shirt.”

A trembling hand shoots out and wrenches up his white Moncler Polo. “What the hell, Colton?” he says again weakly. “You a queer now?”

“No, Troy. I’m your end game.” Changing my mind at the last second, I drop the knife from his throat and drive it down deep into the web of muscles above his kneecap, twisting as I go, severing a couple of tendons and all his hopes and dreams. Never mind a season on the bench; I’ve just gone and annihilated a promising football career at the age of twenty.

I feel nothing about it, though. No guilt. No regret.

Sweet. Fuck. All.

I told you I was ready for the big league, senator.

Troy screams, and I slam my hand across his mouth. “Inhale the pain,” I order, bringing my face close to his. “Inhale it until you feel like your lungs are gonna explode, because that’s only a fraction of what ‘María’ would have felt tomorrow morning if I hadn’t shown up in time.” Flashing him a grin, I pull the knife out, eliciting another muffled scream. “If I were you, Troy Davis, I’d get to a hospital in the next twenty minutes. You’ve had yourself a bad accident... Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much next time. You feeling me?”

He nods, eyes glassy with pain. Compliant as a child.

Maybe he knows the truth about me. Maybe he’s heard about the senator’s reputation.

Removing my hand, I wipe his spit down the front of his polo shirt.

“Go… Get out of here.”

“I-I can’t move.” He starts crying, snot trailing down his face like a well-fucked pussy.

Are they tears of relief or pain? Maybe it’s the realization he’ll never score a touchdown again. Either way, I’ll doubt he’ll be slipping a roofie into another chick’s drink this side of never.

“Then you crawl, asshole. I’ll count to ten, and then I’m introducing my knife to your other knee.”

“Shit! Fuck! Okay!” He starts dragging his bleeding body toward the door, but my focus has already switched to her.

It’s all about her.

I can’t stop staring.

Turns out, I was missing the real masterpiece underneath her clothes.

I want her.

I fucking want her.

My gaze drops to the soft mound barely concealed beneath the black lace. I bet she tastes like peaches and cream...

She moans suddenly, her head falling to one side—hair strewn like dark seaweed across the flawless shores of her cheek.

Focus, Sam. Focus.

She’s the daughter of the enemy. It’s Mexico versus Colombia. It’s the past versus our present. It’s the fact that her daddy, Valentin Carrera, swore an oath years ago to bring death and destruction to the Santiago Cartel, an organization in which my stepfather is so entrenched, even his shit stinks of South America.

There’s bad blood, and then there’s this—a war so dangerous it kills people by seven degrees of separation.

She was meant to be my way into Santiago’s organization. Mess her up a little. Fuck with her heart. Make everyone pay attention… Truth is, I’m done playing with wooden guns in safe, wooden houses, and being forced into a state of peace and tranquility when my black soul screams for anarchy. My stepfather argues that this war is the parents’ fight. That their sins should absolve the next generation from bloodshed.

Screw that.

Not so long ago, he ruled the New York underground for Santiago. Now, I want a piece of his former action, and Santiago, my godfather, is the man to give it to me.

Running the edge of my knife across the unblemished plains of Lola’s stomach, I follow the curve of her hipbone all the way to the black borderline of her panties. She moans again, and slurs out a word, but her eyes never open.

My lips twitch as an idea forms. The tip of the blade makes a shockingly white indentation before the first bud of crimson blooms.

I work quickly after that—a master of my wicked art—marking the flawless skin just left of her hipbone with a single letter that spans a couple of inches wide, and deep enough to scar.

S for my initial.

S for Santiago.

Rising from the bed, I admire my handiwork. What I’ve done to her is far worse than what Troy Davis could ever do. I’ve fucked with her body, and tomorrow that letter will be fucking with her mind.

I’ve finally announced my intention as a player in this war, but best of all?

I’ve made Lola Carrera mine.