The Cartel by Don Winslow Page B

disrespect had gotten his woman thrown into prison. Worse, he knew there was a problem, that’s why he sent her instead of doing it himself. Now it was too late—her case, like his own, was too high-profile for a quick, quiet fix.

    Magda is staring at him.
    “I’m sorry,” he says. “A business distraction.”
    “Do I already bore you?” she asks, with the practiced, pretty pout of a pageant contestant.
    “Not at all.”
    “If there’s something you’d like to talk about…” She reaches across the table and touches his hand.
    It’s an intimate gesture. “Adán, I don’t want to wait anymore.”
    She stands up and walks to the partitioned area that comprises his bedroom. Turning her back to him, she starts to unzip her dress, but then stops, looks over her shoulder in a way that makes her neck long and elegant, and says, “Help, please?” because she knows that he wants to unwrap her like a gift.
    Adán steps behind her and pulls the zipper down, past her shoulder blades and the small of her back, then he leans in and kisses her neck.
    “If you do that,” Magda says, “I can’t stop you.”
    He keeps kissing her neck and then pushes the dress down below her shoulders and cups her breasts. Then he slides the dress over her hips and down her legs until it pools like water at her feet.
    She steps out of it and turns to him.
    “Turnabout is fair play,” she says, unzipping his fly. “What do you like?”
    “Everything.”
    “That’s good,” Magda says, “because I do everything.”
    Her love with Emilio had been pure passion.
    Simple and direct.
    With Jorge had come more sophistication, and he taught her things in bed, things he liked, things that any man would like.
    Now she uses them all on Adán, because this cannot be, cannot be, a one-night stand after which he figures he’s had what he wanted and throws her back into the pool. He has to know that the whole sexual world is in her fingers, her mouth, her chocha, and that she could give him things no other woman can.
    But it’s also clear that he’s had some experience himself, because Adán knows his way around a woman’s body and isn’t selfish. Magda is surprised when she feels a climax building inside her, more surprised when she feels herself toppling over that waterfall, even more surprised that he’s still hard.
    When she looks at him curiously, he says, “I was always taught, ladies first.”

    There’s something in his eyes, this small superior glint, that makes her competitive with him, so she does something that she was going to save up for another time and she watches his eyes go wide, feels his breathing get hard, then hears him moan (you’re not distracted now, are you?), and she keeps him there for a moment and cranes her neck up so her mouth is by his ear and demands, “Say my name.”
    He doesn’t and she stops what she’s doing and feels him tremble.
    “Say my name.”
    “Magda.”
    She starts to move. “Say it again.”
    “Magda.”
    “Scream it.”
    “Magda!”
    She feels him come inside her.
    It feels like safety.
    —
    They start a life of odd domesticity, given their circumstances.
    Officially transferred from COC into the unit with the two other women, Magda actually moves to the cell next to Adán’s and spends most of her nights with him.
    He gets up early to work and then joins her for breakfast. She goes back to her cell to read or work out, then they lunch together. He goes back to work and she reads more or watches television until they have dinner together.
    Some afternoons he takes an hour or two off and they go out into the yard and join one of the volleyball games with other inmates, play basketball, or just get some sun. In the evenings it’s television or movie nights, although more and more often he wants to go to bed early and make love.
    He’s enamored of her.
    Lucía was pretty, petite, and thin. Magda’s body is lush—full hips, heavy breasts—a fruit orchard on a warm, damp