Chapter 2 #2
Georgia had gone from stark terror to overwhelming rage in the blink of an eye: terror that she’d been caught and had a gun against her head before the need to fight and protect her baby had exploded in a hot furnace of rage.
She remembered a moment of lucidity when Niccolo had called her name and the reality that he was the intruder had penetrated her consciousness.
Him. Niccolo. The man who’d hurt her so badly and caused all this.
The red mist had enveloped her again, stronger than ever.
She’d wanted to hurt him, had wanted to transfer all the anguish she’d suffered from his actions and make him feel an ounce of the pain she’d lived with since he’d destroyed her dreams and broken her heart, and she wasn’t the slightest bit ashamed of her behaviour, which was strange as she’d never laid a finger on another human being in the whole of her life.
And now she was putting her life in his hands.
What other choice did she have? She couldn’t stay here or return to her flat. Where else could she go? Callie was in Italy. Her parents? Ha. That was a joke. Besides, as cold and as distant as their relationship was, she didn’t want to put them in any danger.
They’d reached the bottom of the stairs. Niccolo put his hand to the deadbolt and turned his head. His tone low but with an edge to it, he said, “Ready?”
Her heart stuttered with fear, and she instinctively moved closer to him before jerking her head.
Niccolo opened the door and used his huge frame to block the threshold while he checked the coast was clear. For all that he was currently furious with Georgia, he was damned if he’d allow so much as a single strand of her hair be harmed.
In his thirty-five years, Niccolo had walked away from many women.
Georgia was the only one he’d had a moment of regret over.
She’d refused to be his official mistress.
Her exact words before she’d transformed into a Tasmanian Devil had been, “I’m not a prostitute, so fuck you and fuck your generous offer. ”
Those words had insulted him. Infuriated him.
She hadn’t cared that in his world, mistresses were honoured.
Having a mistress was normal. Expected. The sex between them was hot…
scorching… and they shared a humour, so why not make it permanent?
At least it was his own choice and not something being forced on him like his marriage.
But Georgia hadn’t seen it like that. She’d been angrier about his offer than his confession that he’d agreed to marry another woman.
He’d been honest about the circumstances of it and his reasons for doing it, namely that being given the choice between finding nearly half a billion euros out of thin air within five days or ‘suffer the consequences of defaulting’ on his debt, and the choice of having the debt wiped out by marrying Siena had been no choice at all.
Georgia had been given the free choice of making their own relationship permanent and had reacted like he’d offered to give her a window in Amsterdam’s red-light district.
Having had enough crap to cope with, he’d retracted his offer and ended them on the spot.
He'd never imagined he would see her again.
Niccolo supposed it was her psycho sister’s reckless attempt to stop the wedding that had put Georgia back so firmly in his mind this past week. When he’d received Georgia’s message the morning the pre-wedding celebrations had started…
Her name had flashed on the screen of his phone, and his heart had almost exploded out of his ribs. And then he’d read her message warning him of her sister’s plot.
Once the Callie problem had been solved, he should have pushed Georgia from his mind.
He’d been only days away from marrying Siena.
Except, the closer the wedding had come, the more vivid Georgia had become in his mind’s eye.
Those oversized blue eyes and beautiful heart-shaped face had sharpened into focus until she could have been standing in front of him, and now, with the taste and feel of her tongue still in his mouth and the taste of his blood where she’d bitten him mingling with it, he had an energy in his veins he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Not since the day he’d called time on them.
It was long past midnight, but there were still a number of people walking the street. None of them looked like the meatheads the Espositos employed or raised his antennae. Even so, danger laced the air, and he grabbed Georgia’s hand. “Stay by my side.”
If she had any objection to her hand being clasped in Niccolo’s, she kept it to herself. Her fingers laced tightly in his, they stepped into the cool night air.
One last check of their surroundings, and Niccolo set off at a walk that wasn’t far from a run. Only his awareness of Georgia’s much shorter legs stopped him moving faster. On the approach to his car, he unlocked it remotely, headed straight for the passenger door, and threw it open. “Get in.”
The interior light had come on, and as he closed the driver’s door, he was able to see Georgia clearly for the first time, just a sweeping glance as he turned the engine on and checked the street again, but it was enough to absorb the exhaustion on her pale face and the dark bruises beneath her tear-stained, large blue eyes.
And it was just enough for him to see the widening of those eyes.
“Nic… you’re hurt.”
“You bit me, remember?” He was about to turn the wheel and hit the accelerator when she gripped his arm.
“Not your mouth,” she whispered, and it was the fear in the whisper that had him put his foot on the brake and look at her again. Her wide, horrified gaze was fixed on his stomach.
His white shirt was soaked in blood. Saturated in it. His blood.
A brief flash of memory flittered before his eyes, of being ten and soaked in blood, a corrective punishment from his father that had gone too far. All his corrective punishments had gone too far.
Niccolo had felt Georgia’s knife slice his skin, but the burn of pain had been quickly masked by the adrenaline of the situation and everything that had followed, and now that he was aware of it again he became aware of a deep, throbbing sensation, and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
Taking a short but deep breath, he put his foot back on the accelerator.
“Let me drive,” she said as he pulled the car out onto the street. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
“We need to leave the city, and you can’t drive,” he reminded her.
“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No.”
“Look at all the blood you’ve lost,” she beseeched. “You’re in no state to drive – you need medical attention. Let me drive. I’ve been having lessons.”
“When we leave the city, we will find an all-night pharmacy and get a first-aid kit.”
“Please, Niccolo. You’ve lost so much blood… At least pull over so we can try and staunch the bleeding.”
“I’m not stopping this car for anything until we leave the city.”
“What good will you be at fighting off the Espositos if you’re dead from blood loss?”
“I’m not going to die, so quit the theatrics.”
“But…”
“Georgia, that’s enough,” he warned through gritted teeth. “I need to concentrate, so do me a favour and keep a lid on your guilt until we get to safety.”
To his relief, she quietened, verbally at least. Instead of speaking, she fidgeted, her elbows poking out and moving as if in a dance.
Niccolo kept his attention focused on the road before him and the car’s mirrors.
It had been many years since he’d driven himself through London, but it wasn’t navigation he needed to concentrate on; it was all the other road users.
He was confident that if they got a tail, he’d be able to shake them off, but first he needed to be able to identify any tail.
Preferably while they were still in the capital.
It would be easier to lose any chasing thugs on the streets he’d spent his university years exploring than in the unfamiliar countryside.
Now that he was fully in tune with the burning wound above his right hip, he could appreciate Georgia’s panic that he needed medical assistance, but there wasn’t time. He needed to get them to safety.
So intense was his concentration that he paid no attention to Georgia’s continued shuffling and fidgeting, not until she said, “Lean forward a little, and I’ll wrap my shirt around you to stem the blood flow.”
A quick side-eye revealed she’d removed the emerald-green shirt she’d been wearing and that all she now wore from the waist up was a lacy pale-blue bra.
His already overworked heart slammed into his ribs.
Dio, he’d forgotten how incredible her breasts were, as succulent and as voluptuous as the rest of her incredible body.
An unbidden memory floated into his mind of a time she’d fed a rose-red nipple into his mouth and demanded that he suck it.
She’d thrown her head back, he remembered.
Her long white-blonde hair had cascaded down her back as she’d dragged her nails through his hair and ridden his cock with loud moans…
He hastily moved his stare back in front of him and blinked hard to clear the memory.
“Unless you want to pass out through blood loss, lean forward,” the woman who’d melted with her passion for him now snapped.
Tightening his grip on the steering wheel, Niccolo did as commanded, wincing at the lance of pain from the small movement.
He heard the click of a seatbelt as Georgia freed herself to get closer… how she’d removed the shirt with the seatbelt on was anyone’s guess… and twisted in her seat to face him.
He held his breath.
Georgia thought it was just as well that Niccolo’s car was Italian rather than English. His being to the left of her meant she’d be able to actually see the wound.
She didn’t want to see it, though. She felt sick to the pit of her stomach at what she’d done to him.
She wanted to plead that she hadn’t meant to do it. She hadn’t known it was him. Hadn’t even realised she’d stabbed him, had no memory of the knife in her hand meeting his flesh.
“Try and keep still,” she whispered. Pinching the hem of the blood-soaked shirt, she gently lifted it.
Bile rose up her throat. There was enough light pouring in the car from the streets for her to see the two-inch gash above his hip bone. At least, she thought it was two inches long. There was too much blood to tell for certain.
Niccolo’s blood.
More bile rose.
How long had it been since she’d stabbed him? Thirty minutes? An hour? How long did it take for someone to bleed out?
To think she’d kicked him while he was suffering this wound. And bit him. Oh, and hit him over the head with a vase.
With a deep wave of shame engulfing her, Georgia rolled the shirt as thickly and as compactly as she could, then slid it behind his back and used her free hand to loop it around his waist.
“Grit your teeth,” she warned shakily before pressing the shirt to the wound and holding it firm with her palm. A few inches to the right of the gash, she used all her strength to tie the ends of the shirt into a tight knot.
“You are done?” His deep voice sounded as tight as the knot.
She had to swallow her constricted throat before she was capable of answering. “Yes. But you really need to get that seen to.”
“We will be out of London soon. I’ll get the satnav to direct us to a pharmacy.”
“That needs more than what we’ll get in a pharmacy.”
“We’ll make do.”
“Can’t we get you seen at a hospital once we’ve left London?”
His sigh contained a touch of impatience. “Why the hell do you think the Espositos are so powerful? They have contacts everywhere. I will not feel safe until we get to the house.”
“What house?”
“It belongs to an old university friend. He couldn’t make the wedding as he’d already committed to a fortnight in the Maldives for his mother’s sixtieth birthday celebrations.
His name was never on the guest list. We’ll have a few days before the Espositos link him to me and think to search his properties for us. ”
“And then what happens?”
“One step at a time. Right now, my focus is on getting us to safety. We can discuss what comes next then.”
They joined a motorway heading south-west of the country. Only when London was a gleam of nighttime light in the car’s mirrors did either of them breathe properly.
Except Georgia’s easy breaths lasted only the one breath before her lungs tightened back up.
She was on the run from Italian gangsters with the man who’d broken her heart, a man suffering a major injury that she’d inflicted and which he refused to seek proper medical attention for.
Oh, and he was also the father of the child nestled in her belly. A child he knew nothing about.
What her future held, she didn’t dare contemplate.