Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
S arah
I’m sitting on the backseat floorboard of the jeep, my elbow resting on that hump that whoever gets stuck in the middle seat always has to put their feet on. Vincent has his phone to his ear and has been talking nonstop in Italian.
I try to pick out words that I recognize. I try to focus my brain on something, but I can’t. I’m cold, freezing actually. I shouldn’t be. Why am I so cold? My lips and fingertips are tingling. Wait. I know this. I’m breathing too fast.
Breathe in. Pause. Slow breathe out. Pause. In. Out.
I imagine that I’m breathing around a little rectangle, drawing it with my air. In on the short sides, out on the long sides. Around and around and around my little box.
Someone’s talking to me. I open my eyes and see Vincent looking over his shoulder.
“Sarah? Sarah?” He looks… worried. His eyes rove over my face, his brows furrowed together.
“What’s going on?” My teeth are chattering. “Why is it so cold?”
“It’s not. You’re in shock.” He starts flipping switches on the dash and warm air flows out of the floor vents. “It’s not much further.”
“What happened?” I ask again.
“Someone tried to kill me.” He says it so nonchalantly. Like, oh by the way .
“Why are you just okay with that?” I say, switching to sitting on the hump and resting my arms and chin on the center console.
“I’m the head of the New York mafia. Someone always wants me dead.”
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Home.”
“We weren’t at your house?” I ask, confused.
“I have more than one. We’re going to the family home.”
“The what?”
“My father’s house. The house that I inherited when he died, along with everything else.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what to say anymore. There is a magnet on the car under the steering wheel and a gun stuck to it. I’m staring at it, until my vision blurs because I forgot to blink.
He murmurs something in Italian. I feel his big, warm hand stroking my hair. It’s… nice. Soothing. My eyes are getting heavy. I’m so tired all of a sudden, like a giant vacuum just sucked the life out of me.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
I wake up with Vincent pulling me into his arms. I must jump a little because he shushes me. “It’s just me, kitten.”
I’m a seriously crumbled cookie that being scooped up by him is comforting. The rational part of my brain is screaming that he’s the mafia, I’ve been kidnapped, and I need to knee him in the shin and run as fast as I can.
That part is overruled by the rest of me, which thinks he smells fucking amazing and that this is the first time I’ve felt warm since, well, since the last time he had me in his arms. I was very warm then. This is pre-gunshots-and-mad-dash-through-the-house-before-sneaking-out-of-the-city-incognito.
“I can walk,” I tell him.
“I know.”
“Are you going to put me down?” I ask.
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “No.”
His shoes crunch gently over the finely crushed gravel of the driveway. I lift my head and peek around.
“ Holy shit,” I gasp. I feel like I’ve been transported to another dimension. I feel his low, satisfied chuckle.
His “house” is a mansion. An actual, literal mansion.
We’re standing in the circular driveway that leads to the main entrance. The house has at least three floors, and the exterior is some sort of cream stone. Behind us is an honest-to-God fountain with marble statues that look like they were teleported from the Italian renaissance. The perimeter of the drive is edged by low, neatly cropped hedges, and I can see rows of tall, thin cypress trees in the back. The doors and windows are arched. If Leonardo da Vinci walked out of the front door, straight to the fountain, and began chipping away at the statue, it would seem completely normal.
The door opens as we approach. It’s the other man from the alley, from the car. I shiver a bit.
Vincent laughs. “Don’t worry, he’s all bark.”
“Hey!” Marco says, overacting his level of offense, “my bite is just fine, thank you so very much.” Then, as if he notices that Vincent is holding a fully grown woman in his arms, he looks from me to him and back a few times before quirking up an eyebrow at his brother. “Well, this is new.”
“Marco?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.” Vincent walks deeper into the house, and I can hear his brother laughing. He hits a set of stairs and takes them to the third floor, down a few more hallways, and into a plush bedroom. He walks towards the windows, with a padded reading nook nestled underneath, and sets me down.
“Now what?” I ask.
He almost smirks. “Nothing has changed.” He leans down to whisper against my hair, “I meant what I said.”
My face must show my utter confusion. He elaborates, “You’re mine, kitten.” His voice is low, and his eyes are dark and burning.
Somewhere inside my abdomen, I think I just felt my ovaries give each other a high five. My heart speeds up, and I can feel it pounding in my chest.
He runs his hand into my hair, twisting it around his fist and slowly tilting my head backwards. “I could feel how hot your pussy got when I spanked your ass.”
Something has got to be broken inside my head, because I could feel how hot it made me. And how wet. And I could feel his hard cock throbbing behind his jeans, with my legs wrapped around his waist and my pussy grinding against him.
Vincent stands, looking down at me with enough heat to light the fucking drapes on fire. His eyes are damn near black, the tiny flecks of gold reminding me of the eyes of a predator, like a panther or a wolf. And I suddenly feel like I’m going to be devoured.
He pulls my phone from his pocket and tosses it to me. “My number is in there too. Call your friend. Discuss. Motivate.” He pauses on his way out the door. “And Sarah?”
I look up at him. He’s giving me a stony look, the heat evaporating. “Whoever shot at me was also shooting at you. The safest place for you now is under my protection.”
Shit.
He disappears out the door, closing it behind him. I stare at my phone for a minute before deciding to get this call over with.
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling!” Robert sounds, well, like Robert. Over-animated and over-caffeinated.
“I’m—” Shit. “ I’m… Okay, so the other night?—”
Robert yells, “I knew it! There is nothing wrong with your ankle!”
“No, there isn’t. Robert, did you see who those men were?”
There is a pregnant pause. “I know who I thought I saw, but it couldn’t possibly have been correct.”
“The mafia?” I throw out.
“Yes. Sarah, what’s going on? Where are you?”
“So, I, um, well those guys saw me and?—”
I hear Robert inhale like he’s going to start in on one of his rants again, so I just talk louder, “I kinda got kidnapped and now I’m staying here for a while, and you need to not tell anyone anything.”
“Kidnapped?!!”
“Yes.”
“By who?”
I sigh. “Vincent De Luca.”
Robert is quiet for so long I look at my phone to see if the call got dropped.
“Sarah, do you know who he is?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ. Sarah?—”
“Listen to me, okay? I’m fine. I’m not being tortured or beaten or anything. He’s actually kinda protecting me. But you need to forget everything from that night, okay? Bury that shit down and don’t tell a soul.”
He’s quiet again, before I hear a resigned sigh. “Okay.”
“You need to get Bella up to speed for this weekend’s performances,” I encourage to diffuse the tension.
“What do I tell them?” he asks, finally sounding somewhat calm.
“Whatever works. Tell them I had a family emergency, a death in the family or something.”
“Okay. But Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you really okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ll call you when I can, okay?”
“Okay.”
I disconnect the call.
This is fine. Totally fine.
I’m kidnapped by the smoking hot head of the fucking mafia, who I almost saw kill someone, and I can’t stop thinking about the way his lips taste. Or the way his palm on my ass felt.
Yep. Totally fine.