42. Chapter 42
Rosalina
Nico held the door open and stepped aside. “Now that you’re awake, come out to the pool.”
The pool didn’t interest me as much as being on the other side of that locked door. Outside was halfway to escape.
I tried not to look excited as I meandered casually across the kitchen to the back door. “If you insist.”
“Don’t try anything. We’re on private land. There’s nothing for miles. You won’t make it out of here on foot, and no one will hear you scream.”
I brushed past him and stepped into the cool evening air, the chill of the stone steps kissing my bare feet and sending a shiver zipping across my skin. “Noted.”
Fuck him.
I’d find a way. Even if I’d rather stay here, warm and cozy in Oliver’s nest, I had shit to do, captivity to escape.
In the distance, I spied the roof of a barn with a stone path leading in that direction. That must have been where Ollie and Cruz had disappeared to.
Hmmm. What were they up to?
“Come sit if you want. Or swim. No need for a suit, no one’s around to see you,” Nico pulled out a chair next to where he’d been sitting in the amber glow of sunset.
Punching him would be better than sitting with him, but I wasn’t going anywhere while he watched me, so I relented. Maybe he’d give up something useful in the meantime.
“You should hydrate.” He motioned to the pitcher and glasses on the table next to half-assembled gun guts, oil, brushes, and rags.
I crossed my arms over my chest, tucking my hands into the sleeves of the oversized hoodie, muttering under my breath. “I’d rather die of thirst.”
He coughed out a half-chuckle and went on reassembling the Glock that was in front of him. He looked at me from the corner of his eye as he shifted his attention to the big ass revolver.
Silence stretched between us, and soon annoyance got the better of me. “That finger was a nice trick, but next time don’t try to bluff when manicures are in question.” I looked down at my own red fingernails, pretending to be bored, and that the heat from his gaze wasn’t warming my skin.
“Bluff? Interesting.” He picked up the revolver, emptying it in a rain of jingling bullets onto the table, with nothing else to add.
He was insufferable, just sitting there pretending as if I wasn’t even there. “I know who you are.”
“Do you now? I’d wondered if you’d figured it out.” His eyes were on the weapon in his hand, looking down the barrel, but never at me.
“You may have helped with my heat, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” he said with zero inflection. “Just like I can’t hate you for what your father did.” He kept cleaning his stupid gun with an unreadable expression.
My heart twisted in my chest. I had to know. “You killed my brother.”
“Did I? What did he look like? There have been so many, it’s hard to keep track.”
Heat rushed up my neck to my cheeks, scorching my skin like lava and indignation. “It was seven years ago. The warehouse on the south side. You slaughtered everyone.”
Methodically, he set the reassembled gun on the table in front of him, taking his time before answering. “I can assure you, I did not.”
I clenched my fists inside my sleeves to keep them from shaking. “I don’t believe you.”
“Fine. Don’t believe me, but you can ask Oliver or Cruz.
We weren’t involved in that shit show. That was my father’s mistake.
What he does or does not do has no bearing on what I do.
It was a tragedy, but it doesn’t excuse what your father has done in retaliation.
And now you’re expected to pay for it. For what it’s worth, I am sorry about your brother and your family, though. Wrong place, wrong time.”
I wanted to scream, or run, or stab him in the eye, but I didn’t have a knife, and the gun on the table would take too long to load. An unfortunate oversight I’d remedy as soon as I was able.
Nico finally looked at me. “Listen, firecracker. Your father tortured and killed my mother. He left her brutalized and bloody, lying on the front step of my father’s house with a dead fetus ripped from her body.
” He cleared his throat. “You’re just a pawn in a much larger game that you know nothing about. ”
My stomach turned, but I scoffed to cover the reaction.
“That’s ridiculous. If that’s even true, why would my father do such a reckless thing?
How would he get into your father’s compound?
I’m certain it’s at least as well-fortified as ours.
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
” I paused, realizing what he’d just said. “Also, I’m sorry for your loss.”
Was I sorry? I didn’t know anymore. It would be heart-wrenching to have a family member killed, I knew that well enough. I wanted to hate him, but it was harder with every passing minute.
Empathy? Never met her.
I had to change the subject before he drew me any further into his web of lies. “What do you need that for, anyway?” I motioned to the revolver he’d turned his attention to. “Wouldn’t an automatic be better for… things?” I asked as he ran a brush through the barrel.
“Don’t you already know that, little killer? I figured the daughter of Rafael Reyes would know all about getting away with murder.”
I squirmed under his watchful gaze. “You’d know more about murder than I would.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders, and a half-smirk pulled at the corner of his lips.
“Maybe so.” He paused, stroking the barrel of the gun in the most suggestive way.
“When you’re limited on time and don’t have a cleanup crew handy, revolvers don’t leave as much evidence as an automatic would.
The casings stay in the cylinder, but it’s better to have both for…
things.” He mirrored my words back at me, his smile growing.
“Right, because you’re a fucking criminal.”
“Are we just stating the obvious now, bella?” That sexy fucking grin and the rolling growl of his voice had butterflies rioting in my stomach.
“Don’t call me that,” I seethed, recalling the night at his club when he first used it, and the things he did to my body. It made me just as mad at my own reaction as I was at his words.
He had no right looking that hot and smelling that good when his family was responsible for my ruin.
“What? Bella? Would you prefer Lena, then?”
Conflicting emotions clashed inside me. A pit opened up in my stomach while heat bloomed across my cheeks, remembering the nickname I’d given Nico before I’d known who he was.
The one no one but my brother had ever used.
It still filled my heart with warmth, even from the lips of a monster, but it reminded me of why I was here and what I was trying to do.
There must be a way out.
“You said no one was around to see me if I wanted to swim. Who cooks and cleans up after you guys?” I could try hiding in the trunk of a car if there was staff.
His brows pulled together in a grimace. “Do I look like a child to you?” He ran the oiled cloth down the thick barrel of the revolver.
“We take care of ourselves. Ollie likes to cook, so he usually does that, and we’ll do the dishes and wash up.
We don’t come here that often, but we keep it clean when we do.
There’s a family that takes care of the barn and the property during the off-season.
Like right now, Ollie and Cruz are down there helping with the hay delivery. ”
My ears perked up. I could sneak onto the hay truck when it left.
As if reading my thoughts, Nico’s green eyes narrowed. “The truck is long gone, Rosa. You need to stop looking for ways to run from us. We’ll find you, just like last time, and then I’ll have to punish you again.”
My eyes closed for an extended blink as flashes of exactly what happened when I ran tumbled through my mind. I sank back into the comfortable deck chair and wrapped my arms more tightly around myself. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about.”
“Wasn’t it? What were you thinking about then, little omega?” His hands hadn’t stopped moving in slow strokes over the slick silver gun barrel.
Well, I had been thinking about running, but now I was thinking about him catching me in the middle of that field and ripping my dress apart to get at me.
My cheeks glowed with warmth, and I pressed my thighs together.
My brain stuttered to a halt when no easy lie came to mind.
I could barely remember what we were talking about.
His scent swirled around me in the evening breeze. I was so fucked.
Nico breathed in, his bare, tattooed chest expanding. His eyes fell on me like a predator. “Come here.”
I could fight it, but I’d end up exactly where he wanted me, anyway. I stood, worrying my lower lip between my teeth. Should I run? He’d just catch me like last time. Did I want that?
He took the decision away when his arm looped around my waist and pulled me onto his lap, my back pressed against his chest.
His lips skated along the column of my throat. “You shouldn’t lie to me, little one.”
His words melted into my skin, and I arched my neck, giving him better access.
The traitorous hoodie slipped off my shoulder as hot gusts of his breath rolled across my flesh.
He groaned, and the sharp edge of his teeth scraped across my throat.
I wanted the sting of his bite more than anything I’d wanted in my life.
His hands slipped under my sweater, closing over the swollen mounds of my breasts and teasing a moan from my lungs.
“Should I kill you now and end this insanity?” He rolled my nipples between his thumb and forefinger.
Arching into his touch, I ignored his muttered words and rubbed my ass over the ridge in his pants.
I wanted to answer. I wanted to tell him to let me go, but the words evaporated in the heat growing between my thighs.
How could he expect me to form words when one of his hands skated down my stomach and dipped under my sweats, finding me drenched?
“So slick and perfect for me, aren’t you?” His teeth dragged along my shoulder and back up my neck.
My pulse hammered in my ears as he pushed my sweats down.
I squirmed on his lap until my pants slid far enough to kick them off, and I opened my thighs to drape over his.
His fingers dipped into my drenched channel, pulling them free, he offered them to me.
My lips wrapped around his digits, sucking them into my mouth.
French toast, amber, and bourbon undertones coated my tongue, remnants of their cum still deep inside me.
He pulled his fingers free, and I dropped my head back on his shoulder, my eyes falling closed as something cold and hard traced its way down my hip.
I flinched at the chill of metal on my skin and tried to look, but Nico’s hand abandoned my breast and snaked up to wrap around my throat, keeping me from it. His thighs held mine spread wide, pinned against the chair legs as I squirmed, trying to see what he was holding. Deep down, I knew.
It was that gun.
He hated me as much as I hated him, despite how our bodies coveted one another, pulling us together like magnets.
But finally, he was going to do it, he was going to kill me.
Right here in his backyard without a single witness.
I didn’t need to look to know. His shiny revolver had been right there the whole time. Had he loaded it? I couldn’t remember.
Shit, he really was going to kill me.
“Nico, please.” My heart raced, and my adrenaline ratcheted up. Deep down in the depths of my trembling soul, I knew that if he’d decided to do it, begging wouldn’t save me. Nothing would.
He didn’t reply, but his lips closed over the column of my throat.
He was going to fucking shoot me. I trembled.
“Say that again, carino,” he growled against my skin.
My entire body quivered, and goosebumps rippled across my flesh. “Please don’t shoot me.”
His chest rumbled with a near silent chuckle. “Shhhhh, Rosalina. I know what you need,” he purred my name in a way I’d never heard before. A dark, seductive sort of way that felt like velvet fingers stroking all the way down my spine.
Against my will and better judgement, my belly tightened, clenching in the most delicious way.
The harder I struggled, the tighter his hold. Black sparks danced across the pale blue sky as his grip on my throat kept me from filling my lungs.
My vision narrowed. The wide barrel of his revolver nudged against my soaking entrance. My body welcomed it as he pressed the cold slide of unyielding steel into my waiting heat and gushed its approval despite my terror.
If he was going to kill me, at least I’d enjoy it.
After the first long, silky stroke, my struggling ebbed and his grasp on my neck eased, allowing me to gulp a breath. His scent was an assault, flooding my nose, drowning me in his pheromones, and my body throbbed around the revolver that he shoved deeper and deeper with every thrust.
My pussy fluttered around the slippery steel as he used it to ratchet up my pleasure.
He expertly brought me to the pinnacle and held me there, relentless, pistoning the inflexible metal into me, dragging out the ecstasy until it bordered on pain.
Moans tore from my chest in ragged gasps as I let go, no longer holding back as he pounded the barrel deeper.
The cold length was unforgiving and impersonal, but when the trigger guard nudged against my clit, I couldn’t stop the fear-laced orgasm that shattered through my trembling body like an explosion.
Terror and pleasure held me in a vise that I didn’t want to escape, shuddering and grasping around the gun.
Slick dripped down my thighs onto the decking in thick spatters as I clenched around the steel that slowed and finally slid free. My whimper at the loss was laughable.
I thought he was going to kill me, but now all I wanted was more.