Chapter Seventeen #4
When he finally withdrew, a slow trickle of his release followed, warm against her inner thighs.
Taddeo’s gaze lingered there for a moment—on the evidence of how thoroughly he had taken her—before the hard edge of possession softened into something quieter.
He shifted onto his side and gathered her in, guiding her head to rest against his shoulder while his arm settled around her waist.
Later, Isolde lay beneath unfamiliar sheets with her head against the pillow and listened as Taddeo's breathing gradually returned to normal beside her.
The room had gone quiet except for the faint movement of wind against the windows, and with nothing left to distract her, all the facts she'd carried into the room remained waiting exactly where she'd left them.
Taddeo was still the man who had kidnapped her.
Corwin was still missing. Northglass remained guarded, and if she tried to drive through the gate tomorrow without permission, security would stop her.
Desire had not altered any of that.
She was glad.
The alternative would have frightened her more.
Taddeo lay on his back beside her, staring at the ceiling with enough concentration that Isolde turned her head.
“That is not an encouraging expression.”
His eyes shifted toward her. “What expression?”
“You look like you're reconstructing an incident.”
“I was thinking.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I often am.”
Isolde rolled onto her side. “Do you regret it?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly enough that she believed him before the word had finished.
“Then what?”
His gaze moved over her face. “I expected you to leave.”
“My room?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You did last time.”
Isolde thought about that.
The last time, leaving had mattered. She had needed her own bed because going back to it was part of what made the choice entirely hers.
Tonight, getting dressed and leaving solely to demonstrate independence felt almost as controlled by the captivity as staying because she thought Taddeo expected it.
“I wanted my own room last time,” she said.
“And tonight?”
“I'm comfortable.”
Taddeo looked almost suspicious of the simplicity.
Isolde smiled. “Were you hoping for a declaration?”
“No.”
“You look disappointed.”
“I don't.”
“You do.”
His mouth shifted faintly.
He reached toward her and stopped.
The hesitation made something inside her soften.
“You can touch me.”
His arm came around her waist.
Isolde moved the remaining distance herself until her head rested against his chest. Taddeo went still for a second, as though the quiet intimacy of the gesture had surprised him more than anything that came before it, then his hand settled against her back.
This, she realized, was the dangerous part.
Wanting his body was easy to categorize. She could explain attraction with chemistry, proximity, adrenaline, curiosity, even terrible judgment if she became desperate enough for a simple answer.
Liking the silence afterward was harder.
Taddeo's fingers moved once along her spine. “Comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“You're very demanding about accommodations for someone who regularly insults the property.”
Isolde lifted her head. “Did you just make a joke about me being your prisoner?”
“No.”
“That was absolutely what that was.”
“It was an observation about the mattress.”
“The standards of organized crime have collapsed.”
His mouth curved.
She settled against him again.
For a while they talked about nothing important.
Isolde informed him that the painting opposite his bed hung several inches too high, which Taddeo denied because apparently someone had measured it.
She explained that measurement and judgment were different skills, and he asked how long she had been lying there criticizing his artwork rather than sleeping.
The conversation drifted until her attention found an old scar along his ribs and her fingertip followed the pale line before she consciously decided to touch it.
Taddeo covered her hand lightly.
“How old?” she asked.
“Fourteen years.”
“What happened?”
“Knife.”
Isolde raised her head. “That is not a complete story.”
“It answers the question.”
“You were stabbed and your contribution is knife?”
“A man had one. I was closer than I should have been.”
“Did he survive?”
Taddeo looked at her.
She sighed. “Right. Never mind.”
“He did.”
That surprised her enough to make her look back at him. “Why?”
“Cesare needed him alive. He went to prison later.”
“For stabbing you?”
“For several murders.”
Isolde stared for a second before lowering her head again. “Your stories consistently become worse in the middle.”
“You keep asking.”
“I ask questions people ask normal boyfriends.”
The word left her mouth before she could stop it.
Both of them went still.
Isolde closed her eyes.
“That was not intentional.”
Taddeo's chest moved beneath her with what might have been restrained amusement. “I wasn't going to say anything.”
“You were thinking extremely loudly.”
“I've been accused of that.”
“Forget I said it.”
“All right.”
She lifted her head suspiciously. “That agreement came too easily.”
“I have an excellent memory.”
“You are deeply irritating.”
His arm tightened around her with quiet affection.
The mistake should have made her uncomfortable.
Instead, what frightened her was how little it did.
At some point the conversation faded, and Isolde fell asleep without deciding whether she intended to stay the night.
She woke slowly to gray morning light leaking around the curtains and the unfamiliar sensation of warmth along one side of her body. For several seconds she did not understand where she was. Then memory returned, accompanied by the awareness that Taddeo's arm still rested across her waist.
He was asleep.
Actually asleep.
Isolde had rarely seen him completely unaware of anything.
Even in casual rooms, some part of Taddeo always appeared to track entrances, phones, footsteps, and people moving at the edge of his vision.
Now the constant calculation was gone from his face.
He did not look harmless; she doubted anything could make him look harmless once a person knew him well enough.
But the tension between his brows had eased, and his hand rested loosely against her side rather than holding her there.
Isolde shifted an inch.
His arm did not tighten.
She could leave the bed.
The realization mattered.
Within Northglass, there were choices Taddeo had begun making sure remained hers.
She could cross the hall to her room, go downstairs, work in the library, ask Elettra for breakfast, or wake him and stay exactly where she was.
None of those choices were freedom in the larger sense, and Isolde refused to confuse them with it.
She stayed anyway.
That was different.
She looked toward the ceiling and allowed herself to imagine her apartment for the first time without automatically imagining Taddeo absent from it. The thought arrived so naturally that it frightened her.
Her own bed.
Her museum.
Her car.
Linnea calling without security reviewing the message.
A life in which she could open her own front door and decide where she went next.
She still wanted all of those things with an intensity that sometimes felt physical.
But now, when she imagined them, Taddeo existed at the edges of some of the images.
Not as a guard.
Not as the person deciding whether she could leave.
Simply there because she might ask him to be.
Isolde stared at the ceiling.
That was considerably more dangerous than sex.
“You're thinking too loudly.”
Taddeo's sleep-rough voice made her start.
She turned her head.
His eyes were open.
“How long have you been awake?”
“Not long.”
“That is suspiciously reasonable. I expected you to be irritating.”
“I can try again.”
His hand moved lightly at her waist, and the lazy warmth in his gaze threatened to become something else.
Isolde pointed at him before he could speak. “Don't say anything vulgar before coffee.”
“I wasn't going to.”
“You're lying.”
“I was remembering.”
“That qualifies.”
His mouth curved faintly, but then his gaze settled more seriously on her. “You stayed.”
“Yes.”
Something moved behind his eyes.
He didn't ask what it meant.
She was grateful because she had only just begun admitting the answer to herself.
A knock came at the bedroom door.
Taddeo's expression changed before the second knock landed. Whatever softness sleep had left in his face disappeared beneath immediate attention.
“Who is it?”
“Marco.”
Taddeo glanced toward the clock. “What happened?”
There was a short pause outside. “Security flagged something on Ms. Dacre's phone.”
Isolde sat up.
The sheet gathered around her as Taddeo moved immediately toward the edge of the bed.
“My phone?”
“Unknown number,” Marco said through the door. “Message came in a few minutes ago.”
Taddeo reached for the trousers he'd left near the chair. “What does it say?”
Marco hesitated again.
Isolde's pulse began climbing. “Marco, just tell me.”
When he answered, his voice was quieter.
“It's addressed to Izzy. The message says, ‘Izzy. It's me. Don't trust them.’”
For a second Isolde did not understand why the room seemed to tilt.
Then the name caught up with her.
Corwin had called her Izzy since they were children. He used it when he was worried, when he wanted something, when he forgot they were adults and slipped back into the language that belonged only to the two of them.
Taddeo had gone completely still beside the bed.
Isolde looked at the closed door, heart pounding hard enough that she could feel it in her throat.
Whatever else the message meant—warning, trap, proof, manipulation—one fact struck through everything else first.
Corwin was alive.