3. Iris
IRIS
The first thing that filters through the heavy feeling in my head is the smell.
Pine. Woodsmoke. Something else underneath it, clean and dark and familiar in a way I can't place yet. Also safe.
A groan falls out of my mouth as I try to cling to it.
The world is soft at the edges, tilting gently like I'm on a boat. There's movement—steady, purposeful—and the sensation of being held against something very large and very hard and very warm.
Someone’s carrying me up the stairs and over a threshold—new bride style.
I blink. Blink again. Above me, a ceiling swims into focus.
Rough-hewn wooden beams, dark with age. An expansive room with hand-stained hardwood floors.
Against the opposite wall stands a stone fireplace, massive.
Walls of stripped pine, a worn leather couch, a thick rug in shades of rust and amber.
Books are stacked on every available surface.
A single lamp throwing cozy honey-colored light across it all.
It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Instantly fills me with that sense of home that I’ve always been searching for.
I turn my head and the man carrying me like I’m precious cargo comes into focus.
Green eyes. Sharp jaw. A face that looks like it was carved out of a mountain, all hard angles and old scars. Plus something underneath it all that makes my heart do a long slow roll in my chest. And somewhere down between my legs too.
Oh.
Oh.
I smile up at him. My head is full of cotton wool and golden light and I feel absolutely wonderful. "Are you my new husband?" I murmur. "Am I dreaming?"
He grunts.
It’s a very raw sound that skims across my skin like an electric charge. I reach up and pat his cheek, his stubble scraping deliciously rough against my palm. “Thank you, universe, for sending me this mountain man. I take back every bad thing I ever said about you.”
The man spews out a filthy curse that could stain the pretty walls of the cabin. “I got stuck with Snow White.” With that he slow rolls me from his arms onto my feet as if he’s unrolling a dirty rug.
“Oh,” I squeal, my neck and back painfully sore.
The floor rushes up to meet me sideways and I sway hard, the room tilting, my legs made entirely of wet noodles. His arm shoots out—under my breasts, hauling me back against him—and suddenly it’s like I’ve been tied to a sturdy tree.
He's a wall of heat at my back, his forearm a brand just below my breasts, his legs pressed flush against mine. And there’s something poking against my butt cheek before a large hand sits on my lower back and creates distance between us.
My brain feels woozy but my body’s busy feeling things I’ve never known before in my life. Each breath makes my heavy breasts lift and fall against his corded arm, sending a thousand little sparks flying across the rest of my body.
“What’s happening?” I mutter inanely.
Another grunt behind me, the rough exhale raising the little hairs on the nape of my neck in an altogether delicious way.
“You need to wake up, Princess.” His voice is low and rough, like gravel and woodsmoke. “It’s the shot.”
I blink.
Shot.
I frown at the word, turning it over in the cotton wool.
Shot.
Something cold and sharp begins to cut through the golden haze. Trickles down my spine like a cube of ice. And it hits me. Fast and cold.
The church. The wedding. The bullets.
This man carrying me out of the chaos.
Some latent instinct had made me scream about leaving Marco behind, a little too late.
I fought him, tripped and fell on the sidewalk.
He picked me up again.
I punched him in the shoulder. As effective as punching one of the faces on Mount Rushmore.
One hand on the steering wheel, he pulled out a leather case from the compartment between us, drew out a syringe with a dangerous precision and punched it into my neck.
Sudden fear grips me but my mouth is as dry as cotton wool. I push off from his embrace, nearly topple again, but find purchase against another wall. “You injected me with something, you, you… you grumpy giant!”
He raises a brow, a flash of amusement dancing in his eyes. “Quite the vocabulary you have there, Princess.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I look around the cozy cabin and my slow-brewing panic slows down. He can’t be a serial killer if he reads all these books, can he? God, I sound idiotic. “Where even is here? Why did you come to the church?”
“I was paid for an extraction,” he says, walking by me. He checks the basic looking phone in his hand and his jaw tightens. “But no one was at the drop point.”
I wrap my arms around my waist, suddenly feeling very alone. A lot of things that Marco decided in the last two weeks feel like pieces of a puzzle. “Didn’t understand a word of that.”
He looks up. Something shifts in his gaze as he eyes me but doesn’t fully surface in his expression.
Or he doesn’t let it. The man’s control over his facial expressions has to be like a superpower.
“Someone paid me a lot of money to pull you out of the wedding. But whoever it was either has cold feet or is biding their time because no one showed up to take you off my hands.”
“Oh,” I say, several things hitting me at once.
Relief is the most overpowering one. I don’t have to endure a wedding night with old man Vitale. My nightmares about it have been rather vivid. I don’t have to be a cultured, mafia trophy wife, spewing out babies on order.
But worry about Marco gnaws at me, as do doubts of varying degrees. “You don’t know who asked you to save me?”
Mountain man flinches, as if I smacked him across that granite jaw. “I didn’t save you, Princess. I got paid to extract an asset out of a dangerous situation, and then hand it over. Except looks like no one wants you and so I’m stuck with babysitting you for the time being.”
No one wants you, Iris.
He couldn’t have picked a better line to remind me of my general situation in life.
I’ve heard it all my life, from my stepsisters, my stepmom, general staff when I tried to make myself a part of them. From the two cousins I had on my mother’s side because one, I looked nothing like them and two, my mom had tangled with the bloody mafia.
Even my mother on that long ago day when she’d dropped me off at my father’s doorstep had said something close to it.
Only my father and Marco had ever made me feel like I mattered. Suddenly, I want nothing but to hide my face in my brother’s chest and bawl like a baby. But I don’t even know if he got out of the church unhurt.
My lower lip wobbles and I grip it with my teeth.
Don’t cry, Iris. The man’s already made it clear that you’re a nuisance to him.
“No need to be so crotchety about being stuck with me,” I say, raising my head and meeting his green gaze.
My future’s a complete blob right now but I’ve had enough of people making me feel like I was unwanted.
I have to start growing a spine even if it feels like it’s made of noodles as that dark gaze holds me captive.
“Like you very aptly reminded me, as a mafia princess, I’m a high security asset.
You can pad your paycheck for letting me use this cozy little cabin for a few days.
I’ll make sure my brother pays you a little extra for all your trouble. ”
His eyes narrow and his jaw tightens, but mountain man doesn't say a word. Just looks at me for one long beat like I’ve turned into an even worse problem than he imagined.