Chapter Seven #3
‘Dormi, bella,’ he murmured against my hair as he placed his hand onto my head and pressed my cheek to his shirt. ‘We will continue this discussion when you are safe.’
I didn’t know what dormi meant, but I could guess, the exhaustion settling around me like a cloud.
But I gathered the last of my energy and dragged my head free of his hold to send him the hardest stare I could muster.
‘I’m not sleeping on your lap.’ I couldn’t fight him physically.
He was much stronger than I was. And apparently, I couldn’t even resist his kisses.
But I refused to let him treat me like a lover.
I was here against my will, whether I had responded to that damn kiss or not, and he needed to be reminded of that.
Something akin to astonishment flickered in his eyes.
Again with the surprise… Was he really that used to people, especially women, just obeying his every command without question?
He frowned, not pleased with my resistance.
But it was my turn to be surprised when he lifted me off his lap. It was impossible to sit properly on the leather seat with my ankles still bound. I had to do something about that if I was going to have any chance of escaping him.
With that in mind, I said as nonchalantly as I could, ‘Can you free my legs? The tie is starting to cut into my ankles, and I can’t get comfortable.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I will cut you loose if I have your word you will not run from me again, Mia.’
Yeah, right.
My temper spiked. But I bit down on the contemptuous comeback. Talking back to him before had only earned me that devastating kiss.
‘You have my word, Vito,’ I said with all the conviction I could muster while lying through my teeth. What right did he have to demand my obedience? Apart from the gun holstered under his arm.
He wasn’t going to shoot me, though. I knew that much. Because I was carrying his child.
But did he really feel some kind of connection to the baby, or was his reaction to my pregnancy just a part of his conviction that both of us now belonged to him?
How could it be more than that when he didn’t care about my feelings, and when he’d had no qualms about stealing us from our home?
I would have been safer in London, living anonymously, than I could ever be with him. I’d watched him get shot less than six months ago. I’d even been shot at myself that night.
The memories I’d worked so hard to suppress resurfaced as he leant across me to lift my feet into his lap and slice through the zip tie with his knife.
He stroked my ankles, soothing the sore skin.
I jerked my feet free, not appreciating the tingling sensations sprinting up my legs from his touch.
He raised an eyebrow at my defiance—but when he shrugged, his features tightened.
He rolled his shoulder as he straightened.
And the memories flooded back again. The acrid scent of gunsmoke, the metallic smell of blood. His blood.
‘Is your shoulder, okay?’ The question popped out before I could prevent it.
He glanced at me, apparently surprised by the question. I’d surprised myself by asking it. By even caring about the answer. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself from nodding towards the shoulder he’d rolled, the one he’d been shot in, as I put on my seat belt.
‘Your right shoulder. Is it fully healed?’ I added, feeling foolish now, especially when the wave of gratitude returned as I remembered how he had thrown himself across my body to shield me from harm.
It doesn’t make him a hero, Mia. Or you beholden to him. If he’d mentioned he was a mafia don, you wouldn’t even have been in his bed to get shot at in the first place.
Of course, that meant I also wouldn’t have the baby growing inside me, which I loved already. But my pregnancy had been an accident. The ambush that night certainly hadn’t been. It was a by-product of the dangerous life he led that I wanted no part of.
He massaged the shoulder muscle absently. ‘It is sometimes stiff, nothing more. It was only a scratch,’ he said, dropping his hand. ‘I have had worse.’
I couldn’t hide my shock at his nonchalance. Was he being macho about the wound, or did he really not consider it to be that significant?
I knew his injury that night hadn’t been a scratch. There had been enough blood to soak through the sheet. It made me think of the many other scars I’d noticed on his body which I’d found so hot that night…
Those scars were a lot less sexy now. As I wondered how many other wounds he’d sustained, and how bad they must have been for him to be so indifferent about this one… I swallowed to control the well of sympathy making my throat raw.
Stop feeling sorry for him. He chose this life.
All his answer really told me was that he was as reckless and cavalier with his own safety as he was currently being with mine.
Flicking the knife closed, he stuffed it back into his pants pocket. ‘You should sleep. We have a long journey ahead of us before we reach Isla Donna.’
The panic returned, tightening around my already raw throat. So he was planning to take me out of the country.
‘Where is that?’ I said, attempting to calm my breathing and control my thundering heartbeats.
I couldn’t let him get me on a plane. I would have to find a way to run, especially now he’d untied my legs. I had to believe that, or I would freak out completely.
‘It is an island I own in the Bay of Naples. It is where you will be safe. And where my baby will be born,’ he murmured, his voice becoming huskier as his gaze drifted to my bump again.
His gaze hardened with an iron will when it rose back to my face.
The harsh expression was both fiercely possessive and dark with an awareness which made a blush flame across my collarbones and rise up my neck.
I nodded, knowing I couldn’t speak, while the sexual charge which was always there between us—and had intensified since my pregnancy—crackled over my skin like wildfire again from that one incendiary look.
Because then he would know how easily he could trigger my arousal, if he didn’t already. And that would be bad.
I didn’t belong to him, even though my body reacted to him, and neither did this baby.
But the riot of sensations he had triggered with that one hot look had the exhaustion settling over me like a heavy blanket. My mouth cracked open in a huge yawn.
He clasped my neck, the calluses strangely comforting as well as annoyingly arousing as he brushed my cheek with his thumb. ‘Dormi, Mia. And when you are safe, I will give you all the orgasms you need.’
Orgasms? What?
I lurched back. ‘I don’t need any more orgasms from you,’ I managed. But what should have been a slap down instead sounded like a come-on, because my voice had dropped several octaves, too.
The knowing smile he sent me only made his handsome face look more gorgeous. The bastard. ‘I can smell that is a lie,’ he said with a self-satisfied chuckle.
I turned away to stare out of the window, deciding I was way too shattered right now to argue with him—and his gargantuan ego. I had a lot of planning to do before we reached the airfield. Annoyingly, though, I could smell what he could smell—the rich, sultry scent as my panties dampened with need.
Terrific.
I stared at my reflection in the dark glass, the motorway lights blurring as we drove to who knew where, and I struggled to figure out an escape plan.
Perhaps I could steal his knife, or even his gun. I shivered in the warm car.
I’d never touched a gun before in my life, and I had no idea how to use one.
I blinked, determined to keep my eyes open and focus.
But my body felt so heavy, as if I’d been through a war. Probably because I had.
I was in a state of shock, which had lowered my ability to resist the physical pull of the man beside me, who was now talking into his mobile in Italian, having forgotten all about me.
Exhaustion and anxiety and frustration. That’s why I’d succumbed to his damn kiss—and why I felt as if I had a hot rock wedged between my thighs, which was throbbing in time with my heart beats.
And why my limbs felt as if they weighed a thousand tons, and why formulating a viable escape plan seemed more insurmountable right now than attempting to free solo El Capitan with my ankles still zip-tied together.
I blinked slowly.
I yawned again and rested my forehead on the glass. I watched the lights of the other cars heading out of London on a Friday night, mesmerised by the streams blending with the red glow of the approaching dusk on the horizon.
Don’t fall asleep, Mia. Don’t you dare. You’re the only one who can rescue you. But you have to stay awake…
I kept repeating the mantra in my head even as the quite hum of the car’s powerful engine, the low timbre of Vito’s voice talking in Italian and the motorway lights cocooned me in the comforting black.