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 hereallynot 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 hewasplanning 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.
