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Ciro told himself that Lara would soon tire of the dog and then he would arrange for it to go to a new home. A home with a family who would appreciate it.
But even as he thought that he felt some resistance inside him. He was losing it. Seeing how Lara had been with the dog had made him feel as if he was standing on shifting sands.
‘Thank you.’
‘Let’s go.’
Lara walked out ahead of Ciro, his jacket dwarfing her slender shoulders. She should have looked ridiculous. Her hair was all over the place and she was smeared in dubious-smelling substances. Not to mention the blood. Yet she seemed oblivious to it.
When they were in the back of the car Lara said, ‘Sorry—I know I stink.’
Ciro looked at her in the dim light. Even as dishevelled as she was, she was stunning. More so, if possible. As if this act of humanity had added some quality to her beauty.
‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a dog-lover.’
Her mouth curved into a small smile. ‘My parents got a rescue Labrador puppy when I was just a toddler. We called her Poppy, we were inseparable.’
‘What happened to her?’
The smile faded. ‘After my parents and brother died my uncle had her put down. She was old... She probably only had another year at the most.’
Ciro absorbed that nugget of information. He could hear the emotion she was trying to hide in her voice.
‘Have you thought of a name for this one?’
She turned to look at him and he could see the gratitude in her eyes. He really didn’t want it to affect him, but it did. He couldn’t imagine another woman looking so pleased about taking on a mongrel of dubious parentage.
‘Maybe Hero? I’ve always liked that name. After the Greek myth.’
The fact that Hero had been a virgin priestess wasn’t lost on Ciro, but he only said, ‘Fine. Whatever you want. She’s your dog.’
When they arrived back at the house Lara made a face and gestured to her clothes. ‘I should clean myself up.’
She handed Ciro his jacket. He took it, and there was something vulnerable about the way Lara looked. He had a memory flash of having her ripped out of his arms by the kidnappers and thrown from the van to the side of the road. She’d been dishevelled then too. And the look of terror on her face had matched the terror he’d felt but had been desperate not to show.
‘Of course,’ he said tersely. ‘Go to bed, Lara, it’s been a long night.’
Ciro went into the reception room and dropped his jacket on a chair, loosening his bow tie. Except he knew it wasn’t the fault of his tie that he felt constricted. It was something far more complicated.
He poured himself a whisky and downed the shot in one go, hoping to burn away the questions buzzing in his head. Along with the unwelcome memories.
He forced his mind away from the past and the image of Lara’s terror-stricken face to think of her as she was now—standing under a shower, naked. With rivulets of water streaming down over her curves, her nipples hard and pebbled. The soft curls between her legs would be wet, as wet as she always was when he touched her there—
Dio! He had a wife, willing and hot for him, one floor above his head, and he was down here, torturing himself, when he could be burying himself inside her and forgetting about everything except the release she offered.
Ciro slammed down the glass and went upstairs, taking two stairs at a time. When he got to Lara’s bedroom door he stopped, his sense of urgency suddenly diminishing when he thought of how vulnerable she’d looked. What she’d told him about her family dog. Her uncle had had her put down. Just after her family had been taken from her.
Ciro had had his hand lifted, as if to knock on her door, but he curled it into a fist now, and walked away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT SEEMED TO take an age for Lara to fall asleep. She could have sworn she heard Ciro outside her bedroom, and even as she’d longed for him to come in she’d known that if he did she wasn’t sure she’d be able to maintain the façade that she was as cool and impervious to their intimacy as he was.
So when he didn’t appear in her doorway she couldn’t help a tiny dart of relief.
She slept fitfully, and when she woke at some point in the night she wasn’t sure if she’d been asleep for hours, or had only just fallen asleep.
And then she heard it—the sound that must have woken her. A shout. A guttural shout drawn from the very depths of someone’s soul.
