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I rub my lips together, wondering how I’m going to get out of this mess. “I …” I don’t have a reason, really. I just figured if I didn’t talk about it, it wouldn’t exist. But maybe I also thought that if I told him, he’d tell me he didn’t want me anymore. That this baby was the last thing on earth he’d ever want.
“I was afraid,” I say. I don’t like to say out loud that I felt weak.
He grabs my chin and makes me look up at him. “Never be afraid of me.”
He inches closer and closer until I can feel his breath on my skin. His lips part, and he plants an agonizingly slow kiss onto my lips. One that makes the goose bumps scatter on my skin and my heart flutter in my chest.
When his mouth unlatches from mine, my lips are tingly and swollen and yearning for more. I’m surprised he’s so gentle and forthcoming when I just admitted to not telling him the truth about my pregnancy even when I knew what was going on.
“So you’re not mad at me?” I ask.
His brow rises playfully. “Mad? No. But you will be punished for not telling me later.” He ends his words with a growl, making my pussy clench with heat. “That’s my baby growing in there. Mine.”
I giggle when he drags me close to his body, his palm firmly planted against my back like he wants to reel me in and claim me as his right in front of anyone who would dare to come between us. And even if I hate to admit it, I like that. I like the idea of him being completely and utterly in love with me to the point that he’d kill for me. There’s just something viscerally attractive about a man willing to lay down his life as well as others for the sake of yours.
But before our lips collide, his eyes suddenly flick away as he looks over my shoulder. In an instant, they widen and narrow, and he clutches my body so tight the breath is squeezed out of me.
BANG!
I hear the sound before I feel the bullet graze right past my arm.
I don’t even know what’s going on, but Marcello swiftly lunges in front of me and shields me with his body. Another bullet flies past us, and I shriek as he throws us both into a bush. Only when I look up do I spot the men near the fence rapidly shooting at us from all angles.
“It’s the Irish,” Marcello growls. “They’ve come for you.”
Bullets ricochet on the ground, and I cover my ears with my hands so I don’t have to hear the sound of death. Marcello peeks over the bushes and grabs his gun from his holster, the sight making my heart do a double jump.
“No, Marcello, you can’t—”
My words are interrupted by a bullet scraping across the floor mere inches away from me.
“Stay down!” Marcello growls as he gets on his knees and starts shooting back.
Panic swirls through my veins as I try to make myself as tiny as possible. But I can’t help but throw a glance at the gunfight and watch Marcello kill one, two, three of the men with a clean shot as if it’s no trouble to him at all. And for a moment, I’m in awe at the raw power he exudes while killing his enemies, at the harshness on his face as he faces death like an old friend. Like he has no fear at all.
But then he turns his head to me, only briefly, and the once stone-cold icy gaze vanishes. Replaced by a volatile kind of rage that I can only describe as frightening.
I was wrong.
There is one thing Marcello fears.
Losing me.
Right then, a bullet hits him right in the shoulder, and I scream. “Marcello!”
He grimaces and grabs his shoulder but then shoots at the guy who shot him and hits him right between the eyes.
More men come pouring out of the mansion as the guards raise the alarm. But an equal number of Irish men flock at the gates, so many that they’ve managed to build a ladder high enough for them to climb over.
Now panic really begins to flood my body.
“Run to the mansion. I’ll cover for you,” Marcello barks at me.
I glance back and forth between him and the men storming at us with guns pointed right at us, and the sheer intensity of it all freezes me up.
Marcello takes a knee beside me and whips me up into his arms, pressing a hard kiss to my lips, consuming me whole. It’s not a lover’s kiss but a kiss of death. A kiss that says, “Maybe I will see you again … or maybe this is our final goodbye.”
That thought frightens me more than anything else.
