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“Your memory must be failing you. Perhaps you need a little reminder.” I bring my finger up to her chin and tilting her head so that she’s looking up at me. Her eyes are like jewels, sparking with so much fury and lust that I’m tempted to risk everything and make sure she’s pregnant with my baby this time around.
“I think the spanking was enough,” Lola whispers.
“For now.”
She shivers, and though it’s probably from my words, I still slip out of my coat and hand it to her. She wraps it around her shoulders, pulling it across her chest and hiding her hard nipples. Even so, they’re burnt into my mind.
“Still cold,” she grumbles as she sits back down.
I shrug. “I’ve done all I can. If I start cranking up the heat, we’re going to lose fuel, and then we have much bigger problems on our hands.”
There’s a slight shift in her expression, but maybe I’m just imagining it. Smoke still lingers in the air from when I lit my cigar, slightly obscuring her face from across the cabin. “What kind of problems?” she asks.
“Well, the Italians, as I mentioned earlier,” I say, instinctively fishing around in my pocket for a cigar and finding nothing. I sit down, trying to focus on something other than smoking. Nikolai quit when he had a baby, but I don’t see how I would. It’s a habit that’s been engrained since I was twelve years old, stealing cigarettes from the neighbor’s house.
“Are these Italians in the room with us now?” Lola asks, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“You joke, but this is probably one thing I wouldn’t make jokes about. You piss off the Italians, as I have done by commandeering this train, and you tend to end up dead.”
“Oh, lovely,” she chirps. “Then I guess I don’t have to deal with you much longer.”
“It’ll be you too, and they won’t care that you’re pregnant. Not in the least,” I reply, feeling an odd but intense heat in my chest at the idea of anyone hurting Lola. I might hate her, but she’s the mother of my child, and nobody is going to touch her as long as I’m around to protect her.
“You fucked up,” she says, putting her hand over her belly. “I don’t want anything to do with this. I think you should just let me off the train, and I’ll take the risk of walking to the nearest town from wherever we are.”
“I’m not stopping this train. I already told you that,” I snap. “You’re here with me whether you like it or not, which means my problems are yours, too.”
She crosses her arms, pulling the coat even tighter around her curvy body. I love how it looks on her. She should be wearing my clothes all the time… or nothing at all.
“You never answered my question before, by the way,” she says, perking up again. “What’s so special about this train? Why take it from the Italians?”
“One word — money,” I reply, refusing to reveal the real reason I’m taking control of this train.
Lola pouts her lips as she falls into a moment of quiet thoughtfulness. “Sure,” she says slowly, as though it’s not quite adding up in her head. “A train might be a few million dollars, but how are you going to sell the thing? And to who? I feel like more people would be stealing trains if they made so much money from them.”
“Something else is on this train.”
“Me?”
“You really think this is about you? It’s a coincidence that you ended up being an engineer on the train I boarded. Try not to be so conceited.”
She scoffs. “Projection, much? You’re the one speaking in riddles so that I can’t understand what you’re after. As far as I know, I’m the only thing of value to you on this train.”
“Not quite,” I reply, pursing my lips. “But that’s for me to know, and you to be blissfully ignorant about. Just trust me when I say that this train is worth more than a couple million. It’s priceless.”
“Whatever,” she mumbles, but I know she’s interested, even as she turns away and stares out the window at the quickly darkening landscape.
Her silence is a relief after so many questions, and I allow myself to relax in the seat across from her as she gives me the cold shoulder. If she ignores me the entire way to Texas, I won’t be mad at all. It’s easier to think when she isn’t running her mouth.
But as much as I’d enjoy sitting in silence and allowing my thoughts to drift to the prize at the end of this frozen railroad, I can’t think about anything but the way Lola’s body felt beneath mine the first time we were together.
And the consequences of that action.
So severe, and yet…
I’m not sure I wouldn’t do it again even knowing the result.
And that scares me.
