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“Yeah, go,” I tell him. “I promise I’ll give you hell tomorrow, but right now, I’m tired. I slept like shit the past couple of nights. I need to sleep all of this off.”
Even I don’t believe my words.
He narrows his gaze at me, as if he can sense that I’m not being truthful, but he nods like he wants to believe me.
“I don’t know what to do with you when you aren’t giving me shit, you know?” he asks as he folds the sheets back on the bed. “Nothing hurts, right? No headache or anything? I’ve got Tylenol in the bathroom downstairs. I can get you some before I head out.”
He pats the bed, and I go to sit down.
As much as I’d like to finish what we started earlier…relieve some of this sexual tension and forget about the mess my life has become…I just need to lie down. And I can’t do that with Niccolò’s nonstop questions.
“I’ll get Tylenol if I want it. I have water. I’ll be fine. Go,” I say. “Stop badgering me with your bullshit, or I’ll throw up.”
I struggle to smile, but he doesn’t share in my humor. A look crosses his face. Something I can’t quite pinpoint or recognize the emotion behind.
Without a word, he leaves the room and comes back while powering up a cell phone. His clothes cling to his tall frame, black suit pants and a suit jacket that fits him like a fucking glove. The white button-down underneath is somehow still in perfect shape, with no creases in sight, despite everything we’ve been through tonight.
“My number is programmed in here. I don’t plan on being long, but just call if you need me.” He tosses the phone next to me on the bed and takes one more look at me before heading toward the door. “You’re safe here,” he calls out over his shoulder. “Rest.”
He turns around, standing in the doorway as he puts his hand on the frame.
He’s so handsome that it both hurts and pisses me off. It’s a mix of feelings I’m still trying to come to terms with, but right now isn’t the time to try and decipher this.
“You’re really fucking beautiful, Evelina,” he says, and it catches me off-guard.
It’s out of place. Unusual for us. We don’t let our guards down. We bite at each other until one of us bleeds. It’s not what I expected him to leave me with.
“Please, just do as you’re told for once and rest.”
The war raging inside of me lessens just a bit as he turns to go.
“Thank you,” I call after him, knowing no matter how I feel right now, Niccolò deserves that much.
26
NICCOLÒ
“Sir, you can’t just—”
I hold my hand up to silence the woman in scrubs who calls out to me in a nasally, annoyingly high-pitched tone as I walk through the emergency room doors.
“Sir, that’s an ambulance entrance. You need to check in with the front desk.”
Her footsteps gain ground on me as I look in the first room I come to and see it’s not Dom or the fucker from the auction.
“Sir!”
Her fingers come into contact with my upper arm. It’s a feeble attempt to wrap around my bicep. She’s nowhere near able to fit her hand around me, though.
I shrug her off and focus my stare on her—a mediocre-looking brunette in blue scrubs who can’t seem to mind her own fucking business.
Removing my attention from this pesky little thing in front of me, I eye a woman down the hall, who disappears behind a curtain, and then back to the brunette. I cage her with my arms up against the wall.
“Look,”—I glance down at the retractable nametag that’s pinned to her shirt—“Ashley, I’m here to visit a friend, and I’m not someone who follows fucking protocol, okay?”
I spit out the words and stare into her dark-brown pupils that match her boring brown hair. I do not have time for her shit right now.
“Do not fuck with me. Do not get in my way. You will not enjoy what happens if you do.” I back up, placing space between us as her chest rapidly rises and falls. “This is your warning. I do not like hurting people, Ashley. I really don’t. But I have business to take care of, and right now, you’re fucking with that business.”
