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And then, as if by magic, Dornan was standing in my doorway with a bowl of soup and a plate of bread.
My eyes practically bulged out of my head when I saw the goodies he was holding. I should have known they’d come at a price.
Everything always did.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DORNAN
The girl looked terrible when he got back to the room. Her bronze skin had a sickly pallor that he was hoping to fix by feeding her up. He cursed himself as he realised she hadn’t been given a drop of water to drink in the whole time she’d been there.
He dumped the soup and bread on the small wooden table and left, returning with a glass of water. After removing the heavy cuffs from their bolt in the wall, but leaving them on her wrists, he handed her the glass of water. She thanked him as she took it with shaking hands, but she didn’t meet his eyes this time, fixing her gaze in the distance as she emptied the glass.
Odd.
She was a feisty little thing. Maybe she just needed something to eat before she started up the banter with him again. He loved the way she spoke, her slight accent, which gave him a pant-busting crush on her, the way she licked her lips when she was unsure, but, most of all, he enjoyed the attitude behind her words. He liked all of it. And, much to his chagrin, fucking the life out of Bella hadn’t tempered his desire for Mariana at all — if anything, it had inflamed it.
Perhaps he was just using her as a distraction from the work he needed to do upstairs. From the mess that the cartel was involved in. From the reality that even he couldn’t bear to face. Rival suppliers. Rival biker clubs. Nothing mattered when the white powder flowed freely, but now, because of her stupid father, their precious white snow was sitting in a processing plant owned by the DEA in New Mexico, and Dornan and Emilio were fresh out of product.
‘Sit,’ he said, gesturing to the bed. She obeyed without any of her usual snark. Maybe she had broken already. She stabbed you, he reminded himself. No, the girl was definitely not broken. The girl was on fire inside. She was just dormant in this moment, probably from lack of sustenance.
He dragged the small wooden table in front of her. ‘Eat.’
She didn’t hesitate, diving in with gusto. Tearing bread, dipping it into the soup his mother made so well, bringing it to her lush lips. Chew, swallow, repeat.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked. And then immediately cursed himself. She’s a fucking prisoner. She stabbed me.
Something tugged up at the corner of her mouth for just a second, and he exhaled, amused. She was laughing at him. She was so different to the typical girl they saw here, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to fuck her, or shoot her in the head and be finished with it all.
‘How’s your shoulder?’ she asked, meeting his gaze for the first time. Her eyes burned with an intensity he had never seen in a woman before. She wasn’t afraid of him, he realised. That troubled him. Why wasn’t she afraid? Because she was hiding something?
Or because she had nothing left to lose?
‘My shoulder is great,’ he said, leaning against the wall across from where she sat. ‘Never better.’
And he meant it. She had made him bleed . . . and it wasn’t a bad thing. It still throbbed from time to time, but the blade was sharp and she’d missed anything major.
‘I’ll have to try harder next time,’ she said between bites.
Huh. It was one thing that he liked her feisty, but he didn’t want her to think she had power over him. Threats were for him to make. He would have to show her that he was the one in control.
‘This isn’t a fairytale,’ Dornan said wryly, as he watched her bring the soup-soaked bread to her mouth.
She paused with the bread in her hand, looking around the room in mock surprise. ‘You mean, we’re not Beauty and the fucking Beast?’
He laughed.
‘Well, you’re certainly beautiful,’ he said.
‘And you’re definitely a beast,’ she countered, pushing her empty bowl away and resting back on the bed.
‘But there’s no happy ever after for you,’ Dornan added, his eyes trailing over the chains to reach the cuffs that were now permanent bracelets on her wrists.
‘No,’ she said evenly, matching his intense gaze. ‘Not for any of us. Not in this world.’
‘It probably doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to you,’ Dornan said, ‘but I’m sorry that this is happening to you. Sounds like your dad fucked up majorly.’
What on earth had prompted him to say that? He was going fucking soft.
