Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 144979 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144979 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
So, I run.
It isn’t rational. There’s nowhere to go. But my brain is in survival mode as I weave around the greenery and furniture, frantically seeking some source of safety. Heavy footsteps echo behind me. He’s not running. He doesn’t have to. His strides are calm and deadly—as if my capture isn’t even a question.
I can’t bring myself to look back. It’s easier to pretend I still have a chance this way. Skirting the perimeter, I complete a lap and narrow the distance between myself and the door. When I’m in arm’s reach—so close I can almost taste it—he grabs me by the ponytail and yanks me backward.
A startled gasp escapes my lips as I bounce off a hard chest, only to be imprisoned by a steel arm banding around my waist. That’s when my fight response kicks in.
I stomp on his boot and try to thrust my head back against him, but he anticipates the move and grabs me by the throat. Gloved fingers dig into my flesh as the heat of his body presses against me.
“Oh, cara,” he murmurs in my ear, his voice low, dark, and so familiar my knees almost buckle. “If you wanted me to hunt you down, all you had to do was ask.”
An unwelcome spark pulses in my chest as a name whispers through my thoughts. Logically, I know it can’t be him. He’s locked in a prison cell and has been for the past six years. My mind is playing tricks, trying to lull me into a sense of safety in a dangerous situation. Though truthfully, Angelo is probably the furthest thing from safe as it gets for me.
“You might as well just kill me here,” I tell the man. “I have nothing to say, and my father won’t pay a ransom.”
A hollow sound of irritation pulls from his chest. “It isn’t your father’s money I want.”
He loosens his grip on my throat, and I seize the opportunity, dipping my head to bite into his sleeved forearm. It has to hurt like hell, but his only response is to groan … as if he’s getting off on this.
“Is this what you call foreplay?” He yanks his mangled arm from my teeth and squeezes my jaw between his fingers. “Does the thought of leaving your mark on me make you wet?”
A rush of heat blazes over my skin as his filthy words drip-feed the hunger locked deep inside me. I want to deny it, but every nerve in my body is raw and overstimulated. His warm breath tickling my skin, the solid, muscular body pressed against me, the cocktail of fear and adrenaline—it’s all too much. And when I clamp my thighs together, I come to a horrifying realization.
I am wet.
Maybe it’s survival, but I don’t think it is. For months, this current of tension has arced between us, shattering my defenses. With every rough command and inappropriate remark, he’s nourished the most neglected parts of me.
As I close my eyes, my mind runs wild with the possibilities of how this might play out. Visions of him pushing me to my knees, unzipping his pants, and using my mouth. Bending me over a chair, pressing me against the building, fucking me all over this garden until he’s purged this obsessive need inside him…
Dio mio.
There’s something seriously wrong with me.
I shake myself out of it and start to pivot, but he jerks me back. My spine collides with his chest and the rigid heat of his cock.
Jesus, he’s huge.
“Thinking about all the ways you want to be wrecked, principessa?” His words brush against my ear and cascade down my body, settling between my thighs.
“By you?” I counter. “Only in my nightmares.”
He fists my hair and tips my head back, a primal growl vibrating against me as he breathes me in. Then he lets out a low exhale of frustration and releases me like I’ve managed to piss him off just by existing.
For a second, I think maybe he’ll leave. But that thought dies when he slips a black bag over my head, obscuring my vision.
All I can manage is a resigned sigh. After the day I’ve had, I’m not even surprised that I can add getting abducted to the list of things that went wrong.
He lifts me off the ground and tosses me over his shoulder, heaving a breath from my lungs at the impact. There isn’t an ounce of gentility in his bruising grip around my thighs or the warning he gives me when he smacks my ass.
“Be a good girl, and maybe I’ll be nice to you.”
Somehow, I doubt that.
He stalks through the garden, and after a moment, the faint sound of additional footsteps drawing closer makes me wonder if it might be Eugene or Tony. But if I can hear it, so can my stalker, and he doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest—which means it’s not likely to be a threat.