I didn’t reply, but took a sip from my glass instead.
“Okay,” he said. “You win. I will fuck you. But only if you don’t tell your father.”
“What?” I snapped my head in his direction, finding a giant grin stretched across his face. “Funny.” Actually, it sort of was. I started to laugh. Laughing felt good.
He tilted his head. “You have a lovely smile.”
“Are you flirting with me? Because if you are, it won’t work. I’m not sleeping with you.”
He laughed, and it was a deep, sexy, habit-forming laugh.
I couldn’t look away—wouldn’t have been able to even if a bear had popped out of the woods wearing a hula skirt. “You have a n—n—nice laugh, too.” I sipped my wine to unstick that glob in my throat.
He looked at me, and his smile melted away. His dark eyes bore into me, and the tension between us spiked. A gust of wind hit the treetops at the same moment, as if the gods were warning us both to back off.
“I’d better finish dinner.” He disappeared inside, and I released a breath I’d been unknowingly holding in.
Damn it, Dakota. What’s the matter with you?
Somewhere out there, a group of people wanted to hunt me down and ship my head off in a box to my father. And here I was, getting worked up over the man who saw me as work—a project he’d leave behind once his next assignment came along—whose scruples answered to a higher power (my father), and whose sense of right and wrong were dictated by a world that existed only in the shadows, a world I knew nothing about but had suddenly become a part of.
I took another sip and gazed into the forest, wondering where this story would end.
Can’t be a good place.
CHAPTER TWENTY
After a relatively silent dinner peppered with a few polite comments and smiles (and quite possibly the most exquisite pasta I’d ever sampled—diced onions, mushrooms, and bits of crispy bacon mixed with a creamy sauce, poured over fettuccine), I washed the dishes while Santi—Paolo went outside to do whatever crap international men of mystery did. Set up booby-traps, load guns, let off some steam by killing something large and fury…I didn’t know. But when he came inside shirtless, mopping his brow with his tee, panting and sweating, frankly, I didn’t care.
The plate in my hand went crashing to the floor along with my jaw. Good move, Dakota.
“Let me help you with that.” He grabbed a broom and dustpan from a small closet next to the front door.
I reached for them, and when my hands touched his, he froze.
I tugged the broom handle toward me. “I’ve got it, really.”
He stared for several long moments, giving me a brutally carnal look that made me quiver in my flip-flops.
No. I must be imagining it. He’d clearly said I was a job, and he was off-limits.
I cleared my dry throat. “Did you want to say something?”
He blinked as if I’d broken a magical entrancement. “I…I’m going to take a shower. Thank you for washing dishes.” He sauntered off, and though I was certain he could see my expression reflected in some hidden spoon strategically positioned somewhere in the room, I didn’t care. The goddamned man smelled like fresh sweat. He looked like an indestructible pillar of bulging, blatant masculinity. And when he walked away, all I could see was a towering mass of lust-provoking maleness. All I could think of was how we’d woken up this morning with our legs intertwined, my hand on his abundantly proportioned, hard-as-steel erection.
I sighed. “God save me,” I whispered. “Couldn’t my dad have picked someone old, short, and bald?”
I quickly finished off the dishes and went into the bedroom, hoping to find a large shirt to sleep in. I didn’t think the tiny tee, pair of pink socks, and panties I’d brought with me would do the trick.
I opened the top dresser drawer and found… “Shit! A really, really large automatic handgun…” I picked it up. It looked like the kind of gun Rambo might own. I carefully slid it back, glancing over my shoulder at the bathroom door. Paolo’s deep voice rang out, as he sang something in Italian.
Opera. I couldn’t help but smile. He was so…Italian.
I slid open the next drawer and saw a pink lacy nightie along with some other clothing. I held it up and inspected the garment with curiosity.
“If you need something to sleep in, my T-shirts are one drawer down.”
Paolo stood in the doorway, dripping wet, a white towel wrapped around his waist. His well-defined pecs and biceps were just as astoundingly sinful as the last time I’d seen them, ten minutes ago. At least I thought it was ten minutes. Who knows how long I had been standing there gawking at the nightie?
I placed the nightgown back in the drawer and attempted to hide my emotions. What shocked me most was how much I didn’t want to think about him with someone else. It sparked a raging case of jealousy. But that couldn’t be right, unless Paolo had been correct—that when people are in dangerous situations, they quickly grow attachments to those who protect them.