I grind my teeth in my frustration. “You heard what Cillian said. He knows my father. He says he knows me, and I know you and your family. Even if you say you don’t, you’re going to suspect me.”
“Suspect you of what?”
His calm is maddening. I want him angry, shouting, screaming. Anything to show that I’m not overreacting.
“I don’t know! Of being in league with Cillian somehow?”
His lips curl. “Do you really think I would hire a spy to be my physical therapist?”
“No, but—”
“But you’re about to say I’m not omniscient and that you could fool me.” He walks forward, sauntering. Slowly, deliberately. Despite the morning we just had, he seems strangely sure of himself and he’s not limping much. My professional brain is impressed by that. We really have made some good progress. “I know you now, Mirella. You’re not a good actress. You’re an awful liar. You say what you think without considering the consequences because that’s just who you are. If you were a spy, you’d be the worst spy imaginable.”
He stops an arm’s length away from me. His body is hulking and massive, and I’m trembling, so scared I can barely think straight. His words hardly pierce the veil of my agonized terror.
“Just let me leave,” I say, almost pleading with him now. “I want to go home to be with my mom. I don’t want to be a part of a mafia war anymore. You’re okay, Fynn. You’re improving so much and if you just keep doing what I showed you—”
“No,” he says firmly.
Silence falls on the room, broken only by my fast, sharp breathing. I’m trembling like I’m standing naked in the snow and I can’t think straight. Is this how I end up dead? Killed in a mafia compound and buried in the desert? I’ll disappear and my mother will never know what happened to me. She’ll mourn my loss the way she mourned my father, and she’ll have to go through that hell twice. I can’t let it happen. I just can’t.
He comes forward and I back into the wall. I gasp when he grabs my wrists and I look away, terrified of how he’s going to hurt me. But he only lifts my hands up above my head and pins me there, staring down into my eyes, looking at my lips with ravenous need.
“I won’t ever hurt you,” he whispers softly, moving close. He drags his teeth down my cheek and I release a sob. Tears fill my eyes, and that seems to rile him more than the fast beating of my heart or the way my breasts rise and fall with each breath. “I won’t let anyone in my family hurt you.” He kisses the tears as they roll down my face, breathing in the smell of them. “I know you’re not a spy. You don’t know Cillian, and no matter what he says, he doesn’t know you. I will protect you, my Mirella.”
“How can you be sure?” I blink rapidly, trying to clear my gaze. He bites my neck, my shoulder, my ear.
“My brother would never take you away from me. He’d never harm a hair on your body if I told him not to. Even if he doesn’t believe you, he’ll believe me. I promise, Mirella, no matter what, you will be safe if you stay. So stay with me.”
“Why?” I ask, strangled, still crying, but whimpering now as he kisses my neck, my ear, my throat. “Why do you want me here so badly? You don’t need me anymore, Fynn. Just do the work on your own and let me go.”
“No,” he says, biting my lower lip, and I groan despite myself. “I’m not going to let you go when I only just got my first taste of you. You’re mine, Mirella. I own you now, and I’m not letting you run away.”
He smothers my mouth in a kiss and I whimper into it, still crying, but kissing him back. It’s strange and crazy and terrifying all at once, and his powerful body and hands keep me pinned and dominated. I can’t go anywhere, not like this, and he’s not letting me. He bites my tongue, my lips, teases me with his incredible kiss as his taste invades my mouth, spicy and delicious, his smell a musky, gorgeous sensation crawling down my spine.
He releases one wrist and roughly turns me around until I’m facing the wall. I gasp as he grabs my yoga pants and rips them down over my hips, revealing my bare ass. He spanks me hard and I cry out, fingers curling into the wall, knuckles turning white. He spanks me again before dropping to his knees and spreading me wide, his fingers teasing me mercilessly, then his tongue. He licks me from behind and I’m in utter ecstasy now, the tears all gone, the sobs replaced by moans.