“I’m making sure you’re safe from your nightmares, no?”
“You are my nightmare.” She snatched her hand away from me and threw her knife onto the nightstand before ripping the sheets from her legs and leaping from her bed. “Go home.”
“What are you doing?”
She ran to the bathroom and slammed the door. I heard her vomiting in there so loud I wasn’t going to stay on the other side.
I barged in. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
She glared up, her cheeks hollowing in and out from her labored breathing. She held up one finger and barfed again into the toilet.
“Jesus Christ,” I grumbled as I strode forward and scooped up her dark hair into my hands. The smooth strands fell from my fingertips. “Why you keep straightening your hair is beyond me.”
“This hair makes me look like I take no shit.”
“Gives me barely anything to grab on to, woman.” The remark was more for myself than for her. I missed the way she’d looked in my panic room. Relaxed and at home, like we hadn’t tightened her so much that all the wild in her was gone.
“My hair isn’t styled for you.” She wiped her mouth and then sighed before flushing the toilet. “I’m good.”
“Sure?” I kept my fingers threaded through her hair as she stood and faced me, wanting an extra second here before she went back to pretending there was nothing between us. My grip tightened when she nodded. I wasn’t ready to let her go.
She felt it as she smiled and tilted her head into my wrist. “You can’t hold me forever, Rome.”
“I might try.”
She laughed and then bit her lip before she whispered, “Let go, monster.”
It was like prying my hands from the edge of a cliff. This girl didn’t know I was hanging on by a thread, that I wasn’t sleeping without staring at her in the middle of the night, that when I did sleep, I dreamt of her, that my body was being controlled by a desolate beast that only wanted to be with her.
She turned toward the marble vanity and started the faucet. Cupping her palms together, she caught enough water to wash out her mouth.
“You sick, or is this a result of the nightmares?” I motioned toward the toilet.
“Maybe the nightmare.” She shrugged. “Maybe a little of everything.”
“Have you been to the doctor?” I lifted an eyebrow.
“For what?” She bent to grab mouthwash from under the sink and I stared at her ass the whole time. She cleared her throat and I snapped my gaze to hers in the mirror. “Rome, I’m not sleeping with you. So you can go home now.”
I sighed and pulled at my neck as I looked toward the high ceilings. “I’m not here to fuck you.”
She shimmied her ass and my dick jumped. “Sure about that?”
“Don’t tempt me, Kate-Bait. You’re changing the subject. Get a doctor’s appointment.”
“There’s no need. I have issues when I sleep. The nightmares are… I didn’t use to have them. It’s just stress.”
“Probably best not to take a chance. You could have the flu or something.”
“Do you ever not map out the ‘what ifs?’ I’m not your concern anymore.”
I swear to God, she wanted to taunt me or wanted a reaction. My feet ate up the tiled floors to cage her into that vanity, my arms on either side of her. “What makes you my concern, huh? You want me to drag you out of here and lock you up in a room again? I’m happy to.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You’d start a war.”
Her words held weight. She wanted me to back off, to cower from her. Yet her pulse jumped on her neck and her breaths came faster. I watched her breasts rise and fall against the thin fabric. Her nipples hardened, dark and pointed under the smooth cream of her shirt.
My dick hardened against her ass. “If you want me to start a war for you, I will. It’d be one I would win because I’m not afraid to spill blood for you. The whole city could bathe in red for all I care. We both know that. The bratva is no match for us. And maybe it’s best that way. If I lock you up with me and take away this new bloodline of yours, there are no complications.”