Despite the state I’m in, heat rushes through my body, all the way to my core.
It’s the first time he’s dropped the clinical gaze and has regarded me the same way he did while he devoured me.
Holy shit.
This man is dangerous to my health, and I’m not sure if I like it or not.
He’s engaged.
To your cousin.
That little nagging voice in the back of my mind is enough to snap me out of my lust-filled haze.
And I’m glad.
All in all, this man and I are nothing. He will join my family on someone else’s arm, share someone else’s bed, and I’ll have to watch it all happen from the sidelines.
He feeds me the rest of the food in silence, and when I’m done, he grabs the pills.
Instead of letting him put them in my mouth, I draw back a few inches and take them out of his hand.
“I can do that.”
He shoots me a stormy look but doesn’t prevent me from swallowing the medicine with the water he holds out to me.
Twenty minutes later, we’re in his car—a large SUV this time—and I’m propped up with pillows and blankets so my body is jostled as little as possible. Once we’re out on the interstate, the gentle rocking movement puts me to sleep.
Sometime later, Matteo’s voice pulls me out of my sleep. He must be on the phone, so I keep my eyes closed, planning on drifting off to sleep again.
Despite the fact he’s almost whispering, his words have too much bite in them for my brain to ignore. “Nikolai Vasiliev is hiding Vladimir, and someone has to pay for what happened. The tracker I put on Alessandra should make it easy to find him, yet we still have no clue where Nikolai is keeping her.”
My heart is beating so hard, I’m sure Matteo can hear it.
Findhim. Not her.
Not them, justhim.
What the hell is going on?
Chapter5
Gemma
Pretending any kind of normalcy with Matteo once I overheard the snippet of his phone conversation earlier is impossible. Once he dropped that bomb, I couldn’t go back to sleep and just stared out the window for the rest of the drive. I’m not sure if Matteo knows I accidentally eavesdropped or not, but he hasn’t said anything. The whole thing doesn’t make any sense; maybe I imagined it, I was in that half-awake, half-asleep stage, after all.
We drive up to his cabin, and I’m surprised I actually like it. It’s modern, all dark wood and glass, and not at all like the shabby small one-room shack I pictured. Somehow, it still manages to look cozy.
I point out the windshield. “Isn’t this too big to be called a cabin?”
Matteo shrugs. “When my grandpa bought the property, it only had a little cabin on it. The name stuck, even after he built this many decades later.”
This piece of information is so normal that I stare at Matteo for a moment as he pulls into the garage and turns the engine off. He even smiled a tiny bit when he mentioned his grandpa. This man is such a conundrum; he makes my head spin.
I desperately want to get away from him for some time to think, but I’m packed in tightly with all the pillows and blankets, and I’m not stupid enough to cause myself more pain than necessary.
So I stay where I’m at until he comes around to my side and helps me out of my cushioned spot. I follow him to the door that leads us through a mudroom and straight into the kitchen. It’s an open floor plan, and I’m immediately fascinated by the modern interior mixed with the exposed wooden beams and the enormous fireplace on the other side of the living room that’s encased in an all-stone accent wall.
Beautiful and mesmerizing.