“Don’t hold back, please.” He smiled when she burst into laughter. “Don’t worry about my feelings, a’ight? Go in. Go all the way in. I can take it.”
“I’m simply making an honest observation. The same ones I’m sure you’ve made about me.” When he didn’t take her bait, she pressed on, never in her life feeling safer or more secure than she did at that moment, propped up in his hard, sinewy arms. “What do you think about me?”
He searched her eyes. “When I first saw you at that party… In the flesh… My damn heart stopped beating.”
She bit her bottom lip.
“I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
“But you thought I was a monster.”
“You thought I was too.”
“It’s crazy.” Her eyes fell to his lips. “How wrong you can be about a person.”
He moved leisurely through the water with her in his arms, taking her up on the tantalizing offer of giving all of his stress to the God’s above. Even if only for a little while.
“How many safe houses do you have set up?” she asked.
“Few more.”
“I doubt you’ll top Venice.”
“Hopefully we won’t have to find out. ”
“The little show we put on should seal the deal. If he thinks you’re hurting me, he’ll agree to the trade much faster.”
He clenched his teeth, but in the next instant, his jaw softened. “Do you want me to call you Ashley?”
Her heart hit her feet, and then she shook her head.
“No?” he frowned.
“I was born Ashley Kolinsky. I remember being Ashley Kolinsky. But I’m Mia Ali now. I’ve been Mia Ali for almost fifteen years. Being called Ashley would only… it would only send me spiraling back to a place I don’t want to remember. To the memories that still make me sick to my stomach. I’d rather not have the reminders. It’s easier to hold the clouds at bay when I’m living as Mia Ali. As anyone other than Ashley Kolinsky, really.”
“What makes the memories so terrible?”
“The bad memories are hard to stomach, but interestingly enough, it’s the good ones that hurt ten times more.” She smiled shyly. “Does that even make sense?”
He blinked slowly. “Completely.”
She let her eyes flutter when he brushed the tips of their noses once more and then angled his so it was beside hers. She held her breath, waiting for the soft feel of his lips once more. A softness she’d been convinced she’d lost.
But he pulled away.
She sighed.
“How did you get your scars?” His nostrils flared as if he was already playing out in his head all the ways he wanted to kill the person who’d put them on her.
She sank her fingers into his hair, feeling every bone in her body start to tremble.
He must’ve felt her shaking too because he reached up, the water splashing down from his arms as he did, caressed his splayed fingers up her back, and massaged her shoulders from behind.
“The one on my neck…” She pushed her hair away from her neck, displaying the jagged scar just below her ear where dozens of circular lesions arranged in the shape of two stacked cones darkened her skin. “Is from Malik’s python…” She rolled her eyes. “Princess.”
He spoke through ground teeth. “A goddamn snake?”
“She’s huge. Over twenty feet. Three hundred pounds. Big enough to swallow an antelope whole. He likes to punish his enemies by feeding them to her.” She dropped her hair, re-covering the scar. “But me… he only lets her bite me. Then he sedates her before she has the chance to strangle me to death. I suppose I’m supposed to be grateful that he doesn’t let her suffocate me like he does all the others. I’m always supposed to have it in the back of my mind, though. That if I make one false move—if I push him one step too far—he’ll let her finish me off the next time. I can’t lie—it’s an effective strategy. The thought of being eaten alive would be enough to keep most people in line, I’m sure.” She felt his breathing quicken under the water. “The scar on my thigh… the one that’s impossible to miss? I earned that one after he killed Al, the guard I told you about?”
Frowning, Linc nodded.
“My making a new friend wasn’t severe enough to earn the punishment of being eaten alive, but it did earn me the sharpest razor blade in his medicine cabinet.”
He winced.
Her voice lowered, going to a distant place. “Slashing me. Over and over. All the way up my hip because, apparently, that’s where he’d caught Al touching me ‘inappropriately’ in the garden.” She swallowed heavily. “He wasn’t touching me inappropriately. He was moving me out of the way because he saw a bee flying by, and he knew how much I feared bees. He put his hand on my hip because he was moving too quickly to realize where it was. He was trying to help me. Not just with the bee. He was trying to help me be free. And it cost him his life.”
Linc moved his kneading fingers from her shoulders and down her arms. “What’s freedom to you? And not just getting plastic surgery and running scared for the rest of your life. Because that sure as hell a’int freedom. When you thought about what you would do if you and Al had succeeded? When you thought about freedom, what did you really see?”
Her eyes rose to the gray sky, a smile touching her previously trembling lips as the sprinkling rain tickled her skin. “The last thing I remember… before I was taken…?” She sighed. “I was standing on the beach back home in Florida. My boyfriend—my very first boyfriend—was lying in the sand over my shoulder, just watching me. The sky was gray, just like this one. It melted into the horizon so you couldn’t see where the water ended and the sky began.” Her eyes went to a faraway place, her smile petering softly. “I can still remember the sand getting trapped between my toes. And the waves—how the bubbles tickled my skin.”
He tightened his hold on her.
She met his eyes once more, somehow still smiling, though not as strongly as before. “I used to beg Malik to take me to the beach, any beach so that I could feel the bubbles on my skin. The sand between my toes. I just wanted to feel free again. Even if it was only for a moment. Even if it was my terrorizer who made it happen.” She shrugged. “But he never let me. Nearly fifteen years later, and I’ve never been to another beach.”
“That’s freedom to you? Sand between your toes? That’s it?” Linc grinned.
“And the waves. The waves too. The bubbles against my skin.” She sighed, eyes falling serenely closed. “God, the bubbles. They were the last thing I felt before…”
“Before what?”
Her eyes flew open. “Before someone came up behind me and put a bag over my head. Before the whole world went black.”
“Who put a bag over your head? Your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that he never made another sound behind me. And after everything went dark, I never saw him again. Maybe he’s the one who took me. Maybe he set it up so someone else could. Maybe he knew all along, from the moment we met, that I would be taken. Maybe he was taken too… I don’t know. Part of me is kind of glad that I don’t know. At least then I can still believe…”
“That he didn’t betray you.”
She ran her trembling fingers along the edge of his jaw, eyes filling with tears. “Yeah.”
His own eyes softened as they searched hers. “From one prison to another, huh?”
“No.” She frowned with a sharp shake of her head. “You’re a good man, Linc. A really good man.”
“Such a good man that I kidnapped you. Tied you up. Terrorized you just like he did.”
“You’re not a bad man for doing whatever you had to do to get your daughter back. You’d only be a bad man if you didn’t. You’d only be a bad man if you’d given up on Emma the way my parents gave up on me.” Her voice trembled at the tail end of her sentence and the first tear jetted down her cheek.
He wiped it away with a heaving breath, along with all the others that spilled from her eyes, keeping h
is hand on her cheek long after he’d cleaned them all. She could see in his eyes that he wanted to remind her that she’d been lied to. That he would bet his last dollar, her parents hadn’t given up on her. That they were still looking for her, every day, the same way he’d been looking for Lisa. For Emma. Instead of berating her, however, he cupped the back of her head and pulled her in until their foreheads brushed.
Mia’s heart pounded a mile a minute. As his skin grew flushed, she knew his heart was pounding too. The strength of his dick growing hard between her legs once more proved it even further, and her stomach tightened when the warmth of his breath soothed her lips. Every bone in her body trembled, tightened, ached for his kiss. The kiss that, earlier that morning, she believed she’d never know the joy of experiencing again.
The rise and fall of their chests came together, faster every second, making the bed of his thumb shake as he brought it up between the sliver of air that remained between their mouths, brushing her bottom lip. Her eyes fell closed at his gentle touch, such a contrast to the ferocious, brute savage she’d once believed him to be. Her nostrils flared as she took in his clean scent, wanting nothing more than his lips on hers and the hardness still insistent against her thigh buried deep inside her throbbing channel. He dropped his hand from her lips, leaned in, then hesitated, stopping just short of their lips touching. Mia’s eyes flew open just as his own fluttered closed. She dug her fingers into the silky, wet strands of his hair. Clawing. Yearning. Begging.
“Don’t bite,” he whispered.
She could only manage a rapid shake of her head, unable to speak through the lump in her throat, in a silent promise that she wouldn’t. When he closed the space and their lips finally brushed, the gray clouds parted, revealing the first wisps of sunlight that had always been beaming but hadn’t yet been ready to show its glimmering face.
They moaned into the embrace, tilting their heads, wrapping their arms around each other as they spread their lips wide, deepening the kiss. A heat quivered through Mia when their tongues found each other and swept hungrily. Her pulse hammered in her ears, muffling the drum of the sprinkling rain as it slowed. As the kiss grew in fervency, his mouth taking hers like a man possessed, the rain stopped completely, leaving nothing but the frantic sound of their lips rising into the air, filling the quiet Venice quarter with the music of their desperate embrace.
27
From the moment their lips had met for their second kiss in the quarter, they’d only broken their furious make-out session once. Once, after being startled by a catcall-whistle echoing down the Grand Canal. After catching sight of the whistler—a middle-aged Italian man hanging from the fifth-floor balcony of his waterside apartment building, watching their make-out session with a beaming smile on his face—Mia and Linc had instantly swum off, cheeks heated in embarrassment. Their moment of chagrin had been short-lived, however, and even with their unsolicited audience-of-one waving them adieu as they swam away, they hadn’t even made it out of his line of sight before their lips had found each other’s once more.
By the time Linc climbed the winding staircase back up to their room and kicked the door open—Mia still wrapped in his arms—their battling lips had damn near fused into one. With every stroke of her full, pink lips, every sweep of her soft tongue, and every hungry nibble of her teeth as she took his top lip, then bottom, into her mouth, Linc waited for the butterflies assaulting his stomach to slow. For the sweet smell of her skin and hair to stop sending lightning shards flashing through his body. For her smooth skin, her plump breasts, and her hard nipples, brushing against his chest, to stop making his dick jump and flinch in its desperation to be encased in any part of her body she allowed—between her breasts, beyond her lips, and most enticingly of all, deep inside the warm channel between her spread legs still wrapped around his waist. He waited for his body to get used to the sweet moans that left her spread lips and entered his body as they tilted their heads back and forth, desperate to deepen a kiss that was already as fast and furious as it could get.
But his heart only beat faster with every kiss. His fingers only dug deeper into every new expanse of her wet skin he touched. His aching cock only grew longer and harder, every time he thought about sinking deep inside of her. The first woman he’d had in…
He groaned into their kiss, clawing her wet hair almost violently because it had been way too long. He worried he might hurt her. He worried he might break her. He worried it’d been so long he might not last inside her. But that worry didn’t stop him from stumbling out of the foyer and toward the bed with her in his arms. Only breaking his lips from hers to bury his face in her neck and suckle the skin there. The globes of her ass found themselves under his trembling fingers just as she cried out at the warmth of his lips and tongue on her neck. Then her hands were in his hair too, pulling, tugging. He hoped she’d rip a few strands straight out of his skull. At least then he wouldn’t be the only one of them at risk of hurting the other when the passion took over him. Rendering him blind to anything but the blood surging through his dick. Teeming with a vigor bursting to be released.
He moved his fervent kisses all over her long, slim throat, feeling her own pulse pounding against his lips. Feeling her squirm in his arms so the shaft of his dick was pressed firmly against the slippery velvet folds of her center, making it evident that she wanted him just as badly as he wanted her, and that he hadn’t been alone in the thunderous roar that had engulfed every aching bone in his body from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. From the moment he’d seen her pressed up against that window as her real captor savagely took her.
The memory of Mia’s face that night, up against the window, drew a gasp from his lips, forcing them away from hers. His sudden retreat caused Mia to gasp as well because there was no voyeuristic pervert hanging outside a window watching them to justify his breaking the kiss right then. One look into his eyes, her trembling fingers still sank deeply in his hair, and she must’ve seen them—the storm clouds that had stopped his heart in mid-beat. Mere feet away from the bed that they’d both been desperate for him to throw her on top of.
She cupped his cheeks, her voice strangled, broken, and struggling to be above a whisper past her own hammering heart. “Linc? What’s wrong?”
He moved his splayed fingers from her ass and stroked them up her back, searching her eyes, trying to will away the memory of the night he’d watched her up against that window. The way she’d been smiling at Malik. The way her smile had vanished the moment she’d turned her back. The way her entire face had completely transformed. From a woman in love to a woman in loathing with the man violating her from behind.
Would Linc be that man to Mia? Was this another ploy to use her beautiful body—and his utter defenselessness to it—against him? Would she allow him inside of her with a sweet smile on her face, only to scowl in contempt the moment he put her on her stomach and took her from behind?
Most importantly of all, if he made love to her tonight and her smile did remain, how could it possibly remain once the time came to make the trade for Emma? Malik was a despicable man, but at least he was honest about his contemptible ways. Would giving Mia up, days after he’d slept with her, make Linc even worse? Leading her to believe that whatever was happening between them could end in anything but goodbye?
The surprised confusion on her face only grew deeper when, in the midst of his thoughts, Linc allowed her body to sink slowly out of his arms until her feet had hit the floor. It made her lock her arms around his neck tighter.
It took everything he had to pull his head back, softly, when she came to her toes for another kiss.
The hurt in her eyes shredded his stomach to pieces.
But that only scratched the surface. He saw, at that moment, how deeply he could hurt her. How deeply he would.
So the words left his mouth before he could stop them. “I can’t be your superhero, Mia.”
“I’m not asking you to be.” She responded so quickly it was as if
she’d already read his mind before his lips had formed the words.
“I can’t lose Emma.”
“I know that, and I would never, ever put you in the position to… to choose. I understand.”
“Then you understand that this can’t…” He cupped her naked waist with trembling hands, taking a moment to squeeze the skin as his mind profanely berated him for what he was about to say. Ignoring the voices screaming in his head, he pushed her away. “This can’t happen.”
Mia was back on him like glue, shoving his arms away from her body to make space for her to move back in, wrapping her arms around his neck and locking them tight.
His eyes fell closed when her pert nipples brushed his chest once more, her ample breasts heaving against his pecs, and her lips inches from his.
“Why can’t it happen?” she whispered, just as he opened his eyes and reclaimed hers, his green orbs begging. “We’re adults. We’re extremely attracted to each other. And contrary to what you’ve convinced yourself of during that romantic swim in the canal, I’m still the woman who jumped down a laundry chute, put a nail in your neck, and smashed a lamp over your head. I’m nobody’s angel. And I’m certainly no damsel in distress waiting to be saved by her Superman.”
He searched her eyes. “What if I wanna be?” He licked his lips. “Hm? What if I wanna be your Superman?”
“You can’t.” She came to her toes and kissed him softly, keeping her forehead pressed to his after she had pulled away, clutching the back of his neck while looking up into his eyes. “I understand what this is. I understand that, eventually, it has to be goodbye.”
“If we make love right now, I’m no better than him. Shit, I’m worse.”
She shook her head. “Don’t you see, Linc? You stumbled in here, making out with a naked woman who was wrapped all around you, a few steps away from a perfectly good bed, with her tongue jammed down your throat, and you stopped.” Her eyes widened as if she’d seen a ghost. “If that doesn’t prove what a good man you are, nothing will. Not just a good man, but a once in a lifetime man.”
Captive Page 19
