Dios, she looked so vulnerable. Was so vulnerable. It was a fist in his heart as he remembered what it felt like to feel paralysed.
Another shriek ricocheted off his taut nerves.
‘Do something, for heaven’s sake!’
The man who claimed to be the senior of the two medics hovering tried to hold her arm still once more, but her every contorted muscle and frozen vein screamed genuine fear.
Pia brushed down her arms, her movements frantic yet uncoordinated as she shivered and slurred. ‘Please...please, no! Don’t do this.’
On and on she went, crying out for her mama, then talking of Merisi, Zeus—private, personal nightmares—and he hated it. Hated that she was baring her soul in such an anguished, agonising way in front of complete strangers. He wanted them gone. Would have banished them from the room if he could.
Instead he said, in a voice that brooked no argument and warned of dire consequences, ‘She’s delirious—has no idea what she’s saying or doing.’
Nic watched silvery tears trickle down her temples as her energy depleted and she turned to look him right in the eye. ‘Please...don’t...do this to me.’
That was it. That heart-wrenching plea coming from a woman like Pia was the final straw.
‘Stop. Just stop! Her heart must already be at risk from the strain, and if she gets any more worked up—’
‘She needs to get warm quickly. Intravenous fluids are the way to go. Unless we bypass her blood, warm it through, but that’s still going through a vein.’
‘That’s it? Those are our options? Dios!’ His voice sounded as if he’d swallowed a razorblade. He couldn’t stand seeing her like this. It made him want to crawl out of his own skin.
‘My only other suggestion would be for you to get in there. Skin to skin. It’ll probably take longer, but it should still work.’
Right—right. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Because she obliterates your brain cells, that’s why.
‘This would have been useful ten minutes ago,’ he gritted out. With a deft roll of his shoulders his heavy coat slipped down his back and he tossed it over the nearest chair.
‘We didn’t think there would be a problem, and...’ This from the second medic. A tall redhead who was staring at his hands as he uncuffed his shirt.
‘You may leave.’ He punctuated the words by grabbing his shirt at the tails and tearing it open.
The redhead’s lips parted and colour flushed her white skin as buttons bounced off walls and pinged off the floors. He toed off his shoes and went to work on his trousers and her eyes trailed down his flexing biceps, across his wide chest, then paused as he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs.
Fighting the shivers that could only have come from being outside half the night in minus fifteen freaking degrees, Nic stared down at Pia, lying on the bed, eyes closed, trembling.
Commando or not?
She was out of it, but he didn’t want her waking up in his bare arms being frightened. Didn’t want her to think he’d taken advantage of her for a second. Innocent wasn’t a word he would associate with her, but where sex was concerned, or being comfortable naked, in your own skin...? He wasn’t so sure about that.
‘I can leave her bra and panties on, yes?’
‘They look insubstantial enough, so I doubt they’d make much difference.’
‘From this moment it is not your place to look,’ he growled, throwing in a lethal glare for good measure. Ridiculous as it was, his protective instincts had kicked in with a ferociousness that astounded him. ‘I repeat. You may leave.’
He ushered them out through the door, agitated by the way the redhead was devouring him with her eyes. Why couldn’t Pia look at him like that? Then maybe she wouldn’t have swanned off without him this morning and he would have been there all along to keep her safe.
Once he’d locked his door behind them he was back to the bed, fingers flexing on the corner of the blanket. Nervous? Eager? He didn’t know. His concern was so overwhelming it drowned every other emotion out.
Gingerly, he pulled the covers back, just enough to allow him to slip beneath. Nic tried to shut off every thought in his head, loath to admit to the arousing anticipation of feeling those lush curves against him. Then he sent up a prayer of thanks that he’d kept her in her underwear as—Fala serio, could someone cut him some slack, please?—frivolously skimpy as it was.
Under the covers, he didn’t pause to take a breath, not wasting a second of time when his heat could be seeping into her body, protecting her life.
It hit him then. What he was doing. Saving the daughter of the man who’d destroyed his parents and almost taken Nic’s life. He could hurt Zeus in the same way—make him feel the same pain Nic had felt for so long. An eye for an eye. But the fact was it wasn’t in him. Not even if Pia had pulled the trigger herself. He simply wasn’t made that way. Life was too precious to take.
No pause, no hesitation, he tucked one arm under her shoulders and eased her against him, front to front, skin to skin, cheek to cheek. All her softness against his hard strength. Cold flesh against heat. He’d expected a struggle, at least a murmur of protest. What he got was a contented purr when, like a kitten, she burrowed and nuzzled closer, as if trying to climb into his body, where it was warm, so she could go to sleep, protected and safe.
Nic cupped her head, tucked her into the warm space where his neck met his shoulder and gently wrapped his leg around hers until they were one, until the only thing that could be missing was his hardness sliding inside her. Oddly enough, this felt closer—an affection he’d never experienced before. Far more intimate than sex could ever be.
Nic lay there, holding her, gently stroking her hair, burying his nose in the damp waves, inhaling the cold scent that lingered on her body and there...right there...was the faintest hint of that velvety black scent she wore like a sultry signature: jasmine and gardenia and something elusive that sang to his body in a siren’s song. And, Dios, it turned him to stone. He shifted and cursed under his breath, trying his damnedest to ignore the lush satiny dips and curves that fitted perfectly against him.
Tried, too, to quieten every alarm bell shrilling in his head, not to think about what might have been for the first seventeen years of her life. Too late.
At the age when Nic was kicking a football around a field and fishing in the river with his Avô, with not a concern or care in the world for anyone or anything, Pia had been living in her own kind of hell. The fact that she’d been subjected to drugs and abuse from her own mother made him want to lash and snarl and bite like the werewolf she claimed him to be. He realised, too, that her father must have taken her in, taken care of her...
It was a conflicting choking agony to want to feel gratitude to the man who’d caused his parents’ deaths, if only for a second. It tore at his heart even to think it. Yet he was glad Pia had found a better life and a reason for living.
‘Is that why you work so hard for him?’ he whispered as he kissed her flaxen hair.
Nic finally allowed himself to think of the high likelihood that he’d take Pia down with her father. It made his ribcage contract but he’d come too far for too long to be swayed by emotions now. She’ll hate you. Yes, she will.
He flinched as she startled him with a soft reply.
‘Keep me,’ she breathed.
What was she saying? That she worked so hard so her father would keep her?
Nic squeezed his eyes shut and used every weapon at his disposal, every memory he could find, to banish the tumultuous thoughts storming through his mind.
She whimpered and Nic hushed her. ‘Sleep querida, I have you.’ For now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PIA TRIED TO rouse herself time and again from the murky waters of sleep but it kept tugging her back into the nebulous depths. First there’d been darkness and moonlight, then the glare of the midday sun, but her bones had ached so badly she’d snuggled back into the hard-packed mattress and let it happen.
/> Not this time. Now the warm scent of expensive cologne tempted and teased her senses awake. Skin and a light dusting of soft hair against her cheek—warm, so warm, and achingly wonderful. She sighed in contentment.
She felt as if she’d slept for days, and as she coaxed her eyes open to the golden fingers of dusk stroking the windowpane she wondered if that were true.
Had she ever been so lazy and sweet inside? Never—
Pia jerked upright so fast the room spun like a whirly top. What the—?
Her gaze snapped to Nic, lying beside her, and her belly clenched with hot longing at the sight of him—so strong, so masculine, and yet so vulnerable. Face relaxed, as if sleep was his only peace, those long sooty black lashes rested against the tender skin beneath his eyes in decadent arcs.
She was dying to run her hand over his defined chest, that rigid six-pack and his flat, ripped stomach, the hipbones jutting just shy of his boxers...
Then it hit her. He was practically naked. And so was she!
‘Nic...?’ Grabbing the sheet, she covered her breasts and bottom-shuffled sideways to the edge of the bed. What had he done to her? What had they done? ‘You...you...snake!’
Stretching with all the lethargic might of a big sleepy lion basking in the sun, he blinked up at her over and over, as if clearing the fog from his eyes. It took a while, and Pia just sat there watching him, her mind all over the place, trying to figure out how on earth she’d got into his bed. Then suddenly he snapped wide awake, and looked so ridiculously happy to see her that her heart leapt.
‘You’re awake?’
Pia pinched the back of her hand in self-test mode. ‘I’d like to say that’s a stupid question, but actually I have no idea.’ Maybe she was still asleep and this was a dream. A dream, Pia? Don’t you mean a nightmare?
He grinned wildly. ‘Yep, there’s that sharp tongue I like so much. You are definitely awake, bonita. You had me worried for a while there.’
When his hot gaze dropped to her lace bra he stared at her so hard she craved a shower. Whether hot or cold she couldn’t say. Why did every day with him feel like Russian Roulette?
‘Don’t think for one minute this constitutes the terms of our bet!’ At least she hoped to God it didn’t. It rather depended on what had happened. Why couldn’t she remember? This was awful. Awful!
Mischief sparkled in his whisky eyes, lighting them up with flecks of gold as he rolled onto his side playfully and propped his head on one hand. ‘I didn’t take you for a shirker, querida. You did beg.’
‘I...I...I did?’ She had? Noooo.
Nic raised one devilish brow and ran his tongue over that gorgeous mouth suggestively. ‘Oh, yeah. I told you no over and over again, but would you listen?’ He shook his head and tutted. ‘No.’
There he was, the perfect picture of dissolute debauchery, tiptoeing his fingers over the rumpled linen and giving her thigh a sultry little stroke.
Pia shuddered and grappled with the blanket to cover her legs, but he was sprawled over them and he couldn’t give a stuff—just smiled that bone-melting, tummy-flipping smile and kept on talking.
‘“I’m cold, Nicandro.”’
The way he imitated her voice in a brazen purr and batted his eyelashes made her recoil in horror.
‘“Please come to bed with me. I neeeeed you. Please.”’
She gasped in outrage at her own behaviour. Mentally scanned her body parts for sensations of wear and tear. Wear and tear? What was she? A car?
Okay, so she couldn’t remember what après sex felt like, but she was darn sure she would feel something—right?
During her moments of castigation, as her mind flitted like a bird from one branch to another, he’d tugged the blanket away and inched closer, prowling like a feral wolf with hunger in his eyes. Pia looked down and watched his long fingers splay over the slight curve of her stomach, then curl around her waist.
Heat sizzled over her skin and her breath grew so shallow she began to hyperventilate.
‘Come here, my beautiful Olympia. Kiss me. Just as you did last night.’
A tight, choking disbelief caught her by the throat. But there was no calculation in his eyes, none of the shrewdness she’d noticed in him before, and this joyful, impish innocence was a sharp deviation when she knew he had the tail of a scorpion.
Worse still, when had she got so lonely that she didn’t care? Just wanted him near her.
‘What did you do to me?’ she asked, voice trembling as her pulse careened out of control.
Oh, God, she felt angry, and helpless, and frustrated that she couldn’t remember. But most of all—most alarmingly of all—she felt cheated!
With that thought, she tumbled backwards off the bed and landed in a sprawled heap. No grace to it whatsoever. Then she scrambled to her feet and edged away.
Predator. That was surely the word to describe him in that moment as he crawled across the mattress on all fours—big and agile and poetry in motion—the wickedness in his eyes making her lick her dry lips.
‘Ah, you want me to chase you?’ He drew the word out and added a naughty lilt to it.
‘No!’
He sighed theatrically, as if they’d been through all this before. ‘Which means yes.’
‘No, it really doesn’t! What is wrong with you?’ He was being so frisky and light-hearted. Worlds apart from the practised charmer she’d come to expect.
And his body... Wow. All sex and power. The man might be Brazilian but he was like a Greek god. Broad shoulders and carved pecs, rounded thighs and long, athletic sculpted legs sprinkled with dark hair. Quite simply, he was delicious.
Slam. Her back hit the wall and he pressed up against her and thrust his hands into her hair. ‘Shall I remind you, Pia? Remind you of the taste of my mouth?’
Yes. Yes! Nooooo—bad idea. Really.
She remained frozen, her blood pumping too fast in some places and too slowly in others. Her brain, for instance—no blood at all in there.
Nic cupped the back of her head, his fingers the perfect amount of tingly pressure on her scalp, and leaned in. He kissed the rim of her ear, nibbled on her lobe and whispered, ‘Try to remember this one, would you, bonita?’
‘I don’t think...we’ve done this before.’ Because it felt as if she was on the edge of discovery, at the gates of a bold new world. And it was exhilarating and scary all at once.
Electricity arced between them, the shock so violent that Nic jerked back an inch or two and locked onto her eyes. As they stared at one another, her breasts brushed against the hard wall of his chest with every stuttering breath she took. Heaven help her, she wanted it. Him. His kiss. Right now.
‘You make me crazy, Pia,’ he murmured, his gaze intense and considered. His breath a hot rush over her face. ‘You turn me inside out and that is the honest truth.’
Leaning in, he touched his lips to hers and she felt as if she’d been plugged into the national power grid. Closing her eyes, she started to panic. Unsure if she could remember how to respond.
Then he laved his tongue along her lips and she opened up, unfurling to him, giving him her all. And in that moment she didn’t think or plan or have an agenda. She simply moved and gave him permission to go deep and wet and erotic. Which was exactly what he did, with a feral growl that made her skin tighten.
One hand on her lower back, another between her shoulderblades; he pressed her sweetly but firmly against him. She’d never felt anything like it. Unbearably wonderful.
Pia squirmed closer. He pulled her tighter. More. More of the languorous touch of his tongue against her own. And she moaned at the sharp, masculine taste of him—potent and alluring.
It was the hottest, raunchiest, most sensual kiss she’d ever received in her life. He was practically licking her soul.
Nic tightened his hold and she went pliant, revelling in this place where neither of them was alone, letting her body bend to his will as the terror of yearning and the thrill of feeling overwhelmed he
r.
He started talking out a scene—what he craved doing to her—the words rolling lyrically from his talented mouth.
‘I want to taste you everywhere, learn every dip and curve of your beautiful body, feel every inch of you in my hands.’ He punctuated the words with the movement of those clever fingers, trailing down her arms—leaving goosebumps in his wake—then sliding them up her ribcage to cup her lace-covered breasts. Just that slight ease of pressure off her shoulders, the heat emanating from his touch, was the most delicious sensation on earth.
He kissed words along her jaw and ground his hips, pushing his groin against her. Pia moaned long and loud as the hot flesh between her legs beat a wanton tattoo and clenched, desperate for him to be inside her.
‘I want to feel your surrender, Pia. Will you give it to me?’
Another kiss. Another hard press. More heat curling through her veins, swirling through her abdomen.
‘I want to slide down your body and take your orgasm in my mouth. I would do anything...anything to taste you. Just once. Before I thrust into your glorious body and take you to heaven and back.’
She squirmed, gyrating back against him.
‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you, Pia? Me inside you. Taking you long and hard and deep.’
Yes. Yes.
Next thing Pia knew, she had his back plastered against the wall and she was kissing him ferociously—her hands in his thick glossy hair, up on her toes so his huge thick erection nudged her lace panties—unleashing a torrent of carnal need she’d had no idea she was capable of. The scent of him, the feel of his hard body under her seeking hands, was so heady she couldn’t get enough. It sent her hormones, her adrenaline, her desire for him into orbit. And when he fisted her hair with one hand and squeezed her left breast with the other stars burst behind her eyelids.
Nic groaned. She almost climaxed. And the shock of it, of being so out of control, burning from the inside out, was like an arrow of ice spearing into her psyche.
The Ultimate Revenge Page 9
