Gritting my teeth, I turned and tensed.
Stella stood in the middle of the hundred-twenty square foot room, her arms wrapped around her middle, looking completely out of it. Her breathing came out in sharp bursts, panic flickering in her eyes. Her gaze darted around the room restlessly.
“It’s okay. This room is safe.” I tried to calm her, but my words barely registered.
She seemed to be going into shock, her chest rising and falling rapidly. I tore my eyes from her breasts, shoved my gun into the waistband of my sweatpants and moved toward her, carefully prying the gun from her clenched fingers. Pushing it into the back of my waistband, I touched Stella’s cheek. She tilted her head up, her gaze meeting mine. She was more than a head shorter than me, and my protectiveness reared its head. I stroked a few strands of her caramel brown hair from her sweaty forehead.
“You are safe, Stella.”
“You are here,” she whispered as if that affirmed my words.
“I’ll protect you.”
She looked around again. The room was meant for a short stay. Six bunk beds lined the walls to our left and right. The back of the room had a small kitchenette and a narrow closed-off bathroom. Though it was the size of a broom closet, no more. You could pretty much shower while you sat on the toilet.
Right beside the steep ladder was a sofa and a small TV. That was all.
“We’re trapped under the floor,” she whispered, looking up at the low ceiling and swallowing hard. Only a light bulb dangled above our heads.
“Just think of this as a normal apartment.”
“It doesn’t have any windows.”
“A shitty apartment then.”
She giggled nervously. My fingers found her throat and her fluttering pulse beneath her satin-soft skin.
“We won’t have to stay down here long. Soon reinforcements will arrive.” But the alarm hadn’t gone off. I went over to the small console beside the ladder and pressed the alarm button which was connected to our main security system. A red light flashed. No connection. Fuck. I glanced up the ladder, hearing footsteps above us. They couldn’t get down here unless they blasted the entire house into smithereens. But if reinforcements weren’t alerted, Stella and I were stuck down here until our parents returned, and that was in three days. A long time to be stuck in an underground room, especially with your tantalizing half-dressed stepsister. My eyes registered Stella’s flimsy nightgown for the first time. This was a nightmare, and not mainly because of the attackers who potentially wanted to torture and kill us.
“I didn’t hear an alarm,” Stella said, searching my eyes.
Damn. I sighed. For some reason, I never liked lying to her. “It didn’t go off. They disabled it.”
Her eyes darted up to the trapdoor. “But they aren’t going to come in?”
“No, not without a code.”
She nodded, biting her lip, still looking so fucking lost and scared.
I returned to her side and stroked her cheek with the pad of my thumb. Fuck, why couldn’t I stop touching her? “I swear you’re safe.”
Again that small trusting smile, which was giving me ideas and at the same time reminding me that I had a responsibility for Stella. She trusted me, had miraculously done so for a long time.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was past midnight.
“Happy Birthday,” I said.
Stella blinked, her brows crinkling. “If the start of my birthday is any indication for the rest of my year, I’d like to skip it.”
I smiled, shaking my head, my fingers still on her skin. My gaze darted to her lips, the way they curved up in a half-smile despite the anxiety in her eyes. I dropped my hand as if I’d been burned and stepped back, clearing my throat. “I’m going to check everything. It’s been a while since I’ve been down here.”
“Does that mean you don’t have a birthday present for me?”
An image of my head buried between her legs popped into my mind. Not the birthday present she had in mind. I needed to drag my mind out of the gutter. “Not down here,” I got out.
Stella
My heart beat wildly in my chest as I kept listening to sounds from above. Muffled footsteps sounded on occasion, but the door held fast. Slowly, I made my way over to the sofa and sank down, trying to calm myself. Mauro meticulously checked every drawer of the kitchen and the narrow wardrobe.
The muscles in his shoulders and back flexed as he leaned forward. Scars littered his back from knife and gun wounds he’d suffered over the years as a Made Man. Slowly my gaze dropped to his firm ass and a flush heated my cheeks. I quickly dragged my gaze away when Mauro turned, his brows furrowed in concentration. His chest was chiseled, tanned and a small splattering of dark hair trailed from his navel down into his low-cut sweatpants. It was the first time I saw him without a shirt in a long time. He’d always worn a shirt around me. My stomach warmed.