Passion (In Wilde Country 2)

Her hand, the one with the cast, lay over his heart.

Which of them had moved first? Had she crept closer, or had he drawn her to him? The increasing cold in the cabin must have been the cause… and who gave a damn about the cause?

Lying with her this way was a bad idea.

He had to move before she woke up.

Easier said than done.

She was asleep. Sound asleep.

Maybe that would make this simpler. If she were deep in dreamland, if he moved with caution, he wouldn’t wake her.

Slowly, carefully, he began taking his arm from around her shoulders.

“Mmm.”

He froze. Waited. Endless seconds crept by. When he thought it was safe, he moved his arm again. Twisted toward her so he could get more leverage.

She gave another sigh. He felt the warm flutter of her breath against his throat.

Sweat beaded on his forehead. Could a man sweat when the temperature in a room might as well be at the freezing point? Yes. He could.

He could also feel the first, tentative stir of his cock.

No, he thought, dammit, no!

He had to get out of this bed.

Now. Right now, except he moved and she moved, and instead of getting his arm away from her shoulders, he ended up on his side.

With their bodies pressed together.

Her breasts against his chest. Her pelvis against his belly. The two of them wearing thin cotton…

His erection sprang to hard, huge, urgent life.

He groaned. Drew in his breath. Tried to draw the rest of him in, too, but the pitiful bit of space he managed to reclaim didn’t last because his penis grew bigger.

Was that even possible?

And Ariel…she sighed again and scrambled closer.

Matteo slammed his eyes shut.

He told himself to think about cold things. Showers. Ice. The snow outside. The temperature inside. Thinking cold would do it.

It didn’t.

He was hard as a rock.

A shudder went through him.

He took a steadying breath, slid his arm out from around her shoulders. Prepared to roll away and remove himself to the hair-shirt embrace of that hideous chair because a hair-shirt was exactly what…

Maybe he moved too fast. Maybe he let a cold draft sweep over her when he began raising the blanket. Whatever he’d done, the effect was swift and shocking, because she came awake in a frenzied flurry of arms and legs, kicking, punching, shoving him away.

“Ariel?”

“NO!”

“Ariel. Honey. You’re dreaming.”

She grunted. Swung at him. Her cast connected with his jaw.

“Ariel.” How did you defend yourself against a cast without further damaging the bone within it? Cristo, why worry about that when her knee was seeking his balls? “Ariel,” he said. “Wake up!”

“Never—again,” she said. “Never, ever again. Never, never, never—”

Matteo grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back against the pillows. He rolled on top of her, using his weight to keep her from kneeing him.

It was like trying to calm a whirlwind.

“Listen to me. You’re having a nightmare.”

“No,” she said, “no, oh please, oh please, don’t, don’t, don’t…”

“Sweetheart. It’s me. Matteo. Wake up. Open your eyes and look at me.”

Her eyes flew open. Not even the darkness of the room could hide the terror in those eyes.

“Matteo?”

Her voice was small. Paper-thin. He could still feel the tension in her muscles, but she’d stopped fighting him.

“Yes.” He eased back a little, let go of her shoulders. There were tears on her face. He wiped them away with his thumbs. “Okay?”

She drew in a long, shuddering breath. After what seemed an eternity, she nodded and whispered, “Okay.”

“Bad dream, huh?”

“Yes.”

He rolled onto his side. She did, too. His arms were around her; their faces were inches apart.

Gently, he brushed a tear-dampened curl back from her cheek.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No. Yes.” Another shuddering breath. “I don’t really remember it. Not clearly.”

“Yeah, that’s the way nightmares sometimes—”

“I was in a room. Not this one. It was a big room. Dark walls. Dark furniture.” She hesitated. “Someone was with me.”

“Could you see who it was?”

“A man. Big. Dark hair. Rough voice.” She swallowed hard. “He was laughing. He had a low, mean laugh.”

Matteo stiffened. She was describing Pastore.

“And what happened?”

“I don’t know.” She shuddered. Matteo drew her to him. She sighed. “Did I say anything? When I was dreaming?”

He cupped the back of her head, felt the silken strands of her hair kiss his fingers.

“You shouted ‘no.’ And something about never again. You sounded—”

“He was going to—to—” She gasped for breath. Her voice was high and thin. “He put me on the bed and he got on top of me and he laughed and he said—he said, at least I was good for something, and he jammed his knee between my legs and I said no, no, please, no, and he just laughed and he—and he—”

Pastore, Matteo thought with grim certainty. She was talking about her husband.

“Hush,” he said, gathering her even closer. “Cara, it’s all right.”

She was sobbing, hanging on to him as if he were her only hope for salvation in a world of incredible evil.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he promised, his words soft, his touch gentle even as hatred blazed in his heart. “Trust me. It’s going to be all right.”

She fell asleep in his arms.

He couldn’t sleep at all.

He held her, and stroked her when she moaned in her sleep, and as dawn began streaking the sky, he considered his next steps.

Until now, he’d acted on instinct.

That wasn’t sufficient anymore.

They were being hunted by a predator, and one of the reasons predators were successful was because their prey acted on instinct. Something was after you? You ran. Blindly. That was your destiny, if you were the prey. You just ran, and you left a trail any clever killer could follow.

He was tired of being the prey.

He was Matteo Bellini. Well-educated. A member of the bar. A respected figure, a civilized man of the 21st century.

But there was another side to him, one that belonged to Sicily and the old ways. Those old ways were in his blood.

And Tony Pastore was a walking dead man.

* * *

He must have dozed off because the next thing he knew, the cabin was filled with weak early morning light.

Ariel was still in his arms, her face pressed to the place where his shoulder and neck joined.

She was warm and soft, and she smelled sweet.

Despite everything that was happening, he had to admit it was a nice way to start the day.

The bed was regular-sized, but the mattress was old. It dipped in the middle. That must have been how she’d ended up lying in his arms that first time, why she’d remained there through the night.

Surely, he hadn’t reached for her in his sleep.

He wasn’t a man who did that kind of thing.

Sex was sex. Sleep was sleep. He rarely mixed the two. He suspected women didn’t approve of his preference for sleeping alone. Not that any ever complained, but he often sensed disappointment when he’d leave a woman’s bed in the middle of the night, or politely rise from his own and say he’d drive her home.

He’d only once made the mistake of saying he’d phone down to the lobby and arrange for a taxi. The reaction to that had made it easy to know he was much better off getting up, getting dressed, and having his car brought around.

Luca, who knew how he felt about not spending the entire night with a woman, ha

d once teased him about it.

“You find the right woman,” he’d said, “you’ll keep her straight through the night.”

Matteo had raised his eyebrows. “Are you saying that’s what you do?”

His brother had grinned. “I’m saying that’s what I’ve been told.”

They’d both laughed.

Obviously, Luca wasn’t laughing anymore. He’d fallen in love and married. That meant he came awake every morning to this, the warmth of a woman in his embrace, her hair streaming over his shoulder, her breath a whisper against his throat.

Matteo’s arms tightened around Ariel. Amazing, how right it felt to hold her. To feel the beat of her heart against his.

He knew he should wake her. The storm seemed to have passed, but for all he knew, it might return. If they got moving now, they could put some more distance between themselves and Lake Serene while he tried to figure out what their next step should be. What he’d done until now, heading north instead of back to the city, getting off the highway and taking back roads, ditching the GPS and his smartphone, was surely not enough. He needed a plan, and he could work on it while Ariel got some coffee going. It probably dated back to the Pleistocene era, but it would get his brain functioning…

She shifted her weight.

It brought her flush against him, and it made him want to groan.

He looked at her face. She was so beautiful. So very beautiful.

Such an overused word. There had to be a better way to describe her. The silky hair. The lush mouth.