“It’s plenty! I… I’m leaving tomorrow, remember?” The words stick in my throat.
He narrows his eyes, apparently ignoring my statement about going. “I think you need more. And you didn’t buy another bikini.”
“What would I need with the one bikini you already bought me, never mind two?” He insisted I buy a bikini, and I don’t getit. Honestly. He seems to believe I require an excessive number of clothes and books. It’s bizarre.
“To use in the pool,” he says, as though it’s obvious.
“There’s no swimming pool in this building’s gym.” I know. I went to the gym precisely once when I first moved in, checked out all the clean and tidy facilities, did twenty minutes on the treadmill, then couldn’t walk properly for a week afterwards. Lesson learned. I’m not a gym bunny.
“I suppose you’d call it a large hot tub on the deck, not a swimming pool,” he acknowledges.
My eyes go wide. I’ve been out onto the balcony. There’s a stunning view of London, lush banana plants, comfy recliners. But no pool. “You have a hot tub?”
He inclines his head. “I’ll show you.”
9
BRODY
I’m not sure how Caterina avoided finding the stairs up to the little extra roof garden, but I suspect she’s been creeping around rather than understanding that this is her permanent home now. With me.
She gasps as she precedes me onto the smaller upper level and sees the small inset infinity pool with a view over London. It’s lit from below and gleams like a sapphire. The palms on the lower deck have lights shining up through their leaves, giving the impression of being above a jungle. Behind, the London night is a velvet black drape scattered with twinkling gems.
“This is amazing!” She grins, and that’s more inspiring than the night sky.
“I’m glad you think so.”
“Can I use it?”
“Come here,” I order, and her obedience is another twang of my heart.
This. Girl. She could break me.
I touch her chin and turn her head side to side, examining her injuries carefully. I brush her hair aside to check the cut on her forehead, but it has healed nicely, and I can’t resist smoothing my finger down her face. I imagine when there arejust faded scars, how I’d love to splatter her pretty face with my come.
“I think you’re healed enough. You can use it anytime you want.”
“You’re too good to me,” she whispers, and those liquid chocolate eyes grab me by the throat again. She has no idea. Neither about how I am not a good man, nor the terrible, beautiful, sinful things I’d die to do to her.
“Will you come in too?”
Oh god, she’s playing with fire. Swallowing hard, I give a single nod.
Caterina in a bikini? I’m there. Would I like to see her naked again? Yes. Absolutely. The image of her coming as I licked her has been tattooed onto my eyeballs since. I can’t think of anything else.
I can’t do anything but want her, and seek revenge against the men who hurt her. It’s my obsession.
“What about now?”
Inwardly, I groan. “Da.”
“Yay!” She skips back down the steps to change, and I follow with a sense of foreboding mixed with elation.
I’m quicker to swap into swimming shorts, and grab a couple of towels and a bottle of water, than she is to get changed, and I ease into the hot tub to wait. There’s the muffled sounds of the city drifting up, but the air is balmy and the water warm, and the only thing that keeps me from relaxing is that tonight is Caterina’s final night here that she’s not aware she’s a prisoner.
That and the fact I still haven’t found the men who hurt her. My second-in-command is following up some leads, and the London Mafia Syndicate have been helping, but I’m increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress. Admittedly, that hasn’t helped the perception of the Syndicate that I’m trigger-happy.
Footsteps pull my attention away from that danger towards another. Caterina steps up to the pool in a bikini so cute and sexy I grip the tiles where my arms are laid over the edge.
