My gaze snapped to hers.
There was fear leaching from her soft, fawn-colored eyes. The only reason she was sitting on her hands was to hide the fact that they shook like leaves in a gale.
“I should punish you, yes,” I growled.
“Then what’s stopping you?” she challenged.
My nostrils flared, but I bit my tongue.
Whatwasstopping me?
The last time, I slaughtered anyone I thought might have had the smallest connection to my son’s disappearance. Without mercy, without guilt. They’d robbed me. And worse yet, they couldn’t tell me if my son had lived—or been murdered.
Yet this anger tonight was just a fraction of what it had been. The scar had been torn open, and the fear and pain bled into my soul at the thought of almost losing Hristo again.
But I couldn’t bring myself to pull out my gun and end the life before me.
It had to be because it would hurt the boy.
That was what I told myself as I handed her the bottle. Those pretty pink lips slid over the end. Her throat worked as she sucked down the liquid fire.
I yanked it away. “That’s enough.”
“Well, what’s it to be?” Poppy demanded, running the back of her hand over her mouth before returning it under her legs.
“Such bravado,” I chided, my tongue rolling over one of the bigger words in my English vocabulary. “You know, I underestimated you. I don’t make mistakes like that often.”I hate that I did with you.
But I wouldn’t tell her that out loud.
“Give me some more of the vodka or get on with it. Either way, enough is enough.” Poppy threw up her hands. “I crossed you.”
“You did.”
“And now you won’t stop looking at me without that— without that—”
I arched a brow. “How am I looking at you, Poppy?”
She paled, shrinking back in her chair. “I don’t know. Like you’re going to eat me whole.”
Another rough laugh barked from me. “Oh, you have no idea.”
As I said it, an idea actually did form.
I prowled forward.
Poppy leaned back in her chair, as though she could escape me.
I gripped the thing, spun it so it was pressed back against the work bench and she was facing me. I caged her with my arms. “I could spank your pretty ass until it’s as bright red as the flower your Italian parents named you for.”
Her eyes popped wide enough to nearly fall from her skull.
“Or—” I licked my lips “—you could open that treacherous mouth and work out your punishment with your lips fastened around my cock.”
This time her cheeks blazed brightly. She gasped…which only turned into a coughing fit.
I masked my sigh by straightening and folding my arms over my chest. The bottle hung from my fingers. She was in no condition for punishment. She needed to go to bed. Sleep and healing.
“I’ll make it quick and easy,” I decided. “Since the idea of you on your knees strikes my fancy, why don’t you fall on your knees and pray for your life?”
