They hadn’t exchanged a word after that, but she knew he’d lain awake for hours after, just as she had.
She hadn’t needed his reminder because she never forgot why she was there. It was the roughness in his voice that had stopped her saying as much; his rough words delivered more as a warning than a reminder.
It was a warning not to try getting any closer.
The question to Francesca’s mind was why he’d felt it necessary to deliver it. The only conclusion she’d come to was that it was his way of trying to protect her from himself. He knew she was attracted to him and had expected his honesty about his clubs to make her recoil from him. He’d put the emphasis on the sex side of things rather than all the truly shady, illegal stuff because, considering it was the whole reason he’d kidnapped her, the shady stuff was a given.
He didn’t want to encourage any form of bond or relationship between them. Of course, if he really wanted to achieve that, all he had to do was lock her in a windowless, empty cupboard with padded walls for the duration. She wouldn’t be able to escape or hurt herself; he could deliver her back to her family exactly as he’d taken her, just as he was doing by keeping her glued to his side to prevent escape and harm. And she wouldn’t be a constant thorn in his side with her incessant questions and provocations.
She could provoke him to extremes, and still he wouldn’t consider putting her in a padded cupboard. She knew this as surely as she knew he wouldn’t harm her even without the promise he’d made, and just as surely as she knew that if it came to it, he’d be unable to kill her.
He was dangerous. Of that she had no doubt. Dangerous in the same way the Esposito side of her family was. The gun he carried was no toy, and she would bet her savings there was a safe in this apartment, probably more than one, filled with more weapons and ammunition. Francesca’s parents had twosuch safes, and they’d fled the shadowed world. Well, as much as they could. Her kidnapping only proved their deepest fears – that you could flee the shadowed world, but the shadowed world never fled from you. The marriage they were negotiating with her cousins proved it, too. Escape was impossible. If Francesca’s family got their way, she would be thrust into the heart of the shadowed world. All the sacrifices she’d made for her parents’ peace of mind would have been for nothing.
Closing her eyes, she rinsed Gino’s shampoo from her hair. The suds poured over her sensitised breasts. Every part of her body felt sensitised, like her flesh had become a living being in the same way her heart had.
After drying her body and brushing her teeth, she wrapped the big towel tightly around herself, folded her pyjamas and carried them quietly out of the bathroom.
Gino was still lying beneath his duvet. The sixth sense she’d developed around him told her he was awake.
Leaving the pyjamas on her pillow, she shut herself in the dressing room.
Gino left the bathroom. He could hear the hairdryer going in his dressing room. The dressing room Francesca had commandeered space in for her own clothes. He’d seen it last night, before he’d climbed into bed for the most torturous sleep of his life.
It was those damned pyjamas. He’d used her interrogation of him to steel his mind and body against the effect she had on him. The steel had warped when he’d seen her new clothes neatly hung next to his – he’d never allowed a woman to have space in his dressing room – and then she’d left the bathroomin those damned pyjamas that showed every damned curve of her beautiful body. If she’d walked out naked, the effect would have been the same. It had been worse than the effect she’d had wearing his t-shirt.
He’d barely rebuilt the steel when her soft, melodious voice had carried through the room, sinking straight into his loins. Send him to eternal damnation; even her voice turned him on.
And now the woman with the killer body and seductive voice was drying her hair in his dressing room.
Why the hell had he added a hairdryer to the shopping list? Who cared if Francesca had to let her hair dry naturally? He’d always made a point of never having a hairdryer or any of the other creature comforts his lovers always seemed to need in his homes, figuring they would only encourage them to stay longer. Wake up and go, that’s what he wanted of them. He’d only let them sleep in his bed because even he knew it would be rude to kick a lover out after sex. It wasn’t that he had a problem being rude to women, more that you never knew if you’d fancy hooking up with them again. Sure, it only happened rarely, but it did happen. No point burning bridges unnecessarily.
The hairdryer turned off.
Gino braced himself.
He was right to have braced himself.
She bounced out of his dressing room with a bright smile and her hair a thick cloud of dark chestnut beauty. He’d never imagined Francesca would wear anything but dresses, but the tight, figure-hugging black jeans she was wearing only proved – again – that everything he’d thought he knew about her was wrong. Along with the modest scoop-necked, sleeveless cream top she’d paired them with, they clung to her killer curves like she’d been poured into them.
“Good morning!” she said with her insufferable cheeriness. “The dressing room’s all yours.”
Mydressing room, he had to bite himself back from saying. And that washissofa she threw herself onto before jumping up to crosshisbedroom floor for her book.
He shut himself into his dressing room without a word.
“I’m bored.”
Francesca watched Gino’s jaw clench at her words.
“I’m not being deliberately annoying,” she assured him, wriggling her toes. “I’m just stating a fact. I’ve been on this sofa for six hours. I never thought there were enough hours in the day for reading, but it seems I was wrong.” She swung her feet to the floor and sat up. “You must be bored too. You don’t strike me as a man who spends all his time confined to one space.”
“The situation is the situation.”
“Can we go for a walk?”
He didn’t even bother saying no, just cast her with a stare that said it for him.
“Do you have a swimming pool?”
