“That I have no one left to trust.”
Something flashes in his dark eyes. He grabs me hard and drives me backward.
Shit. I pushed too far. He’s lost it; he’s going to shove me up against a wall, or drag me into a bathroom and?—
But there’s a scream.Morescreams, yelling, shouting?—
Men are flocking toward us. Bodyguards and security guards and even Luca D’Amato, with cold fury in his strange, pale blue eyes.
For a second I think they’re coming forme. That this is it: my fate will be appropriately classical. I’m going to be torn apart by a frenzied crowd.
But then Damiano locks his arms around me and hugs me to his chest. We’re moving—or he is, anyway, my feet dangling helplessly as he hauls me straight to the entrance, shouldering aside anyone who comes close.
And over that massive shoulder, I see all those men are still occupied, doingsomethingtosomeonethere on the floor…
“Move!” Damiano roars, and people scatter around us like leaves.
I’m pressed so hard against him that I can feel his heart hammering against mine, can smell his now-familiar scent, can smell something new—something coppery.
We’re back in the car before I know it, the driver taking off from the curb like he’s in Formula 1.
Damiano’s hands pat me all over. “Are you hurt?”
“No?” I look down at myself, bewildered to see dark red smeared across my white shirt. “I didn’t see…what happened?”
He’s still checking me all over, patting me down, turning me this way and that. “You have blood on you.”
“So do you,” I point out thickly. “Jesus, you’re bleeding?—”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, you’re?—”
“I said I’m fine!” He snarls it with such finality that I shut up, but now that I’ve pointed it out, he’s looking at his own arm, at thetorn opening in his tuxedo jacket along his bicep, the dark fabric soaked wet through with…
Blood. It’s dripping right down his sleeve, sliding down his fingers onto the leather seats.
“You need a hospital—” I begin.
“No.”
The car takes the next corner so hard that it throws me back into Damiano’s arms, and he wraps them around me at once.
“You’rebleeding,” I say again. I wrap my hands hard around the cut along his arm, since apparently he’s happy to exsanguinate in the back of the car. “What happened?”
“Someone came at you,” he says, and his arms tighten around me, squeezing hard. “But you’re safe.”
Safe.
And despite the hot blood seeping out from between my fingers, I believe him. Despite the fact that he was jacking me off in public, despite the creepy fucking basement and the collar and the cock cage…
I actually do feel safe with Damiano Orsini.
When we get home, everything transforms. Literally. Damiano hustles me inside and then activates a setting on the security panel right there in the foyer.
Steel shutters slam down over windows. Locks engage all over the house—deadbolts, security bars, enough reinforcement towithstand a siege. The house becomes a fortress in seconds, sealing us in like a tomb.
Damiano keeps me close as we move through corridors he didn’t show me during that house tour the first night. His good arm is wrapped around me, practically carrying me. We hurry down a discreet set of stairs I don’t remember seeing before, and then he’s leading me into a kitchen that smells like rosemary focaccia.
