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Mine went to hers.

I wanted to kiss her.

Not the barely-there touch she’d given me the first time she visited me. A real kiss. My hand in that long hair, her mouth open under mine, enough time to find out whether she wanted me as much as I wanted her.

Her lips parted.

Damn.

If we’d had another five minutes, I might’ve forgotten every sensible thought in my head.

But men were moving through the corridor, and Isabella getting caught in here would give Ciro another prisoner.

I wasn’t letting that happen.

“Blindfold me, Mouse.”

She raised the cloth but paused before covering my eyes.

“Come back to me, Isabella.”

She nodded.

“I will.”

She drew the cloth over my eyes and tied it exactly as she’d found it.

Darkness swallowed the room again.

I listened as she lifted the basket, crossed behind me, and opened the hidden door.

Stone shifted softly, then settled back into place.

Ciro still had the cuffs.

But Isabella had the key.

Chapter seventeen

Lachlan’s words echoed in my mind as I dragged the wooden panel in the wardrobe closed behind me and arranged the hanging dresses across it.

I nearly tripped stepping out, too caught up in the rush of emotions he’d provoked in such a short time.

God, he was something out of a fantasy, like some impossible superhero made real. He was blindfolded, shirtless, and cuffed to a chair beneath my floor, and I wanted to crawl straight back down there because I hadn’t heard him say my name nearly enough.

No—

Because I wanted him to say it while looking at my mouth again.

I closed the wardrobe doors before I did something completely insane and crossed to my dresser. The key remained clenched in my hand as I pulled out a T-shirt and shorts.

I’d spent twenty-five years learning not to hope, not to want, and definitely not to rush toward a man simply because he made my heart race.

Lachlan Byrnes had wrecked all three lessons in one night.

I peeled off my dress and stepped out of it.

“And the cock you looked at twice.”