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“Go on then,” he said quietly. “Take the shot.”

She lifted her wobbling chin and swallowed. “Where’s the key for the door?”

He shook his head.

“Where’s the key?”

Keeping his voice calm and steady, he said, “That door stays locked until tomorrow morning.”

Her face contorted. Without any warning, she moved her aim and shot a pillow. The bullet skimmed so close he felt it whistle past him.

“Where’s the fucking key?” she cried, not just with her voice but with her face. The woman who’d shown not a shred of fear at being kidnapped looked on the verge of bursting into tears.

Maybe it was seeing Elvira so visibly upset, maybe it was that he’d actively worked to contain himself, but a strange calmness settled in him. Swinging his legs off the bed, Mattia got to his feet. “You’ve got one bullet left,” he said, moving towards her. “Shoot me, and you’ll be stuck with a corpse and no means to make contact with anyone for rescue. You’ll never find the key.”

“Don’t come any closer,” she warned, the pitch of her voice getting higher.

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

“Don’t make me do it.” She edged to the side and put her foot on his gun.

He laughed softly and crossed the bedroom threshold. She had both guns now, and yet they both knew the upper hand was all his.

“That’s two clear opportunities to shoot me that you’ve failed to take.” Wrapping his fingers around the slender wrist attached to the hand holding the gun, he brought his mouth to her ear and inhaled the soft warmth of her skin before whispering, “Three opportunities if you count the time you spent in the shower. Your plan worked, but you fucked it up. I was concentrating so hard on not looking at your naked body that I would never have reacted in time if you’d taken the shot.”

That he’d failed to even think of taking the shot when the gun flew from her hand only proved how tight he’d been in his concentration.

He could feel the tremors wracking that same body, and wasn’t surprised when she let him take the gun off her without a murmur. It was like the fight had drained from her, and for one brief, solitary moment, he found himself battling the impulse to wrap his arms around her.

Taking a deep breath to rid himself of the madness this woman elicited in him with no effort at, he stepped back and fixed his attention on the gun. Much smaller than his hand, there was hardly any weight to it, but before he could take in anything else of it, she came back to life without any warning, ducking down and scooping up the gun she’d been treading on.

The cold steel of the muzzle was pressed against his chest directly over his heart before he knew it was happening.

Incredulous at the speed of both her brain and body, he shook his head. “Were you a ninja in a previous life?”

She swallowed and lifted her chin, visibly taking back control of herself. Her voice steadier, she said, “I was just taught from a very young age that the only person who could ever save me from the dangers of the world is myself.”

He put the muzzle of her gun to her cheekbone and gently stroked down it. “Then why put yourself in such danger by behaving so provocatively?”

“Because I knew it was the only way to get the gun from you.” Lips swollen from the violence of their kisses twitched. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And because I knew how much you hated it.”

“Do you always play with fire?”

She jabbed the gun tighter into his skin. “Only when I think I can beat the odds of being burnt.”

He slowly swiped the gun back up her cheekbone and dropped his voice to a murmur. “A word of advice – when you go for the kill, make sure you’ve got what it takes to make the kill. You won’t take the shot; we both know that.”

Even though her chin was wobbling again, her lips made another twitch, and she gave a small laugh that could have been a sob. “Good advice. Let me return the favour. When you take a lady’s homemade gun from her, make sure it’s not fingerprint activated.”

He stared into the silver eyes brimming with more emotion than he’d known was contained in the world and felt his heart pick up speed again.

She sniffed and nodded, then swallowed again. There was a tremor in her voice. “Maybe I can’t take the shot, but I don’t think you can either, even if you had your own gun and not mine. You had your chance to shoot me just as I had the chance to shoot you, and you didn’t take it. Neither of us took the shot, Mattia. The only difference between us now is that I can fire the gun I’m holding. The gun you’re holding, my gun, won’t work for you. It only works for me.”

Chapter Ten

Elvira had no idea how she was still standing. She’d never known her legs could feel so weak. Not just her legs, all of her. She could only keep the muzzle of the gun at his chest by leaning in to her arm to keep it steady.

She was still reeling from the explosion of passion that had caught them.