“Home.”
That queasy feeling in my stomach tells me he isn’t talking about my apartment. Horrified, I gaze at him.
His voice lowers. “Whatever comes out of your mouth next, please don’t let it be a lie.”
The “please” stops me short. He doesn’t seem like a man who even knows the word, let alone allows himself to speak it.
“Okay. No lies. I’m on board with that. So here are some truths for you: I’m confused. I’m exhausted. I’m worried about my friends. I’ve had several drinks, and I don’t think my brain is working the way it should be. I don’t like you, but I can’t honestly say you disgust me, either, which I very much wish you did. I’m disappointed in myself about that.”
He’s watching me with such blistering intensity I have to take a breath to steady myself before I go on.
“What else? Um. I’m relieved you haven’t killed me yet—”
“I swear on my mother’s grave, I will never harm you.”
His voice is rough and urgent. His dark eyes shine like gems. There’s something raw and open in his expression, something that seems to plead with me to accept that he’s telling me the truth.
We gaze at each other in silence until I surprise myself by whispering, “Okay.”
He seems surprised, too. “You believe me?”
“Yes.”
After examining my face for a moment, he breathes, “Thank you.”
I don’t know why, but it’s obvious what I’ve said means a great deal to him.
“What about my friends?”
“They’re safe. You have my word.”
He gazes at me like the sun is shining out of my head, and he’s getting blinded by it. To be stared at with such unwavering intensity by a man so gorgeous, so powerful, and so completely masculine is disorienting.
It’s also undeniably thrilling.
Except I’m supposed to hate him. I do hate him.
I think.
“About this you-taking-me-home thing.”
“What about it?”
“If I tell you I don’t want to go home with you, does it void anything you’ve promised me up to this point?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to go home with you.”
He gazes at me in silence for a moment. Then he smiles.
“Will you stop doing that?” I say, exasperated by his cockiness.
“I can’t help it, lass. You’ve got a face a blind man could read.”
“Please listen to me: I. Am not. Going home. With you.”
“Actually, you are. We’re driving there as we speak.”
This man could make the pope go on a killing spree. “I don’t want to engage in a semantics war, okay? What I’m saying is that it isn’t a good idea.”
“I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in a decade.”
“No! I need to be away from you! I need to process this insanity! I’m not going to your house!”
“It’s not a house. It’s a penthouse. In a skyscraper. The views are incredible. And you don’t need to process anything, except the fact that this is happening. You’ll go to my home, you’ll take a look around, we’ll have some wine, we’ll talk a bit, you’ll get more comfortable with me, and then we’ll do what we’ve both wanted to do since the moment we laid eyes on each other.”
I stare at him. He stares right back, daring me to contradict him.
At least I’m not the only one on the verge of a heart attack. For all his outward cool control, the pulse in his neck pounds as hard as my heart.
“This whole thing is very abnormal. You know that, right?”
“I’ve never lived a normal life. I have no intention of starting now. Here’s the bottom line: I want you. You want me. End of story.”
“I hope you won’t throw me out of the car again, but I have to tell you that your idea of romance is profoundly lacking.”
His voice drops. “It’s not romance you need.”
His expression tells me he’s about to elaborate on that thought. I’m having none of it. “You can just leave that right there, thank you.”
“You don’t want me to leave it. You want me to tell you what I think you need. Then you want me to show you.”
“Okay, that’s just…wow. Your ego needs its own zip code.”
He chuckles softly. “That’s not the only part of me that needs its own zip code, lass.”
I crinkle my nose. “You’re crude.”
“Don’t believe me? I’ll be happy to show you.”
I say hotly, “If you try to unzip your pants right now, mister, I’ll punch you in the throat.”
His voice turns husky. “God, you’re sexy when you’re threatening me. I like it even more than when you’re stealing things I own.”
We’re two feet apart and not touching, but we might as well be naked in bed with him on top of me and thrusting between my spread thighs for how intimate this feels, all this heat and friction and heavy breathing. I’m breaking out in a sweat.
This is a hundred different kinds of wrong. Jump out of the car, Jules. Just open the door and jump.
As it seems drawn to do, his gaze drops to my mouth. When I bite my lower lip, his eyes darken. He leans toward me, his own lips parting.
That’s when the first hail of bullets explodes against the side of the car.
8
Jules
When I dive onto the floor behind the driver’s seat, it’s a reflex. No screaming, no panicking, just an action born of muscle memory in response to something I practiced repeatedly as a child.
I curl into a ball, cover my head with my arms, and close my eyes.
Meanwhile, the bullets keep flying.
The car swerves hard left, away from the direction of the gunfire. Liam shouts something to Declan in a foreign language—Gaelic, I assume—and the car lurches forward, accelerating, tires squealing against the asphalt.
Though we’re under heavy fire, the windows don’t shatter, and the bullets don’t penetrate the car’s steel skin.
Thank you, god, for armored vehicles.
Liam throws his body over mine and curves into a protective shield around me. “Just stay down, lass,” he shouts. “Try to remain calm. We’ll be to safety in a moment.”
I shout back, “Unless this is only the opening act, and they’re intentionally driving us toward something worse.”
I feel his attention shift from the gunfire to me. “Have much experience with diversionary tactics, do you?”
Yes. And handling edged weapons, rappelling from tall buildings, and escaping from locked rooms. Grow up as a mob boss’s only daughter and you’re taught all kinds of useful survival skills for when you’re inevitably kidnapped by daddy’s enemies.
Men, for instance, like you.
Instead of saying any of that, I say, “I watch a lot of crime shows on TV.”
“Oh, look, she’s lying again. Seems to be a compulsion.”
“You’re not half as smart as you think you are, gangster.”
“It occurs to me that you’re unnaturally calm, considering the circumstances, yet you squawked about me killing you non-stop, despite my continued assurances to the contrary. Care to share?”