Kilo

 

Trembling, she drank.

I scanned her dress.

Dry, it’d shown every curve. Wet, it was borderline pornographic. But she wasn’t a piece of ass or a mark, and I had a job to do. One I told myself didn’t include letting her sink inside my headspace and take control, but I was already so far deep into this redhead, I hadn’t come up for air.

Then she’d started heaving her guts out, and something I’d thought was long dead surfaced.

I knew sick.

I also, perversely, knew what her hips and ass looked like as she’d knelt on the ground. Not something I’d forgotten as she sat on my lap, taking water from me like a sub.

Fuck, this was gonna get complicated.

“Enough,” I clipped, pulling the bottle back.

“Sorry.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

Screwing the cap on the water, I handed it over.

She took the bottle, our fingers touched, and I felt it—like a fucking blast wave.

Me, her, sex.

Her voice caught. “Thank you.”

Not getting the hell up like I should have, holding her on my lap like I was some kind of fucking hero, telling my dick to stand down, I cut to the intel I wanted. “Original question. You didn’t answer.”

“Which was?” She kept trying not to stare at my eyes.

I wanted her looking at me. “Did you shower on the boat?” Flipping the ice pack on her knee and palming it to hold it in place, I let my fingers land on her skin to see if she’d flinch.

She didn’t.

She shivered.

“Pardon?” Her gaze cut to her knee.

I applied pressure with my thumb and two fingers. “Simple question.” The answer was another story.

Her gaze drifting, her pulse hammering in her neck, she tried not to look where she’d gotten sick. “No.”

I didn’t put her back in the car. I didn’t let it go. “They touch you?”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t think that’s any of your—”

“Answer.”

Still holding that fucking breath, she clasped her hands like this was some kind of lesson on table manners and stared straight ahead. “Yes, of course they touched me. But not in the way you’re insinuating. At least, not to my knowledge.”

“Take inventory,” I demanded.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Self-assess.”

Her dark eyes met mine, and fire lit her attitude. “I was not sexually assaulted.”

“Underwear intact?”

Even in the dark, I saw her expression. The same damn one she’d had when she’d told me to shoot her instead of putting her in a dead asshole’s wetsuit. “Yes.”

I didn’t drop it because I fucking couldn’t. “You checked?”

“I’m done with this conversation.” She looked away, and the fire in her voice left with an exhale. “Besides, what would it matter now? Are you going to swim back to the remains of a yacht and defend my virtue?”

“No.” But I’d torture Carlos and every single one of his motherfucking guards before I blew them to hell.

“Then I reiterate my previous response.” She shifted on my lap. “I’m done with this conversation.”

I wasn’t. And if she shifted again, I was gonna pick her up and set her back down on my hard cock. “Why was your hair wet?” If she hadn’t taken a shower and they hadn’t fucked her or fucked with her, then what the hell had happened?

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Can we go?”

“No.”

“I would like to leave.”

So would I. As much I liked the hell out of applying pressure on her leg with the same three fingers I’d use to fuck her, the longer we sat here, the likelier we were to have someone see us. “Answer the question.”

The fire came back. Hot and full of anger, but tamped down by whatever bullshit manners or well-bred background she’d come from. “They threw water in my face. An entire bucket of it, actually. Is that what you want to hear? They drugged me, flew me halfway across the world, violated one of my favorite parts of Italy by ruining it with their presence, and they threw water in my face like I was an errant child or misbehaving canine.”

Carlos was a dead man. “Copy.”

“Copy what?” she snapped.

“Understood,” I amended.

“Excellent. I’m glad one of us does. Can we move on now, literally? Because sitting here next to my own vomit, on your lap, while you interrogate me is not on my bucket list, pun notwithstanding.” She made to get up.

Letting go of the ice pack, I snaked a second arm around her waist. “Why?”

Mirroring my movements, she dropped her hand from her temple. “Why what?”

“The water.”

Her gaze went to where she’d been sick, and I knew before she opened her mouth. “I made a mess on their yacht. Carlos’s bodyguard wasn’t impressed when it happened a second time.”

A new fucking level of anger unlocked. “He tried to drown you?”

“No. I told you he threw the water in my face. Or someone else did. I’m not entirely sure who did it. I was bent over the railing.”

That motherfucker. “Voluntarily?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m not paid to think.”

“Just to ask the questions?”

“Explain bent over the railing.” Because I was starting to seriously fucking lose my shit.

“Apparently, he didn’t want me getting sick inside the yacht again. Now, I am truly done discussing it. Do you have toothpaste in that bag of tricks?”

Bag of tricks. Fuck me.

I reached into my go bag.