Page 67 of Savage Redemption

The buttons part. She slips the shirt off to reveal a pale-cream lacy bra.

I open my mouth to utter more in the way of discouragement, but the words die in my throat.

She slides the shirt from her body and drops it to the carpet, to be closely followed by the bra.

I find my voice. “Rosie. Stop. Listen to me…”

She obliges me at last. Hitching her hip on the arm of the sofa, she regards me with interest. “What is it you want to say, Adan?”

What indeed?I find myself momentarily mesmerised by the delightful sight of her naked breasts. She was always a slender little thing, still is, but her breasts seem fuller now. Motherhood, perhaps. I give my head a mental shake. This isn’t right, not after what I did.

Not after how it was between us.

“We need to talk.”

“Okay. Talk.” She lifts a delicately arched eyebrow. “But be quick. I don’t have all day.”

I stifle my grin. She was never this sassy. I find I rather like it. “I’ll try not to hold you up,amor, but I need some answers from you first.”

“First? So, you are going to?—?”

“Answers,” I repeat, cutting her off in a belated attempt to regain some sort of control here.

She shrugs. “Okay. Ask your questions.”

I start with the one that’s been swirling round my head ever since Bartosz told me that he had phoned her father to get him to come and collect her. Rosie had asked him to do that, or more specifically, she appealed to Bartosz’s wife to help her by contacting her family and telling them where she was.

“Why didn’t you ask me to contact your father?”

“What?”

I’ve clearly caught her off guard. I repeat my question. “If you were so desperate to go home, why didn’t you say so? I would have contacted your father. You weren’t a prisoner.”

She tips up her chin. “Wasn’t I? I certainly felt like one.”

“Oh yes, initially. I get that. In the US and with my cousins. I know you were treated like dirt by some seriously nasty bastards. But that wasn’t me. I didn’t do that.”

“You were a gangster, or Mafia, or whatever they call it. I was terrified of you.”

“Were you?” I’m genuinely surprised. “I didn’t threaten you, or… or ill treat you. Did I?”

“No, but…”

I close the distance between us and cup her face between my hands. “Tell me why you were frightened,micorazón.What did you think I might do?”

“Y-you had all the power. You could do anything, anything you liked. No one would stop you. If I was a nuisance, if I stopped co-operating, stopped being sweet and obedient, you’d just sell me and get another girl to fuck.”

“Oh, Christ…” I drop my head to rest my forehead against hers. “You thought that? You actually believed…?” It becomes clear to me at last, the blatant glaring truth that was staring me in the face. “Rosie, I would never have done that.”

“Well, I didn’t know. And I couldn’t take the risk. You were always nice to me, until, suddenly, one day, you weren’t.”

“What do you?—?”

“Oh, that day never came. We were attacked in that cottage. You were taken prisoner, I was released. It was all over. You never had the chance to get bored with me.”

“It would never have been like that. If things had not been right between us, I would never have passed you on like some old used car.”

“I was property. I was told that often enough.”

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