Page 94 of Stolen Seconds

I expected the first brush of his touch to cause me distress but instead I was met with a comfortable ease.

It was difficult to understand my bodies reactions when I stopped caring about them long ago but as Luca continued his ministration, he unintentionally healed a lost part of me.

He took his time carefully washing me, his fingers caressing my body in light strokes and the tenderness of his touch let the unshed tears from earlier fall freely.

My heart felt full, ready to ignite and burst from receiving affection in a way that had been foreign to me for a long time.

When he moved onto my hair, I held my breath as hemassaged my scalp, the lack of length evident as he quickly rinsed it.

“Turn around, sweetheart.”

He guided me to face him because apparently my mind was too messed up to understand what he was saying.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, his eyes blazing with intensity.

My mouth went dry as the water cascaded on us. Luca was pulling at my heartstrings, and I couldn’t stop the way he made me feel. He’d pierced his way into my life and sank himself into a part of me so deeply that I couldn’t place where he began, and I ended.

“Yes.”

He brushed his knuckles against my cheek softly and I leaned into his touch, completely mesmerized by the way he was looking at me.

There had to be a name for this chaos whirling inside my chest. It couldn’t be normal to have difficulty breathing because of someone, right?

Lost in my own thoughts, I hadn’t realized what Luca did until it was too late, the cool air brushing my bare eye. My flawed eye.

My lips quivered as I tried holding back my tears. “Why?” For some reason, Luca seeing my face marred was worse than him seeing my body.

“I told you to not hide from me,” he answered with zero hesitation. His fingers delicately traced my eye as if he wanted to engrave the crevices into his memory. “If only you could see yourself through my eyes, then perhapsyou’d understand the level of desperation I feel for you.Wantingyou.Needingyou.”

I should’ve been scared to hear such an admission from a man like him, but the emotion that strum through me wasn’t fear.

It was acceptance.

Submission.

He was mine.

Chapter 26

Irina

“I’m getting déjà vu by looking at you.”

I pushed the blanket off my face to glare at my best friend. “Did you just make a joke out of your trauma?”

“It’s called healing,” she retorted, climbing on the bed to lie beside me. “Lighten up.”

I couldn’tlighten up.It seemed that it was always one step forward and three steps back with Luca.

He had locked me in this room for a week now, tending to me like my own nurse during the day and holding me in his arms like a lover at night—even when I’d pretend that I didn’t want it.

Every day I’d ask him the same question of when he’d let me go. And every day he’d ignore me as if I’d never asked them in the first place.

I was angry. This constant push and pull between us drove me mad. I wanted him. Ihadhim. But I couldn’t ignore the circumstances.

It was futile warning him with the possibility of war between the Italian Mafia and the Russian Mafia, but he cared even less about that.

I hadn’t spoken to my father or Viktor since the accident, and their silence also terrified me. They had the means to come for me, which meant they were playing in the grand scheme of things. It was only a matter of time before they made their move.

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