Page 192 of Phantom Mine

In the minute since I’ve been gone, the fire encroached almost an entire foot onto this floor.

I don’t waste another second.

Hoisting the axe above my head, I bring it down with violent savagery and a ferocious roar. It strikes the center of the door and splits it in half. I jerk it back to release it and swing it immediately back down, connecting two blows together.

Again and again, I hoist and swing the axe until the wood splinters off. Through the slit, I make out the bottom half of a body. Feet in shoes I know well, ankles I’d recognize anywhere from having had them on either one of my shoulders. Legs. An ass.

With a bellow, I toss the axe aside, shift my weight into my back foot and drive my front one into the weakened wood.

It shatters on impact.

The remnants of the doors fly open, and I burst through.

The force of my kicks sends me sprawling to the floor on the other side. Pain shoots through my side but I ignore it, crawling instead on my hands and knees to Valentina.

Staying low helps me avoid the black smoke that billows into the room and rises up to the ceiling.

Finally, after what feels like a hundred excruciating lifetimes, I reach her and my heart jumps into my throat.

She stares up at me from the floor, her face streaked with tears, her lips stretched cruelly by the gag between her teeth. Then her eyes find mine. Relief explodes in them before it disappears behind a fresh sheen of tears.

An emotional grunt erupts past my lips and I lunge at her.

With one hand, I rip the restraint off her mouth. The other wraps around her waist and crushes her to my chest in the same heartbeat.

“Valentina,” I cry, breathing again. “Valentina.”

I realize it wasn’t just the fire making it impossible to get air into my lungs.

“Matteo,” she whimpers, her face turned into my neck, her voice muffled against my throat.

“Oh, thankfuck. Thank fuck,cara. Thank fuck you’re okay.” There’s a raw desperation in my voice that echoes around us. I run a comforting hand through hair, holding her tightly enough to suffocate. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

I yank the shirt around my face down to my throat and find her mouth. The kiss is hard and messy, a clash of desperate lips and greedy tongues and frantic hands as I cling to her like a drowning person does to a life raft.

“Leni.” A strangled sob wrenches from my throat, surprising me. The emotion pours out of me now that she’s back in my arms. “I love you,” I murmur against her lips. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Each declaration is punctuated with bruisingly hard kisses.

Valentina shakes in my arms but her voice is strong when she whispers against my mouth, “I love you too.”

Feeling her body against mine calms a beast I didn’t realize was loose until the moment it feels her presence and settles down.

I hate having to release her for even a second, but she’s still tied to the chair and I hate that more. I free her ankles first. When I reach behind her for her hands, I find them covered in blood. A blade is clutched between her fingers and there’s a fraying in the rope where she must have been sawing at it.

“Brave girl,” I murmur, holding her hands without hurting her bleeding palms.

Valentina shakes her hands free and throws her arms around my neck with a sob. Her hands claw at my nape and her hair flies into my face. She smells like soot and fire, but right beneath it there’s the familiar scent of her.

“I thought I was going to die,” she admits shakily, burying her face back into my neck.

My arms tighten around her and I pull her desperately closer, wishing I could fold her into my body and keep her protectively there while I figure a way to get us out of here.

“Not on my fucking watch,” I growl.

“I knew you’d come,” she cries, wetting my neck with tears. “I knew you’d come for me, I just didn’t know if you’d make it in time.” Soft lips find my pulse point and then she’s pressing open-mouthed kisses up the column of my throat and along my jaw.

The animal inside me wants to beat its fists on its chest at her words. My girl knew nothing would keep me from her.

“He underestimated how desperate I’d be to get to you.” I cup ner nape and turn my face to press my lips into her hair. “Idiot.”

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