Page 38 of Captured Fantasy

“What?”

“I need it wet,” he said impatiently. “I don’t want to use my saliva. Bacteria.”

“I don’t care if you do,” I said.

A shock of electricity moved between us and I knew he felt it too. For a moment, he just stared down at me. Then he bent his dark head over my lap and spat onto my inner thigh. A ripple of arousal moved through my cold body. Maybe this was what I needed to drive out the grief and ice permeating my bones. Perhaps all it would take was Cosimo Barone’s warm touch to make me human again.

He drew back and wiped the blood from my thigh.

“It’s a scrape, looks worse than it is,” he said.

He crumpled the napkin and tossed it on the truck floor. Then he turned me in the seat and leaned across my body, almost touching his chest to my breasts as he reached for the seatbelt. When I was buckled in, he shut the door to circle the truck.

When I turned to look out the back window, I saw him pause and adjust his belt. For the first time in a while, I smiled.

He handed me a blanket as he got into the driver’s side. I wrapped it around my body, stilling as his hand came up. The backs of his fingers brushed over my forehead.

“No fever,” he murmured.

“I’m not sick,” I said quickly.

We pulled out into the neighborhood and he moved slowly down my street. I took a shuddering breath and turned to look up at his rigid profile.

“What are we supposed to do?” I whispered.

He glanced at me. “Support Amadeo, help them out in any way we can. Help him give Carolina the best, most comfortable six months of her life. But beyond that, we have to keep on living like we always have.”

My throat was dry. I knew this. I’d been through the slow pain of my father’s illness. I’d suffered through that awkward time between his diagnosis and his death, where we’d pretended everything was normal. Because what else were we supposed to do? Exist in a state of grief and misery every day until he breathed his last?

No, for Carolina’s sake, we had to live. She deserved normalcy.

We didn’t speak as he drove into the garage and turned off the engine. He got out and circled the car to open my door.

“Step out and I’ll wrap you up and carry you,” he said.

“I’m—”

“It wasn’t a request, Mrs. Russo.”

Heat shot down between my thighs. For a moment, I just sat there and tried to sort out my feelings. Normally I hated being ordered around by men. I’d been doing that my whole life. But this was different. This wasn’t about getting what he wanted, it was about me for once. And I’d never had a man be so worried about my well-being before.

He shielded me from the neighbors as I stepped out. With gentle hands, he wrapped me in the blanket and carried me into the house. As we moved upstairs to my bedroom, I was acutely aware of the muddy footprints he was making all over my cream carpet. He, on the other hand, was completely oblivious.

He laid me down on the bed. “I’m going to run you a bath and then make a phone call,” he said, straightening. “You need to get out of those clothes.”

He went into the bathroom and the faucet squeaked, water spattering into the bathtub. Then I heard him talking quietly and I tilted my head, trying to make out what he was saying.

“I found her, she was in the cemetery,” Cosimo said in a low voice. “She’s a little scraped up, but nothing serious.”

There was a long silence.

“No, but I’ll talk to her and make sure.”

Cosimo appeared in the doorway, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “Let me carry you in, you’re still shivering.”

I shook my head, getting to my feet despite my legs wobbling. “Who was that on the phone?”

“Federico,” he said. “Your neighbor saw that your door was open and the house was empty so he called the first name on your emergency list on the fridge. Both Federico and Lucien have had people out looking for you since five this morning.”

---