Page 16 of Stolen By the Mafia King
No other woman and heplannedfor this. The jealous creature inside me purrs. “When you discovered the plot to kill me.”
He half smiles. “Something like that.”
“You bought these clothes? You went into a shop?” I can’t imagine it.
Grant shrugs. “My PA did, on my instructions. He wasn’t massively happy, but he knows better than to say so. And it pleased me to have things I thought you’d like.”
It should feel creepy. But it doesn’t. It feels warm and nurtured. All the time I was furious with the world, it was reading the secrets of my heart like fortune cookie papers and stashing them away for safekeeping.
“Nothing makes me happier than taking care of you.” He frames my face with his hands and kisses me and the envious feeling dissipates like dew under the sunlight of his attention.
Downstairs, we walk through the lobby where last night he caught me, dragged me to floor, held me down, and tore an orgasm from me.
After everything that has happened already this morning, I blush even as I can’t help but look at the room with my professional eyes. It’s a beautiful space, but too cool and a little lifeless. It needs a mirror on each side, flowers on that table and a modern landscape on the wall behind the stairs to bring the outside in. If you put a banana tree in a ceramic pot to the left at the bottom of stairs, or maybe a lemon, you’d see it as you came through the door—I turn, thinking through the visual path, to find Grant looking at me with indulgent amusement.
Ah. Right. I’m being weird.
“Does it meet your exacting standards?” he asks mildly.
“No.” Obviously, yes. Except it makes my fingers itch to sketch then acquire the few details that would make it welcoming and not just impressive.
“What would you change?” He sinks his hands into his pockets and though I shake my head, he silently outwaits me.
“You need…” I tap my finger on my chin. “Paintings to start with.”
He nods and makes an affirmative sound.
And that apparently is all the encouragement I need, because I’m off. Pointing at spaces and saying what I’d add. It’s probably a ten-minute rant, but he doesn’t seem to tune out, or tell me I’m ridiculous or boring. He just listens, the light of a smile in his eyes.
“And that’s about it,” I finish eventually, running out of steam like a wind-up toy. I’m a smidge embarrassed. I shouldn’t have rattled on from a polite question and a tiny bit of encouragement.
“You have a day to alter everything in this house to your taste. Since it is so clearly lacking,” he adds drolly.
Only one day. That’s our deal. It’s too easy to forget and think this is more than a fun diversion for a rich man. I don’t want this to end at midnight, but what chance is there of a billionaire kingpin wantingme?
Young. Inexperienced. Not even rich compared to him. So naive I didn’t realise my brother was tapping my phone. What do I have to offer a man like Grant Lambeth?
Nothing.
And that thought makes a thread of genuine fear go through me for the first time since my kidnap.
7
GRANT
She eats toast like she’s filling her slim legs with it. I smirk a little that she’s hungry. Yes, a lot has happened since dinner last night. But orgasms do make a person snackish.
I provide coffee that she drinks with milk and sugar. I sip my espresso rather than gulping it down in one as I usually do. Breakfast with my future wife. I savour it.
I’m quite enjoying the constant hard-on from her presence. I’ve jerked off night after night for years, thinking of her, trying to get relief. I roughly fisted my cock, the edge of pain a penance for my obsession, so many times after seeing her, as I envisioned her naked body, pliant and soft. I want the next time I come to be a bond between us. Preferably me coming deep inside her. Then nine months from now…
“What shall we do today?” I ask when she leans back after eating half a loaf of bread and I’ve had my usual eggs, spinach and toast that she side-eyed but didn’t comment on as she slathered chocolate spread and marmalade onto yet more toast.
“I’m at your disposal, that was the deal,” she points out. “And you’re going to be my personal jailer, right?”
“Yes.” I’ll be anything she needs me to be.
“Glad I won’t be locked up in solitary confinement again,” she jokes, but I see the seriousness of the comment.
