Page 29 of Corrupted Seduction

I sighed. “That’s it, huh? You don’t know anything else about her?”

“I’m afraid not. Oh! She’s deaf.”

“What?” My own hearing must have been playing tricks on me.

“Well, she’s not completely deaf. She can hear louder sounds in her left ear. I somehow doubt that has anything to do with the ‘real scumbag’ you were talking about, though.”

Heidi was deaf?

“How?” The question slipped out unbidden.

“I don’t know,” Raven replied as if the thought had never crossed her mind.

“Grazie, cugina,” I said, then hung up the phone a moment later.

I thought about all the time Heidi had spent watching me. I’d just chalked it up to the way any captive would watch her captor like a hawk. But she hadn’t just been keeping an eye on me; she’d been watching my lips. The few times I’d presumed she was giving me the silent treatment were actually moments when I’d been faced away from her, and she hadn’t been able to hear me.

Great detective work, asshole,my mind taunted.

I shook my head as I slid my phone into my pocket and continued on to Heidi’s room. Because whatever else she was, she was the woman who’d drawn Bianchi’s men here, the woman who’d gotten Aurelio shot. The woman Bianchi was using somehow.

“Let’s go,” I said the moment I opened the door. But she was standing at the window with her back to me, looking out at the forest that stretched for miles behind the cabin.

For one brief moment, fantasies of the woman flashed through my mind like a porn reel. Her hands cuffed behind her back, her tits thrust out toward me; her lips wrapped around my cock; her legs spread wide open, giving me access to every inch of her slick cunt.

My cock jerked.

Christ.

I crossed the room, but before I could tap her on the shoulder, she spun around. Either she could hear better than she let on at the hospital or she was very intuitive. Picking up vibrations in the floor, maybe? Noticing shadows out of the corner of her eye?

I opened my palm and held out the scraps of the tracker I was holding, curious to see how she’d respond.

Her dark brows drew together as her gaze flickered back and forth between my hand and my face. But now I could see how she’d managed to keep me fooled. Her gaze didn’t quite linger on my lips; it swept up them to my eyes and back down again. It looked watchful and wary, and nothing more.

I waited for her gaze to reach my lips on its next pass.

“Thiswas in the heel of your shoe,” I said, letting the scraps fall to the floor. “You were being tracked,” I explained—as if she didn’t already know. “You knew Bianchi would be coming for you. I’m guessing that’s why you’ve had no problem giving me a hard time.”

“I—”

“I suggest you be more careful from here on out, Heidi; you’ve got nobody coming to your rescue now.”

She glared at me, but before she could get out any more irascible remarks, I decided it was time to get this show on the road.

“It’s time to go,” I said, motioning for her to follow me.

“So soon? I was just starting to settle in,” she said, glaring defiantly. “Or is it that you have more men with holes in them you’d like me to patch up? I hope not,” she said, shaking her head with mock sympathy, “because I’m afraid I have a quota. Only one vile criminal per day.”

Christ.The woman had no sense at all.

“Move,” I instructed her in my not-so-nice voice. Maybe she couldn’t hear it, but I was pretty sure my expression spoke volumes.

It spoke loud enough, at least, that it got her hot ass moving, out of the room, through the kitchen, and past the dining table. When I punched in the code to unlock the door at the end of the room and swung it open, though, her feet stuttered to a stop.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, stumbling back.

I shrugged. “Nothing bad ever happens in basements,” I said off-handedly.

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