“The beguilement from the dream has worn off,” he told her. “Whatever you feel is real, and what you choose to do about it is all your own.”
He pulled her hair to one side and put his lips to the bite mark at her neck. Her pulse fluttered like a butterfly and her breathing hitched. His arms tightened and then he let her go and stepped back. She turned around, disheveled and bewildered. Graceful bare feet gleamed pale against the neutral beige of the carpet, her toes painted a glossy red. She looked delicate and delicious and his groin tightened.
He ignored it. “We should go.”
She nodded, trying to tuck flyaway strands of hair behind her ears. “Yes, of course we should. How long did we rest?”
“Couple hours.” He turned away, fighting to control his reaction to her.
“There’s time to clean up, then. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower and change. I won’t be long.” She hurried down the hall.
Dragos angled his head and watched her leave. He still didn’t like that image of her walking away.
Someday you will trust me. Then you will tell me what more there was to the dream and why you were so shaken. You will not be afraid of me and you will tell me all your secrets. And then you will be mine.
He smiled. She didn’t realize he was still on the hunt. Good. It was better that way.
In the bedroom, Pia grabbed the second new outfit she had bought along with underwear, a pair of blue jean capris and a lemon yellow stretch T-shirt with capped short sleeves and a scalloped neck. Only one more new outfit to go. At the rate she was dirtying things, she was going to have to do laundry or buy more clothes.
She closed the bathroom door, feeling silly as she locked it. Like that and the U.S. Army would keep him out if he chose to get in. She shook her head, started the shower, stripped and stepped in.
The warm water gushed over her head and body, soothing achy, tired places. She hissed when it hit her abraded knees. Working fast, she washed her hair with proper shampoo, sighing with relief as she worked conditioner through it and the ropy length became softer and more manageable. Then she soaped the rest of her body, rinsed, dried and dressed. She brushed her hair and pulled it back with a yellow scrunchie, threw the toiletries back into the shopping bag and stepped out of the bathroom.
Dragos had stretched out on the rumpled covers. He made the queen-sized bed look small and cramped. She ran into an invisible wall when she saw him. He lay on his back, eyes closed, one hand behind his head, the other resting on that long washboard stomach.
He had removed the bloodstained shirt and wore only his jeans and boots. The shoulder wound still shone white against the bronze skin. His ribs rippled under heavy pectorals and dark nipples puckered against the cool air. He had washed too, the inky sprinkle of hair still damp on that truly inhuman chest. His head was damp too. She caught the scent of clean male.
As with every room he entered, he owned the bedroom just by being there. She shivered and rummaged for her last clean shirt, a long-sleeved button-down. After she tore off the tags, she put it on and wore it like a jacket, since the hoodie had had such a short life span.
His presence was too overwhelming. She could not bring herself to sit near him on the edge of the bed. Instead she crouched to slip on anklet socks and her tennis shoes. Her gaze darted from Dragos to her various belongings scattered around the room. She looked at her backpack with the documentation for three new identities and almost a hundred thousand dollars. Then she looked back at the supine male.
“Are you ready?” she asked. She sounded as winded as if she had run a marathon. She went around the room and collected her belongings, stuffing them into another shopping bag.
“Yes,” he said. He took a deep breath and sighed. It was an awe-inspiring sight. She licked her lips and tried to think of other things. “You don’t need those other identities,” he told her. “I like the name Pia Alessandra Giovanni. It suits you.”
Shit. Three very expensive well-constructed identities down the toilet. And the others were back in New York. “I can’t believe you!” she exploded. “That was my stuff! You had no right to look at it.”
“Of course I did,” he said.
How did he manage to come up with that? She threw one of the shopping bags at him. He must have been watching her with his eyelids slit. In a movement that looked lazy yet was very fast, he caught the bag with one hand. “I bet you counted the money too!” she snapped.