Wicked Intentions

36

I think for a moment. “Like the Karpov situation?”

His eyes narrow. “You know him?”

“No. You mentioned him the night we had dinner with your friends at the resort restaurant.”

Ryan looks pleased. “You were payin’ attention.”

Like a big baby, I hide my face under his forearm. “I paid attention to everything you said.”

“Yeah?” he murmurs, his voice warm. “And why’s that, Angel?”

I don’t reply. What can I say? Because everything you said was interesting? Because I was infatuated with you from the moment I laid eyes on you? Because you’re beautiful and sexy and so adorable, it melts my black heart?

No. Obviously I’m not saying any of that.

Ryan dips his head and nuzzles my ear. “Just admit it. I dazzle you,” he whispers, then softly laughs.

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“Take off your clothes.”

“Bossy!”

“We’ve already established that you like that, so do as you’re told and get naked, cowboy. This room is only rented for one night.”

There’s a wicked gleam in his eyes that hints at secret plans. But he’s not the only one with plans. He might be a good bloodhound, but I’m an even better escape artist. No matter what he’s got planned for me, I’ll be gone before he can play it out.

I don’t want to go, but doing what I want is a luxury I don’t have. I’ve got the world’s largest blue diamond to steal within ten days. Time’s a wastin’.

“I think you should take off my clothes,” says Ryan, “since you have so much makin’ up to do and all.”

“If I do, will you tell me how you found me?”

“No. Duh.” He pauses. “But I will if you leave with me tonight.”

“Leave? What do you mean, leave?”

“You’ve got a nice big vocab, Angel, I think you know the meanin’ of the word.”

My heart thuds at a thunderous volume, like a fat person clomping down stairs. Is he saying what I think he’s saying? “So…just to clarify…”

“You come back to New York with me and let me take care of your situation so we can get started on our happily ever after.”

My mouth is open. I can’t get it to close. I can’t get any words to come out of it, either. I just stare up at him in disbelief while he smiles calmly down at me like he’s just suggested we order in for pizza.

“You’re cute when you’re speechless, Angel. Can’t wait to see what happens when I get down on a knee and—”

“Stop it! And stop calling me Angel! Get off me!”

“No, no, and no.” He refuses to budge as I try to wrestle him off. The damn man is too big, too strong, and too stubborn to move an inch.

In that maddeningly reasonable way he has, he says, “You think this kinda s**t happens every day? You think two people meet and have thermonuclear chemistry and make each other laugh and have mind-blowing s*x, and then one of them steals a fifteen-million-dollar necklace and disappears and the other one finds the first one within a few days and breaks into her hotel room and almost gets stabbed but ends up on top of her in bed?”

When I don’t respond because I’m too mind-f****d to answer, Ryan says, “The answer to all that is no. Now get on board, Angel, because this train has already left the station.”

After a long time, I manage to say, “Who told you how much the necklace was worth?”

He sighs like I’m the biggest i***t who’s ever lived. “You have a bad habit of focusing on all the wrong things, you know that?”

I blow out a breath and close my eyes because my clomping heart is making me dizzy. I say in a strangled voice, “That’s an amazing offer, cowboy, but I can’t leave with you. It would be a death sentence for someone I love.”

He’s quiet for a moment, stroking a thumb over my earlobe, then he presses the softest of kisses to my jaw. “Mariana, I can help you. That isn’t bullshit. It isn’t ego. It’s the truth. I’ve got a team of badass motherfuckers trained by the United States military in heroics and general mayhem who can be here within hours to back me up. We’ll get your people, and then we’ll get the f**k outta Dodge.”

“There’s nowhere I can run! They’ll find me!”

“Who will?”

I open my eyes. Ryan stares down at me with dangerous intensity burning in his gaze. It breaks my heart how serious he is about helping me.

He doesn’t realize I’m a lost cause, or that I’ve already got one foot out the window.

“The monsters.”

“Not if I get them first.”

I want to scream in frustration. “You don’t understand—”

“So educate me.”

“I can’t!”

“You keep sayin’ that word. Like you forgot you have somethin’ called free will.”

I say bitterly, “Free will is for people who haven’t sworn blood oaths to—”

The words die in my mouth. Horror at my blunder rises up in their place. When I look up at Ryan, a wolf is looking back down at me.

“Blood oath?” he repeats, deadly soft. “We talkin’ Cosa Nostra? The Sicilian mob?”

My entire body breaks out in goose bumps. I say firmly, “No.”

His laugh is short and dark. “Oh, okay. Sure. That was totally believable.”

I turn my face to his arm and close my eyes again, cursing myself for my stupidity and him for seeing through me like a pane of clear glass, which no one—with the possible exception of Reynard—ever does.