Page 57 of Cursebound
“I’m sorry.” He presses a gentle kiss on the stinging wound his teeth left behind. “I’ve hurt you.”
I place my palm on the side of his stubbled face and gaze into those impossibly dark eyes. At his lips, those magical lips, now shining with my blood. I smile and bury my fingers in the thick furrows of his hair. “You didn’t hurt me. You never hurt me. You’re bringing me back to life.”
CHAPTER 21
LUCA
As we fell asleep together, I thought about how amazing it felt to have her in my arms. I hadn’t realized how low my energy was getting. It’s been a nonstop crazy train since I was first sent to Liverpool—meeting her, the clusterfuck in Chicago, being on the run. Negotiating with Vincenzo.
Getting home and getting her to the safest place I could think of for the time being must have switched off at least some of my instincts, because I drifted off with her in my arms like a lovelorn sap. The sex blew my mind, but the way I feel about her is much more than sex. I love her. I will kill for her, and I will die for her.
We’re unlikely to get much peace in the near future, and on some basic level I knew that and let myself rest. All of which makes it especially jarring to be woken up by the sound of Moonface howling downstairs and Matteo hammering on my door.
I leap from the bed, still naked, and pull the door open. My friend looks me up and down and says, “There’s someone at the front, Boss.”
“Have we been breached?” I ask as Rosa stirs behind me. She’s naked in that bed, and the covers have slipped down to expose her breasts. Matteo seeing me nude is one thing, seeing her is entirely different.
“Look away, you dirty motherfucker!” I snarl, fully prepared to tear his head from his shoulders.
He laughs and holds up his hands in surrender as he turns and faces the opposite direction. “No breach, Boss,” he says, amusement in his voice. “Whoever it is, they rang the doorbell. Real polite-like.”
“What is it?” Rosa asks drowsily. “Is there a problem?”
She climbs out of bed, and I stare at her as she wanders the room, looking for her underwear. She doesn’t seem to care that Matteo is standing right here. “Fuck,” she says after stubbing her toe on the side of the bed. “What is wrong with me this morning? I feel like I’ve been hit by a pickup truck.”
Matteo sniggers, obviously assuming that the pickup truck in question is me, and I shove him hard in the back.
I follow him downstairs and into the control room, which is off the main living area. Pietro is shouting from one of the bedrooms, and we ignore him. There’ll be time to deal with him later.
I stand behind Matteo, looking over his shoulder at the screen that shows the front door. As I stare at it, Moonface comes along and licks my hands, obviously unsettled. Doorbells and people knocking trigger a part of her doggy brain that is still traumatized by being raised to fight. She can cope with gunfire fine, but many other sounds agitate her.
I pat her huge head and try to figure out who the hell is standing outside my top-secret safe house. It happens, of course—salespeople, delivery guys looking to leave a parcel for a neighbor, Girl Scouts selling cookies—but at the moment, I am hypervigilant.
The male standing on my stoop is obviously unhappy, wearing some kind of weird hat but no shirt and trying to hide in the scrap of shadow cast by the building. The attractive blond woman next to him waves her fingers up at the camera she shouldn’t have noticed.
I sense Rosa coming up behind me before I feel her hand on my ass, and she winks at me as she leans in between the two of us to get a better look. “Oh. That’s Donatella,” she announces breezily. “Don’t know who the guy is, though. Vamp from the way he’s sizzling.”
She’s right. There is a faint shimmer of heat coming from the bare skin of his chest.
“You told her where we were?” I ask. “You gave the fucking Agostini Seer my address?”
“Not technically,” she answers with a shrug. “I just left my phone on so she could track me. And chill the fuck out, will you? I trust her. She’s one of the good guys. Now are we going to let her in, or are you happy for her friend to fry?”
“I don’t think they’re friends,” Matteo chimes in. “She just grabbed his arm and held it in direct sunlight. Now it looks like she’s laughing.”
“Fuck’s sake,” I mutter. I’m surrounded by idiots.
“Let them in,” I snap. “But keep them in the kill room. And will someone please go and shut Pietro the fuck up before I end him?”
I move quickly down the stairs, Moonface at my heels, her claws skittering on the wood floors. She snarls and growls at the door as the bell rings again, one long continuous note as the damn Seer on my step keeps her finger on it.
“Stop ringing the fucking bell!” I shout, dragging Moonface back by her collar.
Matteo engages the defenses, and metal bars slam down at every doorway. At the bottom of the steps, Moonface and I stand on the other side of them.
The lock on the front door disengages and it opens. First through is the vamp, half thrown, half falling, and he lands on the parquet with a clatter and an agonized scream. I can smell his burning flesh from here, and as he crashes down, his weird hat falls off and rolls along the floor.
Next is the Seer—tall and elegant, with blond hair hanging straight down her back, she’s dressed head to toe in designer bullshit and wearing five-inch leopard-print heels. Subtle, she is not.