Page 3 of Scorned Beauty (Scorned Fate #5)

Chest heaving, I tried to fight the laughter bubbling up my throat.

I failed.

Laughter erupted straight from my belly, the force of my amusement so huge, it was like the sight of Dom struggling to get up from the bushes sent a pin to a distended tension balloon that finally found release.

With tears in my eyes, I approached his flat-on-his-back form. He was cursing and grunting, but his struggles got him nowhere.

“Oh my God, are you all right?” I asked a coherent question in between fits of humorous exhalations.

His glare sliced me into ribbons. “I can’t believe you’re laughing. Help me up.”

I extended my arms and braced my legs while sucking in my spine. An instinct honed from years of hauling heavy things around, including people. That was why when I did my clinical hours, especially in assisted living homes, I was a favorite.

Dom gripped my hands, and I gave him a heave out of the bushes.

Our bodies collided. I lost my breath and became very aware of the heat of his body plastered to me like I was beside a furnace.

We’d never been this close. I kept my eyes level with his chest. A sassy reply refused to form.

Words dried up in my throat. His arms swooped around me, his hands molding to my waist before sliding down my hips.

I wasn’t sure if it was to steady himself, or he was copping a feel.

A pulse of excitement made itself known below my belly.

Dammit. No. No.

His gaze was intent. He was breathing as hard as I was, and this close, I caught a whiff of breath mint. I attempted to pry myself away, but he hauled me back against the hard length of him.

I couldn’t do this.

I wasn’t going to get mixed up with Dom. I would patch him up and call him a ride if I had to.

I swallowed and tried to speak, but no words would come. A connection short-circuited between us, and he was aware of it, too. I wasn’t na?ve. I was aware of my looks and he already said I made him hard in the van.

My amusement still hovered, making it hard to keep a straight face. It probably saved us from a point of no return. It was Dom who spoke first.

“Not a word,” he breathed. “That was embarrassing.”

I could only nod as a silent laugh shook my chest.

“I fell and could have had a concussion and you laughed at me,” he said in an exaggerated, wounded voice.

Bianca once said that Dom was a drama queen, a trait he inherited from the Moretti side of the family.

“Do you need help to walk now?” I tried to inject compassion into my voice.

A man exiting the building saved him from answering. It was Phil Harding, my neighbor who looked like he lived in the gym. He’d asked me out on a date once, but I declined. I hadn’t seen him in weeks. He said he was in sales.

“Everything all right?” he asked. “Saw you took a tumble into the bushes, man.”

Oh my God, he had to point it out.

Dom tightened his arms around me. An air of possessiveness fuming from his side.

“He had a bit too much to drink,” I put in hastily. “Can you hold the door open, Phil?”

“Sure, doll.”

Dom grunted as we passed my neighbor. He was still plastered to my side, but he didn’t say another word.

I hoped he wasn’t plotting Phil’s demise.

Working with the mob, I knew a few of them were on a trigger and the slightest provocation could mean death.

But I also knew the De Luccis were of the more reasonable breed.

I had no clue about the Moretti side of the family except Dom’s uncle, who, according to Bianca, had the violent streak of a sociopath.

Although someone once said to be in the mafia, you had to be part sociopath.

“I’m on the fifth floor,” I told Dom. “And I wouldn’t trust the elevators.”

Another grunt.

Okay, then.

We made our way up the staircase. I was on his right side. His uninjured side. He had one arm around me while the other was holding the banister. At around the third floor, his weight sagged in to me.

“Want to rest?”

A clipped “No” was his answer, so we soldiered on.

As we neared my floor, I was wondering about my stupidity in taking Dom home with me.

What if he coded in my apartment or died?

I sure as hell wasn’t calling an ambulance or the police.

Kolya’s face flashed through my head. Nope.

I would have to call Sandro. Having a Rossi mediate between me and the De Luccis…

that I was not responsible for Dom’s death.

I tripped on one of the steps and nearly sent us careening backward.

“What the—” he muttered. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Believe me, that’s the last thing I want.

” We reached the fifth floor and thankfully my apartment was the second door.

I had three other neighbors. All of us had one-bedroom apartments.

It was a relief when I let us into my place.

I turned on the hallway lights, took off my hat, and swiped the perspiration off my forehead. I was a tad out of breath.

“Okay, let me see.”

Dom just stared at me. His hands by his sides.

“What?” I pointed at his side. “Let me see.”

He quirked a brow. “No foreplay?”

“Dom,” I growled. “I’ve had a trying night, all right? Having to take care of a prima donna don wasn’t on my bingo card tonight.”

“Are you saying I’m high maintenance, Miss Scott?”

There went my nipples with the seductive way he said Miss Scott . What is wrong with me?

Thankfully, he started stripping. Rather, he shrugged off his suit jacket, and, even injured, he made it look sexy. Mentally shaking off my attraction to him, I focused on the task at hand. His upper left arm was bleeding too, and he was slow in unbuttoning his shirt.

I stepped forward. “Let me do it.”

He didn’t argue, and I did my best to ignore the heat emanating from his body, the way his breath feathered my hair or how my heart rate accelerated because of it.

When his white dress shirt came off to reveal an undershirt, I helped him out of it, too.

I slid into clinical mode, even when it was hard to ignore all the tanned skin and glorious ridges of muscle.

“I’ll throw this in the laundry for you. Your dress shirt is probably ruined. Come on.”

I dragged him into the bathroom where the lights were brighter and left him standing there to retrieve my emergency kit from under the sink. I hadn’t turned away from him two seconds before the sound of the shower turned on.

His fingers went to his trouser buttons.

“What are you doing?” I snapped.

“Getting clean.”

“Let me check your cut first.”

He rolled his eyes and waited for me to walk back to him. His arms hung loosely by his sides. I laid my kit on the counter and flipped the lid open to retrieve the mag light.

“You’re a terrible patient, you know that?” I shined the light on the slash at his side and palpitated the surrounding area.

“Any pain?”

“Not really. It just stings.”

The cut was still oozing blood, but it had slowed. It was deep, but not deep enough to do internal damage. Dom’s ab muscles saved him.

“You’re lucky.”

I grabbed a single-use soap from the kit. “Use this to clean yourself. It’s antibacterial.”

All the while, I avoided looking at his expression, but it was getting too obvious that I was uncomfortable to be alone with a half-naked Dom. I lifted my gaze, deliberately bypassing his exposed chest—damn those corded muscles of his shoulders—and settled on his face.

“You need me to help you remove your pants?” I gritted.

His eyes were glassy, and for a moment, I sympathized with him, but the arrogant smirk forming at the corner of his mouth chased away all my goodwill.

“It’ll help. Also, maybe you want to throw my boxers in the laundry too?”

I narrowed my eyes. “What exactly are you saying?”

“You’re a nurse, right?”

“A nursing student.”

“What would you say to a patient who has my injury?”

I grabbed a towel from under the cabinet and laid it on the vanity.

“Take off your clothes and put this on.”

He raked his teeth over his bottom lip. Dom didn’t move a muscle, but his gaze was veiled and his mouth twitched. “This should be interesting.”

Why was I still staring? I pivoted and escaped the sudden suffocating confines of the bathroom, shockingly inadequate to contain Dom’s overpowering presence.

I closed the door and leaned against it.

I let the devil into my domain and his name was Dominic De Lucci.

What have I done?