Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109562 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109562 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
“You’re not.” In two long strides, he’s next to me. “You’re going to take a deep breath, and then you’re going to eat whatever you can stomach. The food is from a good restaurant. The chef is one of the best in the city.”
I don’t get him. I stare at his handsome features as he leads me to a chair. “Why?”
“Why what?” he asks, seating me.
“Why are you doing this?”
He straightens and looks at me with a serious expression. “I’m not a baby killer.”
No, just a cold-blooded murderer. “Oh.” I can’t help but get in a jibe. “And here I was thinking you were just making sure your alibi doesn’t die on you before the police investigation is over.”
I know exactly when he reaches his limit. I see it in the coldness that settles in the bottomless depths of this strikingly blue eyes.
“Careful, tesoro.” His voice is low and menacing as he curls his fingers around my shoulder. “You don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you.”
Heat seeps from his palm through the layers of clothes into my skin. It’s not a soft, comfortable warmth. It’s a scorching inferno. I understand the quiet message only too well.
“That’s better,” he says with a calculated smile when I don’t argue further, not removing his touch as he takes a seat next to me.
His grip is light, but the weight on my shoulder is heavy. He dips a fork into a box and twists spaghetti around it. When he brings the fork to my mouth, I don’t have a choice but to open.
Despite my hunger, I’m queasy. The creamy, peppery sauce with a hint of pesto and parmesan cheese must be scrumptious, but right now, everything tastes like sawdust.
I allow him to feed me bite by bite until the container is empty.
“There,” he says, dabbing at my lips with a paper napkin. “You did well.”
The intimate act makes my cheeks heat. My emotions are all over the place. Terror, exhaustion, and shock are muddled together, blurring the lines of acceptable behavior. It inhibits my reasoning, making it difficult to interpret the non-verbal clues of his body language, because the heat that sparked in his gaze when he wiped that napkin over my lips can’t mean what I think it does.
I rub my eyes, fighting for clarity through the mess in my head.
“Let me have a look at those cuts on your back so that you can get to bed,” he says.
“It’s just a few scratches.”
He stands, offering me a hand. “I’m not going to repeat myself.”
As with everything else, it’s futile to resist. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. I don’t let him help me up. Ignoring his proffered hand, I stand. The sudden movement must’ve made the blood drop to my feet, because a dizzy spell makes me sway. He catches me around the waist, rightening me.
“Easy now,” he says. “Your blood sugar level probably dropped too low. You shouldn’t wait so long between meals. It’s better to eat smaller meals more frequently, especially as the baby grows bigger and presses on your stomach.”
I want to ask how he knows this, but it takes all my focus not to fall over as the room starts spinning.
“Here,” he says in an oddly gentle way, taking my elbow and guiding me to the lounge.
He makes me sit on the sofa and takes a seat next to me. My gaze falls on a medicine kit on the coffee table.
“Where did that come from?” I ask.
Gripping the hem of my T-shirt, he lifts it to expose my back. “My driver brought it with the food.”
The swipe of his fingertips over my spine makes me shiver. Goosebumps contract my skin.
I arch away from his touch. “This is really not necessary.”
“Stop fussing,” he says with a chuckle, pressing a big, broad hand between my shoulder blades and pushing me forward. “Are you always this difficult?”
I want to protest with a retort, but his palm on my naked back makes me freeze. The warmth of the fingers he splays over my ribcage seeps into my body, making me aware of how frozen I feel inside. That heat can melt a glacier.
Yet it’s not his warm hand that turns me into a statue. It’s how he trails his blunt nails over my back, tracing the red lines I saw in the mirror when I’d gotten out the shower. More goosebumps run over my arms and down my sides. Despite the lightness of the touch, it feels intimate. Terrifying. Because the man who takes a bottle of disinfectant from the medicine kit and tells me in a weirdly regretful tone that it’s going to burn, owns every breath I take. I’m completely at the mercy of this beautiful, cruel killer.
I’m not keen on blindly letting him tend to me, so I rest my chin on my shoulder, observing him as he gets to work.