He exhaled in a huff. “Quit wrecking the place. It’s not yours.” For being a pompous lawyer’s brat, the woman sure didn’t know her manners. Damien stepped toward the little vixen and she balled her hands into fists.
“You’re not touching me.”
“You need to get naked before you pass out.”
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
Damien snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. I’ve got no interest in that teeny little body of yours. I’m trying to keep you alive.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and it only made her nipples stand at attention. The rings of darker skin shone through her shirt like beacons calling him forward.
Damien adjusted himself and bit back a grin. He’d always been a good liar.
“You keep staring at me like you want to rip my clothes off.”
Or not. He frowned. “Your clothes are soaking wet and you’re chilled to the bone. You need to warm up.” He tossed the comforter at her. “If you don’t get naked and wrap up in that, you’ll have more than blue fingers and toes to deal with.”
Mia glanced down at her fingers and a gasp slipped from her lips. She looked back up at him in shock.
Ding, ding, she finally got it. “Believe me now?”
She nodded. Her hands slipped under the edge of her shirt, but she didn’t take it off.
“What is it now, princess?”
“Can you…turn around?”
He rolled his eyes. “And give you a chance to hit me over the head with the other vase? Sure thing.” He motioned at her shirt. “It’s not like I can’t see it all already, honey.”
Despite the shivers that wracked her body, Mia’s cheeks turned pink. “So that’s a no?”
He didn’t bother to respond.
“Fine.”
Damn, she’s stubborn. Damien hadn’t known a woman so determined since…He pushed the thought aside. They weren’t anything alike.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and waited. Mia bit her lip.
“You’re not getting any warmer.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. It was such an unexpected act of defiance that Damien forgot to play the asshole.
He laughed.
And in that instant, Mia softened. Gone was the scowl and the angry brow. Exhaustion and surrender took their place. Her body shook and trembled and her eyes looked at him with something other than hate.
His hand twitched with the urge to comfort her. Damn it. Comforting wasn’t his thing. It never changed the facts. She was still his only way to get out of this mess.
Mia turned around and peeled the soaked shirt away. Damien forgot his troubles.
He had been honest when he’d told her the clothes didn’t hide much. But seeing her without them…Pure torture.
She shimmied out of her still-dripping shorts and Damien’s cock throbbed.
Firm and tight and big enough to hold onto, that ass of hers was what dreams were made of. Visions of her straddling him, bouncing up and down as she milked him dry, filled his mind. Fuck.
Mia grabbed the comforter, tugged it around her curves, and Damien closed his eyes. He’d never forget that body.
“Where do you want these?”
Damien blinked his eyes open and snatched the dripping clothes from her hands. “I’ll hang them up.”
“Thanks.”
He paused mid-step. Did she just thank me? He swallowed. “You’re welcome.” He held the soggy mess in his hand and strode into the kitchen. The sound of the blanket dragging across the floor followed behind him.
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
Damien wrung out her shorts in the kitchen sink. “Which time?”
“At my father’s house. When you opened the door to the closet, why didn’t you just kill me?”
The pink terry cloth twisted in his hands. “I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
He braced himself on the counter. “Believe what you want. I don’t need to tell you shit.”
The shorts would dry by morning. He laid them over the faucet and picked up her shirt. A scrap of a thing, he wasn’t sure it would survive much more.
“You don’t by any chance have any spare clothes laying about, do you?”
Damien smiled to himself. She’d read his mind. “I’ll check the bedrooms. There might be something.”
Mia stayed quiet behind him as he squeezed the water from her shirt. He hung it on the faucet next to the shorts and braced himself. He still wasn’t prepared when he turned around.
All innocence and vulnerability. Mia stood in the kitchen of a drug cartel’s safe house, caramel hair fanned out like a halo, white comforter fluffed around her shoulders like wings. She shouldn’t be there. And Damien sure as hell shouldn’t hand her over to Marcelo.