“Please?” I mumble. “Adriano?”

His furious green eyes find mine. “When I’m done fucking you, you’ll leave the country?”

“Yes. Anything you want, Mr. Rossi.”

His mouth becomes a tight line. “You fucking liar, telling me whatever I want to hear. Maybe you won’t go to Colombia on your own. Maybe I’ll follow you.”

I shudder.

“Don’t like that, do you?”

I shake my head.

He drops onto his elbows, the hair on his chest brushing my nipples. “Too fucking bad. I know how to follow people without them seeing. I’ve done it to you for years.”

He strokes his cock through my folds and I whimper. His mouth has me so on edge that I can hardly think, and as scary as the rope is, I’m glad it’s there. It means I’m being forced to this. To feel this way.

“Maybe wherever you end up I’ll get an apartment nearby,” he mutters. “Maybe you’ll feel me watching you while you go to work. While you sleep at night.”

I imagine Adriano out there, looking through dark windows and standing just out of sight on the packed streets where I make my new home. A feeling I didn’t expect comes over me. Warmth.

“Maybe I’d feel safe,” I whisper. “Maybe I’d feel like you were protecting me.”

He shudders, big shoulders shaking, then he reaches up and releases the rope holding my hands. I let them fall to the bedhead, throbbing with blood.

“I can be your pet monster,” Adriano mutters. “Come out at night and fuck you while you’re unconscious. You’ll have no idea until all your kids come out looking like me.”

I should be terrified, but there’s a note in his voice that if it was sung would make me cry. I brush a hand over his back feeling the smooth furrows of scar tissue. “Adriano, I’m not afraid anymore. I’m giving myself to you.”

He throws his head back, avoiding my eyes. His fist is still pumping his tattooed cock and I can see a pearly droplet swelling at the head. “I don’t want what you have to give,” he says.

“But…”

“You’re already mine, January.”

Everything inside me goes still.

“I watched you dance and you were mine. Parker wants your last name. Your stepmother wants money. The others want your body, but I saw you. I watched you dance. And every night since I’ve dreamed about you.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t think.

“Your hair. Your mouth…”

Adriano’s free hand traces my lips. Then he screws his eyes shut, discomfort and embarrassment warring on his face.

The frenzied death I thought was gone, hovers close again. If I upset this man right now, if I offend him, he will kill me just to save his heart. I touch his scarred cheek. “Adriano, I need to go. I need to see my Zia.”

His green eyes bore into mine. “I saw you.”

My heart aches, because he did. He watched me dance when no one else would. Too tall and too busty to be a ballerina, he didn’t care.