She loved him even more for that. “I don’t want to do something wrong, Gino. Not for you.” But really, she was beginning to have much more confidence in them. They fit. They could do anything together. She wasn’t as weak a link as she had first thought. That knowledge was growing stronger in her every day with him and the others. “You can’t go.” Just thinking it, let alone saying it, sent panic skittering through her.
He kissed her again. Long. Hot. Wet. Taking away the anxiety. He kissed her until she forgot to be afraid of anything and there was only the two of them, locked together in the privacy of his room. When he lifted his head, she chased him, one arm hooking around his neck to pull him back down to her. She kissed him, teasing with her tongue, stroking along his until he was growing in her again, stretching her until she felt tight and he felt hot and hard. He rocked in her, sending little tremors spreading through her body like a building wave of pure heat.
“You make us a home, Zara,” he said, “however you want that home to be. I want to come home to you. If you’re there, it’s going to be perfect.”
“I don’t know things,” she reminded.
“Then we’ll have fun doing them together. Furniture hunting, decorating. I want our home to be yours, baby, and whatever that is, it will be perfection.”
He suddenly pulled out of her, flipped her over and brought her hips back to him so he could surge deep. The contrast between his gentle and his rough sent her careening right over the edge. That didn’t stop him. He pistoned into her, pulling her hips back into him with every stroke. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Only feel. Over and over, until she was lost in him and everything was gone from her mind. Every worry. Every silly detail that had been looping there, making her fear she would disappoint him.
There was only Gino and the way he made her feel. Beautiful. Perfect. His. Made for him. Then there was only their bodies, soaring together, his hoarse cry mixed with hers. He collapsed over her, pinning her to the sheets, both of them trying desperately to catch their breath.
The love she had for him was stronger than anything she’d ever known. She was better for being with him. She knew that. And she knew he would be better for being with her. There was that cold, dark place in him he could disappear into. It was dangerous there. The more he went, the easier it was to get lost. He would be in that place when he hunted Zhu. She knew it just as she knew he slipped in and out of it more easily than any human being should.
She closed her eyes and took long, deep breaths, trying to find a way to make him understand it wasn’t worth risking his going after Zhu. Gino had gotten too comfortable with that side of himself. It had probably saved his sanity. Trauma had pushed him there when he was a child, and Ciro Spagnola had deliberately grown that coldness so Gino could better protect his son, his business and himself.
Very slowly he rolled over and then slid up to the headboard. She rolled over as well and lay looking at the fan.
“I don’t want you to go, Gino.”
“He’s a loose cannon, princess, and he hurt you, neither of which I am willing to tolerate.”
“He’s sick. Demented. He likes hurting people, and he wants you to follow him. He’s probably waiting for it.”
Gino shrugged and reached down to stroke a caress over her breast, his fingers lingering, and then his palm covered her in a claiming hold. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does though.” She sat up slowly and crawled up the bed to him. “Gino, you don’t have to mete out vengeance because he hurt me. I’ll admit that in the beginning, I wanted to be with you because I knew you were probably the only man capable of going up against him and coming out alive …”
“That’s not true. I might be the only one who won’t kill him fast, but any member of this team, or one of the others, is capable of killing Bolan Zhu. Don’t for one moment think they aren’t.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “They would kill him fast implies you wouldn’t. Sit up on a roof with a rifle. Shoot him from a distance. Does it matter how he dies?”
“It matters to me. He took something from you.”
She knew what he meant. Her feeling of safety, but she’d never really had that, not even with Whitney. She knew Whitney terminated some women. He put others into a breeding program. He sent them out on dangerous missions. “You gave it back to me.” He had. Gino had made her feel safe almost from the first moment he had come to rescue her.
“I’ll be home soon.”
She shook her head. “Just tell me you’ll kill him from a distance.”
“I can’t give you a promise like that, baby. I don’t even want to kill him from a distance. That bastard hurt you. He tried to permanently damage your feet. He’ll never stop.”
“So shoot him if you have to, but don’t get close. He’s dangerous. I know you’re good at what you do, but you’re underestimating him, and that could get you killed.” Worse, if he went to that cold, dark, dangerous place, he might not come back from it. She couldn’t say that, because she didn’t know how to put it to him.
“It’s going to be all right, Zara,” he murmured, gathering her to him.
She crawled onto his lap, feeling as small as Bellisia, wanting to melt into him, to share his skin, to keep him with her. “I’m so scared, Gino.” She lifted her gaze to his face. “Really, really scared. I don’t want to have to live without you. In my entire life, I never thought I’d have a man for myself, let alone a man like you. I really didn’t. You seem like such a rare gift. You’ve somehow made me feel it’s okay to be me, that there’s nothing wrong with me. You make me feel beautiful and extraordinary and loved. You’re all those things to me and more.”
“Zara, you’re not living without me, but you are living without the threat of Zhu hanging over your head. If I don’t go after him now, when we have children, you’re going to be worried sick.”
That was true. But … “I’m not trading having children for you. I’d rather spend all my days with you alone, Gino, then have you go after him because we’re worried about what he might do when we have children. I want them, but I want you more.”
He kissed her. She loved when he kissed her. He had stolen her soul with kisses. She snuggled her head under his chin, breathing him in. She loved his scent. There was something wild and undefined she could never put her finger on. Gino might have companies that belonged to the modern world. He might have all the money in the world, but there was something very feral and predatory about him.
“Zara, you need to hear me. Really hear me. Nothing is going to happen to me. We’re the last soldiers Whitney experimented on. We don’t get brain bleeds. We don’t need anchors. We don’t have any of the problems some of the other GhostWalkers have experienced. He gave us all the enhancements as well as enhancing our psychic abilities. Zhu has no idea what’s coming for him. It’s like taking a lamb and dropping it alone in the middle of a wolf’s territory.”
She liked that image—the team a pack of wolves hunting Zhu. She chewed on the end of her finger. “How can you catch him alone? He’s probably locked up in Cheng’s fortress right now.”
He took her hand and turned her finger up to his mouth for kisses. “Leave that to me, baby. I have a plan. I’ll take care of Zhu and come straight home to you.”
“Cheng …”
“Is a vengeful asshole. I know that. But he’ll check to see where I was, where you were. The plane we’re flying in on is a regularly scheduled flight to Shanghai. I have never once been on it, nor will I be on it this time. He won’t know who killed his brother. Most likely it will cross his mind and he’ll check, but we’ll look as if we never left Louisiana. He’ll think it has something to do with the club Zhu likes to visit.”
“Club?”
“It’s a vile place, baby, not a real BDSM club, but a place where sick fucks can get off hurting or even killing others. It appeals to very wealthy men and women who fly in from all over to visit. They pay big money to participate and the club provides men, women and children of all ages for their clients to hurt.”
“That’s truly horrible.”