Damn, she was even lovelier than he recalled. No longer the coltish Breedmate girl who’d been his best friend’s sister. No longer the tomboy teenager who used to delight in racing through the cultivated fields of her family’s vineyard, but a twenty-eight-year-old woman with a refined beauty that stirred everything male in him.

Not to mention his blood.

Memories of a night ten years ago came to life in his mind in vivid, erotic detail. Her warm, naked skin against his. Her sweet, breathless cries as he tasted every virgin inch of her beautiful body.

Her trusting, open-hearted gaze as he made love to her for the first—and only—time.

How she must have hated him…after.

He’d despised himself enough for both of them. If he’d been in the least to blame for pushing Bella toward another man—especially one like Vito Massioni—he would never forgive himself.

And if he wanted to pretend he had forgotten her even for a moment during the past decade, seeing her beside him now was as if all that time had simply evaporated.

He didn’t know what he was going to do with her now. She sure as fuck hadn’t been part of the equation when he’d set out on tonight’s mission, but seeing her again had changed everything. Once he had spotted her inside the villa, nothing would have kept him from making sure she was safe.

Not even Bella herself could have stopped him.

So much for a simple operation going according to plan.

Savage forced his gaze away from her and put both hands back on the wheel. His eyes trained on the road, he buried the Pagani’s accelerator and headed for the highway that would take them back to Rome.

 

 

Chapter 4

 

Bella couldn’t wake from the sleep that cocooned her.

Nor did she want to.

Warm fingers stroked the side of her face as she slept, soothing her with a touch that was both sheltering and enticing. So strong. So infinitely gentle.

Ettore’s touch.

Her senses knew it, even if her mind struggled to comprehend. His caress felt like a dream, but it was real. As real as he was, seated close enough to her that his scent filled her lungs with each waking breath she drew.

No, this was no dream.

This was something deeper than sleep.

Her head felt thick, as if her mind were cushioned in cotton.

Then she remembered. The shock of seeing Ettore inside Massioni’s villa. Her dread at learning what he had come there to do.

She remembered him insisting that she leave with him, go somewhere safe. When she refused, he had reached up to touch her brow…

He’d tranced her!

Outrage speared through her. The sudden jolt of adrenaline and fury helped shake off the loose threads of the fading trance. She opened her eyes and found Ettore glancing at her. His handsome face and solemn hazel eyes held her gaze in the dim light of the vehicle’s dashboard.

Beneath her, the low purr of an engine vibrated.

“Are you okay?” he asked, drawing his hand away from her face now.

She instantly missed the warmth, despite the alarm that was flooding her veins.

“What are you doing?” She dragged herself out of her slump in the soft leather seat. On the other side of the passenger window, the nighttime landscape was a blur. Jesus, Ettore was driving like a bat out of hell. She swung an anxious look behind them. “Where’s Massioni?”

“Don’t worry about him. He was mine to deal with. And I did.”

Fresh horror swamped her. “You killed him?”

Ettore looked at her, his expression grim. “I hope so, but there wasn’t time to verify that.”

Oh, God. No. “Where are we going?”

A frown creased his brow. “I’m taking you to Rome, Bella. You’ll be safest at the Order’s command center there. My comrades and I will make sure of that.”

The Order. As shocked as she was to realize the golden, charming young man she had known all those years ago now made his living dealing in violence and death as a member of that lethal organization, she also knew that no one—not even the Order—could protect her from the worst of Vito Massioni’s threats.

For all she knew, it was already too late.

“Let me out of here, Ettore. Let me out right now.”

“What do you mean, let you out?” He gaped at her as if she had lost her mind. “Sweetheart, we’re going a hundred and twenty miles an hour.”

“I have to go back. Please, Ettore!”

Overcome with worry, she fumbled with her seatbelt, unfastening it and tearing it away from her body. She had to get out of the car and go back to beg Massioni’s forgiveness.

If he was still alive.

Dear God, don’t let him be dead.

Don’t let her family be killed because of her failure to protect them.

A sob raked her throat. “Goddammit, I said stop this fucking car!”

He slowed the growling sports car and eased off the empty highway to the shoulder. As soon as the vehicle stopped, she leaped out. She paused only long enough to toss her high heels into the grass, then started running the opposite way on the rough gravel that edged the pavement.

Ettore’s curse exploded behind her. “What the hell are you doing?”

He caught up to her instantly, gifted with Breed genetics that made him faster than any other creature on the planet. He blocked her path, his big male body filling her vision and all of her senses. When she tried to dodge him, his hands came down firmly on her shoulders, holding her still.

“Talk to me, Arabella. Tell me what this is about.”

“My family.” She couldn’t contain the shiver that rocked her when she thought about what they might be enduring because of her, possibly at this very moment. “Massioni promised me that if anything ever happened to him, he’d have them killed.”

Ettore’s scowl deepened. “Your father might have something to say about that. Your brother, Consalvo, too.”

She gazed up at him, shaking her head in misery. “My father’s dead. So is Sal. I guess you didn’t know. How would you, right? You left and never looked back.”

He flinched as if her words stung as much as a slap. Yet when he spoke, there was only quiet, patient concern in his deep voice. “What happened?”

“It was Sal,” she said, still wounded by her brother’s fall from grace—and the betrayal that followed. “Three years ago, my father made the mistake of turning over the vineyard to Sal. Things didn’t go very well. He was careless with the books. Worse than careless. None of us realized how deeply in debt the business was—or why—until Sal’s mate, Chiara, confided in me about his gambling. She was worried for him, and for the future of their infant son. But it was already too late. Sal got mixed up with bad people, the worst of them being Vito Massioni.”