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Tonight had been different.

Tonight he’d been looking at me too.

When his gaze dropped to my lips, his desire had been obvious. Lachlan wanted to kiss me. His green eyes had given him away, and his hand had tightened around mine.

I’d nearly leaned closer and taken the kiss myself.

Then footsteps had moved through the corridor, and somehow the man cuffed in my father’s dungeon had been the one with enough sense to remember what getting caught would cost me.

I should have been grateful for his good judgment.

Instead, I was still annoyed that he hadn’t kissed me.

Clearly I’d become unreasonable somewhere between freeing a mafia captain and agreeing to put my future in his hands.

I caught my ridiculous smile in the mirror.

This was supposed to be about getting out.

I’d gone into the dungeon to find out whether Lachlan Byrnes could be trusted and returned wanting his hands on me and his violence aimed at everyone else.

God help anyone who stood in his way when Lachlan got free.

God help me when he turned all that attention back on me.

I was already half out of my mind over a man who’d barely touched me.

I tucked the key beneath the edge of the mattress, where I could reach it quickly, then went into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth.

Cold water helped exactly nothing.

By the time I returned to the bedroom, I was still thinking about his rough hands and the way those green eyes had dropped to my mouth.

Maybe I’d made the worst mistake of my life.

There was considerable competition for the honor.

I climbed into bed and pulled the blanket over my legs.

For all the hope Lachlan had brought with him, getting beyond the compound was only the first unknown.

His people didn’t know I existed. When they found out who I was—or who they believed I was—they might see Ciro Delgado’s daughter before they saw me.

And Lachlan had a whole life somewhere beyond these walls.

Women who knew that world. Women who could walk into his club whenever they pleased, order a drink, wear whatever they wanted, and touch him without thinking twice.

I frowned at the ceiling.

That thought irritated me far more than it had any right to.

He wasn’t mine.

We hadn’t even properly kissed.

I still didn’t like imagining another woman putting her hands on him.

Especially after Marcela.