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Instead of being insulted, she smirked. “You are such a liar.” Her silver eyes suddenly did that dancing thing they did. “Is there any alcohol in this apartment?”
“No.”
“That’s a shame. Bruno says I can wipe the floor of any man with tequila. I could have got you drunk like a man gets a woman drunk, but instead of taking advantage of you like a man would, I’d shoot you!”
He didn’t want to be amused, but it was impossible not to be. “I consider myself warned… Do you have a high tolerance for all alcohol?”
Leaning back against the counter by the oven, she pulled a rueful face. “Unfortunately, no. Only clear spirits, but I’m not keen on vodka, and I can’t stand white rum or gin, so I stick to tequila.”
“What about beer and wine?”
“I don’t like the taste of beer, and two glasses of wine puts me under the table.”
“I’ll order a crate of red then.”
It was like her whole face danced. “And what would you do if I ended up under the table? Would you take advantage of me before shooting me in the leg and cuffing me back to the chair?”
An image suddenly seared through him, of striding to that nonchalantly posed sexy body, lifting her onto the counter and ripping their clothes off, and it hit him like a bucket of ice that he was attracted to her. Seriously attracted. Worse, he was edging close to flirting with her, something he’d never done in the whole of his life.
Mattia didn’t do attraction. He barely did sex.
Meeting her stare, he coldly said, “I don’t fuck ballbreakers whether they’re conscious or not, so I’d just shoot and cuff you.”
Impossibly, she laughed. “Let’s see when you’re forced to watch me shower if that still stands.”
He would not imagine that hot little body naked. “You won’t be showering.”
“If you want to stink, that’s up to you, but I spent three hours in a sweaty bar earlier, and my adrenaline levels spiked when you kidnapped me, so yes, I will be taking a shower at some point, and the only way you can stop me is by getting close enough to take the gun from me and hoping I don’t shoot you before you reach me.”
Chapter Five
Elvira knew it was madness, but she was enjoying herself. Here she was, stuck in a poky apartment, eating pizza that was neither fresh nor delicious while the sun was rising with the man who’d kidnapped her, the both of them itching to pull the trigger of their guns on the other, and she was having fun.
She was back on her sofa, Mattia back on his armchair, watching each other like lively but wary cats as they filled their bellies. She thought she’d been very generous in giving him an extra slice on account of him being close to a foot taller than her five-foot-five frame. The asshole hadn’t thanked her for it. He’d spoken only in monotone grunts since she’d announced she would be taking a shower at some point. Much of his attention these last few minutes had been on his phone, which was pinging with the same frequency as a popular teenage girl’s.
“You really hate not being in control, don’t you?” she commented after she’d finished her third slice.
His green eyes landed briefly on her before he took a huge bite of the slice in his hand and dipped his gaze back to his phone.
“If Stefano stocked this apartment with food, does that mean he organised this apartment for you too? Or do you own it in some shady way you kept from Vincent like you did with that shit-hole you went to ground in?” Vincent had been the Espositos’ lawyer. His defection had been the key to wrenching their empire from them.
He continued chewing without acknowledging that she’d even spoken.
“What about the two men who helped you take me?”
His eyes caught hers again. There was zero expression in them.
“Ooo,” she said. “Big, bad, brooding Mattia Esposito’s back with his dead-eyed stare.”
There was the slightest pause in his chewing before he swallowed the pizza in his mouth and took another huge bite.
“Is that your total army?” she taunted, unperturbed. “Three men? Stefano, the man who snatched me for you and your driver? I know there’s no one guarding this apartment.”
His eyes suddenly narrowed.
She smiled. “You brought me here in the middle of the night. I couldn’t see, but the rest of my senses were working perfectly – when you’ve got my family’s history, you damned well learn to use all your senses. I heard two sets of footsteps walk down the corridor away from the apartment, and then a short while later I heard two car doors close at the same time. Your men are out doing whatever for you, but they’re not here. There’s been no movement outside the apartment. No one has checked in on you. It’s just you and me. You can bet your ass that if you had a bigger army, you’d have men posted all over this block in case I escape or my brother discovers our location and swoops in to save me.” Putting her plate on the floor to the side of her foot, she kept her body leant forward. “As to why you’ve spent the past five minutes concentrating more on your phone than the gun in my hand, I know you’re not expecting to hear from Elio yet, so my guess is you’re trying to locate Stefano, which means you didn’t see Elio crossing the street to him when you kidnapped me.”
The tic beneath his eye throbbed.
