Billionaire's Captive Complete Trilogy - Stasia Black Page 0,152

to do a damn thing to fix it.

I meant what I promised her. I’m going to cure her. I’ll be strong enough for both of us.

She just has to trust me…

Like you trusted her?

My hands clench but then my cell phone starts blasting “Down with the Sickness” by Disturbed. I laugh out loud and immediately answer. “When did you change my ringtone?”

Daphne’s wan voice answers, “You must be getting slow in your old age if you didn’t notice me do it.”

I’ve already started out of the lab and am halfway up the stairs. I treasure any time she’s awake and hate to think of her ever lying there in bed all alone. At the same time, I feel the pressure beating at me from all sides. Have to find a cure. Have to find a cure. There’s no time. Daphne’s mother died young.

Even allowing the briefest thought spurs my feet faster and in no time, I’m pushing the door to Daphne’s room open.

“How is my favorite—?” the words die in my throat, though, when I see Daphne spread out on the bed in nothing more than a slip of red lingerie. My mouth goes dry.

“Hi,” she says shyly and wiggles her fingers at me in greeting.

“What are you doing?” I look around, immediately zeroing in on the open window. “Daphne, it’s not safe. Your immune system is compromised right now and we can’t take any chances.” I rush over and shut the window with a harsh bang.

I turn around to head back to the bed so that I can cover Daphne with the thick comforter. But what I’m not prepared for is the fury on her face.

Or the pillow that comes zinging right at my head.

“Wha—?” I yelp before getting smacked right in the face by the pillow. I look at Daphne in bewilderment but she’s just getting more ammunition, ready to launch pillow number two.

“Daph!”

She launches the pillow and I manage to get my arm up just in time to knock it out of the way as I stride toward the bed to head off any more attacks. They don’t hurt, but she doesn’t have the energy for this. She barely managed to get the second pillow the few feet away from the bed to even hit me, she’s already that tired.

I sit on the bed beside her and grab her up in my arms. She struggles for the slightest bit before going slack.

“Don’t you dare,” she hisses. Apparently she hasn’t completely given up the fight yet.

“Dare what?” I asked, genuinely fucking bewildered. “Usually I can follow your moods, babe, but you got even me stumped.”

“My moods? My moods?”

I arch an eyebrow. “I feel like anywhere I step is a landmine.”

She looks away from me, staring at the wall and biting her lip. So many times I’ve wished I could read her mind. If I could just see into that broiling brain of hers that’s always ten steps ahead, maybe I could finally feel like I understand what’s—

She suddenly looks back at me, a desperation in her eyes I’ve never seen from her before. “Make love to me.”

Her words make me harden instantly. Because I’m a selfish fuckwit like that and I want her, all the time. Any way I can get her.

But I’m trying to be a better man. I peel her off of me. “Daph, no. We can’t. You’re way too tired for that.”

“Says who? You? Suddenly you’re inside my body and know what I can and cannot take?” She’s challenging. Belligerent. Angry. And afraid.

Because underneath everything else, I see her fear. I see her vulnerability.

I might not understand everything that’s going on in her head. Or hell, maybe I don’t understand anything that’s going on in her head.

But I can see she needs me right now. And I’ll always give my Daphne everything she needs.

So I pull her against me and drop my lips to hers in the gentlest kiss imaginable. But Daphne’s not having it.

She crushes her lips against mine and tears at my shirt. But it’s like she barely has patience for that, only shoving it past my abs far enough so that she can get to my bare skin. And then so that she can get to the button on my jeans.

“Whoa whoa, Daph, maybe we should slow down?”

But she just grins up at me, the shadows under her eyes doing nothing to diminish her beauty.

She reaches into my pants and squeezes my ever-hardening length. “It doesn’t feel like you want to slow