was going to pass out from the pain.
‘Stop fighting me and I’ll stop hurting you,’ he ground out harshly.
Lia ceased her struggles. She slumped weakly forward the moment David reduced that painful pressure.
* * *
Gregorio tensed in the hallway when he heard Lia scream inside the apartment, not hesitating for so much as a second before he raised his booted foot and kicked the apartment door open.
He stepped through the flying wood splinters from where the lock had been detached from the doorframe and carried on down the hallway, his eyes narrowing as he took in the scene in front of him.
David Richardson stood behind Lia, one of his arms about her waist as he held her against him, his face buried in her hair, his lips against her throat.
Had Gregorio imagined that scream?
Or perhaps the reason for it...?
He knew from personal experience that Lia was a passionate lover. She was also a noisy one. She had screamed several times when they were in bed together yesterday afternoon. Usually when she had an orgasm...
Richardson and Lia were both still fully dressed. But, again, that was no guarantee that Lia’s scream hadn’t been a pleasurable one: she’d still been wearing all her clothes the first time she’d had an orgasm in his arms. Had he interrupted Richardson while he was pleasuring Lia?
Gregorio returned his narrowed gaze to Lia’s face. The wide and startled eyes. The pale cheeks. The trembling lips.
The pale cheeks...
Lia’s face was always flushed with pleasure when she orgasmed with him. Her eyes would glow. Her lips would be a deep rose colour.
He took in her body language, noting her tension and the fact that one of her arms was behind her back. Held there by Richardson.
Gregorio’s jaw tensed. ‘Let her go, Richardson.’
The other man’s gaze was insolent as he looked at Gregorio over Lia’s shoulder. ‘She likes it here. Don’t you?’ he prompted Lia confidently as his arm tightened about her waist.
‘I—’ Lia broke off with an indrawn hiss as David gave her arm another painful twist.
She had been completely shocked when the door to her apartment had been kicked or shouldered open—so savagely the lock had come out of the doorframe, wood splintering everywhere, the door itself crashing into the wall behind.
And she had never been more pleased to see Gregorio as he stepped through that ruined doorway, looking for all the world like a dark avenging angel in a black T-shirt, black jeans and heavy black boots, the darkness of hair tousled into disarray.
She had no idea what he was doing here after the way they had parted yesterday—she was just grateful that he was there.
At least she would be if David hadn’t given her arm that warning and very painful twist.
It was a threat that he intended to hurt her more than he already was if she attempted to alert Gregorio to the fact she was being held against her will.
To hell with that!
‘He has my arm twisted behind my back—’
Lia broke off with an agonised yelp of pain as David jerked her arm up even further, the movement accompanied by a snapping sound.
Pain such as Lia had never known before radiated from her arm to the rest of her body. Black spots danced on the edge of her vision as she was thrust forward towards Gregorio, and then the blackness became all-consuming...
* * *
‘Gently,’ Gregorio warned softly as Raphael lifted a still unconscious Lia into his waiting arms where he sat in the back of the SUV.
The other man closed the door and got in behind the wheel to drive them to the hospital.
It was probably as well Lia was still unconscious, because Gregorio had no doubt that her arm was broken. He had heard the distinctive sound of bone cracking as Richardson had pushed her towards him.
Gregorio’s arms had moved up and caught her instinctively. All of his attention had been centred on Lia as she’d fainted in his arms—probably from the added pain he had caused by catching her as she fell.
By the time Gregorio had lifted and cradled Lia carefully in his arms, and then looked around, Richardson had gone.
Gregorio had wasted precious more seconds placing Lia gently down on the sofa, before taking out his cell phone and calling down to Raphael. The bodyguard had reported that Richardson had left the building and already driven away. Not Raphael’s fault: he couldn’t possibly have known that Richardson was fleeing the building rather than just leaving because Gregorio had arrived.
It didn’t matter. Gregorio would find Richardson—wherever he ran to. There wasn’t a place on this earth where the other man would be safe from Gregorio’s wrath for his having dared to physically harm Lia.
In the meantime they had to get Lia to hospital as quickly as possible. Her broken arm needed to be reset and immobilised.
And Gregorio knew her well enough to know she was going to be one seriously angry Lia when she regained consciousness.
* * *
The voices were fading in and out of Lia’s consciousness, and the pain in her arm was making it impossible for her to make any sense of what was being said.
But she did recognise the three voices speaking. Cathy. Rick. And Gregorio.
Memory came rushing back to her.
David waiting for her outside her apartment... His threats...
Gregorio’s unexpected and physically violent arrival...
The snapping sound in her arm as David had pushed her away from him.
The pain.
Blackness.
And then the pain again, when she’d woken up in what she presumed was the A&E department at the local hospital, having her arm X-rayed. Despite the painkillers she had been given, she had passed out again when they’d reset the broken bone.
And throughout all that Gregorio had been at her side. Not speaking. Just there. His face had been set in grimly austere lines. The only words he’d spoken had been to the doctor as the other man had reset her arm. Before she’d blacked out again.
She had no idea when Cathy and Rick had arrived, but she realised Gregorio must have called them. There was no other way they could have known she was at the hospital.
Talking of which...
She opened her eyes to look at the three people sitting beside the gurney she was lying on, obviously all waiting for her to wake up. She seemed to be in some sort of curtained-off area—probably still in A&E. The cast felt like a heavy weight on her left arm.
