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Where the hell did that even come from, anyway?
I mean, maybe he’s right. Maybe it really will get Darragh to back off. But marriage? The first time I met Elio, he told me he didn’t even fuck redheads, and now he wants to make me his bride?
It doesn’t make sense. And surely someone in his position would have a political match lined up, not unlike Valentina with her picked-out fiancé. There has to be some mafia princess promised to him, someone from his world who would be an asset to the Titone empire.
I think of the blonde woman from the gala, think of her possessive hand on Elio’s chest, and my stomach lurches in a way I don’t want to acknowledge.
Elio hasn’t said anything else about marrying him since the car, so maybe he just threw it out there in the heat of the moment. Something he didn’t really mean.
But then again, I know him well enough to know that he doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.
Well, maybe I imagined it then. Fucking dreamed it, for all the sense it makes.
Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and realize most of this insane day has been a dream. I’ll open my eyes in the morning on the day after the anniversary of Mom’s death. Elio will still be up north. And I’ll still be a virgin who hasn’t visited her mother’s grave in years.
But that version of reality doesn’t feel comforting either and I’m too tired and shaken up to figure out why.
Elio returns and resumes studying me. Then, as if mostly satisfied with what he sees, he gets down onto his knees and works off one boot, then the other. He holds my ankles and rotates me so that my legs go lengthwise along the couch and my socked feet don’t get soaked by the puddles on the floor.
But for some reason, he doesn’t let go yet. My muscles tighten and then relax in one big, wave-like movement when he begins to slowly massage the arches of my feet with his thumbs. He’s thorough. Endlessly meticulous. Drawing deep, slow strokes against parts of me that I didn’t even know were sore and tired until now.
Whether it’s the tea or the massage or the warmth, I’m even more exhausted now. My limbs feel like lead. I sag back against the arm of the couch and watch him. His face is mostly cleared of the pulsing rage I saw from the side in the car. His hard, scarred jaw and dark brows seem to be set in a fairly neutral expression, though I doubt Elio Titone has ever felt truly neutral about anything important in his entire life.
His expression puckers slightly when I flinch. His thumb has pressed into the tender place where my foot was injured from the piece of ceramic from the broken cup. Thanks to his ministrations, the surface skin healed up just fine, but there’s still some lingering sensitivity in that spot. Very carefully, he peels off my sock and puts it to the side. He regards the bottom of my bare foot with that same cool look.
And then his eyes fall shut and he presses his mouth to the place that I was hurt. My leg jerks at the unexpected kiss in such a ticklish place, but his hand turns to iron on my ankle, holding me there. When he draws back and opens his eyes, his expressionless façade is still mostly in place. Except for the eyes. They’re liquid, molten black. Heat and darkness combined.
Elio places my feet down on the couch, then bends over me, his fingers rising to my throat. I suppress a small whimper, not even knowing if I want him to touch me or not, my skin already anticipating the possessive glide of leather. But instead, he simply grips the collar of my parka and unzips it, letting the coat fall open. He’s quick but careful in his movements, pulling one of my arms out of one sleeve, then the other. But just as he’s pulling my right sleeve all the way down, he freezes, his gaze stuck on one spot on the sleeve’s cuff.
Elio’s face goes briefly cataclysmic with rage, and when I look down at the bit of the sleeve he’s holding in his hands I can suddenly see why. There’s a singed, ripped part on the puffy outside, near the wrist. It takes me a moment to fully realize that a bullet actually grazed me. Or the parka, anyway.
Elio’s like a statue, staring at that blackened rip like it’s someone he wants to murder.
“It’s OK,” I say. I know even as the words leave my mouth they’re ridiculous. None of this is OK.
But for some reason I just can’t stop myself from saying them.
Elio gives me a potent, angry stare, then rips the coat off the rest of the way and hurls it into a heap on the ground. In a second, he’s on his knees again, his trousers soaking in the slushy puddles. But he doesn’t seem to notice that. He’s too preoccupied with a silent, frantic examination of my hands. He holds each of my fingers right up to his face, then scrutinizes the palms, then the backs. Then, he shoves the sleeves of my hoodie up to my elbows, running his ferocious gaze up and down each forearm, then the tender places at my wrists, like he’s counting every vein and artery.
“You already did this,” I remind him softly. He checked my hands back in the cemetery.
“That was before I knew a bullet actually grazed you,” he bites out. “Shut up and let me fucking focus.”
“Right,” I say, irritated by his command. “Guess I’m no use to you if my fingers get shot off and I can’t play violin anymore.”
He goes still, his gloved hands locked around my wrists like handcuffs.
Then his gaze rises to mine once more, and the rage has taken on a new depth. This time I can tell it’s aimed at me.
“If you weren’t on the edge of going into traumatic shock, I would spank your fucking ass for what you just said.” Elio lays my hands down in my lap, his movements tightly controlled, then lets me go. “But as it is, I will instead inform you that a thought like that was about as far from my mind as possible.”
“I mean, you’ve said something like that to me before,” I remind him, hackles rising further. “Remember? When you gave me mittens and said I wouldn’t be able to play for you if all my fingers fall off from frostbite?”
“Yes,” he seethes, “and I seem to recall that I was joking when I said it. If I remember correctly, you even laughed.” There’s anger harsh as iron in his voice. “Look me in the fucking eye and tell me what you just said was a joke.”
I avoid his eyes because I can’t and he knows it. There was no humour in my comment, just bitterness. Maybe even something mean.
My gaze settles on his gloved hands at his sides, and that bitterness withers in my chest, replaced with guilt. If anyone knows what it’s like to go through life with mangled hands, it’s him. Is it so hard to believe that he might not want that same fate for me?
