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“I’ve heard you speak,” he replies insistently. “And I’ve heard you come. I know your voice is beautiful.”
“Well then let’s not ruin your impression of it by having me actually sing,” I say, giving another awkward laugh that Elio doesn’t respond to. There’s not even a hint of a smirk on his face. Just arresting, fully-absorbed intensity.
“Fine,” he finally says. “Then you’ll play for me tonight instead.”
“Hey, I never said-”
“Please, Deirdre,” he murmurs. Has he ever said please to me before? “It’s been too long since I’ve heard you play.”
Nobody’s ever asked me to play just for the sheer enjoyment of listening to me. Not since Mom, anyway. Whenever Dad asked me to play, it was usually to impress his friends. My students asked me to play so they could learn something, perfect their own technique. Their parents came to watch me play to reassure themselves that the person teaching their kid actually had a bit of know-how to work with. Willow came to a few of my recitals to support me, but I know she doesn’t actually have any patience or appreciation for my music.
But Elio does. He not only appreciates it, he’s obsessed with it.
“You really do like hearing me play,” I muse out loud.
“Of course I do,” he scoffs. “I’m your number one fan.”
“Number one fan or number one stalker?” I ask, raising a sarcastic eyebrow even though there’s a little wiggle of pleasure inside me at his words.
“How about number one husband?” he shoots back. “One and only husband since I don’t plan on sharing.”
A sigh makes my chest buckle. I don’t want to argue about the wedding right now, and I definitely don’t need to get him all worked up about it. I ignore his last words and grab a cloth and bottle of body wash from the shower shelf. I squirt the body wash onto the cloth, relishing the bright, herbal spice of the fragrance mixing with the steam.
“Here,” I say, passing it over to him.
He makes no move to take it. He just watches me in steamy silence, challenge in his eyes. He probably expects me to throw down the cloth and stomp out of here, but I harden against the desire to do just that. I can help wash him. He’s hurt because of me. I can stay detached enough, distant enough, to at least do that much.
I crawl forward until I’m between his spread thighs again. We’re so close that the shower completely envelops us both in its streaming heat. Steadying myself with a hand on his shoulder, I begin to stroke along his jaw, gentler against the scar tissue. I’ve never seen him with so much beard regrowth. The stubble is so thick and dark. I run an experimental thumb along the good side of his jaw, a sensation pulling in my belly at the oddly pleasant grit of texture.
“What is it?” Elio asks, his question a humid breath on my cheek.
“Oh. Nothing. I’ve just always seen you so cleanly shaven.”
“Yeah. No hair grows on the scarred side. So it looks kind of weird if I leave it too long. Asymmetrical.” His lips tug up on one side. “I could grow a moustache, though, if you’re into that shit.”
Despite the circumstances, I find myself laughing. Elio’s humour always gets inside me and draws out responses I can’t control when I least expect it.
“While I’m sure that you could pull it off,” I say, drawing the sudsy cloth down to his chest, still chuckling a bit, “I like how you look now just fine.”
Elio’s pectoral muscles go tight, and I don’t know if it’s in response to my touch or what I just said. I didn’t even mean to say it, to be honest. Elio doesn’t exactly have a small ego at the best of times. But it just kind of… slipped out.
Must be because he’s so injured, I tell myself, closing my big mouth and focusing on stroking the cloth over Elio’s skin. Makes me extra nice to him or something.
In the deepest parts of my foolish heart, though, I know that isn’t true. I do like Elio’s appearance, scars and all. The biting, intractable masculinity of his bone structure. The full lips, the hard nose, the dark brows and eyes like charred embers. The attraction to him is inconveniently ever-present, unmistakable, impossible to shake even if I wanted to.
I rise up higher on my knees to follow the line of Elio’s upward extended arm, the one with the splint he’s holding against the tile and out of the water. Then I move to his other arm, sliding the cloth down the hard lines of it until I encounter the puffiness of bruising and swelling along his forearm. He doesn’t flinch as I gingerly pat at the injured tissue.
“Oh, Elio,” I murmur, shaking my head and blinking hard against tears that I pretend are simply drops of water from the shower. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I’d fucking win. Which I did,” he says nonchalantly.
“But was it worth it?” I say on a sigh, my stomach churning when my gaze lands on the poisonous bloom of bruising at his side.
“I’d pay any price for you, Songbird,” he says. “You should know that by now.” His voice lowers, and his hand rises to caress my lower lip. “I meant what I said, you know. That I would have died for you that night. Or any other night since then.”
“You remember saying that?” I ask, surprised. He’d said it when he was buried inside me, right on the edge of coming, and a part of me had wondered if it was something that just came out in the heat of the moment, arousal-induced but ultimately meaningless.
But he did jump between that gun and me. Used his body as a shield without a thought to where the bullet might land.
