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“What are you doing?” she asks with exasperation as I run that finger down her freckled nose.
“Touching you.”
“Well, obviously.”
Her knuckles glide down across one of my throbbing temples, coming to rest at the top of my cheek.
“You really do feel warm,” she says.
“I run hot. It’s a Titone thing.”
“That’s true. You were like a furnace even before you went to see Darragh. But still…”
I poke the dimpled spot between her brows again. Which, ironically, only makes the wrinkle deeper as she gets annoyed and swats away my hand.
“Has the doctor come to check on you today?” she asks, pulling back a little bit, presumably so that I stop poking her face.
“Is this what people talk about when they say they have a nagging wife?” I mumble, letting my hand drop. I always thought I’d hate that kind of thing. But not now. Not with her.
“You’re the one who decided you wanted a wife,” she reminds me icily. “If you don’t like me nagging you about important things like fevers then I don’t know what to tell you.” There’s a bit of bite in her voice, but the caress of her knuckles against my cheek is very gentle. Tender, even. A sweet supplication of her skin on mine. Without even realizing I’m doing it, I close my eyes and tip my head, leaning harder into the touch.
“Nah. I like it just fine.”
At my lean, she changes the position of her hand, flipping it so that her palm and fingers are cupping the side of my face. Her left hand rises to do the same on the other side, and it’s like those cool hands are holding me together. I sense a change in the weight on the mattress, and realize she’s gotten much closer to me when I feel the heated whisper of her breath against my mouth.
“Gonna stop my heart again, Songbird?” I ask, already tipping my face forward to find her mouth.
“No,” she says. “I just want to look at you for a minute.”
I crack my eyes open, nearly drowning in the gorgeous blue before me. It’s not very bright in here, and her pupils are huge, wrapped in a ring of hushed midnight.
“And what is it that you see?” I ask.
Maybe she’ll say she sees a monster, a tyrant. She’s called me those things before. And she was right.
But somehow, I don’t think that’s what she’ll say. That is, if she means to answer at all. She doesn’t look pissed at me, or betrayed, or like she wants to run. She almost looks sad, but that’s not quite right. Sombre, maybe. Serious. Searching. There’s an anguished gravity in her gaze that draws me in and devastates.
Cristo Santo. Bullets and bruised kidneys are nothing compared to how I ache for her.
I’ve always been a survivor. Fucking unkillable.
But I don’t know if I can survive this. Survive the kind of desire that eats you up from the inside out.
And suddenly I can’t stand it. I can’t stand her being so close but so far. Having her look at me in stoic silence, not knowing what the hell it is she sees. It would be better if she called me a monster and pushed me away just like she’s done so many times before. That, I know how to handle. I spank her, choke her, make her come. Dole out pain and pleasure until she breaks in my hands and I’m the only one who can put her back together.
It was never supposed to be the other way around.
I lurch forward to capture her mouth with mine at the precise moment that two other things happen. One, the door to my bedroom opens and somebody comes in.
And two?
Deirdre turns away.
Like a frightened animal, she bolts, nearly leaping off the bed.
“Valentina!” she cries. “Hi! Um. Hi.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” I growl at my cousin. Now that the drug of Deirdre touching me has been ripped away, the agony floods back in. My side flames. My brain pounds like somebody’s using it for hammer practice.
