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“No! I don’t!”
Well, I’m certainly not being quiet now. The soldier at the stairs is craning his neck and frowning at us. His attention is torn away, though, by the sound of the front door opening and then closing again. I can’t make out the words, but I catch the rumble of Elio’s voice.
A heady combination of relief and rage fill me at his return.
“Don’t bother asking him,” I tell the doctor, already heading for the top of the stairs. “I’m going to do it myself. Right now.”
I jog down the stairs. From here, I can see the door and entryway. Curse is striding away, heading for somewhere else in the house. It looks like he’s carrying a cardboard box, but I don’t get a clear view. Plus, it’s his older brother that I’m focused on right now.
It’s hard to remain righteous in my rage when I see him. There’s an intense, drawn look on his face, and my steps falter a little. I wonder if he’s hurting. If he feels worse than before because he went out.
He’s so lost in whatever emotion or sensation he’s processing that he doesn’t even notice me until my foot hits the floor at the bottom of the stairs.
His head cranks up, his eyes lock on mine, and then he’s in instant motion, coming straight for me with the singular, relentless drive of a torpedo. He barely even stops when he reaches me and crushes me against his chest. It’s only the hard bars of his arms around my back that keep me from falling backwards.
“Songbird,” he murmurs against my hair, bending and breathing in deeply. I can feel him making a vicious fist in the back of my shirt with his non-splinted hand.
“What is it?” I ask, my earlier panic returning with twice as much force, bringing with it an acrid taste on my tongue. “Are you feeling worse? Are you in pain?” I shift and pull in his arms, ignoring his growl of complaint and the way he tries to drag me even closer. I manage to get one of my hands up from where it was jammed between us and I slap it, harder than I mean to, against his forehead.
A shuddering sigh escapes me. His skin is blissfully cool, kissed by the winter air outside. No hint of returning fever.
“What is it?” I ask again, because he’s still holding me in a way that makes me feel like something’s wrong.
“Nothing,” he bites out after a long pause. “Just learned some shit today I wish I hadn’t.”
Before I can ask him more about that, I hear Doctor Morelli addressing Elio in Italian from behind me.
“I’m good,” Elio replies in English. “It was good to get out there. Stretch my legs a little. Already feel even better than I did this morning.”
“Good,” I say, yanking myself out of his arms. “Now that I know you’re alright, I can be mad at you.”
Elio’s brows rise, an expression of dark amusement shaping his mouth.
“Oh?”
“Yes! Why did you tell Doctor Morelli I can’t go on birth control?”
His brows fly even higher before crashing down.
“I don’t recall specifically telling him that,” he says with a frown.
“He said he needs to get your permission before he can give it to me!”
“Yes,” Elio says, slowly, as if explaining something to a child. “Everything that happens to you happens by my say-so, Songbird. And Doctor Morelli reports to me, not to you.”
My hands curl into fists at my side, as if I can punch some good sense into this man.
“So, what?” I hiss through gritted teeth. “If something happened to me and you weren’t here, what then? What if I was on the brink of death? He wouldn’t be allowed to even give me a fucking bandage without calling you first? He’d just let me bleed out on the floor, then?”
A look so black and thunderous contorts Elio’s face that, for the first time in a long time, I feel a frisson of fear when I look at him.
“Do not,” he bites out, “even fucking joke about that, Deirdre.”
“Who says that I’m joking?”
Doctor Morelli, clever guy that he is, makes himself suddenly scarce as Elio locks his uninjured hand around my wrist. Elio starts walking, dragging me along with him. “We’ll talk about this somewhere else.”
I expect him to try to pull me up the stairs, but he doesn’t. It’s as if the bedrooms are too far away and he wants to hash this out right here, right now. Fine by me. He opens the door to his office, shoves me inside, then slams the door behind us.
