That the thing we found, the thing that started with a lamp, then a diner, almost-sex in a gym, and real sex in the bar and an I love you whispered in the dark. It is fragile enough that a bullet can end it. Love doesn't make you bulletproof, but it proves that the people who matter most are the ones you can't protect.
I put my hands in his hair and we both hold each other, trying not to let our emotions override us all the while knowing that love has made things so much more complicated than they were before.
"Hey, asshole, it’s okay… I've got you," I say. "I'm right here."
He nods against my chest and pulls me into him. “And I’ve got you, little vixen. As long as you’ll have me.”
An hour later Russo shows up, looking dishevelled. Apparently he was in surgery when we called.
He stitches the wound and tells Emilio to keep it dry for a week and avoid strenuous activity, and the look Emilio gives me when Russo says strenuous activity tells me the doctor's advice has a shelf life of approximately four hours.
It lasts three.
As soon as he’s done, we rush to his room. He's on the bed, shirtless because shirts and bandages don't coexist, propped upon pillows with his bad arm resting on a folded towel. The stitches are neat, Russo's work is clean even if his bedside manner is garbage, and the bandage wrapping is fresh and white and tight.
I'm sitting beside him in nothing but a t shirt, while he relaxes in boxers and no shirt. It’s fucking impossible to concentrate when he’s got all ofthatgoing on over there. The adrenaline burned off hours ago and what's underneath is want, the specific, urgent, physical kind that shows up after fear. It needs to move. It needs to touch and be touched. It needs confirmation that the person beside you is warm and solid and alive.
I've been staring at his chest for the last ten minutes pretending to read a book I found on the nightstand, something in Italian that I can't read, and he's been watching me pretend with the specific patience of a man who knows exactly what I'm doing and is waiting for me to stop pretending and do it.
"You're staring," he says.
"I'm reading."
"You're reading an Italian book upside down."
I look at the book. It is, in fact, upside down. I set it on the nightstand.
"You should rest," I say.
"I should."
"Your arm is fucked."
"Very."
"Russo said no strenuous activity."
"Russo also said to eat more vegetables and I'm not doing that either."
I climb onto the bed. Carefully, because the bed shifts with weight and shifting means jostling and jostling means pain, and I position myself on his good side with my knees on the mattress and my hands on his chest.
"If you use your bad arm, I'm stopping."
"Try me."
"I'm serious, Emilio. You'll tear the stitches and I'll have to clean it again and I'm not doing that twice in one day."
"Then you better make sure I don't need to use it." His hand comes up and grips my hip, fingers pressing into the curve of my waist, pulling me closer. "Get on top of me, vixen."
I swing my leg over and settle on his hips. His cock is already hard, I can feel him through his boxers, and the contact sends acurrent through me that starts between my legs and ends behind my ribs. I put both hands flat on his chest and look down at him.
He looks up at me. His face is open in a way it rarely is, the grin gone, the performance gone, just him. The man underneath all the charm and the jokes and the bouncing energy. The man who held my head against his chest in the bar and shook because he was scared of losing the thing he just found.
I roll my hips. Slow, forward and back, grinding against him through the fabric, and the sound that comes out of him is low and rough and goes straight through me. His hand squeezes my hip.
"This is torture, just slide it home."
"Shut up. I'm in charge."
