He studied my face. Then his gaze dipped to my lips. Reflexively, I stared at his, and my breath caught. Busted and bloody or not, they were so alluring, sexier than ever, even though I could find no logical explanation to their appeal in their current state.
The only logic that dominated me now was that of my ovaries. The only proof I needed was the gathering moisture between my thighs. It could be a result of the remnants of my pathetic, adolescent dreams or it could have sprouted from the deep roots of my guilt. Either way, it was there, throbbing painfully beyond denial.
“You want to take my pain away?” he asked, mocking.
“I do. All of it if I could,” I blurted without thinking. “But I can only try as far as you’ll let me.”
His eyelids twitched. I couldn’t decide whether it was a blink or an eye roll. I swallowed, dragging my greedy stare away. The closeness between us had jumbled my thoughts enough. Looking away wasn’t as effective as I presumed it’d be, though. Where I sat, the sweat brought his scent—lying under layers of ache, abhorrence and torture—to my nostrils, and it added to my growing need for him.
I must have gone out of my mind to be attracted to a man like Leo Bellomo still. When I was a kid, I lacked the knowledge and the experience to identify what he was. Now, I should have known better than to fantasize about anything that included a psychopath with a list of disorders that could fill ten charts. A made man. An epitome of everything that destroyed my family. A murderer.
A dead man walking.
Even after I helped him survive—for a few more days or hours, I didn’t know—his fate was sealed in blood. Sooner or later, he’d be killed. Whether it’d be the Lanzas or the Bellomos that pulled the trigger, Leo Bellomo was destined to die.
I sighed at the contraction of my heart as I finally finished cutting his pants, wondering why I was filled with sadness at the thought of his demise, why I desired someone who had never bothered to look at me once before, why I cared about an evil killer.
“I found the kit, Doctor.” The woman returned and handed me the box. “I took the liberty of preparing one syringe with one dose of the sedative. The rest of the ampoules stay with me. I’m sure you don’t mind.”
Damn it. I was hoping she might have been incautious enough to give me the whole box. Then I would’ve drugged them both and went on my way. That woman was no dumb blonde.
“There are no basins here, so I improvised.” She placed an unevenly split plastic bottle filled with water next to me, a piece of cloth in her other hand. “Do I need to sanitize this? It’s from the shirt I was wearing earlier, the part that…didn’t have any blood on.” Her voice shook in the end. What exactly had happened to them before they ran?
“It’ll do. It’s for cleaning him up. No offense, but…the condition of his hygiene could cause more infections,” I said as politely as possible.
“None taken. I know I stink,” he said. “If you’d been where I’d been, you’d have known it was the least of my problems. You should’ve seen me a year ago. I was—”
“Fucking Prince Charming.” She interrupted bitterly. “The expensive suit, the cologne, the haircut, the mansion, the car… The perfect disguise that fooled young girls and made them walk right into your traps. Looks do deceive.”
I knew exactly how charming he looked before. How deceitful his looks might have been. There must be more to what she was saying, though. Her bitterness wasn’t just for Leo Bellomo.
“You got that right,” Leo strained his neck to glance up at her, “Little kitten, or is itbaby girlnow?”
She swore and bent to squeeze his throat, throwing a few threats.
“Can you please not do that?” I demanded, again without thinking. I couldn’t help the feeling that I didn’t want him to be in any more pain. He’d suffered enough.
Her head whipped toward me as she glared at me, part angry, part incredulous.
“I mean…if you can start with cleaning him up while I proceed with extracting the bullet that would be a better use of time,” I amended.
“What the fuck? I’m not giving this fuck a sponge bath.”
“Then maybe you should take him to a hospital where a proper nurse would and a more specialized doctor could take out the bullet…because on a second thought, I don’t think I can do it myself,” I dared.
Leo gurgled a laugh. “I’m starting to like you, Doc.”
My heart skittered. I knew he didn’t mean it the way I’d always wished he’d have, and I shouldn’t have wanted him to now, either, but hearing it from him made me feel like that little girl that had no other care or burden in the world except making a boy like her.
The woman left his neck but only to grab her gun and wave it at the two of us. “Let me make things clear here. You two are alive becauseIlet you breathe. Don’t abuse the last part of my humanity that’s stopping me from killing you because God knows, after all that’s happened, I’m holding on to it by a fucking thread.”
I peered between the two of them. Was she bluffing? The tone of her voice indicated the emotional turmoil she was going through was real, but it was the look on Leo’s face that confirmed it. He’d lost his mocking humor, and all I could see in his gaze apart from the pain wasn’t rage or challenge or even alarm or fear. It was sorrow.
The emotion struck me as odd coming from him. Psychopaths lacked empathy to feel sorrow or guilt when it came to the consequences of their actions or manipulation. That led me to conclude whatever had happened to that woman wasn’t his doing. Not directly, at least.
Was that why she saved him?
She pushed the water bottle with the tip of her boot to his side and threw the piece of cloth at him. “You clean yourself up.” She raised a brow at me. “You help him. Then put him to sleep and take out the Goddamn thing. We don’t have a lot of time to waste. We gotta keep moving.”
