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“Perhaps,” Enzo echoed, sounding about as reluctant as Fiore felt. “There are guest chambers not far distant from this suite. Unless…”
Fiore dared not hang all his hopes on a single word. “Unless?”
Enzo swallowed hard. With a glance far more bashful than anything Fiore had seen from him in some time, he replied, “Unless you wouldn’t mind remaining here with me.”
Fiore couldn’t restrain his grin. “The bed’s certainly big enough.”
Enzo’s answering smile appeared as much relief as good humor. “There’s books if you wish to pass the time reading. And a tarot pack in the card-table drawer if you don’t mind playing solitaire. Vittorio is too lazy for much, but his favorite chewing rope is by the hearth if you want to coax him into action.”
“Never fear.” Fiore tapped the bag which held his zibaldone. “I can amuse myself for as long as you require.”
Enzo chuckled again. This time, at least, it didn’t become a cough, for which Fiore gave silent thanks to whichever gods felt like listening.
Fiore circled around the enormous bed to the other side, where there remained ample room for him and at least three others like him to stretch themselves out. Instead, however, he laid himself down beside Enzo—atop the bedclothes, for once, but nonetheless as close to him as he could well cleave.
“Will this do?” Fiore asked, turning his gaze up to meet Enzo’s.
Enzo nodded in reply. Fiore hardly saw it, for the soft warmth in the unmistakably fond look Enzo cast down upon him quite drove all other thoughts from his head.
And, despite declaring his intention to amuse himself otherwise, Fiore’s hands found their natural place in stroking through Enzo’s hair until he fell asleep.
~
CHAPTER TWELVE
Enzo awoke to the soft strains of a lute.
The sound had entered his dreams as he’d slept, and thus upon waking he assumed some of his dream had lingered. It’d proved a pleasant dream, one in which he lay much as he did now, but with his beloved Fiore come to tend his bedside with sweetness and good humor.
As he opened his eyes, however, the music didn’t fade away. He lolled his head across his pillow towards it and discovered Fiore himself perched at the foot of his bed, strumming his lute with a contented Vittorio stretched out beside him and looking very real indeed.
“Fiore?” Enzo muttered, confused. The effort of drawing in air and then forcing it out again to create speech pulled at the wound in his chest. He supposed the morphine tablets had worn off somewhat as he’d slept, for every breath throbbed with distant pain.
Yet as Fiore whipped his head up to regard him and he met the gaze of those soft dark eyes flown wide first with wonder and then delight when he realized Enzo had awoken at last, it seemed to Enzo as if he could feel no pain at all.
Fiore set the lute aside to bestow a kiss on Enzo’s lips.
“Sorry to wake you,” Fiore murmured against his mouth as he withdrew. He waved a careless hand towards the lute. “I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Enzo replied. “Play on.”
An impish smile stole over Fiore’s handsome features. He sat up beside Enzo and took the lute into his lap again. Yet even as he began to pluck its strings, he said in a mock-chiding tone, “You didn’t tell me you played.”
“I don’t,” Enzo replied with honesty. “At least, not well. Giovanna procured it for me after I left university. She thought I needed something to occupy my hours with less violence than fencing.”
A wry half-smile tugged at Fiore’s perfect lips. “But it didn’t suit you.”
“It suits me to hear you play it.” A thought occurred to Enzo amidst the fog of receding anodyne. “You don’t have your own.”
“No,” Fiore admitted, sounding almost reluctant to say so.
“Why not?”
Fiore raised his brows. “The expense, for one. Though I suppose I could find a luthier to fuck if I felt so inclined.”
Enzo’s chuckle ended in a cough. When it subsided, he said, “But you’re not so inclined.”
“No,” Fiore said again. “I don’t want to draw the notice of musical circles in the city. If folk hear me playing, they’ll want to know where I learnt, and as I am unwilling to answer, it would make matters awkward at best. At worst…”
