AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t,” he says quickly. “Let’s just live in the moment, Leo. Life is much more fun that way.
He’s right, partly. There’s no point thinking about how this—whatever the fuck this is—is going to end. Because it’ll end in tears if it doesn’t end in blood.
Right now, I’d just like to enjoy not having my head ache quite as much. The blow job did actually help.
“You should have a nap,” Julian says in my ear. “I’ll stay right here and watch over you.” It should sound creepy. But somehow…
Somehow it’s comforting.
CHAPTER36
JULIAN
Leo falls asleep,snoring gently, and I spend a long time studying his face as he sleeps. Seeing Leo like this: relaxed, vulnerable, trusting me to keep him safe—it makes me feelgoodinside. And I can still taste him, thick and creamy, with a hint of sweetness that lingers on the tongue.
I stare harder at his face, trying to memorize it, knowing it’s pointless. I canseethe broad shape of his nose, the curves of his generous lips, the dark smudges under his tired eyes, but I can never quite imprint them on my mind, never get them to fit together into one wholeface. He’s a jigsaw puzzle where I can pick out the pieces, but not the whole picture.
Frustrated, I flop back down on the bed. I’ve worked damn hard in my life to make sure my other senses made up for this one issue, and truthfully, it’s never bothered me much. It took me a while before Ireallybelieved other people could identify each other just by their faces. But no one else seemed to struggle like I did, and so at last…I accepted it. And mitigated it in every way I could think of.
So why does it bother me so much that I can’t keep a picture of Leo Bernardi in my mind?
I shift around on the bed until I can pull my phone out of my back pocket. I line his sleeping face up in the camera, and take a photo.
Unfortunately, the flash goes off.
Leo’s eyes snap open and he sits up, wincing, looking around. “The hell was that?”
“Nothing,” I assure him, and slide my phone under the pillow before he sees it. “Nothing at all.”
“What time is it?”
“About noon.”
He lies back down and I reach over to stroke his cheek. He lets me. “I had a weird dream,” he mutters.
“Are you hungry?”
His eyes, which are closing again as he tries to recall the dream, fly open. “I could eat a fucking horse.”
“I can get that brought in, if you like. Or we have many other cuts of meat available downstairs, if you don’t want to wait.”
He gives a huff of laughter and kicks off the blankets. “I need to piss first.”
“Be my guest.” I point the way to the attached bathroom, and as soon as he’s gone I pull out my phone to check the photo of Leo. It’s not a bad picture. The flash washed out his skin a little, but it’s not bad. I add a tag to it: LEO.
Maybe if I study itextrahard, I’d be able to pick him out in a crowd.
He comes back out and gives me a suspicious look. “What’ve you been doing while I was asleep?”
His bandage is all crooked, and I tut at him as I get out of bed and come across to straighten it. “I’ve been watching you,” I tell him honestly.
He looks down at me, some thought tugging his brows together, and then his belly growls. “I need food,” he mutters. “And then I need to call Gino.”
“Then let’s do it.”
He hesitates. “If I wanted to walk out the front door right now, would I be able to do that without busting up my knuckles on a lot of Castellani jaws?”
I consider. “I’d rather you didn’t. But yes, if you wanted to leave, no one would stop you. It would be a foolish thing to do, though. Apart from this Roxanne Rochford nonsense, you need someone to keep an eye on you, like the doctor said.”
