18. Savio
CHAPTER 18
Savio
Your Star - The All-American Rejects
“ Y ou’re not the first person who thought they could help me.”
The words fall from my lips despite my inner cravings.
“No.” Her tone’s absentminded but it’s not a question.
She knew that already.
“You must have been a child when I was taken captive.”
“Just turned seventeen. You didn’t get them, did you?”
“Get what?”
“My letters?”
My brows lift. “No.”
She just hums.
“What letters? You wrote to me?” Annoyed when she doesn’t answer, I clench my jaw. “Where did you send them?”
“Whichever parish you were in at the time. The archdiocese I contacted seemed willing to help an old member of your flock who wanted to keep you updated on their travels…”
“You lied,” I grouse, my tone disapproving.
“How else would I have found your addresses? Not that they were all that helpful in the end. You didn’t get any of them. So who’s the worst liar in this scenario?”
My nose crinkles at her silent ‘so there.’
“What about the fallen parishioners?” I ask, keeping my words careful.
“The ones you murdered, you mean?” is her bland retort.
“Did you visit the towns?—”
“Of course not,” she grouses, finally turning around so that she can shoot me an eye roll. “I read the local newspapers. Funny how no one else noticed the connection. Though, perhaps, they were glad to see the backs of whoever ‘killed themselves.’”
My jaw works when she uses air quotes, yet she fails to take into account how obsessive and unhinged she is.
Exactly what I need in a savior…
Absently, I watch her, noting her struggles to bend down. Though I should help her, she’s not going to fall like she almost did earlier. It’s just awkward.
She holds her head by locking her shoulders in a hunched position, but I can tell it’s as if her skull is too heavy for her neck.
When she leans over, she snatches the green case the kit’s in. Upon straightening up, she rests against the sink after she dumps it on the side, and I watch as she takes some slow, deep breaths. A hand lifts to rub her temple.
I’m not the only one with a headache, then.
I’ve been in Rome for almost a year, and the day I arrived, she had her surgery. I can’t imagine what she’s been through in that time, the pain and the medical interventions she’s had. How she’s standing in my kitchen at all is a miracle?—
“Stop looking at me like that.”
The words are hissed out, and for the first time, I sense she’s angry with me.
Because the difference is jarring, I keep my tone gentle: “How am I looking at you?”
“I’m not ill,” she rumbles by way of an answer. “I’m getting better.”
Well, that’s not a lie, even if it’s a case of her stretching the truth.
“Take off your shirt,” she orders when she turns to face me again.
She sounds clinical now, making the contrast in her nature sharper than before.
She said she wanted me.
Everything I had to give, nothing more, nothing less. And not as a priest, as a custodian of her faith, but as a man… The question is, can she handle it?
Almost murdering someone didn’t frighten her off, so maybe the state of my body will.
Hiding a laugh at my gallows humor, I unbutton my shirt. As the cotton fabric falls aside, she steps behind me so she can tend to my back.
No one has seen it before.
Ever.
And I never thought anyone would either.
“How do you clean it when you’re alone?” is her only question.
There’s no shocked gasp. No horrified squeal.
If anything, her tone’s loaded with chastisement.
That shouldn’t make my erection reappear, but it does.
“Sometimes, I don’t bother.”
I can feel her tension despite the two feet that separate us. “You want it to get infected?”
“If only. It never does.”
“How is that possible?”
“God’s will?” I suggest bitterly, bowing my head.
“Do you want to die?” she asks, the words soft.
Sad.
She hurts for me.
Not because she pities me, but because she doesn’t like what I’m telling her.
She doesn’t want me to feel that way.
Is anything about this night even happening, or is it a dream sequence gone awry?
Maybe that would make more sense.
“Not always,” I hedge.
Her answer isn’t forthcoming, but then, I guess there isn’t much to say to that.
Not even in dreams that take the shape of pocket pixies who cup cocks as a greeting and lick blood off their fingers.
Yet again, my body stirs at the memory. I know, point blank, that image will be in my head—dream sequence or not—until the day I die.
The clasp on the kit rattles as she opens it, making me tense as I hear her set up her station.
“Seriously, though, how did you clean the wounds when you bothered?”
“I’d douse a towel in rubbing alcohol and lay it on my back.”
“Jesus, that must have been painful.”
“Are you supposed to use profanity in front of a priest?”
Anyone else, I’d have reprimanded them. But she isn’t anyone else.
“You’re not a priest,” she mutters absently, and before I can reply, she presses an alcohol-soaked gauze to a wound.
A growl escapes me as the astringent makes contact with the raw flesh, and my limbs lock as I process the pain.
Par Dieu , it feels good.
Not as much of a release as when I make the lash marks, but good nonetheless.
She’s thorough, God help me. More thorough than I usually am.
She cleanses everything, and at my side, where she placed the bottle of alcohol on the table, I watch as the level slowly depletes from three-quarters full to nearly empty.
Only then does she murmur, “Damn.”
“It’ll bleed for a while,” I assure her, knowing that to be the case from experience.
“I don’t know how it’s possible, but it looks worse cleaned up,” she whispers, and something in her voice has me glancing over my shoulder at her.
I see her tears. More, I see the trails that pour down her face. Three single track marks, almost symmetrical as they course over her cheeks. Too many to be fresh. Meaning she cried as she tended to me.
Lord, she’s glorious.
Those tears are beautiful, and I want to taste them because they’re mine.
They fell for me.
I twist on the seat, with such a lack of care that it pulls on my wounds. Letting my hand cup her cheek even as my thumb strokes along the silken curve of her skin, I gather some droplets while I stare into her eyes.
Misty green, they penetrate me, making me feel like I could lose myself in them. As if they’re a welcoming fog that would provide shelter rather than lead me into danger.
The sight and the thought stirs me to release her and to bring my thumb to my mouth.
The salty liquid is almost floral on my tongue. Like a wine’s bouquet, it seems to react with my saliva, making her fundamentally collide with me.
I swallow at the same moment she does.
“Why are you here, diavoletta ?”
Her nose scrunches. “I’m not a pixie.”
“No? You feel like something from a dream.”
“I’m not. I came here to help you.”
“Why? People don’t help random strangers.”
“You’re not random. I’ve known you since I was seventeen. I sent my first letter to you then, and I must have sent a dozen more.” Irrational anger at not receiving them filters through me, but it’s stymied when she gnaws on her bottom lip. I want to bite it. I want to— “I know you think I’m crazy. Maybe I am.” A smile appears on her lips, and it’s sheepish and shaken and self-deprecating. It makes me trust her regardless of her admission. “But I truly mean you no harm.”
“I already figured that out. You shouldn’t threaten a man like me.”
“I’m not a sinner.” Her chin jerks up. “I know I’m safe.”
“Everyone sins,” I tell her, knowing it to be true.
“Not me.”
“You blasphemed.”
“Not my religion anymore.”
“Semantics.”
She grins, and despite myself, I grin at her in turn. “I’m an author. I have the lexicon to outtalk you at the best of times.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Give me a chance and I will.”
“And what was grabbing my crotch if not a sin?”
Her nose crinkles, but before I can call her out, she clucks her tongue. “You’re making your back bleed.”
“As I said, it’ll do that for a while. Every time I move, it’ll tear open the wounds.”
“That sounds excruciating.”
I hum with perverse delight. “It is.”
“Savio,” she whispers, cupping my cheek, mirroring my earlier gesture. “You have to see how fucked up that is.”
“It’s the only way I know how to cope,” I confess, and the words are a weight off—whether it’s my shoulders or my soul, I’m not sure.
She sighs and her breath brushes my face. It’s faintly minty, like she’s been chewing gum. Her eyes turn sad, and though I understand why, I hate that I did that.
I hate that I made those happy eyes turn sorrowful.
“Let me help you, Savio.”
It’s the first time in too long that I’ve been called my name by anyone other than my parents.
“Only God can help me now,” I counter, believing every single word.
Something flares in her eyes.
Thumb settling in the small space where a dimple used to form, she breathes, “Then what do you have to lose?”