16. Elio
16
ELIO
I was glad I was wearing black when we walked through the cheap motel I’d been hiding out in near the private airstrip. It concealed the blood just enough not to freak out the bored clerk on duty in the small hours of the night.
Georgia was silent for once. So, that’s all it took to shake her confidence. Slaughtering ten men in front of her. Good to know.
We got into the double room, and I locked the door behind us. I’d been keeping a low profile and hiding from the cops for days since Georgia had given them a detailed description of me. Luckily, they seemed to lose interest in both of us when they worked out who the dead body was in Georgia’s apartment.
It was no big surprise they’d pulled her building’s security detail, as crappy as it was. The LAPD didn’t care about the murder of a man like the loan shark who’d broken into Georgia’s apartment in the night. They were glad he was dead. One less lowlife to manage on the streets.
Still, I needed to get us out of here. The Ravellis were stepping up their efforts, no doubt seeing how Georgia, their leverage, was about to slip through their fingers.
I moved farther into the room and started to strip down.
“What happens now?” Georgia asked. Her voice was faint. She’d seen a whole lot of nightmarish shit in the last few days, probably more than her entire life put together.
That wasn’t my problem.
“Now, we wait while our flight gets rearranged.” I pulled my soiled shirt over my head and flung it toward the bathroom.
Georgia was staring at me in alarm. “What are you doing?”
“Taking a shower, what does it look like? What, you need one, too?” I turned to her.
Her gaze hit my torso and slid down and around. Thank fuck that I’d only had a couple of tats back in my youth, and now, combined into sleeves like they were, they were pretty indistinguishable.
“Don’t tell me you’re an environmentalist? You want to save water and shower together?” I stepped closer to her. “Isn’t that what all the kids are up to?”
I wasn’t quite feeling like myself. I was exhausted, adrenaline dumping out of my system. In the week since I’d been back in contact with this woman, I was feeling more things than I’d allowed myself to feel for over a decade. It was untenable. I felt like a kettle, overfilled and destined to boil over.
Georgia wet her lips, and I couldn’t fucking look away.
“We’re not kids anymore,” she said quietly, her gaze darting around my face.
I knew what she was looking for. She still suspected me of being Elio. Of course she did. She wasn’t stupid. Despite the changes in us over the years, her gut told her the truth. But something was throwing her off, maybe even more than the contacts. She’d never imagined that the Elio she’d known could become a man capable of the bloody acts I’d committed tonight. That, more than anything else, told her that her instincts were wrong.
“Hmm, guess not.” I turned away and grabbed a fresh towel, heading to the bathroom.
As soon as I was inside, I turned the lock and leaned on the cool surface, letting the sudden drop in temperature cut through my heated thoughts. I glanced down. I was fucking hard as hell. It wasn’t anything unusual to be hard after a tough fight. A celebration of life. Your body urgently demanding you go and pass on your genes immediately, in case next time, you don’t walk away.
But that wasn’t why I was hard right now. There was no point in lying to myself.
I was hard right now because of the woman in the next room and the way she smelled. The way her body fit against mine. The way her lips had shone after she’d licked them.
Fuck.
I turned the shower as cold as it would go and stepped in. My breath left me as the freezing water rained down on me, shocking my system.
I was more than flesh and biology. The dark hell that I’d lived had broken fundamental parts of me, and it had all been because of her.
I placed my hands on the tile and let the water run along the ridges of my cock. My sister wasn’t wrong; I did live like a monk. My body was a line I didn’t let another human cross. It was the only thing I had left of my own. I had no silence inside my own head, no peace, no place to hide from the memories of war. But my body? That was mine and mine alone.
After Georgia, there had been no one else. I didn’t trust another woman to come too close. Lust was a stranger to me, and if it did come, in the night, alone with my memories, I just thought of the terrible things I’d seen, in far-off places. Atrocities. Soul-killing evil.
I’d been in the Esercito Italiano long enough to forget how to want, and then in the Col Moschin long enough after that to forget I’d ever known desire in the first place.
I hadn’t been lying in the club when that woman attempted to hit on me. I wasn’t a whole person. I was missing some parts. Pretty important ones.
For the first time in over fourteen years, I felt those parts inside me wake up.
It was unacceptable.
Un-fucking-acceptable.
I lost track of how long I stood under that burning cold, but it wasn’t enough to cool the heat slumbering in my soul. The fire that one woman, and one woman alone, had ever managed to rouse.
I had a bad feeling, deep down in my gut, where all my best instincts came from…
I was already fucked.
After the shower, I froze out Georgia and her attempts at conversation. I bunked down on the floor near the door, and she lay in the double bed. After a while, despite the stress of the day, I managed to drift off. It was a skill learned in the military. You had to sleep when you had the chance.
In my dreams, I was lost in memories. Sitting in a truck, a second before the convoy is attacked. In a medical tent when the guy you sleep next to is brought in, legs blown away. Watching a target approach a school, ninety-nine percent sure that he’s got an explosive on him, waiting for permission to take him out.
I woke with a start, bolting upright in my makeshift bed on the floor, a knife gripped in my hand. My breath was rasping in and out, my body drenched in sweat. So much for the shower. Little by little, the room came into focus. I remembered where I was and who I was with.
Stiffly, I stood and looked over at Georgia, just a shape under the blankets with a dark rope of hair spread against the white pillowcase.
The dreams hadn’t been so bad in a long time. Feeling much of anything at all, thanks to this woman, was going to make everything worse. The silent storm inside me, always twisting and turning, threatening to drag me under, might actually get me this time if I couldn’t find a way to stop my walls from crumbling. They were there for a reason. To protect my mind. I needed them, and this woman threatened them. I needed to get away from her as quickly as possible.
I sat at the table. I had no gun to clean, so instead I laid out the knife collection I’d managed to accrue since Georgia had run to the cops. Since getting caught with weapons, while wanted by the police, wasn’t the smartest idea, I’d left them at the hotel. Collecting weapons was simply a habit at this point.
I took a soft piece of cloth and started to clean the blades, slowly and methodically. I supposed I could be doing anything, as long as it was slow and steady and gave me something else to focus on, but cleaning weapons had become my way of coping with the endless nights.
“What are you doing?” Georgia’s voice was rough with sleep.
I tensed. The last thing I wanted was to speak to her right now.
“I said, what are you doing?” she repeated, as if there was any chance I hadn’t heard her in the silent room.
She got out of bed and approached the table. A single spotlight shone over it, and she stepped into the light. She had an oversized T-shirt on and nothing else. Her dark hair was pulled into a long braid that snaked over her shoulder. Her face was bare and effortlessly beautiful.
Just like that, I was rock-hard again, putting the half an hour under cold water to waste.
“I heard you. Go back to bed.” My tone was not welcoming.
Despite that, Georgia perched on a chair and reached out to touch one of the knives. I caught her wrist tightly, stopping her motion.
I looked at her for so long, she shifted impatiently and raised an eyebrow.
“Ever killed anybody with a knife?” she asked, her hand twisting in my grip.
“Yes.”
She swallowed hard, her slender throat bobbing. A sure sign that she wasn’t as composed as she pretended. Her pulse jumped beneath my fingers.
“Were you in the military?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. I had no intention of taking this stroll down memory lane. Not when the entire way was littered with mines that could end me.
“I mean, clearly you have been trained professionally. What do you do for Renato? Are you a hit man… or maybe a bodyguard?” she continued. “Hello? I’m talking to you.”
“Oh, are you? I thought you just loved to hear yourself speak.”
Her mouth hung open; she was outraged. “Well, it’s polite to make small talk, you know. It’s an asshole move to make others fill the silence all the time.”
“I’m not making you fill the silence. And if you think calling me an asshole will hurt my feelings, I can assure you, I’ve been called much worse.”
She snorted softly. “I’ll bet.”
I shook my head, and the movement seemed to catch her attention.
“What is it?”
“Just… you seem awfully curious about a man like me. I can only warn you that is a very bad idea. Curiosity killed the little mouse, didn’t you hear?”
She sighed. “I told you not to call me that, and I can’t help it if I’m curious.” She was studying the side of my face intently.
“I’m not him,” I told her, once again, and dropped her arm.
She nodded. “I’m starting to see that. He’d never be a man like you.”
I set down the knife I was working on and looked at her, wiping my hands on the rag.
“Considering your terrible taste in men, I think it’s for the best,” I told her.
Her hands balled into fists. “My what? I don’t have terrible taste in men.”
“Of course you do. You didn’t know what was really going on with your dad. You married a man who started out rich but was so piss-poor at managing himself and his money he left his widow at the mercy of a loan shark, living one step above a cardboard box on the street. You have poor taste in men.”
Her eyes grew glassy, like my words had actually upset her. The look bothered me.
“Yeah, well, you think that, and you don’t even know about my first boyfriend… the one who asked me to marry him and told me he loved me, just to run away. The one who broke my heart. If you knew about him, then you’d really know how shitty my taste in men was,” she murmured.
Venom laced her tone, but her words, her words made me see red.
I tightened my hand on the knife I was holding, the dull edge biting into my palm as I squeezed it. She was trying to get a rise out of me. She wanted me to give myself away. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
“He sounds like a real monster,” I ground out.
She stared at me for a long time. She seemed vaguely disappointed.
“He wasn’t anything as grand as that. He was just a man… a thief. A grifter. And none of that would have mattered… except that he never loved me like I loved him. That’s the truth.”
Like fuck, it was.
The words to disagree with every falsehood she’d just uttered consumed me. I burned with the need to remind her who had been the one lacking love, but that was dangerous. Lifting the lid on the past wasn’t something I’d ever allowed myself to do. I wasn’t changing that now.
I stood suddenly, the chair scraping back, and her eyes widened. I was hard as hell, my cock straining up my belly, and the whole fucking room smelled like her skin. I couldn’t stand it. She needed to get back to fucking bed, and there was only one way I could think of to convince her of that fact.
“If you’re cold and lonely in bed, just ask me to join you, Signora Conti. Don’t go about making meaningless small talk in the middle of the night. You wouldn’t be the first desperate housewife to want to fuck a monster.”
Her eyebrows flew up, and red tinged her cheeks. Her mouth fell open, incredulous and outraged. I enjoyed her anger.
“You think I want you?” she managed to get out. “I don’t!”
I glanced down at her hard nipples meaningfully. “Tell your tits that.”
My hand was reaching toward her chest before I could stop myself. Her soft breast filled my palm and sent a jolt of electricity through me. I burned.
When she didn’t stop me, I thumbed her nipple, the hard bud begging for more.
“Should we check how wet you are?—”
Her slap took me off guard. Just another reminder of how far I’d fallen in only a week. I didn’t touch unwilling women. I didn’t touch women at all. I hadn’t felt compelled to in so long… I’d thought that part of my life was over. And then in walked Georgia, just as fucking infuriating as always, and set my blood on fire.
Anger at myself, and her, and this whole fucking situation burst through me. I yanked her close, holding her in place with one hand on the back of her head, fisting in her hair, and the other on the small of her back.
Her hot breath hit my neck as I tilted her head back so I could look her in her eyes. Those mesmerizing eyes that I’d once lost myself in.
I wasn’t sure, right then, if I’d ever found myself again. Maybe she’d kept the best parts of me all along.
“Do you have a death wish, Signora Conti? Or just really poor survival instincts? I’m surprised you’ve made it this long.”
“You don’t know me or what I’ve survived,” she spit at me, anger making her resemble a warrior goddess.
She was pressed against me, her soft belly surrounding my hard-on. She swayed, and the pressure nearly undid me.
“I’ve survived worse than you. I’ve lost everything before… so you don’t scare me,” she breathed. Her gaze ran over my face and dipped to my lips.
I’ve lost everything before. What the fuck was she talking about? She had to mean her late husband. She’d lost everything when that thieving bastardo Conti had died.
“Yet,” I said and smoothed her hair back gently.
The unexpected softness of the touch seemed to shake her more than anything. I rubbed my thumb lightly across her parted lips, and her breath hitched.
“You don’t fear me — yet… We’ve got time for that, Georgia, all the time in the world.”
I slid my hand down her chest and found her hard nipple again. A murmur of pleasure left her as my finger brushed the hard point. Interesting. Then I pinched it hard, and her eyes snapped back into focus.
“Until then… be a good girl and you might survive this.”
“Fuck you,” she rasped at me, pulling her head from my grip.
“Again, just say the word, Signora Conti… I’ll fuck your husband’s memory right out of you.”
She gasped at me and then turned on her heel and stormed back to bed. I’d finally shocked her into leaving me the hell alone.
I sat heavily, my cock throbbing with blood, and I did my best to ignore it. I picked up my cloth and continued to clean, though my thoughts were consumed by her. As insidious as a poisoned kiss, the weakness she created was ebbing into my system, infecting me with every breath.
I had to stay away from her. It was the only way. The sooner she was married off, the better. I held the knife too hard. So hard, the blade split my skin. Ideally, I’d love to punch something. Maybe a wall, or a mirror, but that would give away too much.
I couldn’t let her see the wreckage inside me. I just couldn’t. I just had to make it until the wedding. If I could make it until the wedding, she’d be someone else’s problem.
Right. I couldn’t even convince myself of that.