Francesca
I was at the desk upstairs when one of the maids called up to me. “Frankie, you’ve got a laceration downstairs.”
“Again?” Yesterday, Salvatore got a nasty cut from a broken wine bottle, and now I had another patient on the roster. I’d just made an order from the hospital for more supplies because I’d been flying through them with all the injuries that had happened recently.
I left the office, headed down the stairs, and reached the entryway.
Wolfe stood there, a towel clamped around his forearm, and he wore a playful grin on his lips. “Hello, Nurse.”
“You didn’t learn from yesterday?”
He gave a slight shrug. “Guess not. Gonna stitch me up?”
Something about this seemed suspicious. What were the odds of two cuts in a row from the warehouse? “Come on, follow me.” I walked outside and down the stairs, feeling his mountain of a presence behind me.
We went to the side of the house where the cellar was located, the spot where I triaged most of my patients. He went down the stairs, and I pulled out one of the chairs at the table. “Take a seat.”
He wordlessly sat down, the towel still clamped around his arm.
I grabbed all my supplies and pulled up the chair next to him so I could work on his forearm.
It was the first time I’d been this close to him.
That distinct presence of his was even more potent at this proximity.
He gave off an indescribable heat too, as if he were his own personal sun.
And the way he smelled, like a man who had been working in the warehouse all day, but also with a hint of a man’s cologne, creating this musk that affected me like an aphrodisiac.
“Let’s take a look.” I removed the towel and saw the long cut up his arm. “How’d this happen?”
“Another wine bottle.”
I lifted my eyes and looked at him.
He stared back, a hint of a smile on his lips.
“Another wine bottle?” I asked suspiciously.
“Yeah,” he said. “That I may have intentionally cut across my arm so I could see the hot nurse.”
I went still when I heard what he said. “You did not…”
His grin widened.
“That’s crazy.”
“Well, I’m a little crazy.” He gave a shrug. “At least, that’s what I’ve been told…often.”
I held his stare, momentarily lost in those espresso-colored eyes, paralyzed by that confession.
“If you don’t patch me up soon, I might bleed out all over this table.”
My eyes dropped back to his wound, and I put the cloth back on it to stanch the flow.
He grabbed my suture kit and opened it with his teeth, just the way I did sometimes. “Don’t worry. I won’t pass out like Salvatore. Seen a lot worse than this.”
I removed the towel and got to work, cleaning the wound with alcohol first and noticing the way he didn’t flinch when it should have stung. He didn’t show any discomfort when the needle poked his skin, even though I didn’t numb him first. He seemed impervious to pain.
“Where did you go to school?”
“Florence.”
“Was it always your ambition to work for your father?”
“No. I wanted to work in a hospital, but he needed me, so…”
He stared at my face, while I kept my eyes focused on the wound across his forearm.
“You said you get shot a lot. I’m guessing you get stabbed a lot too?”
“Probably going to get stabbed a lot for the foreseeable future.”
My eyes stayed on his wound, but I knew he was smiling. I could hear it in his voice. Could feel it in the energy around him. “I’d rather you not do that. Your ink is too beautiful.”
“You’re into that, huh?”
I shrugged as I continued to work.
“You know, if you’d rather I not cut myself every time I want to see you, maybe you could give me your number.”
My eyes flicked back up to his.
He continued to smirk, the most handsome and arrogant smirk I’d ever seen a man wear.
Being this close to him made me feel weak, and I didn’t know how I was able to keep everything together.
I only managed to suture his wound because of all the muscle memory I’d built from working in the trenches.
It was second nature at this point. “My father would kill you if he found out.”
“Really? Because you strike me as a grown-ass woman who can make her own decisions.”
“Oh, I can,” I said. “But because he already doesn’t like you, any reason to kill you is a good reason.”
“Let me worry about that, alright?” he said as he continued to stare at me. “So how about that number, Francesca?”
I finished the last suture then secured it in place before I grabbed the gauze, feeling a tightness in my chest when I heard him use my full name. Something no one else ever called me, not even my own father.
This man was hot as hell. The devil in the disguise of a god.
And his beautiful exterior matched his overt confidence.
I could get a free drink at any bar I went to, could get the attention of most men I liked, but Wolfe was on a whole different level.
Way out of my league, so hot he would burn my skin every time I touched him.
Basically, it was the opportunity of a lifetime for me.
A one-time hookup was probably harmless.
No one would ever find out about it, and we would never speak of it again.
I would think about it every time I used my vibrator, but that was my business.
“Look, I never mix business and pleasure, but I’ll make a one-time exception for you. ”
His grin widened, and his eyes lit up like Christmas lights. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Because you’re so fucking hot, I can barely stand it.”
His grin started to fade as his eyes turned intense, like I’d said the perfect thing to coax his ego.
“Free tonight?” This man had probably fucked all of Sicily, so he probably knew how to pound a girl into O-town with no issue.
It’d been a long drought for me. There had been a few guys here and there, but none who made my toes curl.
I was sexually frustrated, to say the least, and a vibrator could never replace the fullness of a girthy man.
And I was certain he was the pump-and-dump type.
We’d get it out of our systems and then pretend it never happened, which was exactly what I was looking for right now.
“Your place or mine?”
“Yours. Mine is here, so that won’t work.”
“You live with your father?” he asked as he furrowed both eyebrows.
“No,” I said quickly. “I have my own villa up the hill. My father owns five square miles of land, so it’s sprawling.”
“I live in Palermo, and that’s quite the drive for you. Is there another road, other than the main one, that leads to your place?”
“Yeah, but it’s completely dirt, with no lights.”
“Works for me.”
“Then you have to drive an hour and a half—”
“Don’t worry about me.” He pulled his arm toward himself as he sat back in his chair. “Is eight good?”
“Sure.”
“Then I’ll see you then, Francesca.” He continued to sit there as he looked at me with that same unblinking stare he gave my father.
Like he didn’t want to look away, even for a second, as if he might miss something.
Then he leaned forward and gripped the bottom of my chair and effortlessly tugged me across the uneven stone floor until my chair was between his knees.
My heart raced so quickly, like a stampede of wild horses.
With the look of a man who knew exactly what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to take it, he slid his hand into my hair and caught my lips with his, kissing me hard and soft at the same time, feeling my lips with his as he dug his fingers deeper into my thick hair, taking me like I was his, even though I was still a stranger.
The kiss went on for a while, the heat building between our mouths as the flames rose beneath our flesh.
He gave me a swipe of his tongue and then moaned when I gave him mine in return.
His other hand slid underneath my thigh, and he was about to lift me into him when my brother called my name from the top of the cellar stairs.
“Frankie.”
I abruptly pulled away and released an aggravated sigh. “Motherfucking cockblock.”
Wolfe released a quick chuckle.
“Frankie?” Leo repeated.
“Yes?”
Then his footsteps sounded as he came down the stone stairs.
Wolfe quickly undid the bandage and ripped it off his arm before he lifted his chair and silently moved it a foot back. Then he sat down again, laying his arm across the table like I still needed to bandage it up.
I got to work and redid the bandage as I heard Leo come up behind me.
“What the fuck happened here?” Leo barked.
“What does it look like?” I snapped. “Did you need something?”
There was a heavy silence.
I knew Leo was staring at Wolfe, and when I glanced up at Wolfe, I saw him stare down my brother.
“Come find me when you’re done.” Leo turned around and headed back up the stairs.
I continued to bandage him up until I knew for certain my brother was gone.
“Thanks, Francesca,” Wolfe said as he touched the bandage with his other hand. Then he got up and wordlessly walked out of the cellar, his boots audible against the stone from his weight.
I felt his kiss on my lips even after he was gone.
My villa had been renovated a few years ago, so the kitchen had new, top-of-the-line appliances, brand-new hardwood floors, and tile on the kitchen floor and the countertops.
Everything remained authentic, all of the stone from the island.
It had a nice patio and an infinity pool that looked out over the grove of olive trees.
My father had gifted it to me, but it was hard to have true ownership of a villa when he still owned the land.
I basically rented it without having to make a monthly payment.
I stood at the window upstairs in my bedroom, searching for headlights in the darkness through the fields.
It was almost eight, so Wolfe should be there any moment…
if he didn’t get lost. All of the roads out here were dirt and didn’t have names, so he couldn’t rely on a GPS to get him here. Just the directions I’d sent via text.