Chapter 34 Cecilia #3
Emory cleaned my back in detail and Mateo sat silently.
He knew who I was, but he wasn’t running away in fear.
He wasn’t screaming in anger or channeling it through his fists or his fucks like Ronan.
He wasn’t hiding and keeping away from me like I felt Santos doing.
He was here, by my side. And while I was having a hard time keeping a grip on my reality, I knew that meant everything.
“Don’t bandage me yet,” I rasped out and she looked at me curiously.
“I’d like to shower while I’m still numb,” I explained, and she nodded in understanding.
“I can leave a few syringes with you, and if you can’t stand the pain then you can have one of the guys administer it again.
It would be a pretty impossible thing to get wrong,” she said as she pulled out extra syringes and Mateo helped me back to a seated position on the bed.
“I’ll leave the extra bandages so someone can wrap you up after you’re clean. ”
When the IV bag was almost empty I shoved my hand in her direction in a silent request for her to remove the needle from my skin and looked away. Yup, I was definitely okay with mid-level torture, but couldn’t handle the sight of a needle.
There was no point in trying to win them all.
I grabbed the shirt and bundled it up in front of my chest to cover myself as best I could, but at this point, I had little dignity left in my reserves.
No, the Bulldog and Scarface drained it all out of me.
A small smile tugged at the corner of my lips when I remembered Mateo saying he killed the Bulldog.
“A word Kane?” She said to him after she packed all of her items back up into her little doctor briefcase and stood by the bed in the same way she did with Ronan the last time I saw her.
“No,” he said to her, shocking the hell out of me as he still held my hand and didn’t spare a glance in her direction at all.
“Fine. I’ll say it here then. She just went through something immensely traumatic.
Keep your dick out of the equation if you care about her,” she said angrily, then mumbled something about thinking I was Ronan’s girl on her way out of Mateo’s room.
I exhaled heavily, the awkwardness from our unfinished kiss still clearly hanging over us.
“Do you want to help me with that shower?” I asked and he nodded, pulling me up by the hand and I let my shirt drop to the ground as I stood up off the bed.
I made my way to the bathroom slowly, Mateo was already adjusting all the shower settings and waiting for me to hobble in. I couldn’t help myself, I turned my head back towards the mirror behind me again, mesmerized at the atrocity that was now permanently branded onto my body forever.
“It’ll heal. And it’ll fade,” he promised, seeing the look in my eyes through the mirror as our dark stares found each other again.
He extended his hand my way and I took it willingly as he opened the large shower glass door for me.
He was still shirtless from giving me his, and now that the pain was no longer screaming for my attention, I could direct some of it towards the perfectly sculpted abs that adorned his body and the lickable V peeking out through his shredded jeans.
He undid his pants while leaving his boxers on and followed me into the shower, promptly removing the detachable showerhead from the wall and using it to avoid getting my back too wet now that the doc cleaned it.
The hot water felt amazing against my bruised and battered body and all I wanted was to make permanent residence inside that shower.
Mateo cleaned every inch of me with a loofah and soap while I stood, my only job was to keep myself upright and I felt like I was truly nailing it.
I was expecting a repeat of the last time we were both in this bathroom, when he scrubbed me in a most deliciously sensual way, but it seemed like the doc’s words got to him and he was holding back.
His sight was fixed on my eyes as if nothing else mattered, there was something unsettling about that, like he could see into my soul now and he knew exactly who I was.
Rayos.
Nobody was supposed to know who I was, I’d grown accustomed to it that way.
He left the water on but helped me out of the shower and draped a thick, luxurious towel around me that somehow was still warm.
He pulled a packaged toothbrush from a drawer and tore the wrapping off before putting the toothpaste on and handing it to me.
I winced at the pain of moving my shoulder but fought through it as I brushed my teeth and he slid back into the shower.
He removed his soaking wet boxers and began to wash, while I stood there, unmoving, watching.
The fogged glass didn’t do much to hide the monstrous beast that had been fighting through his boxers as it was sprung free and jerked to life.
My lips licked instinctively, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to look away, or was I supposed to leave the bathroom?
I couldn’t even bring my head up at this point to stare at anything but it, and I knew he probably already noticed exactly where my eyes were directed.
I heard a dark chuckle, and I turned my head to the side, heat flooding my cheeks from getting caught, but so what?
How many times had he seen my body now with no remorse or sense of shame?
He was built like a fucking God, and I wasn’t going to pretend like it wasn’t doing anything for me because lies didn’t serve me anymore.
As if he knew exactly what he was doing to me, he lingered in that shower, spending way too much of his time and effort lathering up the giant thing hanging in between his legs.
I might as well have pulled up a chair and taken photos at this point, I made no effort to preserve any innocence between us and look away as my eyes trailed back up to find his were still very much fixed on me.
Once he dried off, he slipped on a fresh pair of boxers and instructed me to lay on the bed again, with my back exposed.
He strategically placed the gauze on as much of my back that was physically possible then wrapped a medical bandage around my entire torso.
He even went as far as wrapping it across my shoulder where the gash ended right above my collar bone.
I was a glorified mummy from the waist up, except the bandage was pushing up on my tits like an eighteenth-century corset and if I tried hard enough, I could have probably licked my own cleavage at how far up they’d been squashed.
“What time is it?” I asked him, wondering how much longer I had until real life came tumbling down and I would have to worry about Ronan rampaging his way in here to demand the answers he clearly already got on his own.
I was a little angry that he couldn’t leave well enough alone and went digging behind my back. I knew I didn’t have that right, and it was my screw up entirely but I absolutely needed someone else to blame right now, and fuck it, he’d do.
“Nearly three-thirty,” he grabbed a remote next to his bed and clicked a button that had darkening electric shades sliding down covering every inch of glass in his room.
Mateo opened his closet to pull a shirt out for me and I extended my arms forward to help him dress me, already so used to the way he cared for me and not at all opposed to being on the receiving end of his devotion.
Even the deadliest nightshade could appreciate the kindness of a raindrop.
I kneeled on the bed and waited for him to make his way around the room, that was when I finally noticed all the instruments were gone.
“Where are your things?” I scrunched my eyebrows in the middle while I looked around the room curiously, like they might appear at any moment.
“They um, they were casualties,” he pressed against his temple as he made his way to the bed and scoffed. “I can’t believe I said that, Fletcher’s in fucking intensive care. They were just instruments.”
“Fletcher’s alive?” I practically yelled, my shock, so apparent but how could I have thought anything but the worst when I saw his body lying in a pool of blood too massive for anyone whose heart was still beating?
I heard the way his body hit the ground with that sick lifeless thud that I knew and recognized all too well.
There was just something about the noise made by a soulless vessel when it fell to the floor.
Nothing else could create that sound.
“Yeah, you saved both their lives when you threw that key back in the kennel and distracted that ugly fucker.” Relief drenched me in a powerful wave with the realization that my efforts weren’t in vain and that at least something good came out of my misery.
“Good,” I said, pressing my lips into a flat line. “That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to be upset that your things were ruined. I’m sure some of those instruments were irreplaceable.”
“Maybe that’s the lesson I needed. Maybe that was my punishment for leaving something so rare and beautiful unguarded,” he said, looking straight into my eyes as if he wasn’t talking about his piano or the cello anymore.
“Let’s sleep now, Ronan will want to talk to you as soon as he wakes up.
” He turned off the lights with those words and covered himself with the blanket before turning away from me and leaving me feeling a sense of rejection I knew would eat away at me all night.
“Thank you, Mateo,” I barely whispered before laying on my side facing the opposite direction. Sleep would come easily, sure. But it would only be another hour or so before the bucket of water woke me up again.