Chapter 12 Kitty
TWELVE
KITTY
Even before I woke up, my body knew today was different.
I could feel the aches and pains threatening to drown me while I slowly drifted into wakefulness.
Everything hurt. Everything. Literally everything.
In all honesty, I’d been in a car crash that had hurt less than this. Which seemed impossible considering whiplash was a grade-A cunt, but tell that to my body.
When I got up to pee, I groaned.
“Let me help, duci.” Stan appeared from out of nowhere. Hell, I’d thought he was still sleeping.
Sneak.
“Yeah. You can help.” He re-tucked me into his hold, movements slow and measured, then carried me into the connecting bath. “See,” I chided before he could give me shit for trying to get out of bed on my own. “I’ll ask when I need assistance.”
His nose scrunched. “I suppose I should be grateful for that concession.”
“You should be, yes.”
When he chortled, it registered that my good humor diminished the perpetual worry in his expression.
Worry for me.
Yesterday evening had been one of the most surreal nights of my life. And I’d already lived through bomb blasts, a private jet malfunction, and now a kidnapping.
In a weekend.
Never mind what had happened in the run-up to meeting Stan.
But for all that these experiences had a surreal nature, nothing beat being at the center of this man’s focus.
The prospect of becoming the center of his world had a quiver racing down my spine, and with the state of my body, I wasn’t up to quivers, shivers, shudders, or judders.
“Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere. And I really need the…”
When he didn’t tease me, just helped me over to the toilet and, with more ease than we should have after such a short acquaintance, helped me stand, tugged down my borrowed boxer briefs, and then guided me onto the toilet seat, I was both relieved and mortified.
Once he stood there, hovering over me, I muttered, “Stan, I’m already letting you see behind the fourth wall here. Don’t build a fifth.”
“Liunissa, it’s only pee. It doesn’t count.”
My nose wrinkled. “It does count. I don’t want to see you pee. Not for ten years at least. So, shoo. Out. Go. Before I yell for your mom to help me again.”
He backed off, but not without quipping, “I’m only going because of the ten years comment. Anyway, you look hot, duci. I’d let you do wicked things to me on the throne.”
“Eww,” I shouted, but I grinned.
Yeah, last night had totally been a fever dream because I shouldn’t be grinning so quickly. Not when grinning hurt like fuck.
Still… “What do you mean wicked things?”
His head popped around the door until I shrieked and, snickering, he retreated. “You could suck me off.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” He peeped around the door again. “You haven’t peed yet.”
“Shy bladder.” I wafted a hand at him then noticed— “You got my ring resized?”
He turned bashful, a feat I didn’t think he was capable of. “Yeah.”
“You’re a sneak, you know that?”
That was the second time he’d managed to slide it onto my finger without waking me.
His shoulder hitched. “It slipped on like it was made for that finger.”
“Because it was.” I shook off the fogginess his care and attention triggered in me. I was starting to understand the whole ‘fools in love’ thing. “Shut the door behind you.”
“Only if you call me when you’re done.”
“Bet your ass I will. I’m aching like a motherfucker.”
“Shall I run a bath?”
Longing filled me. “That sounds so nice and yet so painful too.”
“On it.”
When he didn’t come into the room to run this bath, I assumed there was another one somewhere close by.
I hadn’t let him help me shower last night, but I was definitely going to rely on him today.
Double ouch.
Even peeing hurt.
And that was nothing to the seven dwarfs hammering away inside my skull.
Because standing up seemed like a painful prospect, I studied the ring. The setting. The gems. His damn nerve for slipping it onto my finger again…
I needed that spark to encourage me into finishing my business. It got me through waddling into a standing position, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the realization that work expected me in tomorrow.
“Fuck,” I whispered, especially when I trundled over to the vanity to wash my hands. A glance in the mirror had me hissing. “You look like you went ten rounds with Elvira.”
In fact, I looked worse than that.
I had black eyes. Bruises on top of bruises. And the worst part was that the marks Stan had left behind added to my look. His bite took up a good chunk of throat real estate, and I knew people would think my attacker had raped me.
Last night, after Victor had departed and I’d checked myself out in the shower, I’d been relieved to find no blood or spotting.
No tears.
I’d prodded away, seeking evidence of a forced insertion while I was unconscious, and had come up with nothing. But if you looked at the state of me, you’d think I had been.
My fingers gingerly stroked Stan’s bite.
My eyes tripped over it at first, then the bruises, but I always returned to those primitive marks.
Because they were mine.
I’d consented to him biting me.
Everything else with those fuckers had been against my will, but not this.
Never this.
Fingertips still dancing over the marks, I inhaled so deeply that it hurt my ribs. I leaned on the vanity, allowing it to take my weight while I studied his bite like a drowning person clung to a life buoy.
Last night was a tidal wave that wanted to overwhelm me, but I couldn’t let it. I wasn’t the type of person who allowed shit to take a precedence in my life.
In my family, everyone had a role.
Lucas and I kept things going.
That was our job.
If I allowed what happened to breach my defenses, our whole world would topple and—
“Kitty?” Stan followed through with a soft knock on the door.
“Yeah. I’m decent.”
“Shame,” he joked, and my lips curved. Faintly—the moment had gone.
He seemed to sense it too. Neither of us spoke another word as he carried me into the bedroom then out into the hall.
A few doors down, I heard the sounds of running water as he walked us into a family bathroom.
He carefully lowered me into the tub, not bothering to take off the shirt I was borrowing or his loaned boxer briefs.
The moment the heat hit me, I shivered, but it felt good. Really good.
I peeped at him, watching him putter around and rifle through one of the cupboards. “What are you doing?”
“My sister and Matri have too much crap. Mallow blossom? Verveine extract? Tomato leaves? I love Pachino tomatoes as much as the next Sicilian, but who the fuck wants to smell like a tomato plant?”
Grousing in Sicilian now, he brought them over to me.
I held my breath at the words he uttered. Half certain it’d trigger me. But then I sensed the difference between the Sicilian dialect and Italian and I relaxed.
Unaware of my almost-breakdown, he pumped some liquid soap onto each hand then swept them under my nose.
“Option A.”
This certainly was not how I’d anticipated my first bath with him going, but right now, I’d take the show he put on for my audience of one.
Especially as he only wore boxer briefs and, trust me, that was a sight to behold on its own.
He sniffed the first gel, then made a ‘not bad’ face before dunking his hand under the running faucet.
“You don’t do things by halves, huh?” I laughed when, instead of pumping the bottle, he twisted the lid and poured three-quarters of the soap into the water.
“Nah. I’ve stolen this shit before. You need the crap they use for kids. That’s the only stuff that really makes the bubbles.”
The prospect of this lab rat-cum-bruiser taking bubble baths had me slipping under the surface until only my eyes and forehead were visible.
Back to puttering, he grabbed some more items from the vanity. When he offered me three bath bombs, I plucked one that had flowers and salt crystals wrapped in a muslin cloth from his palm and dropped it into the water too.
Next came a candle.
“Narnia’s in that cupboard, huh?”
“I told you they have too much shit.”
Then, he surprised me by closing a bunch of shutters so that it was nice and dark in here.
“Do you want the jets on?”
I groaned. “It has jets?”
“Se.”
“Please.”
I released another, deeper, more guttural groan as the bubbles worked on my soreness. Sure, it pummeled my bruises, but I’d take it.
Allowing myself to relax, I sagged beneath the surface, noticing when I came up for air that he’d plunked himself beside the tub, one leg stretched out, the other bent at the knee, which he used to prop up the arm holding his phone.
“You don’t have to sit with me.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“You really don’t.”
“And let you sink under there? Nope.”
“I’m not going to drown.”
“You sure won’t. Not with me around. Plus, you’ll need help getting out.”
I harrumphed. “You might as well join me.”
His gaze darkened as he glanced at me over his cell. “The next time we’re in a bath, liunissa, I’m fucking you. If you’ll still have me…”
The assurance followed by that glimpse of vulnerability had my already liquifying bones melting some more.
“I wouldn’t have come home with you if I didn’t,” I pointed out.
“A part of me thinks you’re…” When he broke off, I frowned at him until he continued, “…I understand you need someplace safe, somewhere away from your family if you don’t want them to see you like this. But I can get you a suite at The Victoria—”
“I don’t want a suite at The Victoria.” My jaw worked. Which hurt. Fuck. “My sister-in-law’s father tried to abduct her from our building, Stan. I’m well aware that this stuff happens in our world.
“Mostly, I’m mad at myself. I-I shouldn’t have let my guard down—”
“Porca troia, that’s the last thing you should take from this mess.
I want you to let your guard down. You’re safe with me, duci.
Sempri. Always.” He gritted his teeth. “I can’t wait to torture that fucker for proving that I’m lying to you, but I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure that you’re always secure—”
“You can’t promise that,” I butted in, because I wanted to believe him. But I couldn’t. Life had proven otherwise. And not just last night.
That situation with Cade’s father-in-law. Losing Vinny. Killing Neev’s teacher. Da’s death…
Mob-adjacent or not, the underworld poisoned everything it touched.
And no matter how much I tried to avoid it—I was a part of it.
Whether I liked it or not.
“I can promise it,” he growled, drawing me away from my thoughts.
“Stan, you can’t. I don’t need you to. I’m a realist.”
His eyes shuttered like he was the one in pain. And maybe he was. But this kind left bruises on the soul, not the skin.
"Do you know how many people I've lost, Kitty?"
"We all lose people," I rasped. "It's life."
"I won't lose you." He snarled the words as one hand balled into a fist. "You can push me away and I'll let you. You can decide that you never want to see me again. And I'll let you. But you will always have Sicilian guards, whether we’re together or not, and you’ll be safe. I won't be the reason you die."
There were so many fucked-up things in that statement. Too many. And I was in too much discomfort to be horny. Truly.
But damn.
His red flags made me want to burrito myself in them.
Best. Blanket. Ever.
"What if I dated another man?"
Apparently, exhaustion and pain didn’t remove the sass from my DNA.
His jaw clenched so hard that I was sure he'd break his teeth.
"I might kill him, but your guards would make sure you weren’t around at the time."
I snorted. "I appreciate the restraint."
And like quicksilver, he shot me a grin. A sheepish one.
"You're mine, Kitty. Did you forget that?"
Despite the hot water, I shivered. "I didn't."
"You swear you knew I'd come for you?" When I nodded, he shifted until he was leaning against the side of the bath, one arm trickling into the water, a hand settling on my thigh. "My brave liunissa."
“I didn’t feel brave. Mostly, I felt angry.”
“Either way, it brought you back to me. But you’re wrong. Bravery is being afraid and still doing something about it.”
He rolled onto his knees, but that hand of his only wandered before it clamped down. Not enough to hurt, but for me to feel the connection between us stir to life. I saw it banked in his eyes and felt nothing but reassured—this went deeper than sex.
No matter his declaration last night, something uttered in the heat of the moment, the way he looked at me now was proof enough.
Then, he stole the air from my lungs by rumbling, “Do you want to be there when I end that traitor’s life?”