3. Elio
Elio
M y words send a physical shock through Deirdre, which is kind of odd, considering I already told her that we’re engaged in the car.
And I sure as shit know that she didn’t forget or mishear me, because she spent the entire ride back here saying that we weren’t.
And yet, it’s like I’m telling her for the very first time based on the way that she reacts.
“We’re not getting married,” she spits like an angry cat.
She needs more of that bedtime tea. The cat on that box looked chill as fuck.
She swipes her hands like little claws at the panties I’m already holding. As if by taking them back, she can reassert some sort of control over this situation.
Only problem is she never actually had control over this situation in the first place. She can’t take it back if I’ve never relinquished it to her.
I step smoothly out of her reach, tucking the garment of clothing carefully into my pocket.
“We are,” I counter. “It’s your only option. Being married to me will protect you and you’ll be free of your debt all at once. What’s not to like about that?”
“What’s not to like?” she gasps, disbelief making her words all high and huffy. “How about the fact that I’ll be married to you! ”
She tenses, then clamps her mouth shut, her eyes huge. She’s probably afraid that she’s just offended me or hurt my feelings or something, but she hasn’t. I’m more than aware that I’m not the prize in this relationship.
But I’m also the only one who can give her what she needs now.
I’m the only one who can protect her.
I’m the only one who will own her.
Deirdre Titone.
My wife.
Goddamn, do I ever love the sound of that.
I smirk, and that appears to confuse her, because her fury abates slightly.
“I don’t understand,” she says, slowly shaking her head. “This makes no sense. You’ve got to have some actual bride lined up out there somewhere. Why would you marry me just to get Darragh off our backs?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever made a decision in my entire life for the sole purpose of getting another man ‘off my back.’”
Her cute, freckled nose wrinkles with incredulity. “So… You’re telling me you actually want this? You just… You just decided you want to marry me?”
“Do I look like the sort of man who does a single fucking thing he doesn’t want to do?”
Though to be fair, I never wanted to get married before Deirdre. I know that Uncle Vinny’s got some candidates in mind, and that someone like Nat Rizzo would literally claw another girl’s eyes out for the chance, but before now I always looked at it as a chore to be put off for as long as possible.
But now…
Hell. I’d marry my Songbird right here, right now. In this sweet-smelling bathroom, my furious, beautiful bride without a single stitch on her.
But she deserves a better ceremony than that.
She deserves a better groom, too, but that part is decidedly non-negotiable.
“Your tub is getting full,” I point out blithely when she doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t move. She’s studying me with her pretty mouth pinched and her arms crossed over her breasts, like she’s attempting to figure something out. Trying to see a trap from all possible angles.
But there is no angle here. No secret card up my sleeve I’m waiting to play.
I want to marry her and I will fucking do it.
I’ve already come to possess everything else in her life.
Might as well add her vow to the list.
My fiancée – because that’s already how I’m starting to think of her, and Cristo Santo , it kind of makes my dick hard – shakes her head again and then walks over to the tub.
She turns off the water then carefully gets in.
I watch her closely, primed to grab her if I need to because I’m worried those trauma-weakened legs are going to give out like a baby deer’s.
But my Songbird’s made of strong stuff and she gets in just fine on her own.
She refuses to look at me, instead staring mulishly at the foamy bubbles that currently conceal her from her elegant collarbones down.
She lifts her wet, soapy arms, tugging at the loose hairstyle on the top of her head until it all comes tumbling down in a wave of liquid fire that makes my heart feel like it’s beating both too fast and in the wrong place – in my cock instead of in my chest.
“Alright. I’m in the bath,” she tells me. “I’m not going to pass out or hold my breath or anything. You can go now.”
I do, but just for a couple of seconds. I leave the bathroom only for as long as it takes to grab the chair from Deirdre’s room. Then I carry it into the bathroom and set it down beside the bathtub.
Deirdre had been leaning back against the tub eyes closed, but they pop open at the sound of the chair being set down and my body dropping into it.
“What are you doing? I said you could go!” she snaps.
“See, the thing is, I actually can’t,” I say. The chair is facing away from the tub. I’m sitting in it backwards, straddling the seat. I rest my forearms along the chair’s back and make myself comfortable.
Deirdre gives a bitter laugh.
“You’re Elio Titone. Pretty sure you could do anything you set your mind to.”
“Almost anything,” I correct her. “Leaving you alone tonight isn’t on that list. I am physically fucking incapable of that right now.”
She rolls her eyes at me, but I’m not exaggerating. I feel like if I walk back out that door, if I put any meaningful distance between us after everything that’s happened tonight, then some vitally important blood vessel inside my head is gonna pop for good this time.
I could have lost her tonight.
It’s something I’ve been pushing down, down, down since we got home.
A reality I’ve been stuffing behind softer things like tea and baths because stopping to confront the fact that she could have gotten killed tonight, could have died right in fucking front of me , literally makes me think my goddamn heart might give out.
I’m thirty-four years old. I’m way too young to have a heart attack or an aneurysm or whatever the fuck it is I feel like I’m on the verge of when I imagine losing Deirdre.
Darragh doesn’t know how lucky he is that his men have garbage fucking aim.
If that bullet had so much as nicked her freckled skin…
Rage, and something else, something that feels far too close to panic, make an ugly mess of my guts.
My hands prickle and burn. I grip my elbows, forearms still resting along the back of the chair, and I fucking fuse my gaze to Deirdre, as if the intensity of my eyes alone can create a protective layer around her.
She looks like she’s decided to pretend that I’m not here. She doesn’t glance at me and she doesn’t speak, and that’s just fine by me, because I have shit to sort out in my head.
I have to decide what I’m going to do about Darragh. My instincts tell me to gut him like a fish, fill his belly with bricks, and dump him into a frozen fucking lake.
But I also have to be smart about this. Darragh isn’t a lowly soldier or some sniveling ex-boyfriend of Deirdre’s.
He’s the head of the Irish mob, protected at all times.
Killing him would be astronomically difficult, and even if it were achievable, there’s a very good chance I’d take a bullet to the brain in the process.
And then what? Curse steps up to avenge me, Darragh’s men step up to avenge him, Toronto’s streets run red with blood. And in the Shakespearian-level chaos of the fallout, who the hell is gonna be left to take care of my Songbird?
Fucking nobody, that’s who.
Mad Darragh might be a nutcase, but he’s not an idiot.
Right now, he believes he’s taking back something that belongs to him, just like his soldiers said.
But I don’t think that he would be dumb enough to try to abduct or kill a Titone.
His men might not have even realized it was me with her tonight, now that I think about it, because I highly doubt they would have let loose a single shot if they’d been close enough to see who I was.
Darragh Gowan chews on grudges like a starving dog with a bone, but I also know that he wants to stay in business and make a shitload of money.
Not embroil his entire operation in a feud with the highest levels of La Cosa Nostra over a sweet but ultimately worthless little nobody like Deirdre.
Because really, that’s what she is to them. Her father was bottom rung mafia. Deirdre is even further removed. She doesn’t have money or status or friends.
But she’s got me now.
Yeah. I definitely need to think this through. Don’t rush.
That’s never been a problem for me before. I do what needs to be done – always – but I take my time and I do it with my head screwed on straight.
Only problem is I haven’t had my head on straight since that summer day when Deirdre and the sparking music of her soul blew a big fucking hole in the middle of my life.
I look at her while she sits in the tub, so quietly oblivious to everything she’s done to me.
Deirdre slides down a little, tipping her head back until her hair is submerged in the water, then comes back up.
She looks around, her tresses rust-red and sealed to the glorious curve of her neck meeting her spine.
Her gaze seems to snag on something in the shower in the corner of the room, and she sighs and stills.
“What is it?” I ask, leaning forward until my chin comes down on top of my forearms.
“Nothing.”
“ Deirdre .”
“I just wanted to wash my hair, OK? Is that allowed or do I have to ask permission first?”
“It’s allowed.”
Though I have to say, the idea of her coming to me to ask permission even for the most mundane things is appealing.
Can I take a shower, Elio? Can I go to class today, Elio?
Can I come for you, Elio?
Fuck.
“Whatever. The shampoo’s all the way over there. It’s fine. I’ll wash it tomorrow.”
But I’m already up, crossing over to the shower and entering the big glass enclosure of it. I scan the text on the bottles in here, grab the one marked shampoo , then figure she might want the others too, so I bring them all. Three in total.
I drop back down in the seat, straddling it once again. I put the other two bottles down on the stone floor but keep the shampoo. Deirdre holds out a wet hand for it, but I make no move to pass it over.
Instead, I peel off one glove, and then the other.
Then I squeeze the shampoo into my bare hands, lathering it up without looking at them. I lean further forward until my chest presses against the back of the chair and my elbows reach the edge of the tub.
“Come here.”
“I can wash my own damn hair.”
“I didn’t ask if you were capable of washing your own hair,” I say. “I told you to come here.”
Maybe it’s the baggage of this night weighing down on her slender shoulders. Or maybe it’s the fact that she knows she can’t win against me. With an expression of wary resignation furrowing her brows, she slides over to me, then slowly spins on her ass in the tub until her back is to me.
Merda , she’s got a gorgeous neck. And shoulders so lovely that they just about convince my agnostic ass that God must actually be real, because somebody had to have sculpted them.
Beauty that fucking ethereal doesn’t just come out of nowhere.
I’m not even entirely sure how someone so beautiful can exist in a world like mine at all.
Fuck me. Even her ears are pretty.
I don’t know if she’s turned me into that much of a needy fucking fool, or if she really is just that terrifyingly special, but in that moment I feel the truly feral need to stroke myself to climax while staring at her ears. Not her tits. Not her cunt.
Her fucking ears.
Cristo help me.
I ignore the twinge in my dick and instead focus on gathering up all that thick, sodden hair in my fists. But then she makes a small, whimpering sort of sound when I run my soapy fingers along her scalp, and ignoring my arousal becomes a hell of a lot harder.
I want to fuck her again.
And it’s not even lust driving me. Not just obsession or physical desire.
There’s this deep, unnerving sort of feeling that stirs up when I think about being inside her again.
Bizarrely, it almost feels like… sorrow.
Or homesickness. Or some kind of breath-stealing nostalgia.
Whatever the fuck it is, it hurts. Hurts to even imagine fucking her again because I want it, want her, so damn bad.
But that’s not what she needs tonight.
She needs tea, which I’ve made her. She needs a bath, which I’ve drawn her.
She needs her hair washed, which I’m doing for her.
She needs to be tucked all safe and cozy into bed. I’ll be the one to do that, too.
Right before I tuck my own scarred body in next to hers.