13. Deirdre
Deirdre
I wasn’t prepared for seeing Elio downstairs just now.
I wasn’t prepared for my own reaction to him.
When I was in the kitchen, and he came through the door with the other men, it was like a bolt of lightning straight down my spine.
It was all I could do to clutch my teacup and gape.
I was just with him last night, I literally slept in the same bed as him, but it was like I hadn’t seen him in ages.
The way he fills the space, the way he draws my eye like he exerts some kind of gravity that only affects me is deeply disconcerting.
He was with his uncle, whom I’d never seen before, and I didn’t even care one bit.
I barely even noticed the boss of the Titone family, the legendary man who raised Curse and Elio.
Because I couldn’t keep my eyes off of his oldest nephew.
Elio looked a bit rumpled, his clothes wrinkled, shadowy stubble darkening the parts of his jaw that aren’t scarred, his hair askew in a way that made my fingers tighten around my teacup with the urge to smooth the rebellious waves.
And yet…
Fuck, I’m an idiot. But I couldn’t stop staring at him.
I should have just gone upstairs immediately. Gotten some space to clear my head. But the conversation had been about… Well, me. And I found myself rooted to the spot.
Vincenzo called me a whore.
And Elio’s eyes got so fucking dark I was half-afraid he’d kill his own uncle right in front of me.
No one insults my fiancée , he said. No one.
And then, the thing that really stole my breath, was when he told Vincenzo he would step aside, relinquish his power within this family, the role he would inherit…
All for me.
Just to marry me.
I hate how much his words affected me. He’s always so confident, so certain, so sure. It doesn’t matter who he has to confront or convince, whether it’s Brian or his own uncle, he never hesitates to stand up for me. To make his connection to me known.
And when he does stuff like that, it makes my belly go tight with twisted pleasure.
I don’t even want to marry him. But hearing him say that, that he’d give up everything important in his world, just to have me…
Well, it’s making it hard to be as pissed at him as I want to be.
But I’m not that weak. I have to have some kind of resolve here.
He still announced our fucking engagement – an engagement I haven’t even agreed to!
– without even bothering to ask me. Or his uncle, it seems, based on the conversation I overheard down there.
I didn’t stay until the end. I had to get some space from Elio.
And space from all the feelings inside me that, like dynamite he calmly held matches against, were threatening to explode.
I need to focus on something else. So I open my laptop.
The one he gave me. I grimace as I type in the password he set up for me – Iloveelio – and then open up some school files.
I have no idea if it’s even safe for me to go to class tomorrow after what happened last night, but I might as well be prepared.
Not that I get much work done. I’ve only just gotten into my reading for the week when I hear footsteps on the stairs. When the hallway door leading into Elio’s room opens, I know there’s no one else it could be but him.
I stiffen at my desk, frozen and staring blindly at the screen of my laptop.
My throat goes incredibly dry, my chest tightening with nerves and anger and desire and I don’t even know what else.
I don’t hear much movement and I relax slightly, thinking he’s still in his own room.
But then a low, silken murmur of, “Morning, Songbird,” directly behind me makes me leap out of my chair, heart pumping.
I whirl around to find Elio standing right behind my chair. It’s not the first time I’ve thought it, but damn, somebody that big should not be that quiet.
I clear my throat, then lick my lips. Elio’s hooded gaze goes to my mouth.
“It’s not morning,” I say, because I can’t think of anything sensible to actually reply with.
“I know,” Elio says. He grasps the back of the chair with one hand and lifts it easily aside so that there’s nothing between us. “But I didn’t get to say it earlier. So, good morning.”
Before I can react, before I can even think to move away, he’s stepped forward, closing the distance between us. The smooth glide of his leather touch at my jaw as he cups my face makes me shiver. I shiver even harder when his lips press softly, even tenderly, against my forehead.
“And good afternoon,” he breathes against my skin. Then he lowers his mouth to mine.
The kiss is so gentle, so nearly chaste, whisper-light against my lips, that I’m shocked into stillness. I don’t think he’s ever kissed me quite like this. Usually, it’s all tongue and taking. Ravishing. Ravaging.
This is like the mist of rain on my skin.
And yet, despite how incredibly soft the pressure against my mouth is, my body reacts like he’s kissing my clit instead of my lips. My pulse stutters, my insides going liquid. My knees literally go weak, and if that isn’t the definition of pathetic I don’t even know what is.
That realization – that I’m literally becoming a weak-kneed damsel in his arms, that he’s disarmed me with a single fucking kiss – gives me the strength to pull out of his quietly obliterating embrace.
“We need to talk,” I stammer, breathing much harder than I should be.
“Oh?” he says. He starts undoing the buttons on his shirt, and my stomach leaps like a rabbit in response.
I take a prim step back.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” Elio says, finishing unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it over the back of the chair he moved aside.
The back of my chair. The one in here, in my room.
I stare at the black fabric in my space, and it feels like an invasion.
An invasion I don’t know how to defend against. A further blending of our boundaries. No longer him and me, but us.
But then again, he’s the one who bought me that chair. He’s the one who put me in this room, inside his own house.
Was it ever really mine? Was it ever somewhere I could expect to escape from him?
“You’re welcome to join me,” Elio says with a crooked smirk. “You can come chat my ear off all you like without your clothes on.”
“That the only way I’ll get you to listen to me?” I ask, bristling.
“No,” he says. “In fact, I’ll probably be too distracted to listen properly in that scenario. So maybe it can wait.”
Oh, hell no. He just left me here, bleeding and sore in his bed, without even telling me he was going anywhere this morning.
Now he waltzes back in like everything between us is hunky dory?
He doesn’t even think he owes me five minutes before his shower to explain himself over the fact that every news outlet in the city, no, the country is proclaiming our engagement to the masses? Our engagement that doesn’t even exist?
My lungs burn as I prepare to expel all of those angry words.
Except Elio turns to head back into his room, putting his bare back to me, and any fury dissipates, strangled in the cold grip of concern.
“Elio,” I gasp, my fingers automatically reaching for him before I close them into a fist and let them drop. “What happened?”
His back doesn’t look like it’s in great shape at the best of times. Oh, the shape and musculature is akin to a fucking carved statue of a god in a museum, but the skin has seen better days. Various scars, including the burns up at his shoulder and neck, mottle the tissue.
But that isn’t what’s making the contents of my stomach feel like they’re rising up into my throat.
It’s the bruising.
It’s focused mostly at his sides, around his ribs and below, in the kidney area. It looks like he let somebody very, very angry use him as a punching bag.
Which makes no sense. At all. Because I’m pretty sure he could flatten just about anybody with a single punch to the head.
“Had a meeting with Darragh,” he says, turning back to face me. Now that I’ve noticed those injuries, I can’t help but notice others – swelling and bruising along his forearms.
“A meeting?” I ask. My eyes prickle. Seeing Elio all banged up like this is getting to me. It’s making me hurt. And if it was with Darragh, then…
It had to be because of me.
“You shouldn’t have,” I whisper. I blink as fast as I can, but I’m not able to stop a single tear from slipping out from my eye and down my cheek.
Elio comes back and bends, kissing the wetness on my skin.
“Don’t cry for me, Songbird,” he murmurs before kissing me again.
He draws back, running his thumb back and forth against the delicate bone beneath my eye.
“I told you before that this body ain’t worth shit and that I’d put it between you and a bullet any day of the week.
And if I have to put it between you and Darragh Gowan, then I sure as shit will do that, too. ”
“I don’t understand!” I cry. I grab the hand that’s caressing my face and lower it a bit. Yup, his forearm is already hot and swollen. When my fingers touch his knuckles through the gloves, he gives a slight hiss of pain.
That sound, barely audible, splinters something inside me. I don’t bother asking or waiting for permission. Before he can stop me, I move my grip to the ends of his fingers and pull the glove off.
He tenses instantly, and goes to pull his hand away, but I don’t let him, I grasp his hand with both of mine, and he stills.
The scarred skin on his knuckles has torn beneath the leather, and the wound has been bleeding freely into the lining of the glove. It’s hard to tell with the reddish scarring all over, but it also looks like the whole back of his hand is slightly swollen and inflamed.
“Darragh’s got a hard fucking head,” Elio says by way of explanation.
“What the hell happened? What kind of meeting did you two have?” I mutter. I tug him by the hand towards the chair. “Sit down.”
“It’s fine,” Elio says, standing and staring stubbornly down at me.