A Vow So Soulless, page 12
“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.
“I said sit!” I scowl and point to the chair.
Elio raises a sardonic brow.
“I’m not used to being told what to do, you know.”
“Well, you’re the one who seems so hellbent on getting yourself a wife, so you’d better get used to it!” I snap before I can stop myself. My cheeks go hot when I realize what I just said, that I’ve referred to myself as his wife, that I’ve acknowledged this future he’s carving out for us, the future I should run from.
Liquid heat churns in Elio’s gaze. He doesn’t say anything else, but he does actually listen to me and sit down, which I guess is a good thing.
“Stay there,” I say. I hurry into my bathroom and grab the first aid kit that Elio once used on me. I wash my hands, then bring it out to him.
I half-expect him to have disappeared when I get back out there, but there he is, looking way too big for the chair. He’s bent over my desk, peering at my laptop, as if he’s the one who has to do the class reading instead of me. My eyes track over his profile – the hard jaw, the masculine jut of his nose, everything made slightly boyish by the flopping waves of his unruly hair – and I falter, just a little.
Get your act together.
I give my head a shake, then go around in front of him, set the first aid kit down, then open it.
“You doing your homework?” Elio asks.
“Yeah. I was, anyway.”
His eyes glitter with satisfaction.
“Good girl.”
My insides jolt at his words. I ignore the feeling of ticklish heat building in my belly and star sorting through the first aid kit, taking out some antiseptic spray.
“I can do this myself,” Elio says, reaching for the bottle.
“No,” I say, barely stopping myself from swatting at his injured hand. He looks faintly amused by the way I’ve taken charge of this situation, but his expression darkens when I take his hand and gingerly put it palm-down on my desk.
His other hand, the one still wearing the glove, tightens into a fist against his thigh.
“Take that one off too,” I tell him. “We might as well do them both at the same time.”
“I’ll do it myself,” he says again, and his voice is steely.
I sigh and plant my hands on my hips.
“What’s the big deal? You’ve taken your gloves off in front of me before.”
He shifts in the seat.
“That was different.”
“Why?” I ask. “Because you were fucking me?”
“Pretty much.”
The only other, non-sexual time Elio has taken them off was when he was treating the wound on my foot and he had to wash his hands. He’s never once taken them off in my presence for himself. Only when it had to do with me. When he wanted to stop my bleeding.
Or he wanted to touch me, skin to skin.
I understand his hands have become a kind of complex for him. I can’t blame him after the trauma he’s been through. Valentina looked so shocked, aghast when I told her he’d taken the gloves off in front of me at all. He does not do that, she’d said.
He’s worn them since he was a teenager. Never letting anyone see beyond that smooth and perfect black.
He doesn’t want to let me see him now. This is different than him running his bare hands over my body in the darkness. This is sitting still beneath my probing gaze, scars bared in the bright light of day.
“It’s OK,” I say, gently wrapping my hand around his still-gloved one. “You can be vulnerable in front of me.”
Saying words like those to a man like Elio Titone is one hell of a gamble. A muscle twitches in the cheek above the scarred side of his jaw, and I brace for defensive anger.
But it doesn’t come. Instead, his mouth twists into a bitter grimace. He pulls his hand out from under mine then bites the glove off with his teeth before releasing the leather and letting it fall to the floor.
“You think this is what makes me vulnerable?” he says, lifting a sardonic brow and stiffly wiggling the fingers of the hand he just degloved. “No, Deirdre. I only have one real vulnerability these days, and it’s not some dumbass complex about my scars.”
My eyebrows knit together.
“What, then?”
He leans back against the chair, studying me through the glimmering slits of his gaze.
“What do you think it might be?” he says, spinning the question right back at me. “Or better yet, who do you think it might be?”
“You don’t mean me!”
He snorts.
“Course I do. Do you see me acting as a human shield for anybody else around here?”
“I never asked you to do that!” I exclaim, guilt poisoning me from the inside out.
“You don’t have to ask me, Songbird,” he says. “I’m gonna protect you whether you want me to or not. Whether you think you’re worth it or not. And you are, just for the record, in case there was any doubt in that pretty little head of yours.” He leans forward, sliding his injured hand along the desk towards me. I stare down at his torn knuckles and swollen flesh to avoid the piercing thrust of his gaze.
“I would walk through fucking fire for you.”
The raw intensity of his voice makes my nerves snap to attention. Goosebumps rise beneath my sleeves.
He’s breaking down my walls. Every day, every moment, shoving his way inside, finding cracks I thought I’d sealed. He’s digging deeper, deeper, until he brushes up against the broken bits inside me. The bits that cracked when Mom died, and fully shattered when Dad abandoned me.
He would walk through fire for me. Fight for me, burn for me.
He says it and I know it’s fucking true.
I can’t deal with what that means. Panic is rising, pushing back tooth and claw against the fact that someone might actually think I’m worth enough to fight for.
Throat too hot and tight to speak for a moment, I snatch up the disinfectant spray and unleash the stinging stuff on Elio’s knuckles. I watch the muscles jump in his arm.
“Cristo Santo, Songbird, you couldn’t give a guy a warning?” he grits out.
“Well, you certainly didn’t give me a warning this morning,” I reply tartly, relieved to get away from the more intense topic of conversation. “I didn’t know you were planning that engagement announcement. I had to read it on the freaking news today!”
I can hear the smug grin in his voice as I use clean gauze to dab at the excess antiseptic and dribbling blood on Elio’s hand.
“It was good, wasn’t it? Valentina helped us write it.”
“Helped us?”
“Yeah, Curse was there too.”
“For God’s sake,” I snap. “It’s like you asked everybody else for input instead of me!”
“Why? Was there some wording you would have wanted different? I’ll get them to republish a corrected version.”
“No! I don’t want any version of it published at all because we are not engaged!”
Elio inhales sharply through his nose, but I ignore him. He can be mad about it if he wants. I go to tape some more gauze to his knuckles, but he whips his hand away from my reach. He pinches my chin firmly and forces my eyes up to his.
My breath vanishes from my lungs when his gaze captures mine. It’s all-consuming, dark and violently possessive.
“I allow you more leeway than I allow anyone else,” he says, every word dropping his tone lower and lower. “And I allow you more disobedience than I allow anyone else.”
His grip shifts back. He makes a fist around my hair and tugs sharply, exposing my sensitive throat. My back arches involuntarily. Shaken, my hands shoot out for balance, one grabbing at the desk, the other falling heavily onto his rock-hard thigh. With a grunt, he forces me closer. My legs buckle, and I collapse to my knees between his thighs. He’s still got his hand in my hair, tugging my head back with just the right amount of force to twine pleasure alongside pain. My eyes water as I look up at him.
His other hand rises to my throat, a mere echo of pressure before he presses his fingers and thumb into my flesh, massaging the sensitive tissue. I let out a guttural moan, hating the sound and myself for not being able to resist this. Resist him.
“Maybe I’ve allowed you too much disobedience,” he muses darkly. “Maybe I’ve spoiled you too much. Been so lenient that you’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with. It’s my own fault, really. You’ve made me fucking weak.”
Both his hands tighten simultaneously on that word – weak. The increase in the pressure changes the angle of my head, and I’m suddenly confronted with the unmistakable shape of his engorged cock beneath his dark pants.
“You see that, Songbird?” he rasps. “You see what you do to me? Even now, while my kidney is bleeding out into my fucking body, I’m that fucking hard for you.” His grip on my throat goes briefly vicious, and I see ecstatic stars dance across my eyes before he relaxes his hold.
But he doesn’t let go.
“You may be able to affect me in ways nobody else on this planet can, but I want you to hear something right now, and I want you to fucking remember it.”
His eyes are black and bright at the same time. How is that even possible? Like flames made out of shadows. Consuming me.
“You are mine,” he growls savagely. “You are mine in ways you can’t even fucking fathom. You say you’re not going to marry me? That’s like saying the sun’s not going to rise tomorrow. I will drag you down that aisle kicking and screaming if I have to. I will shove a ring on your finger even while you try to claw my fucking eyes out. But make no mistake about it. You will be my wife.”
His eyes are searing me. Burning down into my very soul. Something raw, nearly painful, tears through that dark gaze and into me.
“Marrying you is my sunrise, Songbird. It’s inevitable. Don’t think that you can fight me on this. Because you cannot fucking win.”
“It’s not about winning,” I choke out, my throat catching in the possessive cage of his fingers. “It’s about what I want.”
“No,” he fires back instantly. “It’s about what you need. And what you fucking need is me.”
Chapter 14
Elio
My head hurts. My side hurts. My dick hurts. I’m this fucking close to unzipping my pants and ordering Deirdre to suck. The thought of her gorgeous, stubborn mouth closing over my throbbing head makes my veins feel fucking molten.
God, she looks so good down on her knees like that, her narrow throat trapped beneath my fingers, face flushed, chest heaving with restrained rage and probably at least a little arousal.
My angry little Songbird. Beating so hard against the bars of her cage.
We stare at each other, the silence between us as taut as a flexed muscle. I drink in the sight of her, cock twitching when I see that her nipples are hard and pebbled beneath the buttery-soft fabric of the sweater she’s wearing. My hand drifts down from her throat, and it aches like a bastard, but damn does it ever feel good when I press my palm into the braless curve of her breast. Deirdre takes a strangled breath, arching into my touch before she seems to remember herself and starts to pull away.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I hiss. I’ve still got one hand in her hair, and I give the strands a firm tug of warning. She stills, then shudders, whimpering when I graze her nipple with my thumb.
“Open your mouth,” I whisper, my voice growing rough and urgent. Her eyes flash, and I’m pretty sure she’s about to tell me to go fuck myself, but with a resigned, furious sort of submission, her lips part for me.
“Fuck. There’s my good little Songbird.”
I hook my thumb beneath the edge of her sweater, yanking it upwards and shoving the fabric between her teeth.
“Hold that there,” I tell her. She bites down gently, and the sight of her teeth sinking into the plush fabric twists something deep inside me.
She’s still down on her knees between my legs, holding up her sweater between her teeth, exposing herself to me so beautifully. Her chest is flushed with the force of her emotions, her nipples rosy and begging to be touched. I lean forward, breathing shakily through the screaming pain in my right side, and suck her left nipple into my mouth.
Deirdre spasms as I latch onto her, sucking hard. I groan, palming her other breast with my bleeding hand. She’s so goddamn delicious. She smells so good, like fucking sugar. Her skin is velvet and cream. So sweet it almost seems like she should melt, dissolve like candy. Come apart completely under the wet heat of my mouth. I tongue her nipple, rolling it hard, my eyes fluttering shut in rapture when she moans. Her hands grapple at my shoulders, and I half-expect her to shove me back, but a second later her fingers are burying themselves in my hair. Her touch is an electric fever zinging right up my spine to my scalp. I grunt, suck her harder, graze her flesh with my teeth. I know I’m going too hard. I know I’m going to leave a mark on her.
